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Then the priest told the story of Annette Lolme, pointing out how well Marie was acquainted with all the bearings of the case. 'But both consented to break it off in that case, said Michel. It was singular to observe how cruel he had become against the girl whom he so dearly loved. The Cure explained to him again that neither the Church nor the law could interfere to make her marry M. Urmand.
Few controversies have, despite its dullness, so carefully investigated the eternal problem of Church and State as that to which Hoadly's bishopric contributed its name. De Lolme is the real parent of that interpretative analysis which has, in Bagehot's hands, become not the least fruitful type of political method. Blackstone, in a real sense, may be called the ancestor of Professor Dicey.
But as a thinker he was little more than an optimistic trifler, too content with the conditions of his time to question its assumptions. De Lolme is a more interesting figure; and though, as with Blackstone, what he failed to see was even more remarkable than what he did perceive, his book has real ability and merit.
A more serious defect was his inability, with the Wilkes contest prominently in his notice, to see that the people had assumed a new importance. For the masses, indeed, De Lolme had no enthusiasm. "A passive share," he thought, "was the only one that could, with safety to the state, be trusted" to the humble man.
'But people betrothed are very often not married, said Marie quickly. 'There was Annette Lolme at Saint Die. She was betrothed to Jean Stein at Pugnac. That was only last winter. And then there was something wrong about the money; and the betrothal went for nothing, and Father Carrier himself said it was all right.
What model or example had the framers of the Constitution in their minds, when they spoke of "executive power"? Did they mean executive power as known in England, or as known in France, or as known in Russia? Did they take it as defined by Montesquieu, by Burlamaqui, or by De Lolme? All these differ from one another as to the extent of the executive power of government.
The scope of these laws was altered in the reign of Edward III. That monarch, in view of his intended invasion of France, secured the adhesion of the landowners, by giving them power to raise money upon and alien their estates. De Lolme, chap. iii., sec. 3, remarks on these laws that they took from the king all power of preventing alienation or of purchase.
Nor does public sentiment recommend De Lolme on the British constitution, the Federalist, the writings of Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Story, and Webster, upon the constitution of the United States, and the practice of the government under it.
The theory was not true; though it represented with some accuracy the ideals of the time. Nor must we belittle what insight De Lolme possessed.
De Lolme was a citizen of Geneva, who published his Constitution of England in 1775, after a twelve months' visit to shores sufficiently inhospitable to leave him to die in obscurity and want. His book, as he tells us in his preface, was no mean success, though he derived no profit from it.
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