prescribe to the Crown what persons it should employ as Ministers that the old motive for limiting the prerogative vanished. Those who had been feared as masters were now trusted as servants. The people no longer disliked what was left of the royal prerogative, because their representatives could control the persons who wielded it, and the members of the ruling assembly began to feel that it was in the public interest, and not against their own personal interest, to maintain the powers of Ministers, because many things could be done more easily and more promptly through these powers than by the passing of statutes for dealing with each matter in detail. There may even be a danger, in this new condition of things, that the royal prerogative will be used too freely, because that prerogative now means the will of the leaders of the parliamentary majority, whose action might at a moment of excitement be applauded and sustained by their followers even should it transcend the limits fixed by constitutional usage. It has been already remarked that the system of checks in the Roman Constitution differed essentially from that employed in the English. Every constitution must of course have a system of checks, else it will quickly perish, or, to vary the metaphor, it must so dispose the ballast as to enable the vessel to recover her equilibrium after a violent oscillation. At Rome the checks consisted in the coexistence of various magistrates who could arrest one another's action, and in a permanent Senate with a large though somewhat ill-defined control, while the popular assembly, in theory omnipotent, was in fact restrained by a number of curious features in its procedure which made it much less effective than was the primary popular assembly in most of the Greek republics. It could act only when convoked by a magistrate, could have its action stopped by another magistrate, and was frequently overreached or circumvented by the Senate. In England, on the other hand, the Crown, which before the conflicts of the seventeenth century had been the predominant power which needed to be checked, and which frequently was checked, by Parliament, becomes after that time capable only of occasionally baffling (and that less and less as time went on) the now predominant Parliament, while the restraint on hasty or violent action by Parliament was found, partly in the division of Parliament into two Houses, and partly, especially after the Upper House had begun to lose moral weight, and had passed more and more under the control of one party in the State, in the fact that an assembly of representatives, nearly all of whom belonged to the wealthier and so-called upper classes, was pervaded by a conservative temper. A representative body, the members of which are mostly satisfied with the world as it is, and who are sufficiently instructed to respect the traditions of administration, is, except where a question arises which stirs class passions, less prone to ill-considered action than is an assembly of all the citizens, such as was the Ecclesia of Athens or Syracuse, where the large majority were humble folk, and where the sympathy of numbers made the ascendency of emotion over reason doubly dangerous. Thus, as compared with the democracies of the city-states of antiquity, the representative character of the assemblies of modern Europe has been a moderating factor. But these assemblies are now changing their character, as the countries in which they exist have changed. The progress of science has, through the agency of railways and telegraphs, of generally diffused education, and of cheap newspapers, so brought the inhabitants of large countries into close and constant relations with one another and with their representatives, that the conditions of a small city-state are being reproduced. A man living at Kirkwall knows what happened last night in London, eight hundred miles away, sooner and more fully than a man living in Marathon (distant eight hours' walking) knew what had happened the day before in Athens. The same news reaches all the citizens at the same time, the same emotion affects all simultaneously, and is intensified by reverberation through the press. The nation is, so to speak, compressed into a much smaller space than it filled three centuries ago, and has become much more like a primary assembly than it was then. If concurrently with this change there should come, as some presage, a closer and more constant control of the members of the representative assembly by their constituents, the representatives becoming rather delegates acting under instructions than men chosen to speak and vote because they are deemed trusty and intelligent, much of the moderative value which the representative system has possessed will disappear. It need not be thought that in England at least there is any immediate risk of evils to be expected from the change which has been noted. Representatives have not yet become delegates, and if they do, it will be rather their own fault than that of the electors, for the electors respect courage and value independence. In England the power of party organizations over constituencies and members, if it grows, grows slowly. It is, in fact, not so much these organizations as small sections of opinion or organized 'interests,' seeking some advantage for themselves, that try to terrorize candidates. There is still a valuable check on possible recklessness on the part of Parliament in the fact that it is (unlike some popular assemblies) guided by responsible Ministers, who have hitherto seldom been mere demagogues, and who have experience behind them, prospects of future dignity before them, and the opinion of their own class around them. All that I wish to point out is that a change has passed on the conditions under which representative assemblies act, which in making them more swiftly responsive to public sentiment, increases some of the risks always incident to popular government. History has not spoken her last word about Flexible Constitutions. Rather may she be opening a new stage in their development. VII. THE INFLUENCE OF CONSTITUTIONS ON THE We have been considering what are the conditions present in a nation which make it prefer a particular kind of constitution. Now let us approach the converse question, and inquire what will be the influence on the political ideas and habits of a nation of these Constitutions of the Common Law, or Flexible type, and what are the features of national character which will enable such constitutions to live on and prosper. Forms of government are causes as well as effects, and give an intellectual and moral training to the peoples that live under them, as the character of a parent affects the children of the household. Now the Common Law Constitution, with its complexity, its delicately adjusted and balanced machinery, its inconsistencies, its nuances-one is driven to French because there is no English word to express the tendency of a tendency-its abundance of unsettled points, in which a refined sense can perceive what the decision ought in each case to be without being able to lay down a plain and positive rule-such a constitution must undoubtedly polish and mature in the governing class a sort of tact and judgement, a subtlety of discrimination and a skill in applying old principles to new combinations of facts, which make it safe for a people to leave wide powers to their magistrates or their governing assembly. A sense grows up among those who have to work the constitution as to what is and is not permissible under it, and that which cannot be expressed in the stiff phrases of a code is preserved in the records of precedents and shines through the traditions which form the minds of the rulers. This kind of constitution lives by what is called its Spirit. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' Evidently, however, it is only among certain nations with certain gifts that such a constitution will come to maturity and become a subject for science as well as a work of art. Three things seem needful. One is legal-mindedness, a liking and a talent for law. Another is a conservative temper, by which I mean the caution which declines to make changes save when a proved need for change arises, so that changes are |