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To Norway
among three departments, the executive, the legislative and
the judicive, each moving in its own orbit, and each in a
measnre independent of the others. It retains kingship, bnt the
king can only govern throngh a responsible ministry
responsible to the Storthing, to the constitntion and to the
people. The legislative department the Storthing, electcd
by populär manhood suffrage, is vested with all legislative
power, but in legislating it must keep within the pale of the
constitntion, and cannot invade the constitutional rights of the
citizen, either in person or in property. Such invasion if it
oceurs, and becomes a matter of eontroversy in judicial
proceedings, can if the rights of the citizen in person or in
property is put in jeopardy, be vetoed by the courts, for the
Storthing is the creature of the constitution and has no other
or greater power than is confered upon it by that instrument;
and in this respect it is the only government which resembles
that of the United States. Titled nobility with its appendage
of entailed estates was abolished, and all cilizens were placed on
a footing of equality before the law both as to duties and
burdens. This is but a brief and crude outline of this remark
able instrument, which comes nearest to the constitution of
the United States in providing for the establishment and
maintenance of a free system of representative government,
deriving its powers from the consent of the governed the
people. What, and even more than what, the people of England
have secured after a struggle of centuries the people of Nor
way acquired as it were by one bound in 1814; and this
great aequisition came through the patriotism, vigilance and
skill of an intelligent few and not from the great body of
the people, who were then scarcely conscious of their political
rights and powers. And in this respect it resembled the so called
English revolution of 1688, which was the product of the so
called Whig Nobility and not of the masses of the English
people. While the peasantry of Norway had little to do, in
the first instance, with securing the constitution of 1814, and
in the beginning awoke but slowly to its possibilities and the
blessings it confered, yet when it all finally dawned upon them
they become its staunchest defenders, and worshiped it next
to their Bible and their Catechism. But it took time for
the constitution to bear full fruit, for in the language of Wel-
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