Popular Government: Four Essays occupies a marginal place in the reputation of Henry Maine. Originally published as a series of articles in the Quarterly Review during 1883-5, the book appeared in October 1885, the last major work published in Maine’s lifetime (his Whewell lectures on international law, delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1887, came out after his death in 1888). The work sold well. A second edition appeared within two months of the first, an American edition came out in 1886, it was translated into French in 1887, and went through five editions over the next twenty years, including a popular version in 1909. However, despite its success, Popular Government is seldom mentioned in the same breath as other parts of Maine’s canon, notably, his Ancient Law: its Connection with the Early History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas (1861) and his Village Communities in the East and West (1871), which to this day remain foundation studies in legal anthropology. Stefan Collini’s description of 1991 of Popular Government as a study in “political pessimism” is a representative verdict on a book which divided reviewers when it was published and has not gained in authority with the passage of time. As Maine’s friend and biographer, Grant Duff, stated, somewhat gnomically, “[i]t was inevitable that in a work of this kind a good deal should be said which conflicted with hopes and expectations very widely received”. Another treatise published around the same time and from a similar political standpoint to Maine—Albert Venn Dicey’s Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution—quickly eclipsed Popular Government in terms of influence. Not surprisingly, most recent work on Maine, including his biographer, Raymond Cocks, bypasses the book, and for an extended treatment it is still necessary to go back to George Feaver’s 1969 account. However, neither Feaver nor other Maine scholars explain the enigma: why such a consummate scholar failed to make more of an impact upon a topic that he was eminently qualified to write about. Maine did not set out to be a political Cassandra. In the Preface to Popular Government he promised to examine the topic in a different spirit to those who view “the advent of democracy either with enthusiasm or despair”. The stage seemed set for a sequel to classic political commentary from the 1860s, for example Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution, from a modern master, surveying the state of British politics as the question of parliamentary reform loomed large once more. Why did Maine fail in that mission?

In this essay I suggest that Maine’s problem was not so much his “pessimism”, but his inability to transition from acclaimed scholar to political pundit. From 1880 to 1885, Maine reprised his role as a political journalist, picking up where he had left off before he went to India in 1861. However, this time he sought to cultivate a popular conservative reading public, rather than the liberal audience of his youth. Drawing on neglected archival sources—principally Maine’s correspondence with his publisher, John Murray II—as well as his anonymous journalism from the period, I reconstruct the genesis of Popular Government, Maine’s motivation in publishing the original essays in a single volume, and the negative reception the book received, particularly in the hands of liberal critics.

I. “Democracy” in 1884-5

The four essays comprising Popular Government were written and published while Maine was Master of Trinity Hall, one of the smaller colleges of the University of Cambridge. As with Oxford, the university was slowly undergoing institutional reform, following the Royal Commission of 1850 and the Universities Tests Act of 1871. Nonetheless, Maine looked out at democracy from an ivory tower, far removed from the political excitement evident in much of the rest of Britain. Until 1948 the city of Cambridge contained two parliamentary constituencies. Two MPs represented the university and one MP represented the town. As with other university seats, the University of Cambridge electorate comprised all graduates, of the university. In 1885 that meant an electorate of 6371. The city of Cambridge was slightly smaller: 6189 electors, and the city representation was reduced from two MPs to one by the 1885 Redistribution of Seats Act. Politically, Cambridge was a Conservative Party stronghold. The senior MP for the university, first elected in 1868, Alexander Beresford Hope, was a staunch Conservative: brother-in-law of Lord Salisbury (the leader of the Opposition), and a stout defender of the Church of England. His fellow MP, Henry Raikes (elected at a by-election in 1882), was also a leading light in the Conservative Party. He had previously chaired the influential National Union of Conservative Constitutional Associations, key to the party’s election victory in 1874, and in 1883 co-founded the National Review in order to garner support behind for Lord Salisbury’s leadership. The city of Cambridge was represented by Robert Fitzgerald, a graduate of Maine’s college, Trinity Hall. An Anglo-Irish landowner, first elected in 1885, Fitzgerald led a local campaign in county Cork against the nationalist Land League. Significantly, neither constituency—town nor gown—saw much electoral activity in the period. Between 1874 and 1892 contests only took place for one of the university seats at by-elections (1882, 1887 and 1891). Fitzgerald held his borough seat unopposed until 1906. And even when an election did take place, as in the 1882 university by-election, records show that Maine himself played no part in the contest between Raikes and James Stuart, fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics. Maine did not even vote, despite being a senior member of the university.

Popular Government was nonetheless an intervention in the politics of the day. The original articles in the Quarterly Review accompanied the contested passage of parliamentary reform through the Houses of Commons and Lords in 1884, and the book version appeared just weeks ahead of the general election of November 1885, when William Gladstone’s government was re-elected with a reduced majority, dependent for support on the Irish nationalist MPs. London and other cities witnessed huge demonstrations in support of parliamentary reform, particularly after the House of Lords rejected the franchise bill in the summer of 1884, for example in Trafalgar Square on 21st July 1884. Similar gatherings occurred well into the autumn, including meetings of women calling for the admission to the vote, something which Maine opposed. Additionally, violence in the empire (the death of General Gordon) and in Ireland (the so-called ‘land wars’ and the Fenian bombing campaign on the mainland), combined with a domestic constitutional crisis to create an atmosphere of alarm and danger equivalent to the reform bill riots of 1831 or the Hyde Park demonstrations in the summer of 1866.

“Democracy” as a political catch-phrase also dominated the print culture of the early 1880s. The Social Democratic Federation, formed in 1881, published The Textbook of Democracy. England for All as its founding statement. The SDF and its leader Henry M. Hyndman were accused of inciting a riot at the Trafalgar Square demonstration in 1884. Three SDF candidates contested seats, albeit unsuccessfully, at the 1885. There were other examples. In Popular Government Maine singled out for ridicule Edward Carpenter, whose Towards Democracy was published in 1883. Further afield, Maine criticised democratic tendencies. He joined with opponents of Leon Gambetta, whose short ministry of 1881-2 had failed in its attempt to introduce electoral reform (the list system). Here, Maine followed the arguments of Edmond Scherer, author of La démocratie et la France (1884). Maine also noted how in India, universities such as Calcutta, where he was previously vice-chancellor, were creating an intellectual minority who sought western style democracy.
Earlier in his career, Maine of course had been part of the executive government in India, serving as legal member of the Council of India during the 1860s, and remained a member of the Council on India in London. Although Maine does not mention the Indian National Congress, formed in December 1885, so possibly too late for inclusion in the revised essays, it is unlikely that he would have been unaware of the recent sea-change in reform movements in the Indian subcontinent.

II. The genesis of Popular Government

Prior to the publication of Popular Government in October 1885, and almost three years before the commencement of the series of articles in the Quarterly Review, Maine had already developed a sustained critique of advanced liberalism in the pages of a new newspaper, the St Jame’s Gazette. Launched at the end of May 1880, and edited by Frederick Greenwood, the establishment of the St James’s Gazette represented a schism in the liberal intelligentsia. Greenwood had formerly edited the Pall Mall Gazette, the loyalties of which, under the new editorship of John Morley, followed Gladstone and his new government, formed after trouncing the Conservatives in the general election of April, 1880. Faced with a Liberal electoral stranglehold, unprecedented in recent times, Greenwood and his backers hoped to emulate anti-radical newspapers of the past, such as the Anti-Jacobin (1797-1798) and the Saturday Review (established 1855). Before going to India in 1862, Maine had been a prolific contributor to the Saturday Review. Now he reprised his role, this time writing the lead articles for the new title on a regular basis. Between May 1880 and December 1881 Maine contributed 135 pieces to the St James’s Gazette, more than his Saturday Review tally of the late 1850s, although whereas most of the Saturday Review articles were signed, in the St James’s Gazette he published anonymously. Given a prominent platform to attack Gladstone’s government, Maine covered a full range of topics – politics, religion, agriculture, foreign and colonial affairs, university reform. Not only did this journalism chart his journey away from the liberal apologetics of his earlier career, it also provided a preview of what was to come in Popular Government.

Maine’s first article for the debut issue of the St James’s Gazette, published as the new Parliament assembled for the first time, set the tone. “The Future of Political Ignorance” warned of the dangers of enfranchising agricultural labourers, a legislative pledge made by Gladstone during the election campaign. Farmhands and other rural workers were the “creature of the Poor Laws” and would exercise a disproportionate influence on Parliament. Over the months that followed, Maine developed this theme of the dangers facing the sovereignty of Parliament, owing to the overwhelming majority enjoyed by the Liberal Party, and in particularly the advanced opinions of some of its radical members. He highlighted how the Irish MPs, many of whom were mandated by the Land League were dictating Gladstone’s Irish policy. He singled out the veteran radical MP, John Bright, for censure, somewhat unfairly as the ageing Bright was now behind the curve on some progressive issues (women’s suffrage, home rule for Ireland). Changes in the electoral system, Maine noted, such as the secret ballot (established 1872) and pending new controls on electoral corruption were making it easier for radicals to enter the House of Commons. And new constitutional devices such as plebiscites were interfering with the deliberative character of parliamentary representation.
Once in Parliament the radicals enacted “class” legislation, for example the Employers’ Liability bill of June, 1880. Theirs was a “despotic control” and in March 1881, Maine foresaw the likelihood of a “coup d’état” as the Commons became subjected to the advanced liberals in government and on the Liberal backbenches. Towards the end of the summer of 1880, Maine looked to the House of Lords as the best possible resistance to the new power of the Commons, welcoming its “resuscitation” in opposing the Irish Disturbances bill. However, the Lords too was under threat, and Maine penned three further pieces defending it from abolition. Whilst most of his contributions to the St James’s Gazette focused on contemporary news items, Maine did also step back and offer some wider reflections on how British politics had shifted off course. He poured scorn on the idea of “democratic progress” and its avatars such as Jeremy Bentham, insisting that relatively speaking, the history of democracy was short and recent, and offered no sureties for the future. Thus, much of what he would argue later in Popular Government existed in embryonic form, as polemic and commentary rather than a scholarly work, in the columns of the St James’s Gazette. Maine clearly aspired to be a political sage. One column even aped the title of Thomas Carlyle’s famous prophetic essay of 1829, “Signs of the Times”. Not without irony. The cloak of anonymity both protected his identity but also limited his influence.

In the spring of 1883, Maine returned to the public prints. Over the next two years he contributed the series of four articles to the Quarterly Review which eventually comprised Popular Government. Since its commencement in 1807, the Quarterly Review had been a staunch critic of liberalism in all its varieties. Its publisher, the firm of John Murray, also published Maine’s other principal works, including Ancient Law and Village Communities, which by the mid-1880s were in their 10th and 5th editions respectively. As with most journals of the period, the Quarterly Review not only commissioned reviews of new books but also encouraged contributors to write at length on a theme of their choosing. Maine did both. In his first article, “The Prospects of Popular Government”, the last item of the issue of April 1883, ostensibly a review of Antonio Gallenga’s Democracy Across the Channel, he ignored the book, and instead discussed the fortunes of democracy in France, Spain, Germany, the Americas, Russia and China. Maine’s second in the series, the lead article in the January 1884 issue, “The Constitution of the United States” had for review the procedural manual of the House of Representatives, an 1877 edition of The Federalist Papers (originally published in 1787-8), John T. Morse’s 1883 compendium, American Statesmen and Louis Jennings’ Eighty years of Republican Government in the United States (1868). Jennings may have been specially recommended by John Murray. Jennings wrote prolifically for the Quarterly, and in 1884 had edited the correspondence of John Wilson Croker, a contributor to the journal in its early years. In the event, Jennings merited only one footnote in Maine’s article, most of which was devoted to The Federalist and more recent American political developments. Maine’s third article, “The Nature of Democracy” appeared in the October 1884 issue of the Quarterly, at the end of the long summer of protests around parliamentary reform in Britain, and the climax of the presidential election campaign in the United States, which resulted in a rare Democratic Party victory under Grover Cleveland. Alongside a further American title—this time the collected texts of the federal and state constitutions—Maine also reviewed Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy (neither review nor reviewer mentioned the author), and Edmond Scherer’s La démocratie et la France, both books being discussed en passant. Maine’s quartet of articles closed out with “The Age of Progress”, published as the lead article in the April 1885 issue, with just one title under review: a recent edition (in French) of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract. Maine focused on Rousseau, as well as the Abbé Sieyès and Jeremy Bentham, as exemplifying a specious argument for popular sovereignty.

Shortly after his last article appeared in the spring of 1885, Maine discussed with Murray the prospect of turning his contributions into a single volume. He may have been encouraged in this venture by Lord Acton, the liberal Catholic writer and historian, whose essay, “Democracy in Europe” which appeared in the Quarterly Review in 1878 shared Maine’s downbeat assessment of the spirit of the age. Maine stayed with Acton at his home in Cannes in the autumn of 1884, and discussed “The Age of Progress” with him in their correspondence the following March, Maine outlining the order of chapters for the proposed book, which he intended to be different from the original sequence. In his letters to Acton, Maine referred to their “bottomless differences”, but he nonetheless responded to his suggestions. By the early summer Maine was preparing the revision of his articles for publication, he received the proofs in mid-July, and completed the preface
(in which he thanked Acton) in mid-August. As the articles transformed into a volume, the political world was rocked by convulsion. Gladstone resigned the premiership in June, over the tragic death of General Gordon. Lord Salisbury’s Conservative Party formed a government, with a general election scheduled for later in the year. By mid-September Maine had completed the index to the book, and he signed off to Murray hoping that Popular Government would be published ahead of the election and perhaps attract “a new class of readers”.

III. An “eccentric method of legislation”

In only two ways did Popular Government differ from the original articles published in the Quarterly Review. First, Maine altered the running order so that the article about the American constitution appeared as the last chapter in the book, whereas it had been the second article of the Quarterly Review series. On the one hand, this meant that the volume ended on a positive note, for, as we shall see, Maine saw the American constitution as a less impaired version of the English model. At the same time, this rearrangement foregrounded the two longest articles with the most to say about Britain, namely “The Nature of Democracy” and “The Age of Progress”, both of which were twice as long as the opening chapter, “The Prospects of Popular Government”. This left a relatively short book unbalanced, even if its focus was sharper. Maine defended its length to Murray, stating that he had four essays and no more. Murray may also have been too reluctant to commission an additional new essay. Author and publisher fell out (albeit politely) when Murray insisted that his firm take a larger share of the royalties from the book, as Maine had already been paid for the articles. Adding another chapter would have complicated the royalties issue even further. Secondly, Maine added a preface of six pages, in which he set out his methodology, explaining to his readers that he intended to subject the concept of popular government to historical analysis,
in much the same way as he had examined the idea of the law and the village community in his other works. In applying this scholarly gloss, Maine showed his aspiration that the work be considered as the next instalment of his academic oeuvre. On the eve of publication, he learned of an enthusiastic notice of the Quarterly Review articles in the prestigious Revue des questions historiques, and urged Murray to include its praise in the publicity for the new book. Maine wanted it both ways. He wished for Popular Government to be popular, but also wanted to retain the kudos that went with being a scholar.

Read as an integrated study, rather than a series of disaggregated articles, Maine’s argument in Popular Government can be summarised as follows. It comprised four main themes. Firstly, he insisted that democracy was a relatively recent form of government, there was nothing a priori about its form, nor was it inevitable that it would become the normal state of modernity. Maine pointed up the rhetorical confusion often associated with the discussion of democracy. “Popular government” he defined as governments which “hold powers by delegation from the community”, of which democracy was but one example, mainly to be found in “civilised” countries. However, it was by no means a universal tendency or aspiration. The Islamic world, Africa, China, India all opposed democracy, their habits and manners in this regard were unchanging. Half the human race, that is to say women, were conservative, lacking any passion for change. Even amongst “civilised” nations, elements of “savagery” persisted. Maine attributed the unrealistic expectations surrounding democracy to the influence of Jeremy Bentham and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who between them had ushered in a continuous spirit of reforming legislation, comparable to the reformation of the 16th century, giving legitimacy to radicalism. Following J. L. Austin and James Fitzjames Stephen, Maine distinguished between democracy or equality and liberty, emphasising that liberty was incompatible with democracy. Nor was progress, for example scientific advancement or social improvement, dependent on the growth of democracy. A wider suffrage might have resisted technological innovation: “[t]he threshing-machine, the power-loom, the spinning jenny, and possibly the steam-engine, would have been prohibited”, in much the same way as there was working-class opposition to public vaccination in contemporary times. Conversely, who now remembered the political economy of David Ricardo and James Mill, or the legislation it inspired such as the new Poor Law. And democracy was fragile. Even in the classical era, such as the Roman Republic, or as George Grote had documented in his History of Greece (1846-56), it had been spurned by the wise.

Secondly, Maine sounded alarm over the “insecurity of government” around the world which had followed from the adoption of democracy. Citing Francis Lieber’s work of 1853 he enumerated 350 new “a priori” constitutions established since 1800. Yet most of these, Maine pointed out, had been accompanied by radicalism and imperialism. In Germany, Spain and Italy, the nation at arms was inseparable from male suffrage, and rule by the mob seemed to be spreading beyond Europe, judging from outbreaks such as the Taiping rebellion in China, and the nihilist movement in Russia.

Thirdly, Maine criticised the drift towards radicalism in Britain, particularly during Gladstone’s second prime ministership after 1880. Much of his ire focused on how the Representation of the People Act was forced through Parliament towards the end of 1884, despite the House of Lords rejecting it in July. He criticised the “secrecy” of Gladstone’s ministers over how they agreed to push the legislation over the line, seeing this as symptomatic of how the Cabinet dominated both the Houses of Commons and Lords. The Commons had become bound to an increasingly ill-informed electorate, easily swayed by minority interests and pressure groups who reduced complex questions to party slogans, seeking to mandate the government of the day. Maine singled out Wilfrid Lawson, MP for Carlisle and leader of the United Kingdom Alliance, the principal pro-temperance lobby, as the main exponent of direct democracy, whose tactics he likened to the Puritans, as well as condemning the system of “wire-pulling” in the constituencies associated with the caucus and other local election machines, which had developed since the mid-1870s. Maine also warned of further parliamentary reforms to come, diminishing the capacity of the legislature to deliberate properly. He contemplated the reconstruction of the House of Lords. He anticipated the introduction of proportional representation and the use of plebiscites or referendums to settle constitutional issues, his criticism here targeted at Henry Labouchere, the radical MP for Northampton. Behind this long list of complaint lay the assertion that democracy was affecting Parliament’s ability to legislate properly. The benign influence of Rousseau and Bentham, who, as Maine pointed out, were legal rather than constitutional reformers, had been to encourage an “eccentric method of legislation”, sweeping away the deliberative functions of Parliament.

Fourth, and finally, Maine did discuss some remedies for Britain’s descent into a despotism of democracy. He praised Belgium, for moving towards plural voting whereby those with a certain level of education gained additional votes. John Stuart Mill and others had similarly suggested an “intelligence” franchise in the 1850s, and to a certain extent, it reflected the reality of university representation in places such as Cambridge and Oxford. Then in Popular Government, Maine turned to the USA and its constitution, surveying it at length in the final chapter of the book. Maine saw the American constitution as an export from Britain. He argued that the President was modelled on the prerogative powers of the British monarch, and the Senate (which was not an elected body until 1913) intended as the equivalent of the House of Lords. The founding fathers established the Supreme Court as a solution to the lack of clarity in the British system between the role of the “law lords” (the Lords of Appeal) and Parliament. While noting the similarities between the House of Representatives and the House of Commons, insofar as both were prone to “wire-pulling”, Maine admired the use of standing committees in Congress, permanent bodies which examined legislation and other matters without the partisan pressure of voting and divisions. Maine thought that cross-party monitoring committees of this kind could be easily adopted in Britain. The final sentences of Popular Government concluded his panegyric to the USA with a flourish:

The signal success of the Constitution of the United States in stemming these tendencies [towards disorder] is, no doubt, owing in part to the great portion of the British institutions which were preserved in it; but it is also attributable to the sagacity with which the American statesmen filled up the interstices left by the inapplicability of certain of the then existing British institutions to the emancipated colonies. This sagacity stands out in every part of the Federalist, and it may be tracked in every page of subsequent American history.

IV. A “feeble” reception

The reception of Popular Government disappointed Maine. He complained to James Fitzjames Stephen that, one or two notices aside (including Stephen’s own review in the St James’s Gazette), the response had been “feeble, though generally courteous”. Courteous describes the review in the Spectator, which dwelled on Maine’s critique of cabinet government (noting how he followed Thomas Babington Macaulay and Bagehot in emphasising its significance). Further afield, however, critics lined up to take him down. The Athenaeum set the tone at the end of October 1885. Its lead article commented that Maine’s “arguments are weakened by a lack of that scholarly throroughness and that philosophical caution which he has taught us to expect from him”. The reviewer put their finger on why Maine has produced an “incomplete series of pamphlets”, quoting back at the author his stated aspiration to reach a wider readership. The reviewer went on, caustically, “Sir Henry Maine is more skilful in an abstract dissertation than in party controversy, and had he kept within his old lines he need have been in no fear of getting a small and inattentive audience”. Popular Government fell between two stools. Too partisan and polemical to be taken seriously as a scholarly treatise, and yet too unfocused as a piece of political journalism. Maine himself remained confused about what kind of intervention he was making. He parried a suggestion from Randolph Churchill that a popular edition be produced immediately, presumably as an electoral tract supporting the claims of “Tory democracy”. Maine insisted ‘[t]he book is primarily written for the educated reader … if it has any considerable sale among them … it will then be time to consider whether it is time to tap a lower and larger stratum’. At the same time, he complained to his publisher that none of the Conservative papers seemed interested in the volume. For his part, John Murray, the publisher, passed on a complaint from Louis Jennings that Maine has only paid lip-service in Popular Government to his work on American political history, to which Maine replied that he did not have sufficient space to cover the work at length.

Such ambivalence about the status of Popular Government lay at the heart of the two most significant reviews of the book: John Morley in the Fortnightly Review and Edwin Godkin in Nineteenth Century. Maine learned of Morley’s forthcoming “fulmination” in the third week of December 1885, perhaps with some trepidation. Morley had been editor of the Fortnightly at the time of the schism which led Greenwood to set up St. James’s Gazette. An expert on Rousseau and French history, doughty defender of liberal icons such as John Stuart Mill and Richard Cobden, and newly elected as Liberal MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1883, Morley’s credentials as a bagman for advanced liberalism were well-known. Published in February 1886, his long review proved a critical albeit measured mauling of Maine, reprinted in a later collection of Morley’s essays. The essay was peppered with dry witticisms, for example, “[t]he truth is that scientific lawyers have seldom been very favourable to popular government; and when the scientific lawyer is doubled with the Indian bureaucrat, we are pretty sure beforehand that in such a tribunal it will go hard with democracy”. However, Morley criticised Popular Government in the same way as had the reviewer in the Athenaeum, pointing up how it combined over-zealous argument with spurious scholarship. Maine was wrong to attribute the failings of democracy to the malign influence of Rousseau and Bentham: neither man was wholly original in what they advocated, and anyway the radical tradition in Britain had always tended to ignore a priori reasoning and look instead to historical precedents. Morley found fault with Maine’s poor citation of sources and substantiating evidence. The author “has not been very careful to do full justice to the views that he criticises. He is not altogether above lending himself to the hearsay of the partisan”, Morley observed of Maine, particularly in his treatment of elected chambers and his denigration of the working-class electorate as the mob. Morley also doubted the validity of Maine’s argument that democracy was inimical to the progress of science. He spent part of the review rejecting Maine’s deduction that the opposition towards oppressive state intervention, for example, public vaccination, also resulted from the extension of the franchise.

In his largely negative review of Popular Government, published in Nineteenth Century in February 1886, Edwin Godkin, editor of the New York Nation made similar criticisms to those of Morley. He too disapproved of Maine’s use of evidence, suggesting that his renowned historical method was more of a “chemical method”, a fallacious argument that because democracy had been unsuccessful here and there, it was inherently unstable. Godkin also dealt with Maine’s views on America, particularly the caricature of an ignorant American electorate depicted in the book. On the contrary, Godkin described how universal male suffrage across the states created more political intelligence not less, especially around economic issues. And as Morley had argued, Godkin also dismissed Maine’s claims that democracy retarded scientific progress, producing a wealth of examples which connected political enlightenment with enhanced technological knowledge. For reasons that are unclear, Maine replied to Godkin’s review at length in the same number of the Nineteenth Century, furnishing a range of evidence to reassert his main arguments, and ending the reply by noting that Godkin agreed with him that the best future for democracy lay in America. Maine may have wanted to set the record straight for an American readership, given the impending publication of the volume by the New York publishing house Henry Holt. However, his forceful riposte—his only public response to his critics—reads like special pleading, and cannot have helped the reputation of the volume.

Maine’s foray into democracy might have had an interesting coda. In mid-December, 1886, Beresford Hope, one of the two MPs representing the University of Cambridge indicated to his supporters that his failing health might mean a vacancy of the seat and therefore a by-election in the near future. In early May Beresford Hope’s election committee formally approached Maine to see if he would be interested in becoming a candidate should a vacancy occur. He replied in the negative two days later, mainly on the grounds of his own poor health. Beresford Hope did pass away the following October, with George Stokes, Cambridge physicist and President of the Royal Society, elected in his place. By then Maine too was in poor health. Had he taken a different decision and stood for election, the presence in Parliament of one of its most outspoken critics would have drawn more attention than he could ever have imagined or craved.

In conclusion, Popular Government lacks the academic polish of Maine’s work on the law, and the scholarly apparatus of Dicey’s Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. As a piece of journalism, it pales compared to the wit and wisdom of Bagehot. The alarm bells that it sounded proved premature. In the general election of 1886 Lord Salisbury’s Conservative Party secured a comfortable majority, following the accession of many Liberal Unionist MPs. The political confusion and bad temper of Gladstone’s second administration faded away. Maine also made some poor choices. The essays did not transfer seamlessly from the Quarterly Review to the book format, much more was required to shape them into a scholarly tome. Maine was in a rush to catch and influence the 1885 election. There he also missed an opportunity, neither taking advantage of Randolph Churchill’s offer to bring out a popular edition immediately, nor even writing for a more overt Conservative magazine, such as the National Review, which would have been a simple step, given his Cambridge connections to its proprietor, Henry Raikes. Neither an academic treatise nor a political manifesto, Popular Government was hard to place, and was savaged by the liberal press. Despite that, there remains much of value in Maine’s essays. His warnings about the overbearing influence of the Cabinet in the decisions of Parliament, the dangers of plebiscitary democracy, and the slogansing tendencies of electoral politics, ring as loud now in the age of Brexit and populism, as they did in the 1880s.

Miles Taylor

Miles Taylor is Professor of British History and Society, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His recent books include Empress. Queen Victoria and India (Yale University Press, 2018), and (co-edited with Jill Pellew), Utopian Universities: A Global History of the New Campuses of the 1960s (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). He is currently completing a book entitled The Sovereign People? Parliamentary Representation in Britain Past and Present.