Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/173

Rh begins to be conscious of the greatness of its strength in comparison to the weakness of everything that surrounds it; of duties in proportion to this power, and of rights co-extensive with the duties. It tries instinctively to have an aim and an object worthy of the enormous means at its disposal; the idea of a “supreme social good “takes hold of the commonwealth and brings along with it the absolute right of the state. The rights of the individual, the first thesis of the constitution, and the recognized source of all legitimate power, too often fade away during the supremacy of this second tendency, and sink to nothing before this despotic ideal. The intemperance of Parliament and of the public powers in making laws and regulations, the existence and the exaggerated activity of the special administrative courts in which the state appears both as judge and party, are two facts which show most clearly this tendency to hold private interests and liberties of slight account, and to set up a conscientious despotism of public interests. England, and, in the federal sphere, the United States, have suffered less than France from the first of these evils; they have escaped the second altogether.

In these two countries the importance and prestige of the great corporate bodies who preceded and created their Constitutions has been the cause of their never having experienced this shock of opposition between the state and the individual, this uninterrupted oscillation which alternately raises and gives predominance, now to the rights of the individual, and now to the high mission of the state. Another problem, that of keeping