Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/172

164 afraid of summary and authoritative proceedings, and readily inclines towards socialism.

Here we come within view of the fundamental paradox which lies concealed in the constitutional law of France. I have shown above what an important place the individual citizen holds in it. When analysed to its very source sovereignty rests on the individual alone; public power has authority only because the individual gives up a part of his natural liberty, supposed to be unlimited, and of which he can keep as much as seems good to him. Hence no constitutions abound so much as those of France in decided and emphatic assertions as to the rights of individual citizens. The chief leaning of the French constitution makers is all in this direction. In this lies their merit and their glory. Whatever criticism may be passed on the Declaration of Rights of 1789, the fact will always remain that the resounding fame of these memorable axioms has rendered this great service to the world, viz., that the principles of liberty and equal justice for all, up to that time locked up in maxims of philosophers and aphorisms of society, became thenceforth indispensable articles of all constitutional legislation. Even those who violated these principles have, from that day forward, been compelled to pay them hypocritical respect, as the homage that vice renders to virtue. But this zeal for individual liberty is only the first of two tendencies. After the state has been created by the will of all these human atoms, a second tendency in the opposite direction becomes apparent. This Leviathan — the state (or rather those who act in its name) —