On Constitutions
Belloc, Hilaire
September 16, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 441 ON CONSTITUTIONS By HILAIRE BELLOC ONE of the most arresting of modern contrasts, full of practical effect, and affecting all our international...
...the same was true of Venice, and has been true of every other aristocratic government that ever was...
...not only the ties of the Christian philosophy, but the ties set up by any philosophy—including the Communist...
...The effects of this state of affairs are very grave...
...The new states, from the greatest and most healthy of them, Poland, down to the least and most ramshackle, have simply accepted a new constitution from the hands of the conquerors in the great war, as they might have accepted a label to be tied on to them442 THE COMMONWEAL September 16, 1925 selves...
...Our constitution is nothing more than the still surviving relic of an aristocratic society, which is rapidly ceasing to be aristocratic...
...Personally, I do not think any such simple solution could be imposed upon our ancient civilization...
...It supplies the conceptions at once of certitude and permanence in its own particular field, which is that of the temporal government of man...
...It is not an iron standard...
...It is nothing of the kind...
...We retain words, but we do not retain political ideas, save, indeed, that general idea of aristocratic government which did become native to us as a result of the destruction of the monarchy in the seventeenth century, and which we are only now slowly abandoning—with nothing to take its place...
...In Italy, the constitution, which had a far better national foundation—for it arose in victory and was connected with a new national freedom—was always felt to be artificial...
...In the theory of the constitution, a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate combined, should be all powerful...
...Their new constitutions correspond in no way to the springs of national action or national thought...
...It attaches only to one of the smaller nations...
...There are some—the more important of them are hypocrites, and the rest fools—who cite our own English constitution as an example to the contrary...
...The nation is suspicious of all he does, and contemptuous of his theoretic authority...
...a moderator...
...A Polish minister pretending that Jews are Poles, has as little to do with the national life as would have any unofficial body playing at a similar unreality...
...Now among European nations, as nations, there is nothing of the kind...
...It changed slowly, because aristocracies of their nature are tenacious and slow to change...
...The" Germans of the old Prussian Reich have today a constitution upon which they are not agreed, imposed upon them by defeat, and certainly lacking authority...
...There is nothing which could not be modified...
...On the contrary —in an odd paradoxical way, many of them are confirmed by these very refusals of society to accept its nominal government...
...My object in this article has only been to point out to American readers the very grave importance of their visualizing an old world, in which not only the disturbances of the war and the mutual hatreds it has raised produced grave moral confusion (that is a commonplace) but in which no foreign negotiator can yet be certain that action official to a nation is accepted by that nation—or will certainly and regularly and consecutively be acted upon by that nation, in its relation with other communities...
...The great economic and social interests of the peasantry throughout Catholic Europe are strengthened by the moral weakness of the executive and the legislature above them...
...An admission at Berlin of indebtedness, and a promise to repay, is not binding upon the German people...
...It is the exception of the Swiss constitution...
...It is the contrast between the attitude of European nations today towards their constitutions, and the attitude of the American people towards theirs...
...We have had the same thing in Spain...
...But there was, and is, nothing about the English constitution either sacred or fixed...
...There is, of course, for the great Catholic body dispersed among various nations of Europe, an element of permanence and certitude in their spiritual government and in their grasp of tradition, which is not without its effect upon merely temporal and political things...
...Even there you have nothing of a religion about it, nothing of a faith, and nothing, therefore, of absolute permanence...
...But now, today, there is nothing of the sort politically sustaining any European quapeople...
...And he knows he does not...
...There is no one element in the form of our national government here in England which men really regard as sacred...
...They do not, in the bulk, admit it to be binding for a moment...
...but it is remarkable...
...To put it more strongly, in the field of political ideas Europe has lost its faith and has fallen back upon discussion, fluctuating, unsolidified—not supporting the civic soul...
...The Constitution of the United States has, for the citizens of the United States, a religious value...
...It changes by vote...
...One must always bear that in mind when one is discussing European affairs in America...
...and the Europeans should correspondingly bear in mind (if they have heard of it—most Europeans have not) the American feeling with regard to the American Constitution...
...There was such a thing in all the old monarchies, up to, say, 1700...
...They make the future doubtful in some degree...
...And yet, until it is appreciated, all discussion upon relations between the old world and the new are bound to go wrong...
...In the field of political faith, modern Europe has fallen into mere opinion...
...A French prime minister giving a pledge (backed by a Parliamentary majority) to an English prime minister does not really bind the nation...
...There is indeed, one exception, and I think only one...
...It is no wonder that in the presence of this small, but lucid and strong, example, men groping for a political foundation upon which Europe shall at last repose, have at the back of their minds the Swiss model, and conceive of a European federation, democratic in its units, referable locally to popular votes, and all the rest of it...
...If tomorrow, as is quite possible, trades-councils become more and more powerful (for Parliament is visibly declining in authority) then the change will be incorporated in our public life naturally and easily...
...what is far worse, they deprive immediate official decisions of their full substance...
...The religious ties which bind men are also the stronger...
...September 16, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 441 ON CONSTITUTIONS By HILAIRE BELLOC ONE of the most arresting of modern contrasts, full of practical effect, and affecting all our international relations, is hardly recognized over here in Europe, nor in America...
...Nor was it ever, since the execution of Charles I, and the substitution of government by wealthy landlords and merchants for a popular monarchy, other than a changeable thing...
...But to the European nations, as nations, there is now nothing left corresponding to the anchorhold of a revered, unquestioned mode of government...
...There is nothing which is not being modified, and which has not gone through a process of heavy remodification during the immediate past...
...If—which is much to be hoped—the crown recovers some real power as against the usurped power of mere wealth, that change will also be incorporated...
...There was something of the kind in the case of the Russian autocracy, up to the great explosion of eight years ago...
...It has the value of an unquestioned authority...
...But Switzerland has at any rate founded with remarkable success a purely democratic federal working political system—now of such long standing that those subject to it revere it and maintain it...
...In France, the existing constitution is despised and disliked, and the only reason it continues to function at all—very roughly and very uncertainly—is that the French, knowing themselves to have a passion for civil war, and having for the century since the great revolution so violently indulged in that pastime, are taking a rest...
...in practice, it knows itself to be so thoroughly unrepresentative of the nation that it acts either spasmodically and tyrannically (as twenty years ago against religion) or with laughable weakness (as today against religion...
...It forms a keel or balance...
...There was an institution beginning to be something of the kind, though it had not fully taken root, in the case of the monarchic, military, and yet federal Prussian Reich, as it existed prior to the capitulation of November, 1918...
...It must not be imagined, on the basis of these certainly sound statements, that conservative political elements are absent from Europe...
...It is not an exception with the strength of the American exception...
...It may be profoundly modified tomorrow...
...and when it was found too weak to save the state a couple of years ago, it was thrown out the window and a healthier dictatorship took its place...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 19
