marshalled his arguments with the skill of a great advocate, and the
combination of these qualities--qualities, highly appreciated
everywhere, but nowhere more than in this Hall and among a Gray's Inn
audience--has given an epoch-making character to his work. To-day he
comes before us in a different character. He is neither judge nor
advocate, but historian: and he offers to guide us through one of the
most interesting and important enterprises in which our common race has
ever been engaged.

The framers of the American Constitution were faced with an entirely new
problem, so far, at all events, as the English-speaking world was
concerned; and though they founded their doctrines upon the English
traditions of law and liberty, they had to deal with circumstances which
none of their British progenitors had to face, and they showed a
masterly spirit in adapting the ideas of which they were the heirs to a
new country and new conditions. The result is one of the greatest pieces
of constructive statesmanship ever accomplished. We, who belong to the
British Empire, are at this moment engaged, under very different
circumstances, in welding slowly and gradually the scattered fragments
of the British Empire into an organic whole, which must, from the very
nature of its geographical situation, have a Constitution as different
from that of the British Isles, as the Constitution of the British Isles
is different from that of the American States. But all three spring from
one root; all three are carried out by men of like political ideals; all
three are destined to promote the cause of ordered liberty throughout
the world. In the meanwhile we on this side of the Atlantic cannot do
better than study, under the most favourable and fortunate conditions,
the story of the great constitutional adventure which has given us the
United States of America.