of Great Britain and Ireland is of this second type. The
student who desires to bring together the principles and to tabulate
the working details of the British constitutional order will find no
single document, nor any collection of documents, in which these
things are wholly, or even largely, set down. For the accomplishment
of such a task it would be necessary to review intensively a thousand
years and more of history, to lay hold of a statute here and of a
judicial decision there, to take constant cognizance of the rise and
crystallization of political usages, and to probe to their inmost
recesses the mechanisms of administration, law-making, taxation,
elections, and judicial procedure as they have been, and as they are
actually operated before the spectator's eyes. Foremost among its
compeers in antiquity, in comprehensiveness, and in originality, the
British constitution is at once the least tangible and the most widely
influential among European bodies of fundamental law.

*42. Constituent Elements: the Law.*--The elements of which this
constitution is to-day composed have been classified in various ways.
For present purposes they may be gathered in five principal
categories. In the first place, there are treaties and other
international agreements, which in Great Britain as in the United
States are invested with the character of supreme law of the land. In
the second place, there is a group of solemn engagements which have
been entered into at times of national crisis between parties
representing opposed, or contracting, political forces. Of such
character are the Great Charter, the Petition of Right, and the Bill
of Rights. A third and larger category comprises parliamentary
statutes which add to or modify governmental powers or procedure.
Statutes of this type include clearly the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679,
the Act of Settlement of 1701, the Septennial Act of 1716, Fox's Libel
Act of 1792, the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884, the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835, the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections
Act of 1872, the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, and the
Parliament Act of 1911. In the fourth place there is the Common Law, a
vast body of legal precept and usage which through the centuries has
acquired fundamental and immutable character. The first three elements
mentioned, i.e., treaties, solemn political engagements, and
statutes, exist solely, or almost so, in written form. The rules of
th