GENERAL OUTLINE

Nineteenth-century constitutional law reflects the political situation. In the age of Gladstone and Thiers the bourgeoisie, which had been locally powerful since the Middle Ages, gained access to the national centres of command.

The existing kingdoms of Britain and France were created not by the middle classes but by the monarchy, so that in those countries the Third Estate could simply pick the nation state as a ripe fruit and even, most notably in France, strengthen its unitary centralism. Elsewhere, in Germany and Italy, the nation itself only came into being in the nineteenth century. It was founded by the royal houses of Prussia and Piedmont-Savoy and their great ministers, Bismarck and Cavour, but with the collaboration and the stimulus of the bourgeoisie, which was interested in the abolition of internal economic barriers and the creation of a national common market. The middle classes understood that they could not play a global role with the old mini-states as bases and that capital and entrepreneurial initiative required wide and, if need be, protected markets.

The constitutional ambitions of the bourgeoisie were expressed in two key words, constitutionalism and parliamentarianism. The former excluded absolute, arbitrary rule and demanded a government operating under the law; it created the Rechtsstaat, where the citizens were no more dominated by individuals, but by laws to which everyone had to submit. The latter keyword signified a regime where the government and the legislature derived their authority from and were accountable to the nation, represented by an elected parliament.