Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/339

Rh CONSTANTINUS CEPHALAS. See, ..  CONSTANTIUS,, commonly called, or the Pale (an epithet first applied by the Byzantine historians, though with doubtful accuracy, for there, is evidence to show that ho was, like his son, ruddy), Roman emperor and father of Constantino the Great, was born of noble Dalmatian family about 250 A.D. Having distinguished himself by his military ability and his able and gentle rule of Dalmatia, he was, in March 292, adopted and appointed Crcsar by Maximian, whose daughter Theodosia he w.is obliged to marry after renounc ing his wife Helena. By Helena he became the father of Constantine. He obtained the title Augustus in 305, and died the following year. See.  CONSTITUTION CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. The word Constitution in the time of the Roman empire signified a collection of laws or ordinances made by the emperor. We find the word used in the same sense in the early history of English law, e.g., the Constitutions of Clarendon. In its modern use constitution has been re stricted to those rules which concern the political structure of society. If we take the accepted definition of a law as a command imposed by a sovereign on the subject, the constitution would consist of the rules which point out where the sovereign is to be found, the form in which his powers are exercised, and the relations of the different members of the sovereign body to each other where it con sists of more persons than one. In every independent political society, it is assumed by these definitions, there will be found somewhere or other a sovereign, whether that sovereign be a single person, or a body of persons, or several bodies of persons. The commands imposed by the sovereign person or body on the rest of the society are positive laws, properly so called. The sovereign body not only makes laws, but has two other leading functions, viz., those of judicature and administration. Legislation is for the most part performed directly by the sovereign body itself ; judi cature and administration, for the most part, by delegates. The constitution of a society, accordingly, would show how the sovereign body is composed, and what are the relations of its members inter se, and how the sovereign functions of legislation, judicature, and administration are exercised. Constitutional law consists of the rules relating to these subjects, and these rules may either be laws properly so called, or they may not i.e., they may or may not be commands imposed by the sovereign body itself. The con stitutional rule, for example, that the Queen and Parliament are the sovereign, cannot be called a law; for a law presup poses the fact which it asserts. And other rules, which are constantly observed in practice, but have never been enacted by the sovereign power, are in the same way con stitutional rules which are not laws. It is an undoubted rule of the constitution that the king shall not refuse his assent to a bill which has passed both Houses, but it is certainly not a law. Should the king veto such a bill his action would be unconstitutional, but not illegal. On the other hand the rules relating to the election of members to the House of Commons are nearly all positive laws strictly so called. Constitutional law, as the phrase is commonly used, would include all the laws dealing with the sovereign body in the exercise of its various functions, and all the rules, not being laws properly so called, relating to the same subject. The above is an attempt to indicate the meaning of the phrases in their stricter or more technical uses. Some wider meanings may be noticed. In the phrase constitutional government, a form of government based on certain principles which may roughly be called popular is the, leading idea. England, Switzerland, the United States, are all constitutional governments in this sense of the word. Russia, France under the last empire, and Spain, on the other hand, would generally be said to be countries without constitutional government. A country where a large portion of the people has some considerable share in the supreme power would be a constitutional country. On the other hand constitutional, as applied to governments, may mean stable as opposed to unstable and anarchic societies. Again, as a term of politics, constitutional has come to mean, in England at least, not obedience to con stitutional rules as above described, but adherence to the existing type of the constitution or to some conspicuous portions thereof,—in other words, Conservative. Thus the abolition of the Irish Church, which was in every way a constitutional measure in the judicial meaning of words, was not a constitutional measure in the party sense. In a country like Spain, on the other hand, the party called constitutional is liberal. The ideas associated with constitution and constitutionalism are thus, it will be seen, mainly of modern and European growth. They are wholly inapplicable to the primitive and simple societies of the present or of former times. The discussion of forms of government occupies a large space in the writings of the Greek philosophers,—a fact which is to be explained by the existence among the Greeks of many independent political communities, variously organized, and more or less democratic in character. Between the political problems of the smaller societies and those of the great European nations there is no useful parallel to be drawn, although the predominance of classical learning made it the fashion for a long time to apply Greek speculations on the nature of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to public questions in modern Europe. Representation, the characteristic principle of European constitutions, has, of course, no place in societies which were not too large to admit of every free citizen participating personally in the business of government. Nor is there much in the politics or the political literature of the Romans to compare with the constitutions of modern states. Their political system was almost from the begin ning one of empire, ruled absolutely by a small assembly or by one man. The impetus to constitutional government in modern times has to a large extent come from England, and it is from English politics that the phrase and its associations have been borrowed. England has offered to the world the one conspicuous example of a long, continuous, and orderly development of political institutions. The early date at which the principle of self-government was established in this country, the steady growth of the principle, the absence of civil dissension, and the preservation in the midst of change of so much of the old organization, have given the English constitution a great influence over the ideas of politicians in other countries. This fact is expressed in the proverbial phrase &quot; England is the mother of parlia ments.&quot; It would not be difficult to show that the leading features of the constitutions now established in other nations have been based on, or defended by, considerations arising from the political history of England. In one important respect England differs conspicuously from most other countries. Her constitution is to a large extent unwritten, using the word in much the same sense as when we speak of unwritten law. Its rules can be found in no written document, but depend, as so much of English law does, on precedent modified by a constant process of interpretation. Many rules of the constitution have in fact a purely legal history, tint is to say, they have been developed by the law courts, as part of the general body of the common law. Others have in a similar way been developed by the practice of Parliament. Both Houses, 