it is all but
inconceivable that the heterogeneous nationalities of Austria-Hungary
should thus long have been held together by any force less tangible
and commanding than the personality of a common sovereign. Although in
some of these instances the functions ordinarily associated with
monarchy are more nominal than actual, the fact remains that in no one
of the greater European states, save France, has it as yet been found
expedient, or possible, to dispense with royalty as an agency of
public authority.

*312. The Multiplicity of Constitutions.*--The chain of circumstances by
which the people of France have been brought to their present
republican form of government constitutes one of the most remarkable
chapters in the history of modern Europe. After centuries of
governmental centralization, under conditions which enabled monarchy
to do its best, and its worst, there came the gigantic disruption of
1789, inaugurating a series of constitutional changes by which was
imparted to the political history of the French nation in the
nineteenth century a more unsettled character than that exhibited by
the public economy of any other European state. France to-day is
governed under her eleventh constitution since the fall of the
Bastille. All but one of the eleven have been actually in operation,
during a longer or a shorter period. But, prior to the fundamental law
at present in effect, no one of these instruments attained its
twentieth year. Once having cut loose from her ancient moorings, the
nation became through many decades the plaything of every current (p. 290)
that swept the political sea. It is only within our own generation
that she appears definitely to have righted herself for a prolonged
and steady voyage. The constitutional system of the Third Republic is
a product, not of orderly evolution, but of disruption,
experimentation, compromise. It represents a precarious balance which
has been struck between those forces of radicalism and conservatism,
of progress and reaction, for whose eternal conflict France
pre-eminently has furnished a theatre since 1789. Its connection with
the remoter past is very much less direct and fundamental than is that
of the governmental system of England, Russia, Austria-Hungary, or the
Scandinavian states. At certain points, however, as will appear, this
connection is vital. And the relation of the constitution of 1871-1875
to the several instruments by which it was more immediatel