Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/183

Rh to carry it on: and a government, amendable as its defects ſhould be diſcovered, was as likely to make effectual reſiſtance, as one which ſhould be unalterably wrong. Beſides, the aſſemblies were as much veſted with all powers requiſite for reſiſtance as the conventions were. It therefore theſe powers included that of modelling the form of government in the one caſe, they did ſo in the other. The aſſemblies then as well as the conventions may model the government; that is they may alter the ordinance of government. 2. They urge, that if the convention had meant that this inſtrument ſhould be alterable, as their other ordinances were, they would have called it an ordinance: but they have called it a conſtitution, which ex vi termini means ‘an act above the power of the ordinary legiſlature.’ I anſwer, that conſtitutio, conſtitutum, ſtatutum, lex, are convertible terms. ‘Conſtitutio dicitur jus quod a principle conditure.’ ‘ Conſtitutum, quad ab imperatoribus reſcriptum ſtatutumve eſt.’ ‘ Statutum idem quod lex.’ Calvini Lexicon juriſdicum. Conſtitution and ſtatute were originally terms of the civil law, and from thence introduced by eccleſiaſtics into the Engliſh law. Thus in the ſtatute 25 Hen. 8. c. 19. §. 1. Conſtitutions and ordinances are uſed as ſynonimous. The term conſtitution has many other ſignifications in phyſics and in politics; but in juriſprudence, whenever it is applied to any act of the legiſlature, it invariably means a ſtatute, law, or ordinance, which is the preſent caſe. No inference then of a