CONSTITUTION

Thd collective body of the fundamental laws of a state; either contained in written documents, or established by prescriptive usage. Constitutions have been divided into three kinds by political writers: — 1. Those granted (octroyees) by monarchs to their subjects; 2. Those springing out of rights enjoyed independently by the people, or cla es of the people, which in monarchical countries are recognised by the sovereign in his contract with the people; 3. Those founded on compact between sovereign powers, i.e. federal constitutions. In a certain sense, all states in which the power of a sovereign over his people, or cla es of his people, is limited by law or legal usage in any particular, may be said to po e pro tanto a constitution; but, in ordinary language, only a government in which the power of legislation, or that of granting and withholding supplies to the sovereign, is vested in the people, or a body of representatives elected by them or by a cla of them, is termed constitutional. Constitutions have again been divided into — I. Those in which legislative power is exercised directly by the people (as in some small modern commonvrealths, and in all the free states of antiquity); and, 2. Representative constitutions. The last again, as prevailing in modern Europe and America, has been divided historically into — 1. Those which have originated from compact between several independent interests, as the sovereign, clergy, nobles, and commons, in feudal kingdoms; 2. Those formed artificially, in modern times, on the model of the British constitution; which, although arising out of the same causes which produced the feudal constitutions, a umed in the course of time a different and more comprehensive character. [s. 288]