Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/175

Rh faction or aquiescenceacquiescence [sic] in the arrangements of daily life, dislike to great schemes, to heroic remedies and actions, are naturally destructive of a somewhat complex equilibrium: these are the characteristics common to both the Anglo-Saxon Constitutions.

In France, constitution makers saw nothing but the human monads which, looked at from afar, lost their differences of kind as well as of degree. Hence they were led to treat them as equal and similar, as abstractions by their very nature amenable to very general principles. Consequently principles hold a very important place in French public law. In the next place, a circumstance connected with the exercise of national sovereignty, which is peculiar to France is, that no fabric based on history occupies the ground, and that in the midst of the site to be covered there no longer stands any part of the old edifice, which may hamper the arrangement and complicate the plan of the new construction. The authors of the French constitutions, therefore, have been in the position of an architect about to erect a monument in the centre of a public square — they have a free and clear space at their disposal. How could they escape the temptation of erecting perfectly symmetrical constructions of which all the parts are linked together and radiate from a very few centres? Naturally they would expect that such an edifice, simple, elegant, imposing from the harmony of the whole, and the perfection of detail, would carry prestige with it, and last for centuries. These characteristics are in fact guarantees of solidity, though not the most secure ones;