a
large portion of the people has some considerable share in the supreme
power would be a constitutional country. On the other hand,
constitutional, as applied to governments, may mean stable as opposed to
unstable and anarchic societies. Again, as a term of party politics,
constitutional has come to mean, in England, not obedience to
constitutional rules as above described, but adherence to the existing
type of the constitution or to some conspicuous portions thereof,--in
other words, conservative.

The ideas associated with constitution and constitutionalism are thus,
it will be seen, mainly of modern and European origin. They are wholly
inapplicable to the primitive and simple societies of the present or of
the former times. The discussion of forms of government occupies a large
space in the writings of the Greek philosophers,--a fact which is to be
explained by the existence among the Greeks of many independent
political communities, variously organized, and more or less democratic
in character. Between the political problems of the smaller societies
and those of the great European nations there is no useful parallel to
be drawn, although the predominance of classical learning made it the
fashion for a long time to apply Greek speculations on the nature of
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to public questions in modern
Europe. Representation (q.v.), the characteristic principle of European
constitutions, has, of course, no place in societies which were not too
large to admit of every free citizen participating personally in the
business of government. Nor is there much in the politics or the
political literature of the Romans to compare with the constitutions of
modern states. Their political system, almost from the beginning of
empire, was ruled absolutely by a small assembly or by one man.

The impetus to constitutional government in modern times has to a large
extent come from England, and it is from English politics that the
phrase and its associations have been borrowed. England has offered to
the world the one conspicuous example of a long, continuous, and orderly
development of political institutions. The early date at which the
principle of self-government was established in England, the steady
growth of the principle, the absence of civil dissension, and the
preservation in the midst of change of so much of the old organization,
have given its constitution a great influence over the ideas of
politicia