380 APPENDIX
promote, the national spirit. 14 This also implies that an institutional
reform should be carried out in view of a well defined ulterior goal. 15
Institutional reform thus has to be an integral part of a general plan
which will reveal itself as the new foundation and permanent principle
of public life. In other terms, every act of reform must be imbedded in
a general plan, in a constitution or fundamental law, to be prepared in
secret and promulgated all at once. Naturally, such a constitution or
fundamental law will reflect the guiding principles of its authors and it
will be formulated with reference to the social and political system which
is considered best for the country's future. The government, therefore,
know where they are going. The Senatorial party had a much less
precise - more open - view of the future, merely counting on a natural
evolution in a desirable direction, once the basis of such an evolution
had been laid.1^6
The method advocated by Speransky is the antithesis of the intel-
lectual and political traditions which inspired the members of the Sena-
torial party .. Indeed, according to Speransky, it is not enough to take
the first step in posing a few general principles of justice and personal
security which would provide the inspiration and serve as guide in
creating a political climate which, in turn, would make it possible to
solve pressing problems empirically. On the contrary, Speransky is quite
convinced that any reform must depend on a general plan elaborated in
advance. It is this plan, rather than the particular need or immediate
problem to be solved empirically, which should determine the contents
of each act of reform, even when elaborating as pragmatic a document as
a digest of current law. 17 All the errors and all the defects of past re-
forms (or attempts at reform), Speransky believes, were due to the
absence of such a general plan. 18 Improvements and adjustments made
haphazardly never serve as foundation to a desirable and harmonious
historical development. True, Speransky does know that the general
plan: must be flexible enough to allow variations of detail adapted to
speeial and particular conditions. However, this structure seems to have
been an afterthought, the stress is on the priority of the general plan
and of fundamental principles. 19
Obviously such a method requires for its success a body of properly14 "0 sile obshchego mneniia - 1802", Proekl)' i zapiski p. 80
15 "Razmyshleniia 0 gosudarstvennom ustroistve imperii - 1802" Proekly i zapiski
p.66. 16 "Zapiska ob ustroistve sudebnykh i pravitel'stvennykh uchrezhdenii v Rossii
1803", Proekl), i zapiski, p. 135
17 "Otryvok 0 kommissii ulozheniia - 1802", Proekl)' i zapiski p. 26
18 "Zapiska ob ustroistve sudebnykh i pravitel'stvennykh uchrezhdenii v Rossii -
1803", Proekly i zapiski p. 111
19 Ibid. p. 112