"In England it is not difficult to perceive that everything has a constitution, except the nation," wrote Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man. The great rabble-rouser died 200 years ago this week, but if he had found himself in the public gallery of the House of Commons yesterday, penned behind glass and looking down on the prime minister as he spoke of democratic reform in a chamber whose staff still dress like 18th-century gentlemen, he would surely have been a chastened man.
A writer who loathed the hereditary system would have been dismayed to hear that people still sit in the upper house by right of birth, and that their final removal remains a matter of consultation. A democrat who deplored monarchy would have been shocked to learn that it had survived, and the nation still lacked its written constitution. And a man who believed the system by which people are elected to parliament determines its quality - "as it is unnatural that a pure stream should flow from a foul fountain, its vices are but a continuation of the vices of its origin" - would have heard the prime minister suggest only the most timid reform.
Read Full Article »