Part I
Origin and Spirit of the English
Constitution
The English Constitution is undoubtedly the first of all free constitutions in age, in importance, and in originality. It existed, with all its main features, four hundred years earlier than any other constitution. It has served more or less as the model for all existing constitutions. It contains the explanation, and embodies the true meaning, of more than one provision which its imitators have not always understood or have knowingly diverted from its first intention. No general or enlightened study of positive constitutional law can be undertaken without an exhaustive knowledge of this capital example. But the course to be pursued in acquiring this knowledge cannot be compared to any ordinary path, and especially not to the broad highway which the French jurists have laid out by rule and line in the domain of their law. It ought rather to be compared in the words of Pascal to un chemin qui marche, or to a river whose moving surface glides away at one’s feet, meandering in and out in endless curves, now seeming to disappear in a whirlpool, now almost
