of the individual. Besides these were included
the principle of the division of powers, of rotation of office, of
accountability of office-holders, of forbidding hereditary titles, and
there were further contained certain limitations on the legislature and
executive, such as forbidding the keeping of a standing army or creating
an established church,--all of which do not engender personal rights of
the individual at all, or do so only indirectly. The whole is based upon
the principle of the sovereignty of the people, and culminates in the
conception of the entire constitution being an agreement of all
concerned. In this particular one sees clearly the old Puritan-Independent
idea of the covenant in its lasting influence, of which new power was to
be significantly displayed later. When to-day in the separate states of
the Union changes in the constitution are enacted either by the people
themselves, or through a constitutional convention, there still lives in
this democratic institution the same idea that once animated the settlers
of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Everywhere the bill of rights forms the first part of the constitution,
following which as second part comes the plan or frame of government.
The right of the creator of the state, the originally free and
unrestricted individual, was first established, and then the right of
that which the individuals created, namely, the community.

In spite of the general accord of these fundamental principles, when it
came to carrying them out in practical legislation great differences
arose in the various states, and though these differences were afterward
greatly lessened they have not entirely disappeared even to-day. Thus,
as mentioned above, religious liberty, in spite of its universal
recognition in the constitutions, was not everywhere nor at once carried
out in all of its consequences. In spite of the assertion that all men
are by nature free and equal the abolition of slavery was not then
accomplished. In the slave states in place of "man" stood "freeman".

The rights thus formally declared belonged originally to all the
"inhabitants", in the slave states to all the "whites". It was only
later that the qualification of citizenship of the United States was
required in most of the states for the exercise of political rights.

We have thus seen by what a remarkable course of development there arose
out of the English law, old and new, that was practised in the
colon