For the other nations of the Commonwealth are themselves not now what they were when their constitutions were first framed. They were then but colonies, on whom their mother-country was pleased to bestow constitutions--and if the pleasure was not always the most noticeable part of the bestowal, the legal smile did not diminish the fact of the gift. In their constitutions, therefore, the apron-strings are very much in evidence. It is clear from them that the mother did not propose to let the children wander far from her control, even though she permitted them to walk with their own feet. Not only in the actual provisions of these constitutions, but in their very conception and plan, drawn exactly according to English methods and from English experience, it is evident that a state of perpetual tutelage was imagined for the peoples to whom they were given. That has now changed. The colonies have come to be nations, very jealous of their nationhood. They have grown with experience, have moved onward with time, and it would go hard with anyone who attempted to remind them of what, nevertheless, their constitutions are a continual reminder. The consequence is that the provisions of these constitutions cannot be enforced since they do not square with experience. They encumber the documents which contain them as so much dead timber. They are sometimes carelessly, and more often dishonestly, described as legal fictions. But they are not legal fictions. They are dead letters--dead timber which a wise woodman would soon hew away. Life and experience have outgrown them; and this growth finds expression--if, unfortunately, not the full expression that might at one time have seemed possible--in the present draft Constitution. For under her Treaty with England Ireland agreed to take equal rank in the Community of Nations with the other members of it. Specifically she accepted the "law, practice and constitutional usage" of Canada; and that constitutional usage implies, not the dead timber of the Canadian Constitution, but the living tissue of her constitutional experience.