creased. And yet for political purposes it has become a much smaller world, smaller, more compact, more accessible. And this has tended to greater uniformity of legislation and institutions.
The greater uniformity has been brought about mainly in three ways. First, by direct imitation. Man, as M. Tarde has reminded us, is an imitative animal. He imitates his forefathers: that is custom. He imitates his neighbours: that is fashion. He imitates himself: that is habit. And direct imitation plays a large part in institutions and legislation. English Parliamentary procedure has made the tour of the world. Guizot reminded a Committee of the House of Commons in 1848 that Mirabeau had based the rules of the National Assembly on a sketch of the proceedings of the House of Commons furnished to him by Étienne Dumont[1], and that when the Charter was granted by Louis XVIII in 1814, the same rules were adopted with some changes. Thomas Jefferson, when President of the United States, drew up for the use of Congress a manual consisting largely of extracts from English Parliamentary precedents, and Jefferson's Manual is still an authoritative work. Every colonial legislature conforms to the rules, forms, usages, and practices of the Commons House of Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland, except so far
- ↑ Evidence before Select Committee on Public Business, Q. 309. Dumont's own account (Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 164) does not quite bear out Guizot's statement. According to Dumont, Romilly had made a sketch of English Parliamentary procedure, which Dumont translated for Mirabeau. Mirabeau laid this translation on the table by way of a proposal, but the Assembly declined to consider it: 'Nous ne sommes pas Anglais, et nous n'avons pas besoin des Anglais.' Romilly's own account of his sketch, and of its fate, is to the same effect. Memoirs, i. 101.
