Upon the splendid substructure of the Declaration of the Rights of Man the first French Constitution was reared. It was framed with care, took two years in the making, and was finally accepted by Louis in 1791. Since then there have been many constitutions, but, omitting the Napoleonic interlude, the principles of the Declaration show themselves with triumphant ascendency as the foundation of each reconstruction. Like all written constitutions, modifications are frequently found necessary. There is none of the elasticity of the unwritten constitution which exists only in the land of the people who are said to have a genius for governing themselves, and perhaps it is that endowment with the capacity for self-government which makes the nebulous character of the British Constitution so valuable. It is true that a very great majority of well-educated British people could not give any clear idea of the nature of the constitution of their country, and when any constitutional point arises only a handful of experts can state how far the precedents of the past, by which the constitution is modified, affect the immediate issue; and yet there would be a considerable feeling of alarm if it were seriously proposed to make the whole situation plain by producing a modern written constitution, however much based on all that has gone before. Britons, as a rule, do not even trouble to acquaint themselves with the survival of many ancient royal prerogatives. Walter Bagehot[1] puts into one pregnant paragraph what Queen Victoria could do without consulting Parliament. "Not to mention other things," he writes, "she could disband the army (by law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men, but she is not obliged to engage any men); she could dismiss all the officers, from the General Commanding-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our naval stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a 'university'; she could dismiss most of the civil servants; she could pardon all offenders." The present sovereign could do the same, but safeguards in the form of impeachment of Ministers and change of a Ministry preserve the country from proceedings of this nature; but in a country with a written constitution such legacies from the days when the head of the State was a military dictator exist no longer. [1] _The English Constitution_, Introduction to 1872 Edition.