engaged, has taxed heavily the patience, the endurance, the tempers of the officers in command. Taking a broad view of the results of the campaign, the officers have no reason to be ashamed of their record. Much, however, remains to be done; the battles are not all fought; in fact, the great contest with the giant system of Mohammed has only begun. In the great battle of the future the evangelical Armenian churches ought to be in the very front. Will they be? Much will depend on the training which they receive, but more on the spirit which actuates them. If our words could reach all the parties concerned, we would urge the missionaries among the Armenians to give to the native pastors, preachers, and teachers the most thorough training possible; they are to be the leaders in the work of evangelizing Turkey; the native churches are beginning to demand well-educated ministers; many of the native pastors themselves feel that they are but poorly qualified for their work; it seems morally certain that if this demand for a more thoroughly trained ministry is not met by the American missionaries, the native churches will apply to other sources for aid. Do not the real interests of the reformation in Turkey require that this movement in the direction of a higher education be guided and kept under the control of the practical sense of Americans? We are glad to know that many Armenian youth are pursuing their studies in the Robert College at Constantinople, and that the missionaries and the officers of the American Board are aiding the evangelical churches in Central Turkey to establish a first-class college at Aintab.*

* We cannot forbear quoting the following recommendation of the proposed college at Aintab. It is from the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D, President of Robert College at Constantinople. No man is better qualified to speak on such a subject than Dr. Hamlin.

Constantinople, Sept. 1, 1872.

"The present is the era of education in the Turkish Empire. After the conquest of Constantinople there was a long period in which Turkish fanaticism, not without some excellencies of administration, bore sway; then followed a still longer period of decay and death. The missionaries came in at the right moment to commence their work. The Greek revolution had given a rude arousing shock to the empire. European modes of warfare must be learned. Four centuries before, Turkey had taught Europe the art of war, Europe must now teach her; the steamboat also appeared in Turkish waters. The dense stolid mass of ignorance and self-conceit was riven here and there. The missionaries gave to the empire common schools,

We would urge the Armenians themselves to remember that, notwithstanding all their real or supposed defects, the best and most thoroughly tried friends of the Armenian race are the American missionaries; the dust of many of those missionaries is now mingling with the dust of the ancestors of the Armenian people. Many an American mother has buried her loved children in the sacred soil of Armenia. Ethnologically the Armenians and the Americans are second cousins; they ought to regard each other with mutual respect, to love each other, and to labor for each other's good. Considering what has been accomplished for the Armenians by their transatlantic cousins, especially by such men as Hamlin, Riggs, Dwight, Schneider, Pratt, and others, it ill becomes that interesting people to attempt to disparage or belittle the work of the American missionaries in Turkey. The reformation of the Turkish Empire is one of the great enterprises of modern times; those in charge of this enterprise cannot afford to waste their time and spend their strength in contending with each other. Those Christian friends in England and America who seem disposed to encourage distrust and jealousy in the minds of native pastors and preachers towards the missionaries, can hardly realize what a vital blow they are striking at the very life of the whole enterprise. For many centuries. the Armenians have been an oppressed people; in lifting them from darkness into the light let us be patient, hopeful, forbearing. We should remember that they are a people justly proud of their antiquity, their native country, and the heroic deeds of their ancestors. Scattered throughout Turkey, Persia and Southern Russia, there can be little doubt that they are to exert an important influence in those countries during the next cen

with beautiful intelligible school books in the spoken languages; they gave also the Word of God. Attentive observers know how silently, widely, and mightily, these new forces have wrought, where neither missionaries nor their agents have ever been. The intelligence of all these many peoples has been wonderfully aroused. But now another great step has been taken-the people everywhere demand a higher education-the highest that can be had. The history of the College in Central Turkey, now proposed, is proof of this. In great poverty and depression a noble beginning has been made. Those who aid it will throw the transforming power of a high Christian education right into the heart of this great and dark empire. To what nobler purpose can wealth be applied ?"

tury. The officers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions have shown true wisdom in extending a sympathizing hand to that people in their hour of need. We believe that the name of that Board will be mentioned with heartfelt gratitude by generations yet unborn among the mountains and valleys of Armenia.

This old yet ever young nation appeals to its brethren beyond the seas in the words of the Macedonian cry: "Come over and help us." Shall they appeal in vain? It will require many years of patient toil for America to perfect the reformation. of Armenia, but the work is well begun and can be accomplished; that reformation has a solid basis in the physical strength, the virtue, the mental ability of the Armenians. Let, then, the youngest of the nations stretch out its hand to the oldest; let the blood of the new world flow into the veins and arteries of the old. Once reformed and educated, why should not the Armenians become the pioneers of a Christian civilization that shall renew the youth of the dead empires of the East?

ARTICLE II.-CONSTITUTION-MAKING.

The Constitutional Convention; its History, Powers, and Modes of Proceeding. By JOHN ALEXANDER JAMESON, Judge of the Superior Court of Chicago, and Professor of Constitutional Law, &c., in the Law Department of the Chicago University. New York and Chicago. 1867.

Historical Notes on the Constitutions of Connecticut 1639-1818. Particularly on the Origin and Progress of the Movement which resulted in the Convention of 1818, and the Adoption of the present Constitution. By J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL. Hartford: Brown & Gross. 1873.

Journal of the Constitutional Convention of Connecticut, held at Hartford in 1818. Printed by order of the Legislature. Hartford. 1873.

CONSTITUTIONAL government means, in the language of the British empire, a certain balance of powers in the State-a partly traditional and partly statute arrangement which enables the crown, the aristocracy, and the common people, to hold each other in check. More especially it means that the crown can raise no money but by act of Parliament, and that money-bills must originate in the House of Commons. In the language of the United States, constitutional government means government under a written constitution--government constituted and limited by a certain statute or written law which it can neither overrule nor change, and which differs from all other statutes in that it is the sovereign charter, from which the power to or dain all other statutes is derived. The constitution creates the government; and, by the distribution which it makes of the various powers essential to a government, it provides for the enactment of laws, for the administration of justice according to law, for individual liberty, for the security of right against power, and for the conservation of all those common interests which are recognized as coming within the sphere of govern

ment.

Our idea, therefore, and that which is current among

our British kindred, are alike to this extent: a constitutional government is one in which various powers essential to the State are so adjusted that, while each is helpless without the others, each is in a measure independent of the others. The difference is that in the British empire "the constitution" is essentially unwritten, an agglomeration of statutes and traditions, liable to be swept away by "the omnipotence of Parliament," or (in a closer analysis) by the omnipotence of the House of Commons; while with us "the constitution"- whether of a State or of the United States-is always a written instrument ordained by the people, and incapable of being changed or swept away by any of the powers which it delegates to the servants of the people.

Thus it is that, in this country, the process of making or amending written constitutions-especially the constitutions of the several States-is almost always going on somewhere. new State, coming into existence as a member of the Union, must form for itself a constitution, and after a while that constitution will need amendment-perhaps a thorough revision. A thriving State may outgrow the organic law which was once well suited to its character and condition. Changes not only in the number, but in the distribution and character of its population, may require some political reconstruction to which ordinary legislation is incompetent. Changes in the occupations and industry of the people, and in the amount and distribution of wealth, may be so great that the constitution which was sufficient for the State when almost every citizen cultivated his own farm, and lived in a frugal independence, has become an inconvenient anachronism. In the general progress of the age, corporations of immense wealth, controlled each by an individual who wields it as if it were his own, and con-tinually entering into more formidable combinations with each other, may have grown till the State has suddenly found itself overshadowed by a power which its legislature, under existing arrangements, cannot resist. The progress of political science, guided by experience, may indicate new methods of maintaining individual liberty, of securing intelligence and purity in legislative bodies, and uprightness in the administration of public affairs, or of guarding the people against that tendency