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 selfgoverning State whatever, except Japan, the Constitution of which, established in 1889, bears some resemblance to that of the German Empire. America, as a new continent, is appropriately full of them. The Republic of the United States has not only presented the most remarkable instance of this type in the modern world, but has by its success become a pattern which other republics have imitated, just as most modern States in the Old World took England for their model when they established, during the nineteenth century, governments more or less free. The Constitutions of all the forty-five States of the Union are Rigid, being not alterable by the legislatures of those States respectively. This is also true of the Constitution of the Dominion of Canada,

which is alterable only by the Imperial Parliament. The Constitutions of the seven Canadian Provinces might, so far as their legislatures are concerned, be deemed Flexible, being (except as respects the office of Lieutenant-Governor) alterable by ordinary provincial statutes, but as all Provincial statutes are subject to a Dominion veto, they are not within the sole power of the legislatures. Mexico and the five republics of Central America, together with the nine republics of South America, have all adopted Constitutions which their legislatures have not received power to change. Africa is the most backward of the continents, but she has in the Orange Free State a tiny republic living under a Rigid Constitution. It has been contended that the Constitution of the South African Republic (Transvaal) is referable to the same category, but it is really de iure, and it has always been treated de facto, as being a Flexible Constitution. The Constitutions of the Australasian colonies present legal questions of some difficulty, owing to the way in which the imperial Acts creating or confirming them have been drawn. So far as the method of changing these Constitutions has been prescribed by statutes of the colonies in which they exist, it would appear that each can also be changed by the legislature of the colony. Where those methods, however, are prescribed by the British Parliament, or by instruments issuing from the Crown, the point is more doubtful, and would need a fuller discussion than it can receive here. Questions, however, touching the relations of a legally subordinate to a legally supreme legislature lie in a different plane, so 1 See Essay VII, p. 453.

to speak, from that with which we are here concerned: and we may say that if these colonial constitutions are regarded solely as respects the legislatures of the colonies themselves, they are referable to the Flexible type. As to the new Federal Constitution of Australia there is no doubt at all. It is Rigid1, for any alteration in it requires a majority of the States and a majority of the direct popular vote. All the acts of every British colony are subject to a power of disallowance by the Governor or the Crown, but (although it is sometimes provided that constitutional acts shall be ' reserved' for the pleasure of the Crown) this power is not confined to acts changing the constitution, conformably to the English habit of drawing little distinction between constitutional and other enactments.

All the above-mentioned constitutions are products of the last century and a quarter, and it is doubtful whether there existed in A. D. 1776 any independent State the constitution of which the ruling authority of that State could not have changed in the same way in which it changed its ordinary laws. The Swiss Confederation does not come into question, for that Confederation was, until the French laid hands on it in the last years of the eighteenth century, a League of States rather than a State, and could not be said to have any constitution in the proper sense, not to add that the republics of which the league consisted could alter the terms of their league in the same way in which they had formed it. The same remark applies

1 See as to this Constitution Essay VIII, p. 523. As to the Constitutions of the several Australian and other British colonies, reference may be made to the book of the late Sir Henry Jenkyns, entitled British Rule and Jurisdiction beyond the Seas, the publication of which is announced for a very early date.