Excerpt from Essays on Government Any one who attempts to study a carpet loom, or even an ordinary steam engine, when at rest, will find its mechanism hard to under stand. He may examine the several parts; note their size and shape, and the materials of which they are made; but unless he watches them in motion he will not easily appreciate their hearing upon one another, or their func tions in the working of the machine. The same principle applies to the study of politics, for the real mechanism. Of a government can be understood only by examining it in action. It has, indeed, been far too common to study the constitutions of various countries statically, if I may use the term; and this has led to a. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.