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A national polity is not the creation of a single brain or of a royal commission of brains, but grows with the growth and strengthens with the strength of the nation; cannot be changed without changing much of the spirit of the people, and is strong in proportion to the distinctness of its continuity.

— William Stubbs Lectures on Early English History (1906)

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More quotes by William Stubbs

England alone has a history in which ancient freedom has made its way through, and utilised all that is good in feudalism, widening from precedent to precedent into perfect political liberty.

Lectures on Early English History (1906)

Among the first truths which the historical student, or indeed any scientific scholar, learns to recognise, this is perhaps the most important, that no theory or principle works in isolation.

The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, Vol. I (1874)

It is that the essence of the historical study is in the working out the continuity of the subject, while the essence of the legal study is in the reducing of it all to certain theoretic principles.

Lectures on Early English History (1906)

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

The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, Vol. I (1874)

But although English society was divided by sharp lines, and broad intervals, it was not a system of caste either in the stricter or in the looser sense. It had much elasticity in practice, and the boundaries between the ranks were passable.

The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, Vol. I (1874)

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