Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/159

Rh Constitution; in England it is they who daily make and complete the Constitution by the very action of their life, and the natural play of the forces working in them. In France the partial or special groups are all artificial; they make up a regular organized hierarchy, and the powers which rule them derive their rights from the law. In England the partial or special groups, and the powers which rule them, date from far back in the past, and each one for itself derives the most undeniable part of its authority from long possession.

shown in the preceding essays that in the United States the organization of the federal union ought not to be separated from the interior organization of the different States, and that the two organizations have no complete and precise meaning unless placed side by side. It is well to distinguish them at first, and consider them separately in order to see what the whole body derives from each one. The single States, founded on virgin soil by individuals who, having broken their ties with the old world, found themselves thrown back in some sense on the very origin of political society, were obliged, like the French, to re-organize their local and central authorities from top to bottom. I pointed out that in this respect the State constitutions have