Studies in Constitutional Law/Preface
Preface
Of the three following essays two have been published separately, the one in 1878, the other in 1884. In the first I have attempted to make a critical survey of the English Constitution, combined with as complete a classification as possible, of its sources. I trust that I have not omitted anything essential. I do not examine into the institutions themselves, nor do I attempt to describe them; such a subject cannot be dealt with in a hundred pages. I am satisfied, first, to distinguish different parts of the political compact; next to note the special characteristics of each according to its origin, and lastly, to define the general spirit of the Constitution in which these parts are merged.
The second essay, à propos of a question of method, opens a number of vistas and, so to say, side-views of the Constitution of the United States. These views are tolerably numerous; they throw light over a considerable surface, so that the reader can form a fairly complete picture of the whole Constitution. A good deal of the detailed information in this essay is new, and if it does nothing more, it may possibly somewhat shake men’s confidence in certain prejudices of very old standing.
Owing to the political circumstances of the day, the actual information given in these two essays has excited an unusual amount of attention; but I think the real value of this work to the public is of a different kind, and does not in the main arise from the information which the essays contain. I have given great care to fixing the rules to be followed in exploring certain departments of public law which have been mapped out, either badly, or not at all. I have dwelt at length on the precautions to be taken against the pitfalls into which any person may fall owing to individual bias and the influence of national circumstances. I have pointed out, above all — and this is a warning against the snare most dangerous to Frenchmen — that constitutional mechanism has no value or efficiency in itself, independently of the moral and social forces which support it to or put it in motion; though by this I do not mean deny that the excellence of the mechanism intensifies the action of these forces and makes it more durable and regular.
The third essay has not been published before. It suggested itself to me from the juxtaposition of the two which precede it; it constitutes in a measure the conclusion drawn from them. By a more rigid and continuous comparison with France, I have in this essay tried to recapitulate and bring out the differences not only in form and in structure, but in essence and in kind, between the Constitutions of England and the United States on the one hand, and France on the other. These differences are connected with the fundamental notion of sovereignty, which differs in the three countries.
May, 1885.