Amending Procedure of the Federal Constitution1

The development of government on American soil presents, as one of its features, the embodiment in its fundamental law of provisions for its modification. The early colonial charters kept alive the fiction that a form of government once established was supposed by its creators to last forever. Only the slow change of custom or the violence of a revolution could modify or destroy such a system of government, except, as in the case of the charters granted by the crown, a modification came as a consequence of the exercise of the royal prerogative.In the Frame of Government drawn up by Penn and his colonists in 1683, appeared an amending provision for the first time in the history of written constitutions; and while all subsequent Pennsylvania charters contained a similar provision, the other colonial charters presented no method whatever for their alteration. Prior to the drafting of the Constitution of the United States, however, a method of amendment was embodied in the state constitutions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, Vermont, South Carolina, and also in the Articles of Confederation.