Several times on his way home he stopped to read, and only suspended his studies at the approach of evening, which found him east of the pond, lying across his direct route, and which he found the means of passing.

Blackstone he took in earnest, and smiled to find nothing that he did not seem to comprehend, and often went back, fearing that the seeming might not be the real meaning.

At the end of a week he returned to his kind friend, the General, not without misgivings as to the result of his work.  He found him at leisure in the afternoon, and was received with much kindness.

“Well, how goes Blackstone?”

“Indeed I don’t know; and I am anxious, if you have leisure, to find out.”

The General took the book, and turning to the definition of law, and the statement of a few elementary principles, found that they were thoroughly understood.  Turning on, he paused with his finger in the book.

“What do you think of the English Constitution?”

Bart looked a little puzzled.

“The English government seems to be an admirable structure—­on paper; but as to the principles that lie below it, or around it, that govern and control its workings, and from which it can’t depart, I am cloudy.”

“Yes, a good many are; but then there is, as you know, a great unwritten English Constitution—­certain great fixed principles which from time to time have been observed, through many ages, until their observance has become a law, from which the government cannot depart, and they take the form of maxims and rules.”

“I think I understand what you mean; but to me everything is in cloud-land, vague and shifting, and the fact that nobody has ever attempted to put in writing these principles, or even to enumerate them, leads one to doubt whether really there are such things.  When king, lords and commons are, in theory and practice, absolutely omnipotent, I can’t comprehend how there can be any other constitution.  When they enact a law, nobody can question it, nobody can be heard against it; no court can pronounce it unconstitutional.  What may have been thought to be unconstitutional they can declare to be law, and that ends it.  So they can annihilate any one of the so-called constitutional maxims.  When a party in power wants to do a thing, it is constitutional; when a minister or great noble is to be got rid of, he is impeached for a violation of the constitution, and constitutionally beheaded.”

“Well,” said the General, smiling, “but this, for instance:  the great palladium of British liberty, taxation, must be accompanied with representation.”

“Yes; that, if adhered to, would protect property and its owners; but then it never has been carried out, even in England, while the non-taxpayer is wholly out of its reach; and my recollection is, that the constitutional violation of this palladium of the Constitution by king, lords and commons, produced a lively commotion, some sixty-odd years ago.”