Note 315 — Chapter II
Reading edition
It is to the activity of this protective and centralizing spirit that we must ascribe, what a very great authority noticed thirty years ago, as ‘le défaut de spontanéité, qui caractérise les institutions de la France moderne.’ Meyer, Instit. Judic. vol. iv. p. 536. It is also this which, in literature and in science, makes them favour the establishment of academies; and it is probably to the same principle that their jurists owe their love of codification. All these are manifestations of an unwillingness to rely on the general march of affairs, and show an undue contempt for the unaided conclusions of private men.