woof of their political life, nay, as a part of their very political manhood. Some of these were the same that were incorporated into the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and which were, as we have seen, so novel to French thought. Among Englishmen they were as old as Magna Carta, and grew naturally into their constitutional position. As Mr. W. T. Brantly has tersely said: "Magna Carta, the Acts of the Long Parliament, the Declaration of Right, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of 1787, constitute the record of an evolution.”*

Thus in many respects did the American constitutional system find a place prepared for it in the affections of the people. Only in a similar way could a constitution be expected to suceed in France. All these conditions were wanting in the era of her Revolution.

Carlyle has well said:

"A Constitution can be built-constitutions enough a la Sieyes; but the frightful difficulty is that of getting men to come and live under them. Is it not still true that without some celestial sanction, given visibly in thunder or invisibly otherwise, no Constitution can in the long run be worth much more than the waste paper it is written on? The Constitution, the set of Laws, or prescribed Habits of Acting, that men will live under, is the one which images their convictions, their Faith as to this wondrous Universe, and what rights, duties, capabilities, they have therein."

"Who is it that especially for rebellers and abolishers can make a constitution? He that can image forth the general belief, when there is one; that can impart one when, as here, there is none."†

It may be said, as to the French Revolution, no less. than the American, that it came in the fullness of time. But its mission, its office and its opportunity were unique..

*6 Southern Law Review, 352. French Revolution I, p. 209.

In America, it was the fullness of time for the constructive work of erecting a political fabric for a people already well educated politically. In France, it was the fullness of time for the destruction of anachronisms, the annihilation of political shams, the emancipation of a people who had been so long oppressed that, in spite of their natural intelligence and vivacity, they were politically in dense ignorance. For such a people, the fullness of time for the constructive work of erecting a political fabric must come later.

XI.

CONSTITUTIONAL PHASES OF ENGLISH HISTORY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.*

Viewed at a glance by an ordinary observer, the political history of England during the seventeenth century appears much like a kaleidoscope.

The successive events are varied and sometimes incongruous, and the governmental changes are so decided, and often so startling, that they seem far outside the scope of the ordinary evolution of historical events. We pass rapidly from the England under James I., who feels the hostility of a Parliament which he fears to antagonize, to the England under a Charles I., who endeavors without success to overrule the parliaments which he hates, and succumbs to them; thence to a nation which takes the unprecedented step of bringing its king to trial and execution; thence through stages of chaos to a Commonwealth which exhibits great apparent strength, but is overthrown by a despotic protectorate, which commands admiration by the benignity of its exercise of

*From the American Law Review, Jan.-Feb., 1903.

vast power, but which in its turn grows effete and gives way to a restored kingship. The shifting scenes now exhibit a once vigorous and aggressive Protestantism, wasting away before the rising power of a Roman Catholicism which soon becomes dominant,-next an abdicating and flying king, abandoning the prerogative for which his family had staked their all; and then an elective Kingship, which at last becomes the distinguishing feature of the century's closing history.

So sudden are many of these mutations, and so bewildering are they all, as to lead one to think that sedate history has in this instance put on the dress of Harlequin and has taken to turning somersaults.

Viewed, however, with closer scrutiny, by a careful inquirer into the meaning of these dissolving views, they appear as the successive acts of a great historical drama. One consistent purpose asserts itself throughout the whole discordant era. One dominant theme recurs again and again. One end, though often obscured, is once more aimed at, and is finally accomplished.

The hearty welcome of the English people to their first Scottish ruler was their tribute of loyalty to the kingship as an essential feature of their constitutional polity. But the English view of the place and office of the king was something of which the Stuarts, first and last, were invincibly ignorant. The past of the English people gave them a parliament, as well as a king, an institution making equal demands upon their loyal devotion. The writers of our histories continue to style the parliaments of the time of any king, that king's parliaments. The truth is, that they were the people's parliaments, not the king's. Though the institution in its then existing form dated from the time only of Edward I.,

yet it was in principle an even older Anglo-Saxon institution than the kingship.

The fatal Stuart error was the attempt to make this parliament subordinate. The genius of the English people insisted on retaining both king and parliament, assigning to each its appropriate sphere. This insistent idea of the nation, though often overpowered, now by the encroachments of the kingly prerogative, now by the ascendency of republicanism, finally triumphed. Thenceforth it was settled that king and parliament must co-exist, as the governmental agents of the sovereign people. Elizabeth had recognized this peculiar feeling among her subjects, had realized its vitality, and had skillfully managed to conform to and live with it. In the seventeenth century, this feeling, now become a theory, must struggle for respect, for recognition, for existence. The history of the century chronicles its struggles and its triumph. The Stuarts attacked it with their claim of divine right to rule, the army and the Republicans undertook to abolish the kingship, and the heavy foot of Cromwell crushed for a time the power of both king and parliament. Other causes and forces were at work, too, in shaping the political movements of the time, and bringing in various complications, so as sometimes to obscure the great constitutional issues of the period. Among these influences were the religious dissensions then rife, the profligacy and weakness of Charles II., the perversity and incapacity of James II., the scheming interventions of foreign powers, and the partisanship of Whigs and Tories. But through all the mazes of bigotry, chicanery, bribery and intrigue, the grand movement of the century is still discernible, that which culminated in the settlement of the Constitution under the Declaration of Right and the Bill of Rights.