CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 557 



to approach to the social classes, to fight the privilege of riches, to 

 improve the condition of the miserable are questions which re- 

 quire most our attention arid preoccupy it almost entirely. Elec- 

 toral programs are almost all occupied by economical questions, 

 and to those questions are even adapted the names of the political 

 parties. 



Political institutions are mediums to reach the greatest good, and 

 also, as means, they are not kept in great account because they did 

 not succeed in hindering the creation of a frightful urban proletariat, 

 a large inequality of fortunes, an enormous plutocracy, whilst pro- 

 claiming the sovereign number they give to the working-classes the 

 need to serve themselves with that sovereign number they are en- 

 joying, to be able to reach their ideals without modifying political 

 institutions, and whilst materialism, positivism, the declining 

 religious feelings are directing ever further their minds towards the 

 material satisfaction of comfort and riches. 



Notwithstanding the constitutional law must solve in our days 

 the most important problems of history, the states were never so 

 much exposed to the action of two forces fighting together, of two 

 opposite principles contending one against the other the empire of 

 institutions. If the forces pressing on the state from without and 

 those governing it within would come into conflict one against the 

 other, they would determine a supreme crisis, in which it is permitted 

 to the prophets of misfortune to foretell all the horrors of anarchy 

 and all the reactions of despotism, not without the most audacious 

 transformations on the political map of Europe. The modern state 

 sees ever more in danger the basis on which it seemed ready to defy 

 the centuries, the representative government and parliamentary system, 

 and is directing itself towards the popular government, and mean- 

 while the external forces operating on it become ever more threaten- 

 ing, and show us in a remote light the needed peace of the united 

 states of Europe, through inexorable fatalities of fratricidal struggles. 

 of sacrifice, and blood. 



You may remark that if the science of constitutional law is import- 

 ant for all, it is necessary to pay attention to the different nature and 

 different problems it is offering in America and in Europe. Well 

 wrote A. V. Dicey: " If I speak of the constitutional law of the 

 United States I know precisely what is the subject of my teaching 

 and what is the proper mode of dealing with it. It is a definite 

 assignable part of the law of the country ; it was recorded in a given 

 document to which all the world had access; the articles of this 

 constitution fall, indeed, far short of perfect logical arrangement, 

 and contain, in a clear and intelligible form, the fundamental law 

 of the Union. This law is made and can only be altered or repealed 

 in a way different from the method by which other enactments are 



