Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/27

Rh pects to find the same characteristics in every other human work. Any one who wants to feel at home in the English Constitution, and to understand it thoroughly, must get rid of any such expectation at once, for the English Constitution does not recognize any such ideals as simplicity and uniformity. Indeed, it seems as if its authors had deliberately avoided, as a dangerous extreme, any attempt at unity, or at laying down general principles, or at assimilation and fusion of the different parts of the Constitution. They certainly carefully guarded against all the generalizations and simplifications, which the creators of French public law were always striving for with the greatest faith and ardour, not to say passion.

Strictly speaking, a third Act should come under the head of Treaties, i.e. the statute which was passed in 1858 for the better government of India. In India there existed, in fact, no independent sovereign, but a quasi-sovereign. whose authority became extinct and has now devolved on the English nation. The East India Company gave up its autonomy by the passing of the Act of 1858. The Crown had alienated part of its regal rights in favour of the Company, which, from the extent of its resources, its military and financial power, and the almost uncontrolled authority it exercised over its conquests, was virtually a state within the state. By means of a compromise which gave to the directors of the Company the power of nominating seven members out of fifteen in the supreme council, the Crown regained possession of this immense Indian Empire