566 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 



the esprit des lois, and proposing the imitation of England, as later 

 did A. de Tocqueville and Edouard Laboulaye that of the United 

 States of America. 1 But in that manner we are falling again into 

 idealism; meanwhile the real comparative doctrine inaugurated 

 from Le Play observes all special facts to be able to ask, with 

 serene impartiality, fruitful examples from the various free peoples, 

 as Aristotle gathered and studied the seventy constitutions of the 

 Grecian world to reform that of Athens. 2 So some modern writers 

 are succeeding in a kind of common constitutional law, of relative 

 ideal, which make them penetrate into the edifice of national right, 

 the data admitted on the territory of comparative law, almost a 

 quintessence of the various institutions. 3 A general political science, 

 obliged to study all political forms for determining and classifying 

 all the various types in which may be combined the institutions 

 governing the states; to examine the correspondence between these 

 institutions and the conditions of the ambient, the races, the periods 

 in which the different peoples can meet to examine the worth of the 

 different organism, the measure in which they are satisfying the 

 needs of society, and to study the general laws of their development. 

 A so conceived general political science requires, of course, the com- 

 parative study of the greatest number of political arrangements. 

 We cannot deny that the method is on its part alone insufficient and 

 unable to give us complete solution. The imitation inspired from 

 the best comparisons can resolve itself into a pure dogmatism, and 

 we must not forget what Montesquieu himself wrote, that political 

 laws must be so much adapted to the people for whom they are made 

 that it is a very strange case if those of one nation can be convenient 

 for another. 



It is useless to stop at other scientific methods that some might 

 find in the application of common good sense and others might find 

 in the application of the laws of history. What we have said is 

 sufficient to show that to be able to resolve the present scientific 

 problems of constitutional law, in their variety, and in their import- 

 ance, we are obliged to move by observation and with the guidance 

 of history and will gather the greatest number of facts. It is neces- 

 sary to study these facts in themselves, in the cause determining 

 them, in their consequences, aiding ourselves in this second study 

 with scientific research. On this investigation must follow the ex- 

 periment, guided by common good sense, with almost no dogmatic 



1 De Tocqueville, De la Dfmocratie en Am&rique, 3 vols.; E. Laboulaye, Paris 

 en Amtrique, Questions constitutionnelles; Conferences sur les Etats Unis 

 d'Amcrique. 



2 Le Play, La rf forme sociale. 



3 See the Reports of the International Congress of Comparative Legislation in 

 1900, and generally the reports made by Lambert, Larnaude, Soleilles, and 

 others ; Conception et objet de la science du droit compare?, in Bulletin de la 

 Sociitf de Legislation comparee, 1900, pp. 389-405. 



