The sweeping
reforms in French law are but a small part of what has been done. All
the neighbors of France, from Derry to the Dardanelles, have shared
in the blessing. We may be assisted to an idea of it by turning to the
experience of our own country, whose condition in this regard was
so exceptionally good at the beginning of the period in point. The
constitutions of our States have been repeatedly altered, and they are
now very different in their details from the old colonial charters,
liberal and elastic as these for the most part were. Yet American
innovations are but child's play to those of Europe, which has not
reached the position we held at the beginning, and has a great
deal still to do. In France the people are not trained to local
self-government, but they have an excellent police, and the rights
of person and property are well protected. In Italy, which has only
within a few years ceased to be a mere geographical expression,
municipal rights and the independence of the commune are on a
stronger basis, but the police is bad, though far better than when
the Peninsula was divided among half a dozen powers.
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