In those European countries where the difference in the procedure for changing constitutional and other laws is the most marked, the special formalities for the former consist in requiring more than a majority vote in the legislature, or that a general election shall take place before the amendment is finally adopted, or both. Now the last of those conditions is practically not unknown in England. There is a growing feeling that no fundamental or far-reaching change ought to be made unless, as a result of a general election fought on that issue, Parliament has received from the nation a mandate to make the change. Such a doctrine does not affect the law, but it does affect that body of customs which is a not less vital part of the British Constitution. The classical distinction between constituent and law-making powers, and hence between rigid and flexible constitutions, has also been somewhat effaced by extending the requirement of a special procedure to the enactment of certain classes of ordinary law. Thus in the German Empire the only peculiar formality for amendments to the constitution is found in the provision that they are defeated by fourteen adverse votes in the Bundesrath.[5:1] This gives Prussia with her seventeen votes a veto upon them, but she has also a veto in the Bundesrath upon any measures affecting the army, the navy, customs-duties or excises.[5:2] [Sidenote: Growing Variety in Written Constitutions.] In the middle of the last century written constitutions in Europe were framed for the most part upon the same model and were much alike, so that a written constitution usually implied a definite type of limited monarchy, where the same class of matters were removed from the direct control of the legislature and placed, in theory at least, under special protection. But now written constitutions all over the world have come to differ a great deal, some of them being simpler, and others more comprehensive than of old. The constitutional laws of France, for example, provide only for the bare organisation of the public authorities, and can be amended virtually at will by the legislature; while the constitutions of Switzerland, Germany and the United States go into great detail, and that of the United States can be amended only with the greatest difficulty. The result is that the French constitution, although written and technically rigid, bears from the point of view of rigidity a far closer resemblance to the constitution of England than to that of the United States.