_The Revolution._--With the Revolution France entered the ranks of constitutional countries, in which the liberty of men is guaranteed by fixed and definite laws; from this time on, she has had always (except in the interval between two revolutions) a written constitution, which could not be touched by the ordinary legislative power. The first constitution was that of 1791; the states general of 1789, transformed by their own will, backed by public opinion, into the Constituent Assembly, drew it up on their own authority. But their work did not stop there. They abolished the whole of the old public law of France and part of the criminal law, or rather, transformed it in accordance with the principles laid down by the political philosophy of the 18th century. The principles which were then proclaimed are still, on most points, the foundation of modern French law. The development resulting from this extraordinary impetus can be divided into two quite distinct phases: the first, from 1789 to the _coup d'etat_ of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII., was the continuation of the impulse of the Revolution; the second includes the Consulate and the first Empire, and was, as it were, the marriage or fusion of the institutions arising from the Revolution with those of the _ancien regime_. The Constitutions of the Revolution. On the whole, the constitutional law of the Revolution is a remarkably united whole, if we consider only the two constitutions which were effectively applied during this first phase, that of the 3rd of September 1791, and that of the 5th Fructidor in the year III. It is true that between them occurred the ultra-democratic constitution of the 24th of June 1793, the first voted by the Convention; but although this was ratified by the popular vote, to which it had been directly submitted, in accordance with a principle proclaimed by the Convention and kept in force under the Consulate and the Empire, it was never carried into effect. It was first suspended by the establishment of the revolutionary government strictly so called, and after Thermidor, under the pretext of completing it, the Convention put it aside and made a new one, being taught by experience. As long as it existed it was the sovereign assembly of the Convention itself which really exercised the executive power, governing chiefly by means of its great committees.