101 



CONSTITUTION. 



CONSTITUTIONS AND CANONS ECCLESIASTICAL. 162 



sovereign power), or of all the males born of American citizens and of 

 a given age, as in most of the United States of North America such 

 sovereign power cannot act unconstitutionally. For to act xmcon- 

 stitutionally would be to act against a rule imposed by some superior 

 authority, which would be a contradiction. 



A constitutional government may be either purely democratieal, 

 as those of the United States of North America, or it may be 

 republican, that is, a government in which the sovereign power is 

 simply denned as not being held by one person. It may be of 

 such a kind that it shall approach very near to a monarchy, if 

 the king or other head of the state is by the constitution invested 

 with very great powers, or such powers as may enable him to over- 

 power, overawe, or render incapable of action, the other limbs of the 

 Constitution. A constitutional government may be of the aristocratical 

 kind, as England, where the power of the crown is now very limited 

 in practice, and is in effect wielded by the small number who for the 

 time obtain the direction of affairs by means of being able to get a 

 majority of the House of Commons ; for this body, though elected by 

 the people, cannot yet be considered as a really popular body. The 

 French king, under the Charter, had greater powers than the English 

 monarch has hi fact, though in theory it may seem otherwise. The 

 King of the French presided in his own Cabinet ; the English Cabinet 

 deliberates without the presence of the sovereign, whose wishes, in 

 opposition to those of the Cabinet, can never be carried into effect. 

 The Cabinet consists of the responsible ministers ; they are the king's 

 servants, but so long as they are in office they act as they please. 

 But whatever variety of form there may be in constitutional govern- 

 ments, the essential element to a constitutional government, as here 

 understood, is an assembly of representatives chosen by all the people, 

 or by a considerable proportion of them. This is the body on which 

 a constitutional government depends for its strength, its improvement, 

 and its existence. This is the element out of which ought to come all 

 the ameliorations of the condition of the people which can be effected 

 by legislative measures. The limb or member of a constitutional 

 government, which is composed either of hereditary peers, or of peers 

 named for life by a king, is from its nature an inert body. It may 

 resist unwise and hasty change, but it is not adapted for any active 

 measures. 



The policy of having a constitution in a state where the sovereign 

 power is in the hands of all the citizens may be defended on general 

 grounds of convenience. When the community have settled that 

 certain fundamental maxims are right, it is a saving of time and 

 trouble to exclude the discussion of all such matters from the func- 

 tions of those to whom they have by the constitution intrusted 

 legislative power. Such fundamental rules also present a barrier to 

 any sudden and violent assumption of undue authority either by the 

 legislative or executive, and oblige them, as we see in the actual 

 workings of constitutions, to obtain their object by other means, 

 which, if not lees dangerous in the end, are more slow in then- 

 operation, and thus can be detected and are exposed to be defeated by 

 similar means put in action by the opposing party. There are disad- 

 vantages also in such an arrangement. Constitutional rules when once 

 fixed are not easily changed ; and the legislative body when once esta- 

 blished, though theoretically, and in fact too, under the sovereign 

 control, often finds means to elude the vigilance and defeat the wishes 

 of the body to which it owes its existence, and from which it derives 

 its power. One of the great means by which these ends are effected is 

 the interpretation of the written instrument or constitution, which is 

 the warrant for their powers. The practice of torturing the words of 

 all written law, till in effect the law or rule is made to express the 

 contrary of what seemed to be at first intended, appears to be deeply 

 implanted in the English race, and in those of their descendants who 

 have established constitutional forms on the other side of the Atlantic. 

 The value of all written instruments, whether called constitutions or 

 not, seems considerably impaired by this peculiar aptitude of men to 

 construe words which once seemed to have one plain meaning only, so 

 that they shall mean anything which the actual circumstances may 

 require, or may seem to require. 



It is beside our purpose to discuss the advantage of a Constitution 

 in a community where the sovereign is one. Being supreme, the 

 sovereign may change the Constitution when he pleases. It may be 

 said that if the constitution is good, and has been allowed to stand by 

 several successive possessors of the sovereign power, it obtains an 

 apparent prescriptive authority, which is the more binding on the 

 sovereign, as the mass of the nation habitually regard this same 

 Constitution as something which even the sovereign cannot touch 

 with impunity. It would shock common prejudice if the actual 

 sovereign were to violate that which has been sanctioned by his pre- 

 decessors, and is recommended by an apparently higher antiquity than 

 the power which, in the actual sovereign's hands, appears to be of 

 more recent birth. The precise meaning of what is called the English 

 Constitution must be got from the various writers who have made its 

 origin and progress their ftudy. In reading them it may not be amiss 

 to bear in mind that the word Constitution, as used by them, has not 

 the exact, but the vague meaning as explained above. 



State* where there is a king, or other person with corresponding 

 name and power, are now most usually distributed into the two classes 

 of monarchies and constitutional monarchies. The term Monarchy is 



ARTS AKD 8CI. DIV. VOL. TO. 



a proper term to express a form of government in which one man has 

 the sovereign power, as in Russia. The term Constitutional Monarchy 

 is not an appropriate term, because the word monarchy is not capable 

 of a limitation of meaning without the implication of a contradiction 

 in terms. Still the expression is used, and it is understood to express 

 those states in which the kingly power is limited or defined by a 

 written instrument, which also lays down certain general rules affecting 

 the form of government and the condition of the people, which are 

 not to be varied by any legislative act. Such an instrument was the 

 French Charte [CHARTE], under which France, instead of being a 

 monarchy, as it was once, became a constitutional state, or, as it is 

 called, a constitutional monarchy. This act, which proceeded from 

 the king (Louis XVIII.), could not be revoked by any future king con- 

 sistently with good faith ; and its attempted violation by Charles X. 

 produced a revolution. 



"When a nation has reached a certain point in its social progress, a 

 participation in the sovereign power becomes a universal desire. It 

 does not follow that a nation will be better administered because the 

 people participate in the sovereign power, but they will not be satisfied 

 till they do participate in it ; and that is the important matter for an 

 absolute power to consider. The representatives may often, and will 

 certainly sometimes, enact laws which are mischievous to themselves ; 

 but that is an incident to, or an accident in, a constitutional system, 

 not its essential. The essential of a constitutional system is, to call all 

 men into political activity as members of a state, to secure the highest 

 degree of individual freedom that is consistent with the general inter- 

 est ; to establish a real national character, by making each man a 

 potential and living member of the body corporate ; and, above all, to 

 keep a tight and steady hand upon the public purse ; to see that no 

 more taxes are raised than are necessary for the due support of the 

 administration, and to see that they are raised in such a way as to 

 bring the largest sum into the treasury with the least detriment to the 

 individual. Freedom of publication, or, as it is usually called, the 

 liberty of the press, is in modern times indispensable as a means of 

 maintaining constitutional freedom where it exists, and of attaining it 

 where it does not. In Prussia it is restrained by a censorship; in 

 France it is checked by severe enactments, together with a system of 

 warning, and a power of suspending the publication of newspapers. In 

 England the freedom of the press is amply secured both by law and 

 usage. In the actual state of Germany, in which political life hardly 

 exists, the establishment of a true constitutional government in Prussia 

 would be the commencement of a new era for the Germanic nation. 

 The Russian subjects of the Czar of Muscovy, or of the greater part of 

 his dominions at least, may be at present as contented and as well 

 governed as they would be under a constitution ; for a constitution, in 

 order to be beneficial, must be founded upon a representation of a 

 whole nation which has political knowledge, or of a majority so large 

 that the minority shall be insignificant when compared with it. 



In the article CHAUTE an account is given of the constitution of 

 France ; and of that of the UNITED STATES of NORTH AMEHICA, in 

 GEOO. Drv., under that head ; America and England enjoy a higher 

 degree of constitutional freedom than any other states. Since 1848 

 Sardinia has possessed a representative constitution, and has still more 

 recently acquired a free press The struggles of Prussia and the 

 results will be found in the GEOO. DIV., under PRUSSIA. Spain has 

 made extraordinary efforts to obtain the advantages of a constitution. 

 [CORTES.] Some of the smaller states of Germany have constitutions, 

 as Wurtemberg, Hanover, Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, Hesse Cassel, 

 Nassau, Ac. The European States which have no constitution are 

 Russia, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, Naples and Sicily, the Papal 

 States, Grand Dukedom of Tuscany, Dukedom of Parma, Dukedom of 

 Modena, Dukedom of Lucca, &c. The constitutions of Mexico and of 

 the Republics of South America resemble, in some respects, that of the 

 United States, but have not yet acquired stability. Brazil has a con- 

 stitution and a representation. 



For the nature of a federal government, which necessarily implies 

 the notion of a constitution, see FEDERATION. 



CONSTITUTIONS AND CANONS ECCLESIASTICAL. King 

 James I., in the first year of his reign in England, by his writ directed 

 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, summoned and called the " bishops, 

 deans of cathedral churches, archdeacons, chapters and colleges, and the 

 other clergy of every diocese within the province of Canterbury," to 

 meet in the cathedral church of St. Paul in London, to " treat, consent, 

 and conclude upon certain difficult and urgent affairs mentioned in the 

 said writ." The persons so summoned met in convocation, and " agreed 

 upon certain canons, orders, ordinances, and constitutions, to the end 

 and purpose " by the king " limited and prescribed unto them ; " to 

 which the king, out of his " princely inclination and royal care for the 

 maintenance of the present estate and government of the Church of 

 England by the laws of this realm now settled and established," gave 

 his royal assent by letters patent, according to the form T>f the statute 

 of the twenty-fifth year of King Henry VIII. The king, by his prero- 

 gative royal and supreme authority in causes ecclesiastical, commanded 

 these said canons, orders, and constitutions to be diligently observed, 

 executed, and kept by his loving subjects of the kingdom, both within 

 the provinces of Canterbury and York, in all points wherein they do or 

 may concern every or any of them ; and the king also commanded that 

 every minister, by whatever name or title soever he be called, shall in 



M 



