Read Ebook: Halloween a Romaunt; with Lays Meditative and Devotional by Coxe A Cleveland Arthur Cleveland Gimbrede Joseph Napoleon Illustrator

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FOOTNOTE:

CONSTIPATION , the condition of body when the faeces are unduly retained, or there is difficulty in evacuation, tightness of the bowels . It may be due to constitutional peculiarities, sedentary or irregular habits, improper diet, &c. The treatment varies with individual cases, according to the cause at work, laxatives, dieting, massage, &c., being prescribed.

CONSTITUENCY , a political term for the body of electors who choose a representative for parliament or for any other public assembly, for the place or district possessing the right to elect a representative, and for the residents generally, apart from their voting powers, in such a locality. The term is also applied, in a transferred sense, to the readers of a particular newspaper, the customers of a business and the like.

The above is an attempt to indicate the meaning of the phrases in their stricter or more technical uses. Some wider meanings may be noticed. In the phrase constitutional government, a form of government based on certain principles which may roughly be called popular is the leading idea. Great Britain, Switzerland, the United States, are all constitutional governments in this sense of the word. A country where a large portion of the people has some considerable share in the supreme power would be a constitutional country. On the other hand, constitutional, as applied to governments, may mean stable as opposed to unstable and anarchic societies. Again, as a term of party politics, constitutional has come to mean, in England, not obedience to constitutional rules as above described, but adherence to the existing type of the constitution or to some conspicuous portions thereof,--in other words, conservative.

The ideas associated with constitution and constitutionalism are thus, it will be seen, mainly of modern and European origin. They are wholly inapplicable to the primitive and simple societies of the present or of the former times. The discussion of forms of government occupies a large space in the writings of the Greek philosophers,--a fact which is to be explained by the existence among the Greeks of many independent political communities, variously organized, and more or less democratic in character. Between the political problems of the smaller societies and those of the great European nations there is no useful parallel to be drawn, although the predominance of classical learning made it the fashion for a long time to apply Greek speculations on the nature of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to public questions in modern Europe. Representation , the characteristic principle of European constitutions, has, of course, no place in societies which were not too large to admit of every free citizen participating personally in the business of government. Nor is there much in the politics or the political literature of the Romans to compare with the constitutions of modern states. Their political system, almost from the beginning of empire, was ruled absolutely by a small assembly or by one man.

The impetus to constitutional government in modern times has to a large extent come from England, and it is from English politics that the phrase and its associations have been borrowed. England has offered to the world the one conspicuous example of a long, continuous, and orderly development of political institutions. The early date at which the principle of self-government was established in England, the steady growth of the principle, the absence of civil dissension, and the preservation in the midst of change of so much of the old organization, have given its constitution a great influence over the ideas of politicians in other countries. This fact is expressed in the proverbial phrase--"England is the mother of parliaments." It would not be difficult to show that the leading features of the constitutions now established in other nations have been based on, or defended by, considerations arising from the political history of England.

The constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land as to the matters which it embraces. The constitution of each state is the supreme law of the state, except so far as it may be controlled by the constitution of the United States. Every statute in conflict with the constitution to which it is subordinate is void so far as this conflict extends. If it concerns only a distinct and separable part of the statute, that part only is void. Every court before which a statutory right or defence is asserted has the power to inquire whether the statute in question is or is not in conflict with the paramount constitution. This power belongs even to a justice of the peace in trying a cause. He sits to administer the law, and it is for him to determine what is the law. Inferior courts commonly decline to hold a statute unconstitutional, even if there may appear to be substantial grounds for such a decision. The presumption is always in favour of the validity of the law, and they generally prefer to leave the responsibility of declaring it void to the higher courts.

The judges of the state courts are bound by their oath of office to support the constitution of the United States. They have an equal right with those of the United States to determine whether or how far it affects any matter brought in question in any action. So, vice versa, the judges of the United States courts, if the point comes up on a trial before them, have the right to determine whether or how far the constitution of a state invalidates a statute of the state. They, however, are ordinarily bound to follow the views of the state courts on such a question. They are not bound by any decision of a state court as to the effect of the constitution of the United States on a state statute or any other matter. This judicial power of declaring a statute void because unconstitutional has been not infrequently exercised, from the time when the first state constitutions were adopted.

Juries in criminal causes are sometimes made by American statutes or recognized by American practice as judges of the law as well as the fact. The better opinion is that this does not make them judges of whether a law on which the prosecution rests violates the paramount constitution and is therefore void .

If a state court decides a point of constitutional law, set up under the constitution of the United States, against the party relying upon it, and this decision is affirmed by the state court of last resort, he may sue out a writ of error, and so bring his case before the Supreme Court of the United States. If the state decision be in his favour, the other side cannot resort to like proceedings.

A decree of the Supreme Court of the United States on a point of construction arising under the constitution of the United States settles it for all courts, state and national.

The salient characteristic of the United States constitution is, perhaps, its formidable apparatus of provisions against change; and, in fact, only 15 constitutional amendments had been adopted from 1789 up to 1909, the last being in 1870. In the same period the unwritten constitution of England has made a most marked advance, chiefly in the direction of democratizing the monarchy, and diminishing the powers of the House of Lords. The House of Commons has continuously asserted its legislative predominance, and has reduced the other House to the position of a revising chamber, which in the last resort, however, can produce a legislative deadlock, subject to the results of a new general election . And the cabinet, which depends on the support of the House of Commons, has become more and more the executive council of the realm. One conspicuous feature of the English constitution, by which it is broadly distinguished from written or artificial constitutions, is the presence throughout its entire extent of legal fictions. The influence of the lawyers on the progress of the constitution has already been noticed, and is nowhere more clearly shown than in this peculiarity of its structure. As in the common law, so in the constitution, change has been effected in substance without any corresponding change in terminology. There is hardly one of the phrases used to describe the position of the crown which can be understood in its literal sense, and many of them are currently accepted in more senses than one. The American constitution of 1789 reproduced, however, in essentials, and with necessary modifications, the contemporary British model, and, where it did so, has preserved the old conception of what was then the British system of Government. The position and powers of the president were a fair counterpart of the royal prerogative of that day; the two houses of Congress corresponded sufficiently well to the House of Lords and the House of Commons, allowing for the absence of the elements of hereditary rank and territorial influence. While the English constitution has changed much, the American constitution has changed very little in these respects. Allowing for the more democratic character of the constituencies, the organization of the supreme power in the United States is nearer the English type of the 18th century--is, in fact, less elastic than in the United Kingdom.

Between England and some other constitutional countries a difference of much constitutional importance is to be found in the terms on which the component parts of the country were brought together. All great societies have been produced by the aggregation of small societies into larger and larger groups. In England the process of consolidation was completed before the constitution settled down into its present form. In the United States, on the other hand, in Switzerland, and in Germany the constitution is in form an alliance among a number of separate states, each of which may have a constitution and laws of its own for local purposes. In federal governments it remains a question how far the independence of individual states has been sacrificed by submission to a constitution. In the United States constitutional progress is hampered by the necessity thus created of having every amendment ratified by the separate vote of three-fourths of the states.

The only question as to authorship that can fairly be raised is the question whether it is by Aristotle or by a pupil; i.e. as to the sense in which it is "Aristotelian." The argument on the two sides may be summarized as follows:--

Most of these have passed through several editions. The fullest commentary is that contained in the edition of the text by J. E. Sandys . The best translations are those of Kenyon, in English, and of Kaibel and Kiessling, in German.

CONSUETUDINARY , customary, a term used especially of law based on custom as opposed to statutory or written law. As a noun "consuetudinary" is the name given to a ritual book containing the forms and ceremonies used in the services of a particular monastery, cathedral or religious order.

CONSUL , the title borne by the two highest of the ordinary magistrates of the whole Roman community during the republic. In the imperial period these magistrates had ceased practically to be the heads of the state, but their technical position remained unaltered.

Most of the internal history of Rome down to the beginning of the third century B.C. consists in a series of attacks, whether intentional or accidental, on the power of the executive. As the consuls are the sole representatives of higher executive authority in early times, this history is one of a progressive decline in the originally wide and arbitrary powers of the office. Their right of summary criminal jurisdiction was weakened by the successive laws of appeal ; their capacity for interpreting the civil law at their pleasure by the publication of the Twelve Tables and the Forms of Action. The growth of the tribunate of the plebs hampered their activity both as legislators and as judges. They surrendered the duties of registration to the censors in 443 B.C., and the rights of civil jurisdiction and control over the market and police to the praetor and the curule aediles in 367 B.C.

The result of these limitations and of this specialization of functions in the community was to leave the consuls with less specific duties at home than any magistrates in the state. But the absence of specific functions may be of itself a sign of a general duty of supervision. The consuls were in a very real sense the heads of the state. Polybius describes them as controlling the whole administration . This control they exercised in concert with the senate, whose chief servants they were. It was they who were the most regular consultants of this council, who formulated its decrees as edicts, and who brought before the people legislative measures which the senate had approved. It was they also who represented the state to the outer world and introduced foreign envoys to the senate. The symbols of their presidency were manifold. It was marked by the twelve lictors , a number permitted to no other ordinary magistrate, by the fact that the first act of newly-admitted consuls was to take the auspices, their second to summon the senate, and by the use of their names for dating the year. The consulate was, indeed, as Cicero expresses it, the culminating point in an official career .

Since the theory of the persistence of the republican constitution was of the essence of the Principate, the consuls necessarily lost little of their outward position and dignity under the rule of the Caesars. The consulship was the only office in which a citizen, other than a member of the imperial house, might have the princeps as a colleague, and in the interval between the death or deposition of one princeps and the appointment of another the consuls resumed their normal position as the heads of the state . As the presidents of the senate, who after A.D. 14 elected them to t

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