Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/155

Rh the lofty, and the comprehensive and admirable self-reliance, exhibited by great corporate bodies existing for partial or special objects, by whom moral life is kept at a constant average level. French organization being so completely national in every pore it follows to their extreme length the oscillations of public spirit.

England the Constitution — I mean by that, the whole of the written or unwritten rules which regulate the exercise of the public powers in all their branches — was never the result of an imperative law passed by a sovereign people creating authorities, so to say, out of nothing, and investing them with fixed powers. The English Constitution is made up out of a long list of bilateral or trilateral acts. These acts are many and varied, they are tacit arrangements, agreements which have been fought out in debate, and solemn compacts made between powers already existing, acknowledged and respected, which were in a sense self-constituted, because they were created by the force of circumstances, and because they claim a title grounded on immemorial I. 2