Churchill once said that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all others…” and in Popular Government, Henry Sumner Maine answers him 60 years in advance with “…unless you examine any part of history at all.”

In this book, one of the greatest legal minds of the 19th century applies to the question of governance the historical method that made him famous in his Ancient Law. No faction—anarchist, legitimist, nationalist, Jacobite—escapes his penetrating gaze, nor does any democratic vice. But Maine is no partisan, and in the fourth and final essay, he gives a fair and thorough critique of the jewel in the democratic crown—the US constitution.

In an age where democracy has never been more fragile, Maine’s clear-eyed analysis has never been more relevant.