That state which best represents national character enjoys the freest play of institutions, favours the finest shape of spirit, public and private, will wield the most formative influence among nations, expand the most easily, and propagate itself by expansion. And the state which best embodies the national will, is where the legislature is in keenest touch with the executive, where institutions are organic, where representation is popular, and where centralisation is foreign to the national genius. This has, unfortunately, never been realised in France. She was centralised to an amazing degree long before her memorable outburst; and De Tocqueville has well shown that her attempts to unite judicial with legislative functions were the surest signs of her lack of “solidarity.” Her great upheaval was predicted by Bolingbroke more than forty years before it occurred, just because he discerned that her ancient constitution ignored a popular representation. De Tocqueville himself, too, only proves that the aristocratic centralisation of old France has been replaced by the collectivist centralisation of its new democracy. Both in spirit are the same. Centralisation, whatever its forms, precludes the fair and free distribution of activities. It hoards and absorbs the national character. These are its original sins. But Disraeli has also pointed out that, for many reasons, France remains the sole ancient country that can afford to begin again. So much for the “Rights of Man.” One word still on “the Sovereignty of the People.” “A people,” said Disraeli, as early as 1836, in his _Spirit of Whiggism_, “is a species; a civilised community is a nation. Now a nation is a work of art and a work of time. A nation is gradually created by a variety of influences.... These influences create the nation--these form the national mind.... If you destroy the political institutions which these influences have called into force, and which are the machinery by which they constantly act, you destroy the nation. The nation, in a state of anarchy and dissolution, then becomes a people; and after experiencing all the consequent misery, like a company of bees spoiled of their queen and rifled of their hive, they set to again and establish themselves into a society....”