When the constitutional fathers in China wrote the provisional constitution it is obvious that they had at the back of their minds the American constitution, and that, they had conceived oF the American constitution as a pro-det of the American Revolution aronine to themselves that if America could evolve a. workable constitution after a revolution and carry along for 130 years on it. thera was no reason why China should not make a similar docnment do.
What the Chinese fail to appreciate is that there is almost nothing in the American constitution which had not been tradition] with the ancestors of the American colonists for considerably more than a thousand years. There was scarcely an institution defined in the American constitution for which tke historian could not find a prototype by readin: of the doings of the Anglo-Danes before the Norman conquest with their al/-thing or of the Anglo-Saxons with their wifangemot. The whole history of the constitu tional struggle in England is the history of struggle between the racial traditions of the Anglo-Saxons and the AngloDanes and the continental concepts of government imported by the Normans in the 11th century and imposed upon the English people by conquest. The Magna Charta does not mark the beginning of English constitutional history, but only the reassertion of social and political traditions naturally evolved on all the shores of the North Sea centuries before. The American constitution is only a later reassertion of these traditions. In some respects these traditions were adapted to the immediate and tempora ary political needs of the American colonies, permanent needs they seemed then; and it is only these adaptations, lapses from wisdom on the part of the drafters, which from time to time have to be amended or have to be as freely interpreted as some Biblical passages in the exegesis of a popular metropolitan pastor. If any part of the American or British constitutions, or any of the traditional Anglo-Saxon institutions which they are designed to safeguard, happen to fit the Chinese people and coincide with their. traditions it is only accident.
Evonvrion Nor Crmtion, The fathers of Chinese constitutions do not realize that neither the American nor the British. constitutions were created but evolved and that they only enjoy any degree of permanency because they embody the results of some thousands of years of political experiment in tribal and national government. They regard the American revolution as a radical volte face, which it was not, so they are trying to make poor old China, with a history, civilization and traditions of her own, volte face by adopting, and putting on ready made, one or another suit of alien traditions or an attractive conglomeration of all the post-revolutionary doctrines of America, Great Britain, France, Japan and Russia. Some of these imported articles may harmonize with Chinese tradition and temperament, others certainly will not.
Only time will tell what the Chinese people will eventually adopt and naturalize and what they will not; but the constitutionalists will not. let time tell. They will not Jet a constitution evolve. They tweak their nose at nature and evolution, tradition and temperament and insist upon composing documents on the basis of a very shallow knowledge foreign political institutions and total unconcern for native political tradition.
Suppose you went to a mad tailor who refused to look at you, to measure you or to consult your taste, but insisted upon carving you out a set of garments according to his own errant fancy after a hasty tour of the costume rooms in a museum; you would not expect to cut a very dignified figure as you walked down the would you? Neither does unhappy China cut a very dignified figure in her constitutional garments. Alli of which is designed to explain why the threatened revival of the constitutional ''wen-t'i" sends a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.