376 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
For centuries the word Constitution always meant a particular administrative enactment. Much as it had meant to the Roman Lawyers. The word was used to distinguish such particular enactments from Consuetudo or ancient custom. It was not until 1610 the Constitution came to have the modern meaning, according to which it means the scheme of civil Government as defined by law ; in other words, the legal frame work of the State.
A hundred years later the word Constitution is seen to have taken on an additional and special meaning which goes much beyond the legal frame-work of the State. This is well indicated by Bolingbroke who, writing in 1733, said :—
“By Constitution, we mean, whenever we speak with propriety and exactness, that assemblage of laws, institutions and customs, derived from certain fixed principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of public good, that compose the general system, according to which the community hath agreed to be Governed.”
Even this meaning of the word Constitution is still short of the modern meaning of the word Constitution. To-day the word means the fundamental law which determines the powers and duties of the different organs of Government in a State and to which they are subject. This meaning of the word Constitution was evidently brought out by Thomas Paine who argued that:—
“A Constitution is not the act of a Government but of a people constituting a Government and a Government without a Constitution is power without right.”