Page:The Irish Constitution Explained.djvu/23

 truth is overlooked. The Canadian Constitution, for example, having provided for the Union of Provinces by which the Federation was created, begins at once with the statement that "the Executive Government and authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen." Nothing has been said about a Legislature—nothing about the people of Canada. The Constitution begins at once with an Executive Authority which nothing has brought into being, and which therefore exists of its own right, original and indefeasible, all things else in the Constitution depending from it. The pyramid is hung from heaven, for the philosophy of the plan is to be found in the mediaeval myth of the Divine Right of Kings.

The Constitution of Canada consequently proceeds downwards from that apex to the Legislature; and in that Legislature, according to the philosophy, the Senate comes before the Commons. "There shall," it says, "be one Parliament for Canada, consisting of the Queen, an Upper House, styled the Senate, and the House of Commons." As for the base, it is found nowhere at all. The interest is exhausted before it is reached; and the People are not mentioned.

I have taken the Canadian Constitution because it is specially mentioned in the present draft of the Constitution of Saorstat Eireann; but the same supposition is found in many other constitutions, such as those of Denmark, Sweden, South Africa. In them are to be found the relics of the mediaeval theory of government, of a divine authority conferred on a family, which therefore ruled of its own right; and of its own grace summoned the subjects of that authority for counsel and advice. Therefore in these constitutions it is assumed that the sovereignty is above and the subjection below—even though no one to-day supposes that the practical facts are what they assume them to be.

In the Irish Constitution, as in most modern constitutions, this order is inverted. The sovereignty