other States, it gives no power to summon a revising

Convention.

No doubt therefore is possible as to the mode in which these American State Constitutions settle the formidable questions which the discussion of 1884 has shown to be unsettled in this country. First of all, it is to be noted that the electoral body recognised by all the Constitutions, without exception, as having an exclusive jurisdiction over amendments of the Constitution, is the existing electoral body, and not any electoral body of the future. Next, the most ample notice is given to it that an amendment of the Constitution will be brought before the next Legislature which it is called upon to choose; both branches of the outgoing Legislature must record a resolution with the numbers of the division upon it, and this resolution must be published three months before a general election. It is quite clear, therefore, that the representatives chosen at this election will have what may be called a "Mandate." The amendment must then be agreed to by an absolute majority of the members of both Houses of the new Legislature; or, as is required in some States, by a two-thirds or three-fifths majority in both Houses, or one of them. But there is a final security in addition. The Mandate must be ratified. The amendment must be submitted to the people in any way which the Legislature may provide; and, as is shown by the

Constitution of New Jersey, the ratification is usually placed in the hands of a special legislature specially elected for the purpose of giving or refusing it.

Such are the securities against surprise or haste in conducting the most important part of legislation, which American political sagacity has devised. They may very well suggest to the English politician some serious reflections. What was most remarkable in the discussion of twelve months since was, far less the violent and inflammatory language in which it was carried on, than the extreme vagueness of the considerations upon which it has turned. The House of Lords, for instance, was threatened with extinction. or mutilation for a certain offence. Yet when the offence is examined, it appears to have consisted in the violation of some rule or understanding, never expressed in writing, at variance with the strict law, and not perhaps construed in precisely the same way by any two thinking men in the country. Political history shows that men have at all times quarrelled more fiercely about phrases and formulas, than even about material interests; and it would seem that the discussion of British Constitutional legislation is distinguished from the discussion of all other legislation by having no fixed points to turn upon, and therefore by its irrational violence. Is it therefore idle to hope that at some calmer moment-now that the creation of two or three million more voters has

been accomplished-we may borrow a few of the American securities against surprise and irreflection in constitutional legislation, and express them with something like the American precision? Is it always to be possible in this country that a great amendment of the Constitution should, first of all, be attempted to be carried by tumultuary meetings of the population, enfranchised and unenfranchised-next, that it should be conducted through Parliament by a process which practically excluded Parliament from all share in shaping its provisions-and, lastly, that it should hardly become law before it was hurriedly altered for the purpose of giving votes to a particular class of paupers ? ? Some have supposed that the only remedy would be one which involved the conversion of the unwritten Constitution of Great Britain into a written Constitution. But a great part of our Constitution is already written. Many of the powers of the Crown -many of the powers of the House of Lords, including the whole of its judicial powers-much of the constitution of the House of Commons and its entire relation to the electoral body-have long since been defined by Act of Parliament. There does not seem to be any insuperable objection, first of all, to making a distinction between ordinary legislation and legislation which in any other country would be called Constitutional; and next, to requiring for the last a special legislative procedure, intended to secure

caution and deliberation, and as near an approach to impartiality as a system of party government will admit of. The alternative is to leave unsettled all the questions which the controversy of 1884 brought to light, and to give free play to a number of tendencies already actively at work. It is quite plain whither they are conducting us. We are drifting towards a type of government associated with terrible events a single Assembly, armed with full powers over the Constitution, which it may exercise at pleasure. It will be a theoretically all-powerful Convention, governed by a practically all-powerful secret Committee of Public Safety, but kept from complete submission to its authority by Obstruction, for which its rulers are always seeking to find a remedy in some kind of moral guillotine.

ESSAY III.

THE AGE OF PROGRESS.

THERE is no doubt that some of the most inventive, most polite, and best instructed portions of the human race are at present going through a stage of thought which, if it stood by itself, would suggest that there is nothing of which human nature is so tolerant, or so deeply enamoured, as the transformation of laws and institutions. A series of political and social changes, which a century ago no man would have thought capable of being effected save by the sharp convulsion of Revolution, is now contemplated by the bulk of many civilised communities as sure to be carried out, a certain number of persons regarding the prospect with exuberant hope, a somewhat larger number with equanimity, many more with indifference or resignation. At the end of the last century, a Revolution in France shook the whole civilised world; and the consequence of the terrible events and bitter disappointments which it brought with it was to arrest all improvement in Great Britain for