PROBLEMS OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 591 



senators, one fourth of the whole number of senators originally 

 chosen by the national convention which framed and adopted the 

 constitution, should hold for life, and that their successors should be 

 chosen by the Senate itself and also hold for life. Here was a certain 

 nucleus of strong conservatism and executive support in the Senate. 

 All that has been changed by the constitutional amendment of 1884, 

 and the members of the Senate all proceed now ultimately from the 

 same source as the Deputies. The French Senate has now arrived at 

 the consciousness of a solidarity of interest with the deputy chamber 

 upon the subject of legislative prerogatives versus executive pre- 

 rogatives, and the power of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies, 

 intrusted to the French President under the more favorable condi- 

 tions for its exercise just mentioned, has now become practically 

 obsolete. The French system is, therefore, veering towards the 

 directory. This will not serve for France, however it may work in 

 Switzerland or even in Norway. France must have a strong execu- 

 tive. If France will have a parliamentary system, then France must 

 have a king. If, on the other hand, France will have an elected 

 executive, then France must have the presidential system. This is 

 her great governmental problem. All others should stand aside 

 until this is substantially solved. 



The fourth great problem of the constitutional law of the present, 

 as I view these problems, concerns chiefly, if not wholly, the United 

 States. It is the question of extending the legislation of the central 

 government further into the domain of private law, especially in the 

 regulation of commerce and marital relations. The other states 

 having federal governments, except Mexico, and, of course, all the 

 states having centralized governments, have assigned these subjects 

 to the legislation of the general government, and Mexico has gone 

 much further than the United States in this direction. 



Whatever may have been natural a century ago, when the settled 

 parts of the commonwealths of this Union were separated from each 

 other by comparatively impassable districts of primeval forest and 

 there was comparatively little intercourse between them, now when 

 these obstacles have entirely disappeared and intercourse is so active 

 that no man knows when he passes from one commonwealth to 

 another, it has became entirely unnatural and scarcely longer 

 endurable that the code of commerce should not be exclusively 

 national. The existence of the common law as the basis of the law 

 of the commonwealths upon this subject has minimized the diffi- 

 culty of a great nation getting on with systems of local commercial 

 law; but the differences in detail, at first hardly noticeable, have 

 now, on account of the vast development in the complexity of these 

 relations, become almost unendurable. This problem should be 

 dealt with by constitutional amendment if possible. If not, then the 



