o attend school.
c. To buy uniforms for a regiment of soldiers.
d. To establish a death penalty.
e. To send a committee abroad to study a system of waterworks.

10. Trace the authority of a school-teacher, a policeman, a selectman, a
mayor, or of any public officer, back to some part of your constitution.

11. Mention any parts of your constitution that seem general and
somewhat indefinite, and that admit, therefore, of much freedom in
interpretation.

12. Show how the people are, in one aspect, subordinate to the
constitution; in another, superior to it.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

Written Constitutions.--Very little has been written or published with
reference to the history of the development of the idea of a written
constitution. The student will find some suggestive hints in Hannis
Taylor's _Origin and Growth of the English Constitution_, vol. i,
Boston, 1889. See Henry Hitchcock's _American State Constitutions; a
Study of their Growth_, N.Y., 1887, a learned and valuable essay. See
also _J.H.U. Studies_, I., xi., Alexander Johnston, _The Genesis of a
New England State (Connecticut)_; III., ix.-x., Horace Davis, _American
Constitutions_; also Preston's _Documents Illustrative of American
History_, 1606-1863, N.Y., 1886; Stubbs, _Select Charters and other
Illustrations of English Constitutional History_, Oxford, 1870;
Gardiner's _Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution_, Oxford,
1888.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FEDERAL UNION.

Section 1. _Origin of the Federal Union._

Having now sketched the origin and nature of written constitutions, we
are prepared to understand how by means of such a document the
government of our Federal Union was called into existence. We have
already described so much of the civil government in operation in the
United States that this account can be made much more concise than if we
had started at the top instead of the bottom and begun to portray our
national government before saying a word about states and counties and
towns. Bit by bit the general theory of American self-government has
already been set before the reader. We have now to observe, in
conclusion, what a magnificent piece of constructive work has been
performed in accordance with that general theory. We have to observe the
building up of a vast empire out of strictly self-governing elements.

[Sidenote: English institutions in all the colonies.]
There was always one important circumstance in favo