The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1901-02-09
THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION.

The Chicago American contains in
tcrcsting letters from school children
in reply to the question: "To what ma
ton of Europe do we owe most for the
important features of the American
Constitution and system of govern
ment?' The most of the pupils an
swcr that the United States is indebt-
cd to "thc mother country" for the
Constitution, and some of them quote
Bryce who says that "therc is little in
the American Constitution that is alb
SOlutcly new. and there is much that is
as old us the Magma Charta." The two
leading features of the great charter of
liberty cNtortcd from King John by
the barons 1T Runnymcde, who. by the
way. could not sign their names. were
trial by jury, and limiting the power
OF taxation to a representative body
of the people.
One of the scholars goes further
back and gives the credit to Greece in
1867 B. c., when Thesus laid the foun-
dations of Attica. He says Athens and
Thebes were the first to try the expert
ment Of a Constitution in a republican
form Of government Lycurgus re-
modelled the Constitution in SS4 3. c.
and instituted n senate to preserve a
just balance between king and sub
jects. Scion afterward instituted a
senate Of 600 members in which mea-
sures originated, and the young writer
opincs that the Romans adopted that
system of government from Greece,
that England took it from Rome to-
gcther with the idea of a Magma Char
ia. and the United States took it from
England.
We suppose that the schoolboys of
Chicago have never heard of the great
legislator, Ollave Fola, the Scion of
Ireland, who lived away back about
$50 B. c., and held a triennial parlia-
mcnt at Tara, in Meath, in which wise
laws were enacted for the government
Of the kingdom and the administration
Of justice. The laws were written on
parchment in large characters and
were collected by three brothers in the
eighth century of the Christian era,
and translated into English by the late
Eugene O'Curry. 1t is historical fact
that the Irish gave an alphabet to
England. Why not it's laws? The
English certainly did not take their
unwrittcn constitution from the Rom
ans while the latter were in Britain,
and why should not they take it from
the enlightened people across the Irish
sea and st. Georges channel? The
Brchon laws of Ireland are hardly
known through the medium of English
literature, for it has been the policy of
the English to represent the Irish as
an ignorant and barbarous people be-
fore the Anglo Norman invasion in the
twelfth century.
In his great Grafton on the death of
Daniel O'Connell in 1917, William H.
Seward, the secretary of state in Lin
coins cabinet, made use Of the follow
ing language, to which We direct tho
attention of young Irish Americans
who are proud of the race from which
they have sprung:
ireland was long ago an indepcn-
dent nation, governed by king and
council or parliament. and was divided
into inferior Kingdoms anu subordinate
sccts or clans. 1t had population and
revenues equal to what were generally
possessed by other states in the same
| ages. One Of the inhabitants thus de-
scribed the kingdom Il thousand years
ago: