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 illustration of the way in which great institutions grow.  They take shape when they express the opinions and wishes of a multitude of persons; but it often happens that one or two men of remarkable foresight had thought of them long beforehand.

[Footnote 4:  Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, p. lx.]

[Footnote 5:  See Hosmer’s Young Sir Henry Vane, pp. 432-444,—­one of the best books ever written for the reader who wishes to understand the state of mind among the English people in the crisis when they laid the foundations of the United States.]

[Sidenote:  The Mayflower compact(1620).] In America the first attempts at written constitutions were in the fullest sense made by the people, and not through representatives but directly.  In the Mayflower’s cabin, before the Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth rock, they subscribed their names to a compact in which they agreed to constitute themselves into a “body politic,” and to enact such laws as might be deemed best for the colony they were about to establish; and they promised “all due submission and obedience” to such laws.  Such a compact is of course too vague to be called a constitution.  Properly speaking, a written constitution is a document which defines the character and powers of the government to which its framers are willing to entrust themselves.  Almost any kind of civil government might have been framed under the Mayflower compact, but the document is none the less interesting as an indication of the temper of the men who subscribed their names to it.