The phrase "fundamental constitution" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to the basic principles or laws that form the foundation of a political system or organization.
Example: "The fundamental constitution of the nation guarantees the rights and freedoms of its citizens."
Alternatives: "basic charter" or "core constitution."
He and Shaftesbury had instituted religious toleration in the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas.
In his capacity as the secretary to the Lords Proprietors, Locke was involved in the writing of the fundamental constitution of the Carolinas.
Armitage in his (2004) article "John Locke, Carolina and the Two Treatises of Government"argues that Locke was involved in a revision of the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas at the very time he was writing The Two Treatises of Government The provision that "Every Freedman of the Carolinas has absolute power and authority over his negro slaves" remained in the document unchanged.
King and people were bound by "the fundamental constitution or compact", which if the king violated, the people might return to their original right and freedom.
The Fundamental Constitutions was abandoned in 1693 and replaced by a frame of government diminishing the powers of the proprietors and increasing the prerogatives of the provincial assembly.
In that role Locke helped to draft The Fundamental Constitutions for the Government of Carolina (1669), which, among other provisions, guaranteed freedom of religion for all save atheists.
The original framework of government for the Carolinas, the Fundamental Constitutions, drafted in 1669 by Anthony Ashley Cooper Lord Shaftesburyy) with the help of the philosopher John Locke, was largely ineffective because of its restrictive and feudal nature.
On the other hand, David Armitage has shown that Locke was involved over the years in amending the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas right up to the time at which he was writing the Two Treatises of Government, and while many articles of the Constitutions were removed at various times, this was not the case with the clause about negro slavery.
Armitage implies that this shows not only that Locke agreed with the clause about negro slavery in the Fundamental Constitutions but that we should interpret the Second Treatise account of slavery as intended to justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery.
He meant by this that scientific cosmology need entertain no extra-scientific principles as fundamental: "the constitution of the solar system is not archetypal, as the ancients supposed, but the same corrupt mixture of law and apparent accident that the phenomena of the earth's surface exhibit" (PD 9).
Unlike the legislatures of many other countries, it is bound by no fundamental charter or constitution; but has itself the sole constitutional right of establishing and altering the laws and government of the empire".
