Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/182

174 complete and minute knowledge than now exists of the objects aimed at by a constitution, will have to provide those checks on sudden change which policy now draws from custom, tradition, and other sentiments which do not originate in the rational part of human nature but are derived from past history.

An acute observer has remarked that the United States are still in the feudal stage of their history, and that they must in their turn pass through the successive phases of centralization. I have already pointed out the circumstances which have retarded, and which will still greatly delay, the progress of this evolution. In England, at any rate, the Constitution is gradually ceasing to be a government of public opinion, and is becoming an organized democracy. Formerly the majority of the people were excluded from the parliamentary franchise. At that time popular aspirations formed a sort of atmosphere, generally in a state of moderate activity, in which independent political powers floated and moved with apparent spontaneity, but in the end yielded to the course of opinion. Sometimes they delayed and resisted this current for a long time till its accumulated force carried everything away before it. To-day, owing to the existence of almost universal suffrage, the will of the people is condensed and embodied in a legal organ, viz., Parliament. Popular will acts upon the law and upon the government like a powerful and regular spring, presses and bears upon the right spot, and thus produces with perfect certainty the desired movement of the political mechanism.

To sum up the whole matter, the distinctions