a. The simplicity of the earlier constitutions.

b. Illustrations of the legislative tendencies of later consti<

tutions.

c. The motive for such extension of a constitution.

d. The difficulty of amending a constitution.

e. The legislative method of amendment.

f. The convention method of amendment.

g. The presumed advantage of embodying laws in the consti tution.

h. A comparison with the Swiss Referendum.

i. Objections to the Swiss Referendum.

j. Other objections to the practice of putting laws into the constitution.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS.

1. Do you belong to any society that has a constitution? Has the society rules apart from the constitution? Which may be changed the more readily? Why not put all the rules into the constitution?

2. Read the constitution of your state in part or in full. Give some account of its principal divisions, of the topics it deals with, and its magnitude or fulness. Are there any amendments? If so, mention two or three, and give the reasons for their adoption. Is there any declaration of rights in it? If so, what are some of the rights declared, and whose are they said to be?

3. Where is the original of your state constitution kept? What sort of looking document do you suppose it to be? Where would you look for a copy of it? If a question arises in any court about the interpretation of the constitution, must the original be produced to settle the wording of the document ?

4. Has any effort been made in your state to put into the constitution matters that have previously been subjects of legislative action? If so, give an account of the effort, and the public attitude towards it.

5. Which is preferable, -a constitution that commands the

approval of the people as a whole or that which has the support of a dominant political party only ?

6. Suppose it is your personal conviction that a law is unconstitutional, may you disregard it? What consequences

might ensue from such disregard ?

7. May people honestly and amicably differ about the interpretation of the constitution or of a law, in a particular case? If important interests are dependent on the interpretation, how can the true one be found out? Does a lawyer's opinion settle the interpretation? What value has such an opinion? Where must people go for authoritative and final interpretations of the laws? Can they get such interpretations by simply asking for them? 8. The constitution of New Hampshire provides that when the governor cannot discharge the duties of his office, the president of the senate shall assume them. During the severe sickness of a governor recently, the president of the senate hesitated to act in his stead; it was not clear that the situation was grave enough to warrant such a course. Accordingly the attorney-general of the state brought an action against the president of the senate for not doing his duty; the court considered the situation, decided against the president of the senate, and ordered him to become acting governor. Why was this suit necessary? Was it conducted in a hostile spirit? Wherein did the decision help the state? Wherein did it help the defendant? Wherein may it possibly prove helpful in the future history of the state?

9. Mention particular things that the governor, the legislature, and the judiciary of your state have done or may do. Then find the section or clause or wording in your state constitution that gives authority for each of these things. For example, read the particular part that authorizes your legislature :

a. To incorporate a city.

b. To compel children to attend school.

c. To buy uniforms for a regiment of soldiers.

d. To establish a death penalty.

e. To send a committee abroad to study a system of waterworks.

10. Trace the authority of a school-teacher, a policeman, a selectman, a mayor, or of any public officer, back to some part of your constitution.

II. Mention any parts of your constitution that seem general and somewhat indefinite, and that admit, therefore, of much freedom in interpretation.

12. Show how the people are, in one aspect, subordinate to the constitution; in another, superior to it.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

WRITTEN CONSTITUTIONS. Very little has been written or published with reference to the history of the development of the idea of a written constitution. The student will find some suggestive hints in Hannis Taylor's Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, vol. i., Boston, 1889. See Henry Hitchcock's American State Constitutions; a Study of their Growth, N. Y., 1887, a learned and valuable essay. See also J. H. U. Studies, I., xi., Alexander Johnston, The Genesis of a New England State (Connecticut); III., ix.-x., Horace Davis, American Constitutions; also Preston's Documents Illustrative of American History, 1606–1863, N. Y., 1886; Stubbs, Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, Oxford, 1870; Gardiner's Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, Oxford, 1888.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FEDERAL UNION.

§ 1. Origin of the Federal Union.

HAVING now sketched the origin and nature of written constitutions, we are prepared to understand how by means of such a document the government of our Federal Union was called into existence. We have already described so much of the civil government in operation in the United States that this account can be made much more concise than if we had started at the top instead of the bottom and begun to portray our national government before saying a word about states and counties and towns. Bit by bit the general theory of American self-government has already been set before the reader. We have now to observe, in conclusion, what a magnificent piece of constructive work has been performed in accordance with that general theory. We have to observe the building up of a vast empire out of strictly self-governing elements.

There was always one important circumstance in favour of the union of the thirteen American colonies into a federal nation. The inhabitants were English inall substantially one people. It is true that stitutions in in some of the colonies there were a good many persons not of English ancestry, but the English type absorbed and assimilated everything else.

all the coloDies.

All spoke the English language, all had English institutions. Except the development of the written constitution, every bit of civil government described in the preceding pages came to America directly from England, and not a bit of it from any other country, unless by being first filtered through England. Our institutions were as English as our speech. It was therefore comparatively easy for people in one colony to understand people in another, not only as to their words but as to their political ideas. Moreover, during the first half of the eighteenth century, the common danger from the aggressive French enemy on the north and west went far toward awakening in the thirteen colonies a common interest. And after the French enemy had been removed, the assertion by parliament of its alleged right to tax the Americans threatened all the thirteen legislatures at once, and thus in fact drove the colonies into a kind of federal union.

The New

England

Confederations among states have generally owed their origin, in the first instance, to military necessities. The earliest league in America, among white people at least, was the confederacy of New Confederacy England colonies formed in 1643, chiefly for (1643-84). defence against the Indians. It was finally dissolved amid the troubles of 1684, when the first government of Massachusetts was overthrown. Along the Atlantic coast the northern and the southern colonies were for some time distinct groups, separated by the unsettled portion of the central zone. The settlement of Pennsylvania, beginning in 1681, filled this gap and made the colonies continuous from the French frontier of Canada to the Spanish frontier of Florida. The danger from France began to be clearly apprehended after 1689, and in 1698 one of the