"Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther"

In one of his letters on "interesting subjects," American revolutionary Thomas Paine states what he believes a constitution should be. In letter IV, Paine seeks to differentiate a constitution from a form of government, because the two are "spoken of as synonomous things; whereas they are not only different, but are established for different purposes."

Paine made the case that England's lack of a formal constitution was an error that ought not be repeated in the "new world," for absent a constitution there exists nothing to keep leaders in check. Sure, the British have their common law, writes Paine, but that won't necessarily stop Parliament from making some arbitrary new laws that are repugnant to the people. Common law is not concrete enough to stop the monarch from increasing the number of legislatures whenever he pleases.

The problem with England's system, Paine argues, is that there's nothing (i.e. a constitution) that draws a line in the sand and tells the government "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther."

Paine concludes by writing that preserving a constitution is equally important to creating one, and that the only way to do the former is to ensure that it cannot be altered by the legislature or the crown (or any other executive branch). Instead, Paine advocates that changes to the constitution should be made only if "a clear majority of all the inhabitants shall so direct."

Paine implies that only by placing clear limits on governmental powers can a society hope to maintain it's liberty.

Might be nice to have a guy like Paine working in the current administration.

Just after publishing this entry, I came across an excellent post by Glenn Greenwald which draws some contemporary parallels to the above subject matter. Below is an excerpt:

In Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton described the defining power of the King which made the British monarchy intolerably corrupt: "In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate; and it is a maxim which has obtained for the sake of the public peace, that he is unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred." Thomas Paine proclaimed in Common Sense "that so far as we approve of monarch, that in America THE LAW IS KING." But little effort is required to see how far removed we now are from those basic principles...

The full post is worth a read if you've got the time.