Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/152

144 ready for the hatchet. It too fell in its turn. Everything therefore had to be planted or sown afresh on this soil, which had been dug and re-dug, and weeded to excess, until it was well-nigh exhausted. The whole body of the people was the only social organization which remained standing. The people had to create new powers, so to say, out of nothing — to invent and constitute a whole new political society. These facts are too well known to require dwelling upon. I only note this much: in France every power, every established authority, dates from the revolutionary constitutions — from them it proceeds, from them it derives its title. In the case of subordinate officers, their title to authority, originally inserted in the constitution itself, has been in later times derived from laws made in virtue of powers given by the constitution. But the primary source is the same for both; neither seek to date their investiture farther back than the constitution. The only exception was in the case of royalty in 1814, and rather less clearly so in 1830. Louis XVIII. flattered himself that he reigned in virtue of an immemorial right: Louis Philippe was not in his own eyes an elected king who owed his crown to a contract between the Chambers and the younger branch of the Bourbons. But these two exceptions in some sense confirm the rule, as they both acted in contradiction to, and as a dissolvent of, the system to which they belonged. The element which had a different origin from all the rest was, in the end, eliminated by violence.

We see the consequences. A day came in history when France was one single homogeneous mass,