Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/148

132 every assembly from that time to this has done the same. I am safe, therefore, in the position that the constitution itself is alterable by the ordinary Legislature. Though this opinion seems founded on the first elements of common sense, yet is the contrary maintained by some persons: 1. Because, say they, the conventions were vested with every power necessary to make effectual opposition to Great Britain. But to complete this argument, they must go on, and say further, that effectual opposition could not be made to Great Britain without establishing a form of government perpetual and unalterable by the Legislature, which is not true. An opposition which, at some time or other, was to come to an end, could not need a perpetual institution 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. If, 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 principe conditur.” “Constitutum, quod ab imperatoribus rescriptum statutumve est.” “Statutum, idem quod lex.” Calvini Lexicon juridicum. 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 synonymous. The term constitution, has many other significations in physics and in politics; but in jurisprudence,