Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/381

 is another point of view from which we have still to consider the Constitution. It is not only a fundamental law, but an unchangeable law, unchangeable, that is to say, by the national legislature, and changeable even by the people only through a slow and difficult process. How can a country whose very name suggests to us movement and progress be governed by a system and under an instrument which remains the same from year to year and from century to century?

By the "Constitution" of a state or a nation we mean those of its rules or laws which determine the form of its government, and the respective rights and duties of the government towards the citizens and of the citizens towards the government. These rules, or the more important among them, may be contained in one document, such as the Swiss or the Belgian Constitution, or may be scattered through a multitude of statutes and reports of judicial decisions, as is the case with regard to what men call the English Constitution. This is a distinction of practical consequence. But a still more important difference exists in the fact that in some countries the rules or laws which make up the Constitution can be made and changed by the ordinary legislature just like any other laws, while in other countries such rules are placed above and out of the reach of the legislature, having been enacted and being changeable only by some superior authority. In countries of the former class the so-called Constitution is nothing more than the aggregate of those laws—including of course customs and judicial decisions—which have a political character; and this description is too vague to be scientifically useful, for no three jurists would agree as to which laws ought to be deemed political. In such countries there is nothing either in