Fisher, Sydney George. The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States. Showing That It Is a Development of Progressive History and Not an Isolated Document Struck Off at a Given Time or an Imitation of English or Dutch Forms of Government. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1897. 398 pp. Reprinted 1996 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 97-41054. ISBN 1-886363-08-0. Cloth. $65. * Fisher [1856-1927] was a prominent historian and lawyer, who was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1883 after legal studies at Harvard University. His Evolution of the Constitution collates for the first time all the various provisions of colonial documents that served as source material for the Constitution. Asserting that the Constitution was neither an imitation nor an invention, Fisher traces every material clause back to its origin. Twenty-nine colonial charters and constitutions, seventeen Revolutionary constitutions, and twenty-three plans of union are the resulting source materials from which Fisher draws his analysis. Abundant quotations from the sixty-nine documents illustrate the evolutionary nature of the Constitution and make this a valuable sourcebook for the reader who desires to find in one volume the Constitution's many and varied origins.