ABSTRACT
SPEAKING of the "literature of ideas," Balzac says that as a literary school it recommends itself by its abundance of facts, by the sobriety of its imagery, by conciseness, clarity, and above all a profound sense of comedy in the midst of seriousness. Comedy is kept in reserve. "It is the spark in the flint.HI The same remarks apply to the pattern of constitutional nation building which, both in the Colonial Office and the colonial territories, has taken on a style of its own, a precision, a sense of social as well as legal propriety, and above all a well-disguised reserve of comedy. It is its own literary school, and the products, with greater or lesser durability, are scattered all over Asia and Africa. South Africa, India, Ceylon, Burma, Pakistan, the Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria-all are products of the tradition of constitutional nation building, not to speak of the special and distinctive designs embodied in West Indies federation and in Malaya where the realities of disperse geography and multiracialism have been bridged or rendered harmless by the constitution makers, assisted of course by the good will of the local inhabitants.
