Unlike in the United States, the fact that the Canadian Constitution was intended from the outset to encompass unwritten conventions and legal principles is beyond question. For example, the text of the original constitution does not mention the office of Prime Minister and still fails to state that the Governor General always grants royal assent to bills. Principles such as democracy, the implied Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and judicial independence are held to derive in part from the preamble of the constitution, which declared the Canadian Constitution to be "similar in principle" to the British Constitution