nt. Such constitutions are familiar today and it is not always remembered that our country was the first to have one. Certainly one purpose of a written constitution is to define and therefore more specifically limit government powers. An all-powerful government that can act as it pleases wants no such constitution - unless to fool the people. England had no written constitution and this once proved a source of tyranny, as our ancestors well knew. Jefferson said about this departure from the English type of Government: Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. "A second unique feature of our Government is a Constitution supreme over the Legislature. In England, statutes, Magna Carta, and later declarations of rights had for centuries limited the power of the King, but they did not limit the power of parliament. Although commonly referred to as a constitution, they were never the supreme law of the land in the way in which our Constitution is, much to the regret of statesmen like Pitt the elder. Parliament could change this English Constitution; Congress cannot change ours. Ours can only be changed by amendments ratified by three-fourths of the States. "A third feature of our Government, expressly designed to limit its powers, was the division of authority into three co-ordinate branches, none of which was to have supremacy over the others. This separation of powers with the checks and balances which each branch was given over the others was designed to prevent any branch, including the legislative, from infringing individual liberties safeguarded by the Constitution. "All of the unique features of our Constitution show an underlying purpose to create a new kind of limited government." [Completion of the Constitution was followed shortly after by James Madison's proposed ten additions or Amendments, these first ten Amendments becoming collectively known as the ...
