from the United States,
congratulated the American people on having a Bonaparte in their army,
so that when their democracy failed, as in a few years it was sure to
do, they would have a descendant of a royal house to be their king or
emperor. Alas! the Bonaparte has left us, and besides, he was not the
descendant of a royal house, and was, like the present Emperor of the
French, a decided parvenu. Still, the Emperor of the French, if only a
parvenu, bears himself right imperially among sovereigns, and has no
peer among any of the descendants of the old royal families of Europe.

There is a truth, however, in De Maistre's doctrine that constitutions
are generated, or developed, not created de novo, or made all at once.
But nothing is more true than that a nation can alter its constitution
by its own deliberate and voluntary action, and many nations have done
so, and sometimes for the better, as well as for the worse. If the
constitution once given is fixed and unalterable, it must be wholly
divine, and contain no human element, and the people have and can have
no hand in their own government--the fundamental objection to the
theocratic constitution of society. To assume it is to transfer to
civil society, founded by the ordinary providence of God, the
constitution of the church, founded by his gracious or supernatural
providence, and to maintain that the divine sovereignty governs in
civil society immediately and supernaturally, as in the spiritual
society. But such is not the fact. God governs the nation by the
nation itself, through its own reason and free-will. De Maistre is
right only as to the constitution the nation starts with, and as to the
control which that constitution necessarily exerts over the
constitutional changes the nation can successfully introduce.

The disciples of Jean Jacques Rousseau recognize no providential
constitution, and call the written instrument drawn up by a convention
of sovereign individuals the constitution, and the only constitution,
both of the people and the government. Prior to its adoption there is
no government, no state, no political community or authority.
Antecedently to it the people are an inorganic mass, simply
individuals, without any political or national solidarity. These
individuals, they suppose, come together in their own native right and
might, organize themselves into a political community, give themselves
a constitution, and draw up and vote rules for t