of
Rights," which simply put their previous declaration into the form of
a declaratory statute. The Bill of Rights was not--even in form--a
grant from a sovereign; it was an instrument framed by the
representatives of the people, and without promising to respect
it William and Mary could no more have mounted the throne than a
president of the United States could be inducted into office if he
were to refuse to take the prescribed oath of allegiance to the
Federal Constitution. The Bill of Rights was therefore, strictly
speaking, a piece of written constitution; it was a constitution as
far as it went.

[Sidenote: Foreshadowing of the American idea by Sir Harry Vane
(1656).]
The seventeenth century, the age when the builders of American
commonwealths were coming from England, was especially notable in
England for two things. One was the rapid growth of modern commercial
occupations and habits, the other was the temporary overthrow of
monarchy, soon followed by the final subjection of the crown to
parliament. Accordingly the sphere of contract and the sphere of
popular sovereignty were enlarged in men's minds, and the notion of a
written constitution first began to find expression. The "Instrument
of Government" which in 1653 created the protectorate of Oliver
Cromwell was substantially a written constitution, but it emanated
from a questionable authority and was not ratified. It was drawn up
by a council of army officers; and "it broke down because the first
parliament summoned under it refused to acknowledge its binding
force." [4] The dissolution of this parliament accordingly left Oliver
absolute dictator. In 1656, when it seemed so necessary to decide what
sort of government the dictatorship of Cromwell was to prepare the way
for, Sir Harry Vane proposed that a _national convention_ should
be called for drawing up a written constitution.[5] The way in which
he stated his case showed that he had in him a prophetic foreshadowing
of the American idea as it was realized in 1787. But Vane's ideas were
too far in advance of his age to be realized then in England. Older
ideas, to which men were more accustomed, determined the course of
events there, and it was left for Americans to create a government by
means of a written constitution. And when American statesmen did so,
they did it without any reference to Sir Harry Vane. His relation to
the subject has been discovered only in later days, but I mention him
here in illu