Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/163

Rh striking than the contrasts they each offer to the numerous monuments of French public law.

In France, since 1789, the nation considered as an indivisible whole, has been the only existing corporate body animated by a really powerful spirit of life. And within the nation there has been and is nothing solid and stable but individuals. For it was necessary to find a solid foundation on which the state could rest, and to dig deep to clear away the rubbish left by the crumbling edifices of the ancient political bodies. The determination of individual rights is then the first and principal question which came before the French legislator; all French political history gives evidence of its priority and pre-eminence. From this question we have derived a very simple and very precise conception of sovereignty. The nation, for reasons which have been explained, cannot, in France, be anything but the whole body of citizens. Theoretically, sovereignty is the will of all the citizens, and practically it comes to be the will of the numerical majority. In France, since 1789, this majority has been in fact the sole and necessary source of all legitimate authority. The existing powers are all creations of this majority, and all are based on the constitution which is its work. Any power which is suspected of not representing it, or of misrepresenting it, loses in a sense, its justification for existence, and is marked out by this want of harmony for immediate destruction or transformation. There is no fulcrum the majority, and therefore there is nothing on which, as  the majority resistance or lengthened opposition can lean. This is why all French