tion and the Amendments in unbroken connection, so that the whole great design is visible, and the explanation appears immediately under the part to be explained.

In addition to a showing of the historic sources or causes of particular provisions of the Constitution, there are also exhibited examples of the application of the clauses in great cases which have arisen during our constitutional life. These decisions of the courts are brought down to the present day. They illustrate very clearly that the man in power has undergone no change and that without the prohibitions of the Constitution and the means of giving them immediate effect he would become as dangerous as he ever was to the safety of the government and to the rights and liberties of the people.

"In questions of power, then," wrote Jefferson, "let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

The founders of the Republic feared parties of the people as much as they did a royal government. “Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong," wrote Madison to Jefferson in 1788, "wrong will generally be done, and not less readily by a powerful and interested party than by a powerful and interested prince." The notes which are to follow will disclose the truth of that statement.

There is no more interesting fact to be learned about our Constitution than that of its influence upon the nations of the world. While Americans know in a general way that under their Constitution thirteen scattered agricultural communities have developed into a nation of forty-eight States of the most varied resources, with the highest social and educational advantages, they are not aware that our Constitution has been copied in whole

or in part throughout the earth. "The Republic of the United States," says Lord Bryce, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Washington from Great Britain from 1907 to 1913, author of "The American Commonwealth" (1888), and professor of civil (Roman) law in the University of Oxford from 1870 to 1893, writing ("Studies in History and Jurisprudence", Vol. I, p. 168) of what he calls a rigid constitution - one like ours, which can be changed only by a method different from that whereby other laws are enacted or repealed "has not only presented the most remarkable instance of this type in the modern world, but has by its success become a pattern which other republics have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. ... The constitutions of all the forty-five States [forty-eight in 1922] 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. 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."

The Commonwealth of Australia adopted a constitution (1900) following ours more closely even than that of Canada (1867) did; and in 1909, after the Boer War, the Union of South Africa adopted a similar constitution, but, owing to the diversity of races and interests which were united, it does not follow the American model so closely as do those of Canada and Australia. France, Belgium, and Switzerland have put in their constitutions many provisions first employed in ours; but to the extent that other countries have failed to follow the Constitution of the United States their governmental structures are weak, as the study of the notes will reveal.

It is to be seen, further, that the underlying principles of our Constitution were not formulated in a day. When our forefathers declared their independence some of the colonists had lived under written charters from the English Crown for one hundred sixty-nine years, or thirty-six years longer than we have lived (1922) under the present Constitution. During that long term many of the Colonies were practically self-governed. The English historian Lecky ("England in the Eighteenth Century") says that all of them enjoyed greater privileges in this respect than did the English people themselves. It will be seen from a study of the notes that many leading principles of the Constitution were adoptions or adaptations of what the colonists had worked out in experience while they were subjects of the English government; and that after the Declaration of Independence the States framed constitutions of their own from which many important provisions were borrowed by the Constitutional Convention and made a part of our fundamental law. Many other provisions of our Constitution merely state principles of English law as the colonists thought that they should be. applied in the new day.

Thus, in 1780, seven years before this Constitution was drafted, Massachusetts put in its Constitution what became the classic statement of the American theory of the division of governmental powers:

"In the government of this commonwealth the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

Nearly a year before the Constitutional Convention sat James Madison began working out what was called "the Virginia plan" of a form of government. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina took with him to the Convention a carefully drafted plan. Alexander Hamilton of New York had drawn such an elaborate scheme of government "that", says Taylor ("Origin and Growth of the American Constitution"), "it might have gone into effect the next day if it had been adopted." Other plans and suggestions almost without number were presented to the Convention. Taylor says that the three plans mentioned were the real basis of the Convention's work, that they were “identical in all vital particulars ", and that they were restatements of principles contained in a document published at Philadelphia by Pelatiah Webster in 1783.

In addition to this careful preparation after more than a century of self-government, there were in the Convention men of extraordinary natural ability and wide experience, like Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton. There were men who had studied law at the Inner Temple in London, who had been educated in the University of Edinburgh, who had been graduated from American colleges, who had been governors of States, chief justices of supreme courts, and men who had achieved distinction at the bar and in business life. Edmund Burke stated in the House of Commons in March, 1776, that more books of law were going to America than of any other kind. Of the fifty-five members of the Constitutional Convention, thirty-one were lawyers. Blackstone's Commentaries were taught by Chancellor Wythe in William and Mary College before the Declaration of Independence. John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe were among his pupils.

When our Constitution was written Harvard College (1637) had been sending out educated young men for just a century and a half, William and Mary College (1692) had been graduating learned youths for almost a century, Yale College (1701) had been contributing to the education of the people for more than three quarters of a century, and Princeton (1738) had been teaching for half a century. The people were well prepared for their great endeavor.

The task of the Constitutional Convention was not to construct a government from the foundation up. There had already been firmly set by experience thirteen basestones in the form of State republican governments. Upon these, and for the benefit of their population as a whole, the National structure was placed. This super-government was to deal with foreign nations, and also to administer at home all matters of National (as distinguished from State or local) character. The National government was to be supreme in its domain, and the State governments were to be sovereign in all affairs not National or foreign. As will be seen, this duality, while conducing to a happy balancing of governmental powers, has at the same time been the strongest force in political and material advancement. For the Nation has learned from the States, as they have learned from one another and from the Nation. Many changes have been brought about by the action of States which might never have resulted were action by the whole people called for in the first place. Of the numerous illustrations which might be given of the effect of State action upon National opinion perhaps the best is found in the laws (local option or prohibitory) restricting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. Without precedent action and demonstration by