The constitutions
conceived by philosophers in their closets are constitutions only
of Utopia or Dreamland. This world is not governed by
abstractions, for abstractions are nullities. Only the concrete
is real, and only the real or actual has vitality or force. The
French people adopted constitution after constitution of the most
approved pattern, and amid bonfires, beating of drums, sound of
trumpets, roar of musketry, and thunder of artillery, swore, no
doubt, sincerely as well as enthusiastically, to observe them,
but all to no effect; for they had no authority for the nation,
no hold on its affections, and formed no element of its life.
The English are great constitution-mongers--for other nations.
They fancy that a constitution fashioned after their own will fit
any nation that can be persuaded, wheedled, or bullied into
trying it on; but, unhappily, all that have tried it on have
found it only an embarrassment or encumbrance. The doctor might
as well attempt to give an individual a new constitution, or the
constitution of another man, as the statesman to give a nation
any other constitution than that which it has, and with which it
is born.
The whole history of Europe, since the fall of the Roman empire,
proves this thesis. The barbarian conquest of Rome introduced
into the nations founded on the site of the empire, a double
constitution--the barbaric and the civil--the Germanic and the
Roman in the West, and the Tartaric or Turkish and the
Graeco-Roman in the East.
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