At the Universities the study Of constitutional history has of course long been regarded as of primary importance and I have some hope that to students entering upon their course this book may be useful as a preliminary to more exact and detailed work. Teachers Of the upper forms in schools, more over, who have specialised in other directions, may not be un willing to regard it as an alternative to the ordinary historical narrative; for their convenience, therefore, a list of leading dates has been given at the end of each chapter, and a brief analysis of the contents of the book included in the Appendix. The book is so obviously without claim to be regarded as the fruit of original research that I have in no case thought it necessary to quote authorities. To any student of history it will be plain from what sources I have drawn, while for others the matter can have no interest. For the same reason I have given no very exact references to the documents from which the extracts in the Appendix are selected and translated. These extracts are merely illustrative they may be of interest to readers who have no access to the originals, but in the case of the professed student they could only serve as an intro duction or guide to the well-known collections of constitutional documents.
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