The Meaning of Constitutional Government
3
but actually constitutions may be partly or even wholly unwritten. These
unwritten constitutions are not based on a single document but are made
up of old customs, conventions, statutes, charters, and habits in public
affairs. The British Constitution is an example of this sort of basic body
of laws. Until the Constitution of the United States was agreed upon in
Philadelphia, all national constitutions were ‘‘unwritten’’ and informal.
A few years after the American Constitution was drawn up, written constitutions were adopted in Poland and France. Even the American Constitution is not entirely set down upon paper, however.
For it has been said that every country possesses two distinct constitutions that exist side by side. One of these is the formal written constitution of modern times; the other is the old ‘‘unwritten’’ one of political
conventions, habits, and ways of living together in the civil social order
that have developed among a people over many centuries. Thus, for instance, certain important features of America’s political structure are not
even mentioned in the written Constitution of 1787. For example, what
does the written Constitution of the United States say about political parties? The answer is—nothing. Yet political parties direct the course of our
national affairs. What does our written Constitution say about the President’s cabinet, with its secretaries of state, of the treasury, agriculture, defense, education, and the like? The answer again is nothing; yet the President could not function without a cabinet.
So it is possible to speak of a ‘‘visible’’ and an ‘‘invisible’’ constitution,
and of a ‘‘written’’ and an ‘‘unwritten’’ constitution. In this book we are
concerned principally with the written Constitution of the United States,
although from time to time we will refer also to aspects of our basic political system that have not been set down in writing.
A constitution is an effort to impose order for the achievement of certain ends. Those ends are often set forth in a preamble to the document,
as in the American Constitution, which states that the ‘‘People of the
United States’’ have established the Constitution ‘‘to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.’’
Liberty, order, and justice, it may thus be seen, are the primary objectives of the American political system. They are probably the most im-