general readjustment of the constitutional relations of the British government at a special Conference to be called after the war; and it contained the interesting declaration that "any such readjustment, while thoroughly preserving all existing powers of self-government and complete control of domestic affairs, should be based upon a full recognition of the dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth, and of India as an important portion of the same, should recognize their right to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations, and should provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common Imperial concern, and for such necessary concerted action founded on consultation as the several governments determine." The experiment of 1917 was repeated in 1918.1

1 For a brief discussion of imperial federation see Lowell, Government of England, II, Chap. lviii. One of the earliest extensive discussions is C. Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain (London, 1890). More recent books on the subject are R. Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism (London, 1905); ibid., The Imperial Conference, 2 vols. (London, 1911); ibid., The Britannic Question; a Survey of Alternatives (London, 1913); J. G. Findlay, The Imperial Conference of 1911 from Within (London, 1912); J. W. Root, Colonial Tariffs (London, 1906); C. J. Fuchs, Trade Policy of Great Britain and her Colonies since 1860, trans. by C. Archibald (London, 1905); E. J. Payne, Colonies and Colonial Federation (London, 1905); Lord Milner, The Nation and the Empire (Boston, 1913); L. Curtis, The Problem of the Commonwealth (London, 1916); A. P. Newton, The Empire and the Future (London, 1916); and W. B. Worsfold, The Empire on the Anvil (London, 1916). An interesting expression of opinion by the Earl of Cromer is presented in W. H. Dawson [ed.], AfterWar Problems (New York, 1917), 17-38. On the Imperial Cabinet see J. A. Fairlie, British War Administration (New York, 1919), Chap. iii, and G. M. Wrong, "The Imperial War Cabinet," in Canadian Hist. Rev., Mar., 1920. Interesting suggestions are made in A. P. Poley, "The Privy Council and Problems of Closer Union of the Empire," in. Jour. Soc. Comp. Legis., Jan., 1917, and A. B. Keith, "The Idea of an Imperial Constitution," in Canad. Law Times, Nov., 1916. Useful surveys of the subject are T. H. Boggs, "The British Empire and Closer Union," in Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev., Nov., 1916, and R. L. Schuyler, "Reconstruction of the British Empire," in Polit. Sci. Quar., Sept., 1916.

PART II

GOVERNMENTS AND POLITICS OF CONTINENTAL

STATES

I. FRANCE

CHAPTER XX

THE RISE OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

Government under the Old Régime. - Disraeli once whimsically remarked that there are only two events in history — the siege of Troy and the French Revolution. The statement is absurd enough; and yet it contains this undoubted truth, that the political and social transformation of France at the close of the eighteenth century can be kept off no list, regardless of how brief it is, of great historic occurrences. It divided the career of France into two vast, unequal chapters; it released impulses which turned the governments and peoples of all western continental Europe into new paths; despite the apprehensions and admonitions of Burke, it perceptibly affected the political development of England; the waves of its influence have reached the most distant parts of the earth and have not yet spent their strength. Modern government in continental Europe is largely the product, not of the Revolution in any narrow or immediate sense, it is true, yet of the complex of liberalizing forces to which the Revolution first gave full and concrete expression.

In turning to a study of the political systems of the principal continental states it is therefore logical to begin with France; and in undertaking an analysis of the governmental institutions and usages of the France that we know to-day, it is necessary to take a backward glance at the nature and extent of the political change which the Revolution wrought, and at the principal stages through which the political experience of the nation passed before the stability and maturity of the Third Republic were reached. An additional reason for taking up France next

in order after England is that the institution or form that dominates the governmental organization of both states is the same, namely, the cabinet system. The two governments are sufficiently alike to make comparisons and contrasts both interesting and instructive.

The political system which the Revolution overturned was the product of eight hundred years of growth. On account of her less isolated position, France was played upon by more unsettling forces in medieval and modern times than was England. But it would be easy to exaggerate the difference between the two states so far as the mere matter of political and institutional continuity is concerned; the changeableness of governmental forms which seemed a main French characteristic between 1789 and 1875 found no counterpart in the history of the country in earlier centuries. The principal features of this historic political system can be stated briefly. First, the government was an absolute monarchy. It is true that certain fundamental laws of the realm, established for the most part by custom, had become real constitutional principles, and as such were considered binding upon the king himself. One of these regulated the succession to the throne; another forbade alienation of the royal domain. But there was a good deal of doubt as to what rules belonged in this category, and the freedom of the sovereign suffered no great limitation. Gathering strength in the hands of strongwilled monarchs such as Philip Augustus, Louis IX, and Philip the Fair, the royal authority reached its apogee in le grand monarque, Louis XIV, in the second half of the seventeenth century a king who subordinated everything to dynastic interests, who surpassed all contemporary despots in his sense of unbounded and irresponsible dominion, and who showered every favor upon the bishop-courtier Bossuet for writing a book which made him the chief exponent of the theory of absolute monarchy by divine right. "We hold our crown from God alone," reads an edict of Louis XV in 1770; "the right to make laws, by which our subjects must be conducted and governed, belongs to us alone, independently and unshared."

Second, the country's affairs were administered by a vast, centralized, bureaucratic body of officials-notably the intendants of the généralités and their agents, the sub-délégués

1 La politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Écriture sainte, or "Politics as derived from the very Words of the Holy Scriptures," published soon after the author was appointed tutor to the dauphin in 1670. See Dunning, Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu, 325-330.

under the direction of the chancellor, the controller-general of finances, and the secretaries of state for the royal household, foreign affairs, war, and marine at Paris.1 Together with a varying number of influential men who held no portfolio, these six ministers composed a Royal Council, of some forty members in 1789, which was in some respects more truly the center of power than the king himself. The members of the administrative hierarchy could rarely be controlled or called to account by the people, and local self-government was rather a tradition than a fact.2

Third, the Estates General, which, speaking broadly, grew up in France contemporaneously with the rise of the English Parliament, had failed to win for itself any such position as had been arrived at by its counterpart beyond the Channel. In the first place, it had never outgrown the medieval type of assembly organized on the basis of "estates," or orders, with separate interests and distinct traditions. It sat and deliberated in three separate bodies, or chambers, one representing the nobility, one the clergy, and a third the tiers état, " third estate," or bourgeois, middle class. The first two estates usually agreed on proposals submitted to them, and could always outvote the tiers état. In the second place, whereas the English Parliament met as a rule once a year in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and on an average at least once every five or six years under the Tudors and Stuarts, the Estates General in France was summoned at extremely irregular intervals, which grew gradually longer, until after 1614 it was summoned no more at all until financial necessity forced the government's hand in 1789. Finally, the assembly never became anything more than a body of men who were agents in relation to their constituents, petitioners in relation to the king, with no general, independent powers, either fiscal or legislative. Regional "estates" survived in Burgundy, Brittany, and Languedoc, and a few other provinces in 1789, but they were hardly more than subsidiary administrative agencies.

Fourth, the entire political system was based on inequality and privilege. The government was notoriously arbitrary and capricious, and it not only "incessantly changed particular regulations or particular laws," as de Tocqueville tells us, but applied a given law in no general or uniform manner to all indi

1 Dupriez, Les ministres, II, 249–253; P. Boiteau d'Ambly, L'état de la France en 1789 (Paris, 1861), 111–143.

2 See p. 466.

viduals. There were no certain guarantees of personal freedom; under a lettre de cachet, or "sealed letter," any one might be arrested summarily and held in prison until it suited the convenience of the authorities to inquire into the merits of his case. In return for a small collective don gratuit (which sometimes was not actually paid), the clergy as a class was exempt from taxation. The nobles paid only such nominal taxes as they bargained with the officials to pay; and both they and the clergy enjoyed many other privileges, including a monopoly of high offices and honors and the feudal, customary right of exploiting the peasantry.1

Growth of Political Liberalism in the Eighteenth Century. The government of the Bourbon kings was thus autocratic, wasteful, corrupt, and burdensome; and in 1789 a tide of protest which had long been rising swept over the head of the luckless Louis XVI and engulfed the whole order of things of which he was a part. This protest came fundamentally from the great body of the people, and especially from the intelligent, ambitious, and well-to-do bourgeoisie, which supplied most of the constructive statesmanship of the Revolution. It found most lucid and forceful expression, however, in the writings of a remarkable group of critics, essayists, dramatists, and novelists, known collectively as the philosophes. Beginning with the light satire of Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721), this literary and philosophic appraisal of the existing state of things, -in government, law, the Church, education, economic organization, and practically everything else— advanced by stages to the bitter denunciations of Voltaire in the "Philosophic Dictionary" (1764) and the "Essay on Republican Ideas (1765). Criticism was not merely destructive; the underlying aim was the reorganization of society, including government, on the rules of reason and natural justice. In the political field the new thought took, indeed, widely different forms. Voltaire and the Physiocrats, sprung from the privileged classes and careless of political rights, would perpetuate the absolute power of the king, insisting only that the prince use his authority to

1 The state of government before the Revolution is more fully described in Cambridge Modern History, VIII, Chap. ii, and E. J. Lowell, The Eve of the French Revolution (Boston, 1892), Chaps. i, îì, viii. Important French works include A. de Tocqueville, I’Ancien régime (Paris, 1856), trans. by H. Reeve under the title State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789 and the Causes which led to that Event (new ed., Oxford, 1894), and H. A. Taine, Les origines de la France contemporaine: L'Ancien régime (Paris, 1876), trans. by J. Durand as The Ancient Régime (New York, 1876).