CHAPTER I .-- CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR THE FRAMING OF GOOD LAWS.
Among the most difficult undertakings in this world is the formulation of a national constitution, especially if this is to be a complete and comprehensive work.

To replace the old structures inside which a great people has lived by a new, different, appropriate and durable set of laws, to apply a mold of one hundred thousand compartments on to the life of twenty-six million people, to construct it so harmoniously, adapt it so well, so closely, with such an exact appreciation of their needs and their faculties, that they enter it of themselves and move about it without collisions, and that their spontaneous activity should at once find the ease of familiar routine,--is an extraordinary undertaking and probably beyond the powers of the human mind.

In any event, the mind requires all its powers to carry the undertaking out, and it cannot protect itself carefully enough against all sources of disturbance and error.

An Assembly, especially a Constituent Assembly, requires, outwardly, security and independence, inwardly, silence and order, and generally, calmness, good sense, practical ability and discipline under competent and recognized leaders.

Do we find anything of all this in the Constituent Assembly?
I .-- These conditions absent in the Assembly Causes of disorder and irrationality--The place of meeting -- The large number of deputies--Interference of the galleries -- Rules of procedure wanting, defective, or disregarded .-- The parliamentary leaders--Susceptibility and over-excitement of the Assembly--Its paroxysms of enthusiasm .-- Its tendency to emotion .-- It encourages theatrical display--Changes which these displays introduce in its good intentions.
We have only to look at it outwardly to have some doubts about it.