CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 573 



is the expression of the public conscience, the formula of that which 

 the nation recognizes as necessary and useful, and to which it submits 

 itself freely. We must not ask from politics what it cannot give. 

 Persuaded that the ideal state does not exist, perceiving that in this 

 modern age liberty is greater, justice surer, morals higher, the general 

 well-being more widely spread, that the defects of our political 

 institutions seem to us greater because we can censure them freely, 

 we are obliged to look for the future, from what we are now in 

 comparison to past times, from the progress reached in so many 

 centuries and amid so many difficulties. So well as from the ancient 

 city, across the aberrations of the great Asiatic and Roman mon- 

 archies, the invasions of the barbarians, the brilliant feudal anarchy, 

 the struggle for the supremacy of the Empire and of the Church, the 

 patrimonial state and the police state, we have arrived at the 

 national state, the progress of constitutional law will lead us to 

 the universal state, which before being the aspiration of modern 

 society has been the promise of the Gospel, the tentative of the 

 Empire, the belief of the Church, and it remains ever the regret of 

 the intellect which struggles with the reforms of the law, the most 

 beautiful dream of the men of heart, longing for the infinite pro- 

 gress of humanity. 



