Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/8

Rh Monsieur Boutmy further, with great ingenuity, carries over to America, so to speak, the contrast between English and French ideas of government. He shows that, marked as are the contrasts between the English Monarchy and the American Republic, the institutions of the English people on both sides the Atlantic are in essence though not in form the same, and that they stand in marked contrast with the institutions of France. All the characteristics, he suggests, which distinguish the Constitution of England from every one of the constitutions of France reappear, though in a curiously changed shape, in America. In the United States, as in England, custom has the authority of law. The constitutional history of the United States is as obviously as the constitutional history of England the record of an attempt to close political contests by means of treaties. The development of American no less than of English political institutions has been the result of a long conflict between powers which existed prior to the Constitution. The crown, the nobility, and the commons existed long before the English Constitution had even a name. The States, Monsieur Boutmy insists, created the American nation; it was certainly not the American people which created the States.

Of the translation I have said little. Anyone who can read French should study the works of a writer