youth is taught to have for it the respect due to years; to question its wisdom is to be guilty of apostasy; it is treason to the state and to society; and, short of revolution, it is almost impossible to bring about a change, so far-reaching are the effects of a written constitution on the mind of a people.

Beginning with the first constitution of the Puritans, the Bible, we next see Hooker's written constitution in Connecticut, then the charters, which were the constitutions of the colonies and the authority by which the Assemblies passed the various provincial laws; Penn's plan of union, Franklin's scheme, the Articles of Confederation adopted by the thirteen states twenty-three years after Franklin's proposal had been rejected, and, finally, the existing Constitution of the United States of America. No great body of unwritten or common law is called into existence by the necessity of circumstances, no precedents have the force of statutes, no Congress or Legislature is able to make the Constitution conform to the latest enactment of the lawmaking power; but the lawmaking power is narrowed by the terms of the Constitution, and authority is expressed in the specific words of a statute.

Franklin's Plan of Union is worth brief study as prefiguring the Constitution adopted thirty-three years later, and as pointing the road on which American thought was marching even while no man challenged the authority of the Crown or attempted to obtain for the colonies independence. In Frank

lin's preamble it is proposed "that humble application be made for an Act of Parliament of Great Britain, by virtue of which one general government may be formed in America." A President-General was to be appointed by the Crown and a Grand Council formed, consisting of forty-eight members, of whom seven were to be from Massachusetts, two from Rhode Island, and the other colonies in like proportion, but after three years each colony should be entitled to representation proportionate to its contribution to the general treasury, in no case, however, exceeding seven or less than two. The Council had the appointment of its own Speaker.

All acts were to receive the approval of the President-General, and were to be transmitted to the King in Council for approbation, and if not disapproved within three years were to remain in force. The President-General, with the advice of the Grand Council, had power to make treaties1 with the Indians and to declare war and make peace with them; to make new settlements and provide laws for their government until given their own government by the Crown, to raise armies for the defense of any of the colonies; but men could not be impressed in any of the colonies without the consent of its legislature,

1 Cf. Constitution of the United States, art. 11, sec. 2: "He [the President] shall have power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties;" art. IV, sec. 3: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union," etc. In Franklin's plan is found the germ of the American Constitution, and it is striking with what fidelity his ideas were later enlarged to meet the requirements of a nation.

which alone could make laws and levy the colonial taxes. Recalling the long struggle that has divided men in the United States over the tariff, Franklin's economic philosophy is of interest. In giving the Grand Council power to levy taxes, that power was to be exercised "as to them shall appear most equal and just (considering the ability and other circumstances of the inhabitants in the several colonies), and such as may be collected with the least inconvenience to the people; rather discouraging luxury, than loading industry with unnecessary burdens.'

It has often been asked what made the Americans adopt the peculiar and, to many European students of American political institutions, confusing dual system of government, the imperium in imperio of the state sovereignty within the national sovereignty; and the convenient answer has been that it is an original American discovery. The dual system of government, the rights of the state subordinated to the general government, and the powers of the general government held in check by the rights of the state, simply continued in unbroken form the government that from the first day had marked the relations of the colonies not only to the Crown but also to each other. A political system as remarkable as any the world has known was the result of pure accident.

A company of merchant adventurers received a charter to land in Massachusetts, a court favorite

was rewarded with a grant, a royal relative was given a patent, but each colony as it was planted was independent of all the others, each was governed by its own laws, each was subject to the King, but owed no allegiance to its neighbors. So strong was this spirit of independence, so much had it become a part of the nature of the English in America, that when necessity drove the colonies into concerted action, as we have repeatedly seen, nothing could make them surrender their quasi-autonomy or yield control of their domestic affairs to a central authority. Colonies were willing to provide for the common defense, but they retained the right to levy their own taxes; they would furnish their quota of troops, but the enlistment must be carried on under their own supervision. From the day when the English first set foot on American soil until the Constitution of the United States was adopted, there was never any departure from this principle, which by the force of tradition and political circumstances became a fixed law.

But by no strength of the imagination can it be twisted into a moral law or an ethical principle. It was not so regarded by the men of its time. It was conventional, but not sacred. Beginning as an expedient, it became a custom, later to develop into a conviction that it was a wise arrangement it were well to leave undisturbed, but it made no appeal on moral grounds; it was only when men had to palliate their wrong-doing and find a defense for slavery

other than greed that they found in a political institution a “moral" justification.

In the United States the judiciary is elevated above the legislature, for the sufficiency of a law depends not upon its enactment by Congress but whether it passes the test of constitutionality as applied by the Supreme Court of the United States. This is in opposition to the English system, where the law of the land is the last enactment of Parliament, and this divergence from the model might be assumed to suggest an inspiration other than English, but a careful examination will show that the makers of the Constitution did no violence to their traditions.

In the colonial period, when there was a conflict between the colonists and their governors, an appeal lay to the courts of England or the Sovereign and his Privy Council, and in those days the Privy Council exercised much more important functions than it does now; and it was the courts and the Sovereign and his Council who construed the charters and determined whether an act of a provincial legislature or the order of a governor was violative of the charter. This taught the colonists to look to the courts, not only to protect their rights but also to determine how far laws were in harmony with the spirit of the charter, and when the tie with England was broken and the people instead of the King were sovereign, it was not easy for them to escape from the habit of turning to the courts for