Page:The Irish Constitution Explained.djvu/17



During the early days of the second French Republic a customer entered a bookseller's and asked: "Have you a copy of the French Constitution?" "We do not," the bookseller politely replied, "deal in periodical literature."

Now, to any student of history such a story is a sure indication of the time of which it is told. He need not inquire to know that the time was one of revolution, change, and unsettlement. He also knows the mind of the people of that time, for insecure conditions beget a nervous, restless fear. And these things are significant. They reveal a quality of constitution-making that is not always, or easily, remembered. For whatever changes may proceed in legislation—however many and rapid they be—as long as the Constitution, written or unwritten, remains intact, the State at least is stable and its foundations are secure.

Plainly, therefore, nothing should be written into a Constitution that is of a temporary, experimental, or questionable nature, or which should fall to the lot of ordinary law-making and the changing convenience of practice. A Constitution is that which is permanent, as far as anything in this world may be permanent. Even to amend it, or add to it, requires in all countries (except England, where the Constitution has not taken a written form) a procedure quite different from that of ordinary 15