Page:Const history of France (Lockwood, 1890).pdf/13

Rh one must be careful to avoid strained comparisons and unnatural attempts to bring dissimilar events into juxtaposition. If the greatest care is not practiced, positions will be assumed that are both fictitious and unreal, and precedent, which is ever sought for by the human mind, will be used to forge new chains for humanity.

Beyond doubt, as a philosophical abstraction, it is true that the Cromwellian hastened the American, and the American the French Revolution; still, the environments of these three epochs are quite dissimilar, and cannot strictly be compared with each other. It would be unscientific to claim that there was a semblance between Cromwell and Washington. Such an attempt would possibly result in a straining after an antithesis for literary ffect.

The practical question is: What influence have the events of French history exerted, for the last 100 years, upon the people of the world, as manifested through their governments? If a general lesson is given to the world by this nation, what is it? To examine this question properly, it will be necessary to discover what the French people have done in the development of constitutional and statute law.

Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands had made rapid strides in the art of self-government before democracy had taken any outward form in France, but after it had been once organized and put in action in that country, its movement was most rapid and vigorous, for it was compelled to meet a condition of things created by one of the most infamous of all systems of absolutism, and rapid because it assumed the form of evolution. Reform, which is slow revolution, would not suit the conditions; only active, merciless revolution could strike the blow that was