There are no constitutional revolutions, no violent reversals of legislation; custom is far more potent than law, and custom is modified infinitesima… - William Stubbs

The old map of France is full of memories—recollections of Gaul and Rome, the empire of the Cæsars, Burgundians and Aquitanians, Franks and Armoricans—Clovis, Charles the Great, and St. Louis—knights, troubadours, saints, and heroes. The history of the land was written on its face. The map of modern France is a catalogue of hills and rivers, a record of centralisation, codification, universal suffrage, government by policemen. Probably the work of simplification will never be carried so far in England, but there is a tendency towards it, which is a sign of the decline of independent thought and character.

In a further stage the land becomes the sacramental tie of all public relations; the poor man depends on the rich, not as his chosen patron, but as the owner of the land that he cultivates, the lord of the court to which he does suit and service, the leader whom he is bound to follow to the host: the administration of law depends on the peace of the land rather than that of the people; the great landowner has his own peace and administers his own justice. The king still calls himself the king of the nation, but he has added to his old title new and cumbersome obligations towards all classes of his subjects, as lord and patron, supreme landowner, the representative of all original, and the fountain of all derived, political right.

[T]he whole of the constitutional history of England is little more than a commentary on Magna Carta.