Page:The Irish Constitution Explained.djvu/20

 according to which the King swore "to maintain the Constitution intact." In the first two cases the kingly lines were not chosen until the Constitutions had been framed, when the chosen dynasties stepped into the places appointed for them, and carried out the functions defined for them. In each case, however, the authority of the king sprang, not from the divine right of kings, but from the divine right of the people, as set forth in the sovereign act of giving themselves a Constitution.

How different the power of kings such as these from the power of the French monarch who in the 18th century declared, "L'Etat, c'est moi"—"I am the State." He was right. He was sovereign. Sovereignty had to reside somewhere; and until the people arose and declared that it resided in them, and expressed that declaration in a formal Constitution, it continued to reside in the ruler who claimed it.

When, however, in 1787, the thirteen American States "ordained and established a Constitution" for their Union, then in the modern world the people came by their own. France quickly followed the example, but as a result of the wars which followed the world was thrown back into reaction. Throughout the 19th century, however, the statement of democratic sovereignty as a fundamental law of the State found expression in Constitution after Constitution;v.with the result that now, in modern practice, the existence of a Constitution is practically identical with a statement of national sovereignty.

There has hitherto been one chief exception; and that exception is of striking interest at the present time. For within the British Empire the theory has been that there is only one sovereign assembly, the Parliament at Westminster. It is true that the Constitutions of Canada, Australia and South Africa were each drawn up by Constituent Conventions in the countries themselves; but by the prevalent theory none of these peoples were competent to confer these Constitutions upon themselves. They were not, that is to say, sovereign; and before the