304 CAUSES OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



State. At that time, by dint of hard work, 

 the Queen had signed all commissions up to 

 1858, and there remained 15,931 documents of 

 this kind still unsigned. 1 



3. RESPECT FOR TRADITION. The persistence of 

 some institutions can only be accounted for by a 

 lack of invention. Mommsen calls attention to 

 a remarkable instance of this kind in the history 

 of early Rome : 



When a government by praetors as consuls 

 were first called was substituted for a govern- 

 ment by kings, the new system remained the same 

 in idea though nominally different. The old idea 

 of royal authority survived for a long period, and 

 the praetors enjoyed all the old kingly powers, even 

 those in plain contradiction to the temporary 

 character of their office : the king could not be 

 deposed, but neither could the praetor be con- 

 strained to depose himself ; the king, when dying, 

 nominated his successor himself, and this power 

 remained to the praetor although the system of 

 election by the comitia had been introduced 

 for the praetor had the right of excluding whoever 

 he chose from the list of candidates, and also of 

 annulling the votes given to those who displeased 

 him. It was only at a later period that a logical 



1 Bagehot, The English Constitution, pp. 57 and following ; 

 London, 1891. 



De Franqueville, Gouvernement et Parlement Britanniques, i., 

 p. 251. 



