rican, but parts of it were inapplicable to the
conditions in which the thirteen Colonies found themselves, and where
the model failed the Convention struck out anew. The sagacity of the
American statesmen in this creative work may well fill Englishmen, so
Sir Henry Maine wrote, "with wonder and envy." Mr. Bryce's
classification of constitutions as flexible and rigid is apt: of our
Constitution it may be said that in the main it is rigid in those
matters which should not be submitted to the decision of a legislature
or to a popular vote without checks which secure reflection and a chance
for the sober second thought, and that it has proved flexible in its
adaptation to the growth of the country and to the development of the
nineteenth century. Sometimes, though, it is flexible to the extent of
lacking precision. An instance of this is the proviso for the counting
of the electoral vote. "The votes shall then be counted" are the words.
Thus, when in 1876 it was doubtful whether Tilden or Hayes had been
chosen President, a fierce controversy arose as to who should count the
votes, the President of the Senate or Congress. While many regretted the
absence of an incontrovertible provision, it was fortunate for the
country that the Constitution did not provide that the vote should be
counted by the President of the Senate, who, the Vice President having
died in office, was in 1877 a creature of the partisan majority. It is
doubtful, too, if the decision of such an officer would have been
acquiesced in by the mass of Democrats, who thought that they had fairly
elected their candidate. There being no express declaration of the
Constitution, it devolved upon Congress to settle the dispute; the
ability and patriotism of that body was equal to the crisis. By a
well-devised plan of arbitration, Congress relieved the strain and
provided for a peaceful settlement of a difficulty which in most
countries would have led to civil war.

In the provisions conferring the powers and defining the duties of the
executive the flexible character of the Constitution is shown in another
way. Everything is clearly stated, but the statements go not beyond the
elementary. The Convention knew what it wanted to say, and Gouverneur
Morris, who in the end drew up the document, wrote this part of it, as
indeed all other parts, in clear and effective words. It is due to him,
wrote Laboulaye, that the Constitution has a "distinctness entirely
French, in happ