Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/161

---

unified and imperial, the second is federal. In the relation between Ministry and Parliament, the one upholds the principle of ministerial responsibility, the other the principle of ministerial independence; finally, to go to the bottom of the whole matter, the first is entirely aristocratic in its construction, the second democratic to the very core. My readers may wonder that I should bring together by way of comparison two such apparently opposite types, and the more so because I may be thought to have treated as the antithesis and opposite of them both that French public law which resembles either Constitution in detail, and even in general outline, more than the English and American Constitutions resemble each other. The differences and analogies between the three Constitutions must, however, not be pressed too far; besides, in proportion as democracy spreads its uniformity over all three countries, these differences gradually melt away and disappear. I only keep up the comparison for a moment to deduce the following principle from it: viz. that in order to determine the species of a Constitution, to define it, and class it per genus et differentiam, there are factors as important as the imperative provisions which it contains, and as distinctive and specific as the particular amount of equilibrium maintained in the Constitution between the several powers. I refer to forces anterior to the Constitution, which were the source of its existence, and which have brought its very elements together and united them. In other words, some important characteristics of the constitutional law of any country can be gathered at least