[Sidenote:  The “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” (1639).] The first written constitution known to history was that by which the republic of Connecticut was organized in 1639.  At first the affairs of the Connecticut settlements had been directed by a commission appointed by the General Court of Massachusetts, but on the 14th of January, 1639, all the freemen of the three river towns—­Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield—­assembled at Hartford, and drew up a written constitution, consisting of eleven articles, in which the frame of government then and there adopted was distinctly described.  This document, known as the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut”, created the government under which the people of Connecticut lived for nearly two centuries before they deemed it necessary to amend it.  The charter granted to Connecticut by Charles II. in 1662 was simply a royal recognition of the government actually in operation since the adoption of the Fundamental Orders.

[Sidenote:  Germinal development of the colonial charter toward the modern state constitution.] In those colonies which had charters these documents served, to a certain extent, the purposes of a written constitution.  They limited the legislative powers of the colonial assemblies.  The question sometimes came up as to whether some statute made by the assembly was not in excess of the powers conferred by the charter.  This question usually arose in connection with some particular law case, and thus came before the courts for settlement,—­first before the courts of the colony; afterwards it might sometimes be carried on appeal before the Privy Council in England.  If the court decided that the statute was in transgression of the charter, the statute was thereby annulled.[6] The colonial legislature, therefore, was not a supreme body, even within the colony; its authority was restricted by the terms of the charter.  Thus the Americans, for more than a century before the Revolution, were familiarized with the idea of a legislature as a representative body acting within certain limits prescribed by a written document.  They had no knowledge or experience of a supreme legislative body, such as the House of Commons has become since the founders of American states left England.  At the time of the Revolution, when the several states framed new governments, they simply put a written constitution into the position of supremacy formerly occupied by the charter.  Instead of a document expressed in terms of a royal grant, they adopted a document expressed in terms of a popular edict.  To this the legislature must conform; and people were already somewhat familiar with the method of testing the constitutionality of a law by getting the matter brought before the courts.  The mental habit thus generated was probably more important than any other single circumstance in enabling our Federal Union to be formed.  Without it, indeed, it would have been impossible to form a durable union.