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British thinkers Zhang studied—men like Walter Bagehot, Leonard Hobhouse, and Albert Venn
Dicey—turned on a belief in the historical contingency and cultural particularity of political
forms in general, and British constitutional government in particular. In an essay written in 1915
to mark the seven hundredth anniversary of the Magna Carta, Zhang offers more direct
observations about the possibilities for constitutionalism in China by discoursing on its career in
Britain. He acknowledges the fact that the document was largely the result of aristocrats wresting
power away from the king for their own benefit, not that of the people, but argues that eventually
the system opened paths to popular dissent and change. Zhang extracts an important lesson from
this historical fact: ―the political successes of the British lies in their clearly discerning that
reform takes place in multiple steps‖ (ZQJ 519). By characterizing the British governmental
system as historically emergent rather than instantaneous, Zhang identifies the foundations of
constitutionalism in incremental, historically specific changes that culminate in wider
transformation. ―Constitutions are matters of politics and history, not purely matters of [specific]
laws‖ (ZQJ 521).
Against those like Frank Goodnow—then-president of the American Political Science
Association and special foreign advisor to Yuan Shikai—who argued that China was not ready
for constitutionalism, Zhang points out that at one time Europe was without constitutional
apparata either. Before their political systems became second nature, there necessarily existed
―individuals who transcended their times, patriotic men who all undertook the task of abolishing
the old and thinking about the new, and finally the new was able to triumph over the old.‖ This
was not a process of imposition, precisely because it was a process that unfolded slowly and
among and between various, bold individuals who went on to influence the rest of society. Only
Convention