Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/11

x deal of the detailed information in this essay is new, and if it does nothing more, it may possibly somewhat shake men’s confidence in certain prejudices of very old standing.

Owing to the political circumstances of the day, the actual information given in these two essays has excited an unusual amount of attention; but I think the real value of this work to the public is of a different kind, and does not in the main arise from the information which the essays contain. I have given great care to fixing the rules to be followed in exploring certain departments of public law which have been mapped out, either badly, or not at all. I have dwelt at length on the precautions to be taken against the pitfalls into which any person may fall owing to individual bias and the influence of national circumstances. I have pointed out, above all — and this is a warning against the snare most dangerous to Frenchmen — that constitutional mechanism has no value or efficiency in itself, independently of the moral and social forces which support it to or put it in motion; though by this I do not mean deny that the excellence of the mechanism intensifies the action of these forces and makes it more durable and regular.

The third essay has not been published before. It suggested itself to me from the juxtaposition of the two which precede it; it constitutes in a measure the con-