Most everything that goes into the makeup of a constitution (and the traits and character of one constitution, when compared with others, will be as varied as the people it is intended it should govern) can come, and go, and be modified in degree; but, as sine qua non, it governs all who occupy a geographical area, a country. The OED defines a country as a "tract or district ... inhabited by people of the same race, dialect, occupation, etc." The desire to be part of a group likely springs, naturally and deep from within each one of us, from a fundamental need for a situation, controlled just enough, so as to allow each within the group to be able to get on with life, without being molested. Threats to a person's security can come both from within the group and from without the group. The group, particularly if it is to successfully deal with threats from without, must organize itself, by means of patriotic feelings, into a large and powerful group, which, sets for itself, and which is generally recognized by all, both from within and from without, a geographically defined area.

A country is more than a collection of people with patriotic feelings. A country is kinsfolk, or kindred. A country is the friendly feelings to which such kindred gives birth. A country is the feeling of confidence that people have when sharing similar habits and customs. A country, says Ernest Renan, a nineteenth Century French writer, is "the historic consequence of a series of facts converging towards the same point."

"At all times such formations have been guided by the urge of some deep-seated reason. ... But what, then, is a nation? Why is Holland a nation, while Hanover and the Grand Duchy of Parma are not? ... Why is Switzerland, with its three languages, its two religions and three or four races, a nation, when Tuscany, for example, which is so homogeneous, is not? Why is Austria a state and not a nation? In what does the principle of nations differ from that of races? ...
Man is the slave neither of his race, nor his language, nor his religion, nor of the windings of his rivers and mountain ranges. That moral consciousness which we call a nation is created by a great assemblage of men with warm hearts and healthy minds ...
What makes populations fuse, to come together? History shows that it is not race. Search the history books, one will not find where a nation has been founded on race. One will find where a race runs through numerous nations; and a nation may consists of numerous races. Charlemagne reconstructed in his own way what Rome had already built, viz., a single empire composed of the most diverse races.
Ethnographic considerations have, therefore, played no part in the formation of modern nations. France is Celtic, Iberic and Germanic. Germany is Germanic, Celtic and Slav. Italy is the country in which ethnography finds its greatest difficulties. Here Gauls, Etruscans, Pelasgians and Greeks are crossed in an unintelligible medley. The British Isles, taken as a whole, exhibit a mixture of Celtic and Germanic blood, the proportions of which are particularly difficult to define.
The truth is that no race is pure, and that to base politics on ethnographic analysis is tantamount to basing it on chimera. The noblest countries, England, France and Italy, are those where breeds are most mixed."5

"The political importance ascribed to languages comes from regarding them as tokens of race. Nothing could be more unsound. In Prussia, where nothing but German is now spoken, Russian was spoken a few centuries ago; in Wales, English is spoken; in Gaul and Spain, the original speech of Alba Longa; in Egypt, Arabic; and we could cite any number of other examples."

So, we take our first notion of what a constitution is from the dictionary, "to settle, fix, or enact; to establish; to form or compose: to make up; to make a thing what it is." A constitution is what a country is. It is not, -- and certainly not in any country with British traditions such as Canada -- to be found in any one document. And while the essentials may well be written up in one document, no one document can be comprehensive in describing every tradition and all the cultural aspects of a country's makeup. It is for this reason, that written constitutions are expected to be short; they need only stick to the essentials. Constitutions should settle and fix values such as life and liberty; and, critically, the form of government it elects for itself.

Government, my trusty dictionary tells me: "regulation; control; restraint; the exercise of authority; direction and restraint exercised over the actions of men in communities, societies, or states; the administration of public affairs; the system of policy in a state; the mode or system according to which the sovereign powers of a nation, the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, are vested and exercised; ... etc. etc." Nowhere, in this dictionary of mine, does it say that government is a biological identity; its not a person, or anything else that is capable of individualistic thought; its a theoretical concept.

"Government has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own rights." (Shelley, 1812.)