for life, and by one
hundred members (sixty-four sitting for counties, thirty-five for
boroughs, and one for the University of Dublin) of the House of
Commons. The Anglican Church of Ireland was amalgamated with the
established Church of England, though, subsequently in 1869, it was
disestablished and disendowed. The union with Ireland was in the
nature of a contract, and while in a number of respects the conditions
which were involved in it have been altered within the past hundred
years, its fundamentals stand to-day unchanged. It is these
fundamentals, especially the assimilation of Ireland with Great
Britain for legislative purposes, which are the object of relentless
attack on the part of the Home Rule and other nationalistic and
reforming elements.[47]

[Footnote 46: Styled "the Parliament of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."]

[Footnote 47: An abridgment of the text of the Act
of Union with Scotland is printed in Adams and
Stephens, Select Documents, 479-483; of that of the
Act of Union with Ireland, ibid., 497-506. The full
text of the former will be found in Robertson,
Select Statutes, Cases, and Documents, 92-105; that
of the latter, ibid., 157-164. On Ireland before
the Union see May and Holland, Constitutional
History of England, II., Chap. 16.]

IV. THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF THE CONSTITUTION

*41. The Elusiveness of the Constitution.*--The description of the
British governmental system which is hereafter to be undertaken will
be clarified by a word of comment at this point upon the character
which the English constitution of to-day has assumed, upon the form in
which it exists, and upon the sources from which it has been drawn.
The term "constitution," as is familiarly understood, may be employed
to denote a written instrument of fundamental law which has been
framed by a constituent assembly, drafted by an ordinary legislative
body, or promulgated upon the sole authority of a dictator or monarch;
or, with equal propriety, it may be used to designate a body of (p. 042)
customs, laws, and precedents, but partially, or even not at all,
committed to writing, in accordance with which the machinery of a
given governmental system is operated. The constitution of the United
Kingdom