der it. Thomas Paine would admit
nothing to be the constitution but a written document which he could
fold up and put in his pocket, or file away in a pigeon-hole. The Abbe
Sieyes pronounced politics a science which he had finished, and he was
ready to turn you out constitutions to order, with no other defect than
that they had, as Carlyle wittily says, no feet, and could not go.
Many in the last century, and some, perhaps, in the present, for folly
as well as wisdom has her heirs, confounded the written instrument with
the constitution itself. No constitution can be written on paper or
engrossed on parchment. What the convention may agree upon, draw up,
and the people ratify by their votes, is no constitution, for it is
extrinsic to the nation, not inherent and living in it--is, at best,
legislative instead of constitutive. The famous Magna Charta drawn up
by Cardinal Langton, and wrung from John Lackland by the English barons
at Runnymede, was no constitution of England till long after the date
of its concession, and even then was no constitution of the state, but
a set of restrictions on power. The constitution is the intrinsic or
inherent and actual constitution of the people or political community
itself; that which makes the nation what it is, and distinguishes it
from every other nation, and varies as nations themselves vary from one
another.

The constitution of the state is not a theory, nor is it drawn up and
established in accordance with any preconceived theory. What is
theoretic in a constitution is unreal. The constitutions conceived by
philosophers in their closets are constitutions only of Utopia or
Dreamland. This world is not governed by abstractions, for
abstractions are nullities. Only the concrete is real, and only the
real or actual has vitality or force. The French people adopted
constitution after constitution of the most approved pattern, and amid
bonfires, beating of drums, sound of trumpets, roar of musketry, and
thunder of artillery, swore, no doubt, sincerely as well as
enthusiastically, to observe them, but all to no effect; for they had
no authority for the nation, no hold on its affections, and formed no
element of its life. The English are great constitution-mongers--for
other nations. They fancy that a constitution fashioned after their own
will fit any nation that can be persuaded, wheedled, or bullied into
trying it on; but, unhappily, all that have tried it on have found it