8 - Of the Old French Constitution

Summary

Digression on the king and on his declaration to the French of July 1795

People have held three different theories about the old French constitution: some have claimed that the nation had no constitution; others have claimed the contrary; and finally, others, taking a middle position, as usually happens on important questions, have claimed that the French really had a constitution, but that it was not observed.

The first view is indefensible; the other two do not really contradict each other.

The error of those who claim that France had no constitution stems from that great mistake about human power, prior deliberation, and written laws.

If a man of good faith, given only good sense and probity, were to ask what the old French constitution was, he could be answered boldly: ‘It is what you sensed when you were in France; it is that mixture of liberty and authority, law and opinion that would lead the foreign traveller in France, even though he was subject to a monarchy in his own country, to believe that he was now living under another government than his own’.

But if one wants to study the question more deeply, the characteristics and laws which ranked France above all known monarchies may be found in the corpus of French public law.

This monarchy possesses a certain theocratic element that is peculiarly its own and that has given it a lifespan of fourteen hundred years. There is nothing so national as this element.