If its large constitutional outlines had been traced by a preceding age, its administrative detail had still to be secured.

The process was very gradual; and the attempt of George III to arrest it produced the splendid effort of Edmund Burke.
Locke's work may have been not seldom confused and stumbling; but it gave to the principle of consent a permanent place in English politics.
It is the age which saw the crystallization of the party-system, and therein it may perhaps lay claim to have recognized what Bagehot called the vital principle of representative government.

Few discussions of the sphere of government have been so productive as that in which Adam Smith gave a new basis to economic science.

Few controversies have, despite its dullness, so carefully investigated the eternal problem of Church and State as that to which Hoadly's bishopric contributed its name.

De Lolme is the real parent of that interpretative analysis which has, in Bagehot's hands, become not the least fruitful type of political method.
Blackstone, in a real sense, may be called the ancestor of Professor Dicey.