if you call in the masses to make the laws, can they rise above their
own level? Nay. The more faithfully an assembly represents the opinions
held by the crowd, the less it will know about government, the less
lofty its ideas will be, and the more vague and vacillating its policy,
for the crowd is and always will be simply a crowd, and this especially
with us in France. Law involves submission to regulations; man is
naturally opposed to rules and regulations of all kinds, especially if
they interfere with his interests; so is it likely that the masses will
enact laws that are contrary to their own inclinations? No.

"Very often legislation ought to run counter to the prevailing
tendencies of the time. If the law is to be shaped by the prevailing
habits of thought and tendencies of a nation, would not that mean that
in Spain a direct encouragement would be given to idleness and religious
intolerance; in England, to the commercial spirit; in Italy, to the love
of the arts that may be the expression of a society, but by which no
society can entirely exist; in Germany, feudal class distinctions would
be fostered; and here, in France, popular legislation would promote the
spirit of frivolity, the sudden craze for an idea, and the readiness to
split into factions which has always been our bane.

"What has happened in the forty years since the electors took it
upon themselves to make laws for France? We have something like forty
thousand laws! A people with forty thousand laws might as well have none
at all. Is it likely that five hundred mediocrities (for there are never
more than a hundred great minds to do the work of any one century), is
it likely that five hundred mediocrities will have the wit to rise to
the level of these considerations? Not they! Here is a constant stream
of men poured forth from five hundred different places; they will
interpret the spirit of the law in divers manners, and there should be a
unity of conception in the law.

"But I will go yet further. Sooner or later an assembly of this kind
comes to be swayed by one man, and instead of a dynasty of kings, you
have a constantly changing and costly succession of prime ministers.
There comes a Mirabeau or a Danton, a Robespierre or a Napoleon, or
proconsuls, or an emperor, and there is an end of deliberations and
debates. In fact, it takes a determinate amount of force to raise a
given weight; the force may be distributed, and you may have a less or
g