CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 561 



amendments, they are the cause of the continued agitation of political 

 parties. The written constitution less changeable is less elastic, less 

 apt to assure the political progress of a people, especially if its education 

 is elevated and its public spirit developed and energetic." * On the 

 other hand a written constitution is almost a bridge leading to better 

 time, an easier and quicker means of giving civil dignity and po- 

 litical conscience to a people. It increases its juridical sense; it is 

 a watch-tower showing when its liberty is in danger; it offers him a 

 text which can always be recalled and returned after the agitations 

 of revolution and the violence of reaction. 2 I perceive, also, only 

 two moods suitable to reform constitutional law: that embodied in 

 the American Federal Constitution and that one followed in England 

 and in Italy. Among you, consent of the majority sanctions the 

 difficult machinery of the amendments; among us the constitution is 

 surrounded with the highest respect, considered as something not to 

 be touched in its fundamental principles, subjected to the constant 

 action of social and political progress, and is transforming itself in a 

 manner that will enable it to provide for all needs and all exigencies, 

 joining to the most venerated traditions the novelties which are better 

 providing for the wishes, the needs, and the interests of the greatest 

 number, to the very assiduous, fruitful expression of the national 

 conscience. 



The English constitution, as we have seen, consists of two different 

 parts; one part is made up of rules, which are enforced by the courts, 

 and which, whether embodied in statutes or not, are laws in the 

 strictest sense of the term and make the true law of the constitution; 

 the other part is made up of understandings, customs, or conventions, 

 which, not being enforced by the courts, are not laws in the true 

 sense of the word. The law of the constitution is the result of two 

 guiding principles: "the sovereignty of parliament and the rule of 

 law." The first principle means, in effect, the gradual transfer 

 of power from the crown to a body which has come more and more 

 to represent the nation, with two effects: namely, the end of the 

 arbitrary power of the monarch and the preservation of the supreme 

 authority of the state. The second principle, the supremacy through- 

 out all institutions of the ordinary law of the land, determines the 

 substance of English constitution which is, more truly than any other 

 polity in the world, except the constitution of the United States, 

 based on the law of the land. The rule of law is a conception within 

 the United States which indeed has received a development beyond 

 that which it has reached in England, but it is an idea not so much 

 unknown to as deliberately rejected by the constitution-makers of 

 France, Italy, and other Continental countries. The supremacy 



1 Brunialti, op. cit. pp. 79, 80. 



2 A. Jameson, op. cit. pp. 77, 78. 



