from the House of Lords, to the King. The House of Representatives is
copied directly from the popular assembly of the colonial government,
which in turn was modelled after the British Commons. The right of
originating bills of revenue, which the Representatives possess, was
preserved in many a contest between colonial assemblies and royal
governors. It is the birthright of Englishmen, dating from the Petition
of Right granted by Charles I., which substituted fixed taxes for
forced loans and gifts. The national supreme judiciary, the most novel
of the three divisions of the National Government, embodies in its
appellate principles the Privy Council of England, to which all
colonists could appeal, and the later admiralty committees of the
Continental Congress, to which all cases of prizes seized in the war
might be referred. The theory of a state court of last resort had
already found place in nine of the State constitutions and the
convention simply placed the capstone of a national Supreme Court on
the top of the column. Some parts of the colonial government were
rejected as unfitted to the national frame. An advisory council for
the President, such as nearly every colony gave to its governor, was
desired by many but finally omitted. The present Cabinet really takes
its place.

In like manner, it is possible to find British and colonial precedent,
tried and proved, for almost every provision of the National Government.
The ruling class at the time it was framed was composed of English and
Scotch, trained in British forms of government. The Dutch in New York
and the Germans of Pennsylvania took almost no part in the Philadelphia
Convention. It is as useless to deny an English parentage for the
American Constitution as to deny that there were English colonies in
America. So did the heirs of the ages avoid the mistakes of the past
by seeking the results of the law of the survival of the fittest. They