and England, whose Constitution has always since the days of Ecghbert and Alfred been that of a large and originally a rural and scattered community. If, however, the comparison is attempted, we may observe that England never, after the fourteenth century, recognized such vast powers in the Crown (whether in the Crown personally or as exercised by its Ministers) as Rome granted to her magistrates. In the sphere of public law England has applied more successfully than Rome did the conception of the inviolability of the rights of the citizen as against the organs of the State, although that conception is itself Roman. With all their legal genius the Romans were too much penetrated by the idea of the necessary amplitude of State power to fix just limits to the action of the Executive. When it was necessary to provide for checking a magistrate, they set up another magistrate to do it, instead of limiting magisterial powers by statute. Nor did they ever succeed as the English have done in disengaging the judicial from the executive department of government. In both these respects part of the merits of the English Constitution may be ascribed to Norman feudalism, whose precise definition of the respective rights of lord and vassal-all the lords but one being also vassals, and the greater vassals being also lords-helped to form and imprint deep the idea that powers, however strong within a definite sphere, may be strictly confined to that sphere, and that the limits of the sphere are fit matter for judicial determination. Perhaps the existence in the clergy of a large class of men enjoying specific immunities the exact range of which had to be settled, and, where possible, judicially settled, may have also contributed to train this. habit of mind. The extent to which England, favoured no doubt by her insular position, was able to secure domestic freedom while leaving a large discretionary authority to the Crown, is usually credited to the rise of the House of Commons and the vigilance of its control. But much is also to be ascribed to that precise

definition of the rights of the individual which has made life and property secure from injury on the part of the State, to the habit of holding officials liable for acts done in excess of their functions, and to that ultimate detachment of the judiciary from the influence of the Crown which has enabled the individual to secure by legal process the enforcement of his rights. These principles have sunk deep into the mind of the nation, and have been of the utmost service in forming the habits of thought and action by which free constitutions have to be worked. They are just as strong as if they were embodied in a Rigid Constitution, instead of being legally at the mercy of Parliament. But that is because they have centuries of tradition behind them, and because the English are a people who respect tradition and have been trained to appreciate the value of the principles which their ancestors established.

VIII. CAPACITY OF CONSTITUTIONS FOR TERRITORIAL EXPANSION.

One point more remains to be mentioned before we quit constitutions of the Flexible type, viz. their suitability to a State which is expanding its territory and taking in other communities whether by conquest or by treaty.

Such constitutions seem especially well suited to countries which are passing through periods of change, whether internal or external. When new classes of the population have to be admitted to share in political power, or when the inhabitants of newly-acquired territories have to be taken in as citizens, this is most quickly and easily effected by the action of the ordinary legislature. Both Rome and England availed themselves of this flexibility in the earlier stages of their growth. England, itself created as a State by the expansion of the West Saxons, enlarged herself to include Wales with no disturbance of her former Constitution, and

similarly fused herself with Scotland in 1707 and with Ireland in 1800, in both cases altering the Constitution of the enlarged State no further than by the admission. of additional members to the two Houses of Parliament, and by the suppression of certain offices in the smaller kingdoms. The ease with which the earlier expansions were effected may be attributed to the fact that in mediaeval times the prominence of the king made the submission of any tribe or territory to him carry with it the incorporation of that tribe or territory into his former dominions. The popular assembly of a community, such as were the South Saxons, for instance, sank into a secondary place as soon as the king was head of the South Saxons as well as of the West Saxons, for the council of the united people which he summoned and over which he presided became the national assembly for all his subjects. In later times, though Scotland and Ireland had their separate Parliaments, these could be readily united with that of England, because in all three countries the popular House was representative. Here, however, England has stopped. The vast dominions. which she possesses beyond the oceans, while legally subject to her Crown and Parliament, have not been brought into the constitutional scheme of the motherland. Indeed they could hardly be brought in without a reconstruction of the present frame of government, which would probably have to be effected by the establishment of a Rigid Constitution.

Similarly the Roman State had its first beginnings in the union of neighbouring tribes, whose popular assemblies coalesced into one assembly. As time went on, the flexibility of the constitution permitted the extension. of political rights to a number of communities which had lain outside the old Roman territory. But the process presently stopped (so far as effective political expansion was concerned), because the representative system had not yet been invented. When after the great revolt of the Allies in B. c. 90 Rome was compelled to grant full

citizenship to a large number of Italian communities, she did not take what moderns might think the obvious course of creating a representative assembly to which these allied communities might send elected delegates, but merely distributed the new citizens among her old tribes, an expedient which so far improved the position of the Allies that they became legally equal to Roman citizens, and acquired thereby various privileges and exemptions, but which extended to them practically no share in the government, since few could not come to Rome to give their votes in the assembly of the people. It may well have been that neither the oligarchs nor the leaders of the so-called popular party at Rome were willing to resign a substantial part of the power of the inhabitants of the City, with the opportunities of bribing and being bribed, in exchange for the primacy of a Federal or quasi-Federal Italian republic. But that the notion of a representative assembly had not crossed men's minds appears from the circumstance that the Italian Allies themselves, when in the course of their struggle they set up a rival government, merely reproduced the general lines of the Roman constitution, and did not create any representative council, excellently as it might have served their purpose. So strong was the influence of the idea of the city community in the ancient world, and (it may be added) so little power of invention do mankind display in the sphere of political institutions.

When an expanding State absorbs by way of treaty other communities already enjoying a government more or less constitutional, the process now usually takes the form of creating a Federation, and a Federation almost necessarily implies a Rigid Constitution. Cases where the Flexible Constitution of one State is stretched to take in another (as the Constitution of England was stretched to take in Scotland) are rare. The ancient Romano-Germanic Empire had a Flexible Constitution, which, already in an advanced stage of decay, was extinguished by Napoleon. When it was desired to re

establish a German Empire out of a number of practically independent States, this had to be done by the creation of a federal system under a Rigid Constitution. No similar device was required in the case of Italy, because the communities which united themselves to the kingdom of Sardinia between 1859 and 1871 had not theretofore enjoyed constitutional government, had just dismissed their whilome sovereigns, were all eager for union, and in their eagerness for union cared but little for the maintenance of any local rights.

IX. THE ORIGIN OF RIGID CONSTITUTIONS.

We may now pass on to examine the other type of constitution, that for which I have suggested the name Rigid, the specific character whereof resides in the fact that every constitution belonging to it enjoys an authority superior to the authority of the other laws of the State, and can be changed only by a method different from that whereby those other laws are enacted or repealed. This type is younger than the Flexible type. The latter goes back to the very beginning of organized political societies, being the first form which the organization of such societies took. Rigid Constitutions, on the other hand, mark a comparatively advanced stage in political development, when the idea of separating fundamental laws from other laws has grown familiar, and when considerable experience in the business of government and in political affairs generally has been. accumulated. Thus they have during the last hundred years been far more in favour than constitutions of the Flexible type.

In Europe they exist in every constitutional country. except the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Italy. There are none in the Asiatic continent, but Asia, the cradle of civilization, possesses no constitutional self-governing State whatever, except Japan, the Constitution of which, established in 1889, bears some resemblance to that of