y, 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
legislation. To change it, or recast it, requires a revolution. Such a
revolution may not be accompanied by bloodshedding, or it may, but it is
certainly accompanied by insecurity and unsettlement.

It should, therefore, be the business of constitution-makers to prescribe
only what to them is fundamental and irrefutable; to lay down the secure
foundations of their State; and to leave all other matters to the
experience of the nation, without seeking to shackle that experience by
provisions that time may not commend. Otherwise, a convulsion may be
necessary to get done what ordinary legislation could have accomplished
without affecting the stability of the State.

This, then, is the first definition of a Constitution, that it contains
the Fundamental Law of a State, and only the Fundamental Law. In England
there is no such thing as a Fundamental Law. It is claimed by English
constitutional lawyers that this is because Parliament is sovereign; but
the historical truth is that in England Parliament exercises a sovereignty
in fact which the King is supposed to exercise in theory; and any attempt
to make the theory square with the fact by the writing of a Fundamental
Law would lead, perhaps, to a surprising situation.

Yet in England certain fundamental rights are recognised, with which
Parliament would not lightly tamper; and these amount in effect to a
Fundamental Law, holding a higher rank than ordinary laws. In practically
all other countries such rights are set forth in a document, different
from all other legal documents, inasmuch as unless these other documents
observe the conditions required in the first, and do not conflict with its
provisions, they are null and void. In both sets of documents the laws of
the realm are to be found; but the two sets of laws are of different
sorts. One is fundamental and permanent; the other is by contrast casual
and changeable.

This, then, is the second definition of a Constitution, not only that it
contains the fundamental law of a State, but that it prescribes the manner
in w