558 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 



made or altered. Story and Kent, therefore, knew with precision 

 that the nature and limits of the department of law which they 

 intended to comment, must be guided by the same rules as in any 

 other branch of American jurisprudence, and their work, difficult 

 as it might prove, was a work of the kind to which lawyers are 

 accustomed and was to be achieved by the use of ordinary legal 

 methods." 1 



Otherwise it happened with English constitutions and with all 

 others inspiring themselves in it, and which, although the letter is 

 different, were modeling themselves on it in the whole development 

 of parliamentary system. To comment on English constitution, 

 Blackstone may search the statute-book from beginning to end 

 and will find no enactment which purports to contain the articles 

 of the constitution, no test by which to discriminate laws which 

 are constitutional or fundamental from ordinary enactments; the 

 same term of constitutional law is of comparatively modern origin. 



Notwithstanding, the English constitution is, in the quaint lan- 

 guage of George the Third, " the most perfect of human formations," 2 

 which had not been made, but had grown; which was not the fruit 

 of abstract theory, but of the instinct of the people. The celebrated 

 quotations of Burke and Hallam 3 and many others recall with 

 singular fidelity the spirit with which those institutions were 

 regarded. 



The Romans spoke of constitutio principis, and in some statutes 

 of the Middle Ages the same word is repeated, although it is more 

 frequently spoken of as the charta or the statuto. Constitutional 

 laws called for the first time in the science are those promulgated in 

 1643 from Sweden; the word acquires a real importance in the 

 United States, becomes popular in France, and thus becomes the 

 denomination of all fundamental laws of free peoples. The constitu- 

 tion in the Union remains a precise text, completed from the consti- 

 tutions of the states and of the decisions of a judiciary authority, 

 which is the only one in the world, a real, high, respected political 

 power; the constitutions of England and, in smaller part, that of 

 Hungary, are instead the result more or less definite of a succession 

 of legislative acts or ordinances, of judiciary decisions, of precedents, 

 of traditions. The other states have written constitutions : of 

 popular origin, as America, France, and Switzerland; granted by 

 the sovereigns, as Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia; of a mixed 

 character, as many others and as the Italian constitution, which 

 was formerly accorded by the King Charles Albert, and afterwards 

 became a sacred pact between prince and people, sanctioned with 







1 Lectures Introductory to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, London, 1886, 

 pp. 5, 6. 



2 Stanhope, Life of Pitt, i, App. p. 10. 



3 Burke, Works, in, p. 114; Hallam, Middle Ages, 1st ed., n, p. 267. 



