ABSTRACT
The French Revolution is one of the great occurrences of the social order. Those who consider it an accidental event have looked to neither the past nor the future. England is the only great European empire that has achieved the final stage of perfection of the social order known to us. Worldly desires have always been a part of religious fanaticism, while, on the other hand, true fidelity to abstract ideas often feeds political fanaticism. Religious fanaticism offers the kind of infinite future that raises all the hopes of the imagination. Legitimacy, as it has been recently set forth, is thus absolutely inseparable from constitutional limitations. It matters little whether the limits that formerly existed in France were an inadequate barrier to the abuse of power or whether they were violated and obliterated gradually. These limits should be applied now, even if their antiquity cannot be proved.
