bodied in one legal document and unchangeable by the legislature, are intended to be, and would seem likely to be, peculiarly durable. Being definite, they do not give that opening to small deviations and perversions likely to arise from the vagueness of a Flexible or unwritten' Constitution, or from the probable discrepancies between the different laws and traditions of which it consists. They may be battered down, but they cannot easily (save by a method to be presently examined) be undermined. When an attack is made upon them, whether by executive acts violating their provisions, or by the passing of statutes inconsistent with those provisions, such an attack can hardly escape observation. It is a plain notice to the defenders of the constitution to rally and to stir up the people by showing the mischief of an insidious change. The principles on which the government rests, being set forth in a broad and simple form, obtain a hold upon the mind of the community, which, if it has been accustomed to give those principles a general approval, will be unwilling to see them tampered with. Moreover the process prescribed for amendment interposes various delays and formalities before a change can be carried through, pending which the people can reconsider the issues involved, and recede, if they think fit, from projects that may have at first attracted them. Both in Switzerland and in the States of the American Union it has repeatedly happened that constitutional amendments prepared and approved by the legislature have been rejected by the people, not merely because the mass of the people are often more conservative than their representatives, or are less amenable to the pressure of particular interests' or sections. of opinion, but because fuller discussion revealed objections whose weight had not been appreciated when the proposal first appeared. In these respects the Rigid Constitution has real elements of stability.

Nevertheless it may be really less stable than it appears, for there is in its rigidity an element of danger.

It has already been noted that a constitution of the Flexible type finds safety in the elasticity which enables it to be stretched to meet some passing emergency, and then to resume its prior shape, and that it may disarm revolution by meeting revolution half-way. This is just what the Rigid Constitution cannot do. It is constructed, if I may borrow a metaphor from mechanics, like an iron railway-bridge, built solidly to resist the greatest amount of pressure by wind or water that is likely to impinge upon it. If the materials are sound and the workmanship good, the bridge resists with apparent ease, and perhaps without showing signs of strain or displacement, up to the highest degree of pressure provided for. But when that degree has been passed, it may break suddenly and utterly to pieces, as the old Tay Bridge did under the storm of December, 1879. The fact that it is very strong and all knit tightly into one fabric, while enabling it to stand firm under small oscillations or disturbances, may aggravate great ones. For just as the whole bridge collapses together, so the Rigid Constitution, which has arrested various proposed changes, may be overthrown by a popular tempest which has gathered strength from the very fact that such changes were not and under the actual conditions of politics could not be made by way of amendment. When a party grows up clamouring for some reforms which can be effected only by changing the constitution, or when a question arises for dealing with which the constitution provides no means, then, if the constitution cannot be amended in the legal way, because the legally prescribed majority cannot be obtained, the discontent that was debarred from any legal outlet may find vent in a revolution or a civil war. The history of the Slavery question in the United States illustrates this danger on so grand a scale that no other illustration is needed. The Constitution of 1787, while recognizing the existence of slavery, left sundry questions, and in particular that of the extension of slavery into new territories and States, unsettled. Thirty years

later these matters became a cause of strife, and after another thirty years this strife became so acute as to threaten the peace of the country. Both parties claimed that the Constitution was on their side. Had there been no Constitution embodied in an instrument difficult of change, or had it been practicable to amend the Constitution, so that the majority in Congress could have had, at an earlier stage, a free hand in dealing with the question, it is possible-though no one can say that it is certain that the War of Secession might have been averted. So much may at any rate be noted that the Constitution, which was intended to hold the whole nation together, failed to do. There might no doubt in any case have been armed strife, as there was in England under its Flexible Constitution in 1641. But it is at least equally probable that the slave-holding party, which saw its hold on the government slipping away, hardened its heart because it held that it was the true exponent of the Constitution, and because the Constitution made compromise more difficult than it need have been in a country possessing a fully sovereign legislature.

Two opposing tendencies are always at work in countries ruled by these Constitutions, the one of which tends to strengthen, the other to weaken them. The first is the growth of the respect for the Constitution which increasing age brings. The remark is often made that if husband and wife do not positively dislike one another, and if their respective characters do not change under ill-health or misfortune, every year makes them like one another better. They may not have been warmly attached at first, but the memories of past efforts and hardships, as well as of past enjoyments, endear them more and more to one another, and even if jars and bickerings should unhappily recur from time to time, the strength of habit renders each necessary to the other, and makes that final severance which, at moments of exasperation, they may possibly have contemplated with equanimity, a severe blow when it arrives. So a nation,

though not contented with its Constitution, and vexed by quarrels over parts of it, may grow fond of it simply because it has lived with it, has obtained a measure of prosperity under it, has perhaps been wont to flaunt its merits before other nations, and to toast it at public festivities. The magic of self-love and self-complacency turns even its meaner parts to gold, while imaginative reverence for the past lends it a higher sanction. This is one way in which Time may work. But Time also works against it, for Time, in changing the social and material condition of a people, makes the old political arrangements as they descend from one generation to another a less adequate expression of their political needs. Nobody now discusses the old problem of the Best Form of Government, because everybody now admits that the chief merit of any form is to be found in its suitability to the conditions and ideas of those among whom it prevails. Now if the conditions of a country change, if the balance of power among classes, the dominant ideas of reflective men, the distribution of wealth, the sources whence wealth flows, the duties expected from the administrative departments of government, all become different, while the form and constitutionally-prescribed methods of government remain unmodified, it is clear that flaws in the Constitution will be revealed which were previously unseen, and problems will arise with which its arrangements cannot cope. The remedy is of course to amend the Constitution. But that is just what may be impossible, because the requisite majority may be unattainable; and the opponents of amendment, entrenched behind the ramparts of an elaborate procedure, may succeed in averting changes which the safety of the community demands. The provisions that were meant to give security may now be dangerous, because they stand in the way of natural development.

Even where no strong party interest is involved it may be hard to pass the amendments needed. The his

tory of the United States again supplies a case in point. Two defects in its Constitution are admitted by most political thinkers. One is the absence of power to establish a uniform law of marriage and divorce over the whole Union. The other is the method of conducting the election of a President, a method which in 1876 brought the country to the verge of civil war, and may every four years involve the gravest risks. Yet it has been found impossible to procure any amendment on either point, because an enormous force of united public opinion is needed to ensure the concurrence of twothirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of the States. The first of these two changes excites no sufficient interest among politicians to make them care to deal with it. The second is neglected, because no one has a clear view of what should be substituted, and neither party feels that it has more to gain than has the other by grappling with the problem.

A historical comparison of the two types as regards the smoothness of their working, and the consequent tendency of one or other to secure a quiet life to the State, yields few profitable results, because the circumstances of different nations are too dissimilar to enable close parallels to be drawn, and because much depends upon the skill with which the provisions of each particular instrument have been drawn and upon the greater or less particularity of those provisions. The present Constitution of France, for instance, is contained in two very short and simple documents, which determine only the general structure of the government, and are in size not one-twentieth of the Federal Constitution of Switzerland. Hence it follows that a far freer play is left to the legislature and executive in France than in Switzerland; and that these two authorities have in the former State more power of meeting any change in the conditions of the country, and also more power of doing harm by hasty and unwise action, than is permitted in the latter. As Adaptability is the characteristic merit and insecurity