CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 567 



spirit, without pride and obstination, in a manner to be able to con- 

 serve and to perfect the convenient political institutions, to abandon 

 and reform the others. 



Therefore political science considers as particularly adapted for 

 its purpose the federal states, which is a very laboratory of political 

 experiment. Thus and not otherwise perfect and spread itself the 

 homestead, the holidays, the legislative referendum, the municipal- 

 ization of some public services, whilst other reforms, which seemed 

 destined for a great future did not succeed to prevail in a like meas- 

 ure. I will only recall the woman suffrage, the proportion of repre- 

 sentation. A state of the union, a canton of Switzerland, adopts 

 the reform, another one studies and perfects it, and experiments are 

 following various parallels contemporaneously; they may study and 

 compare with the aid of investigation and results correct them- 

 selves or advise the abandonment of an idea which appeared sur- 

 rounded with all possible seductions. Old England in merit of its 

 internal composition and of its numerous colonies became, like the 

 federal states, a political laboratory, but now, even the nations most 

 devoted to uniformity are putting themselves in this way. In Italy 

 we have at last understood that unity can exist only in variety, 

 that the agrarian laws of Lombardy cannot be suitable for the Roman 

 Campagna; the industrial provisions sufficient in Turin are not so 

 in Naples; the laws for the fishing of sardines on the Adriatic cannot 

 serve for the fishing of tunny or of sponges ; and overcoming an in- 

 stinctive repulsion, we made many special laws for the Roman Cam- 

 pagna, for the basilicata, for the acid-fruits of Sicily, for the indus- 

 tries of Naples, and for building water aqueducts for Apulia. 



So the modern problems imposing themselves on the constitutional 

 law are keeping us farther from dogmatic abstractions, from classical 

 types, from prejudices, and from unilateral conclusions, whilst the 

 common fund of the science is ever increasing. It would be suffi- 

 cient to show, therefore, the modern transformation of the public 

 law of England. Whilst the European Continent was admiring self- 

 government, the constant active participation of the leading classes 

 in the general and local government, and all those singularities, 

 agreeing in a secular, historical evolution, more than in the theo- 

 retical conceptions of the studious, England was reforming its ar- 

 rangements, shaking the most ancient basis of the constitution and 

 of the administration, destroying their aristocratic character, yield- 

 ing to the prevailing democracy, and approaching to the institu- 

 tions of the Continent by new concentrations of power, by the simpli- 

 fication of old institutes, by the continued substitution of paid 

 functionaries to the honoraries, by the increasing of public expenses. 

 It is true that as R. Gneist observed, "the transformation happened 

 easier in England because the state had obtained during the centu- 



