[23] For the reader’s convenience I quote four passages from Dicey on the sovereignty in England. The references are to the first English edition.
“If the true ruler or political sovereign of England were, as was once the case, the King, legislation might be carried out in accordance with the King’s will by one of two methods.”—The Law of the Constitution, p. 354.
“Parliament is, from a merely legal point of view, the absolute sovereign of the British Empire.”—Ibid.
“The electorate is, in fact, the sovereign of England. It is a body which does not, and from its nature hardly can, itself legislate, and which, owing chiefly to historical causes, has left in existence a theoretically supreme legislature.”—Ibid., p. 355.
“Our modern mode of constitutional morality secures, though in a roundabout way, what is called abroad ‘the sovereignty of the people.’”—Ibid.
[24] The American system would not have succeeded in France. If the president had exercised the authority of an American president the Chamber would not have endured it, and there would have been a presidential crisis, with a new presidential election, every six months. The present system is not ideally perfect, but it suits the French temper better than any other that modern ingenuity can devise.
[25] It may be answered that this could be done by refusing to vote the supplies, but if the Sovereign were perfectly obstinate the House of Commons could not long put a stop to the working of the public service.
[26] It is an English habit to represent égalité as an Utopian aspiration for equality in all things. The French understand it to mean nothing more than equality before the law.
[27] Article in the Contemporary Review for March 1888.
[28] The reader will observe that I have substituted “nobility” for “House of Lords,” as there is no House of Lords in France, and “clerical” for “academical” education, as there is nothing corresponding to Oxford and Cambridge.