permanent constitution of any other than an English character would probably have been an impossibility. This is quite sufficient to account for the silence as to sources at the time and ever since. Americans then regarded and still regard their constitutional principles as essentially their own, - English constitutional principles having become American constitutional principles.1 By a process of adoption and adaptation, rather than of new creation, the Convention at Philadelphia gave the highest evidence of its sagacity. "The American Constitution," says Mr. Bryce, "is no exception to the rule that everything which has power to win the obedience and respect of men must have its roots deep in the past, and that the more slowly every institution has grown, so much the more enduring is it likely to prove. There is little in that Constitution that is abScotland. As to political training, they had all been reared under the English system of local self-government which had grown up alongside of the English customary law in the several States which they represented. Those States they had helped to transform from English provinces into independent commonwealths, whose constitutions were substantial reproductions of that of the English kingdom."-Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, 62. 1 "Although the framers of our Constitution were without any grasp of the modern conception of the historical continuity of the race, they revered the ancient constitutional traditions of England. And thus it came to pass that Magna Charta, the Acts of the Long Parliament, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of 1787 constitute the record of an evolution.”. W. T. Brantly's essay, "Formation of the Federal Constitution," Southern Law Review, August, 1880, VI. 352. solutely new. There is much that is as old as Magna Charta." The delegates of the Convention "had neither the rashness nor the capacity for constructing a constitution a priori. There is wonderfully little genuine inventiveness in the world, and perhaps least of all has been shown in the sphere of political institutions. These men, practical politicians, who knew how infinitely difficult a business government is, desired no bold experiments. They preferred, so far as circumstances permitted, to walk in the old paths, to follow methods which experience had tested."2 Professor Johnson speaks in the same strain: "If the brilliant success of the American Constitution proves anything, it does not prove that a viable constitution can ever be struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. Man may be a political animal, but in no such sense as this. . . To accuse the members of having deliberately hazarded the destinies of their country upon the outcome of an entirely new and untried instrument of government, would be an injustice against which they would have been the first to protest; and yet the intensity of 1 American Commonwealth, I. 26. 2 Ibid. I. 31. "The American Constitution of 1787 was a faithful copy, so far as it was possible to make one out of the materials at hand, of the contemporary Constitution of England. . . . Allowing for the more democratic character of the constituencies, the organization of the supreme power in the United States is nearer the English type of the last century is less modern, in fact - than is the English Constitution of the present day." - Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., VI. 310, "Constitution." posterity's admiration for their success is continually tempting new writers into what is in reality just such an accusation.' And Mr. James Russell Lowell has observed, with his usual grace: "They had a profound disbelief in theory, and knew better than to commit the folly of breaking with the past. They were not seduced by the French fallacy, that a new system of government could be ordered like a new suit of clothes. They would as soon have thought of ordering a suit of flesh and skin. It is only on the roaring loom of time that the stuff is woven for such a vesture of thought and expression as they were meditating."" 1 New Princeton Review, September, 1887. ... 2 Address on Democracy, October 6, 1884. "What gives colour to the notion, that the American constitutions, both State and Federal, are the voluntary creation of man, is the fact that they are written (so-called), and that these writings have been formulated, enacted, and promulgated by representative conventions. This opinion has been so prevalent that the national habit is to look upon the members of the Convention of 1787 as demi-gods, giant heroes, far surpassing the foremost men of to-day, while the Constitution itself has been placed upon a pedestal and worshipped as a popular idol. . . But by making a popular idol of it we are apt to lose the very benefits which its excellencies insure. It is the complete harmony of its principles with the political evolution of the nation which justly challenges our admiration, and not the political acumen of the convention which promulgated it. Instead, therefore, of being the voluntary creation of the American people in the eighteenth century, the Federal and State constitutions of the United States are but natural and sequential developments of the British Constitution, modified as to detail and as to a few fundamental principles by the new environment. This claim is easily substantiated by the most superficial comparison of the British and American constitutions. ... And a closer study of the two systems reveals the fact that every principle brought into play by the American constitutions, that has endured and proved effectual in the attainment of the ends aimed at, was either of English origin or was the direct product of the social forces that were at play in American life." — C. D. Tiedman, Unwritten Constitution of the United States, 20, 25. CHAPTER III. LEGISLATIVE ORGANISM. HE Germania of Tacitus describes the ancient Teutonic assembly as twofold in operation, with a conservative element in the conference of chiefs and a popular element in the gathering of the armed host of freemen. "About minor matters," he tells us, "the chiefs deliberate; about the more important, the whole tribe. Yet even when the formal decision rests with the people, the affair is always thoroughly discussed by the chiefs. They assemble, except in the case of sudden emergency, on certain fixed days, either at new or at full moon, for this they consider the most auspicious season for the transaction of business. . . . Their freedom has this disadvantage, that they do not meet simultaneously, or as they are bidden, but two or three days are wasted in the delays of assembling. When the multitude think proper, they sit down armed. Silence is proclaimed by the priests, who have on these occasions the right of keeping order. Then the king or the chief, according to age, birth, distinction in war, or eloquence, is heard, more because he has influence to persuade, than because he has power to command. If |