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chapter twelve: Necessary Comment - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

Edition used:

Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003).

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chapter twelve

Necessary Comment

What has happened to the privileged castes in our times in France obliges me to enter here some explanation of my opinion on the matter. I would not wish to be confused with men who sought in the abolition of improprieties only a means of satisfying their hatred and long-wounded vanity.

The destruction of hereditary privileges in France was an inevitable consequence of the progress of civilization. From the time the nobility had ceased being feudal, it had become a brilliant ornament but without a definite purpose, agreeable to its possessors, humiliating to those who did not possess it, but without real means and above all without power. Its advantages consisted more in exclusions for the lower orders than in prerogatives for the preferred class. The nobles obtained improper favors but were not invested with any legal power. They did not constitute an intermediary body which kept the people in order and the government in check. They formed an almost imaginary corporation, which for everything which was not just recollection or prejudice, depended on the government. Heredity in England does not confer on its members a contested power, arbitrary and vexatious, but a specified authority and constitutional functions. Its prerogatives, being legal in nature and created for a definite purpose, are less wounding for those who do not enjoy them and give more power to those who do. Therefore, this heredity is less exposed to attack at the same time as it is more readily defended. The nobility in France, however, invited attack from every vain and worthless thing and armed almost no interest to defend itself. It had no base, no fixed position in the community. There was nothing to guarantee its survival. Quite the contrary: everything conspired to its ruin, even the education and individual superiority of its own members. This is why it was destroyed almost without commotion. It vanished like a shadow, being only an indefinable memento of a half-destroyed system. Therefore its abolition cannot be the object of justified censure. Everything the [227] leaders of our Revolution have added to this measure, however, has been unjust and insane.

One cause which has not been sufficiently noted contributed, if I am not mistaken, to the mingling of wise principles with odious and unreasonable means. We can count the origins of hereditary privileges among the differences between us and the ancients.

Among the peoples of antiquity, civilized by colonies without being conquered by them, inequalities in rank had their origin solely in superiority, either physical or moral. You will be conscious that I am not speaking of slaves, who have to be counted for nothing in the social system of the ancients. Among them, the privileged were a class of compatriots, come to wealth or esteem because their ancestors had acquired merit in the youthful society, teaching it either the first principles of government, or the ceremonies of religion, or discoveries necessary to life’s needs and the elements of civilization. Among the moderns, by contrast, inequalities of rank have their basis in conquest. The civilized peoples of the Roman empire were shared out like cheap cattle among ferocious aggressors. European institutions have for centuries borne the imprint of military force. Overcome by the sword, the conquered have also been kept in servitude by it. Their masters did not deign to disguise the origin of their power by ingenious fables or make it respectable by well or badly founded claims to superior wisdom. The two races reproduced themselves, for a long time with no other relationship than bondage on the one hand and oppression on the other. Everything from the fourth to the fifteenth century served to remind a Europe civilized but overrun, of the scourge it had received from the north. The superiority of the ancient peoples derives from this cause. They walked free from all domination, on land that no proud foot of a conqueror had ever trampled on. The moderns, a race debased and dispossessed, went wrong following a single conquest.

From this difference between the ancients and us has resulted a striking difference in the intellectual systems of the friends of liberty in the two eras. Despite the drawbacks of hereditary privilege, even among the ancients, almost all the publicists of antiquity [228] want power concentrated in the hands of the upper classes. Aristotle makes this an essential part of a well-constituted democracy.29 By contrast, since the Renaissance of learning, the supporters of political freedom have never believed its establishment possible without the destruction of the predominant castes. Those whom Aristotle sees as our guides, Machiavelli sees as victims who must be sacrificed.30 From the fifteenth century until our times, those who have taken a position in the matter have written in favor of equality, and acted or spoken on behalf of the descendants of the oppressed and against the descendants of the oppressors. In proscribing not only hereditary privileges but also their possessors, they have themselves without knowing been dominated by hereditary prejudices. At the foundation of the Republic in France, the aim was more, as in the Italian republics, the rebuffing of conquerors than the giving of equal rights to citizens. Scanning the laws against the nobles in Italy, especially Florence, you would think yourself reading the laws of the Convention.31 These eighteenth-century nobles have been depicted like fifteenth-century barons. Hateful men have skillfully blended all the centuries to rekindle and maintain hatred. Just as we once went back to the Franks and Goths when we wanted to be oppressors, they now revisited the Franks and Goths in the search of pretexts for the opposite oppression. Puerile vanity once searched for noble titles in archives and chronicles. A harsher and more vindictive vanity now drew on them for the wherewithal of accusations. A little reflection, however, must convince us that privileges of a naturally improper kind can be a means of leisure, of improvement and enlightenment, for their possessors. Great independent wealth is usually a guarantee against several kinds of baseness and vice. Knowing one is respected saves one from that thin-skinned and restless vanity which sees insult and imagines scorn everywhere, those violent, implacable feelings which take revenge in the ill they do, on the sorrows they undergo. Being given to gentle ways [229] and accustomed to very refined nuances gives the outlook a delicate susceptibility, and the mind a ready flexibility.

These precious qualities had to be put to good advantage. The spirit of chivalry had to be circled with barriers it could not transgress, without its being excluded from the careers open to everyone. Thus would be formed that class of men which the ancient lawmakers regarded as destined by nature for government. It would be formed by the enlightened section of the commoners and the enlightened section of the nobility.

Woe betide the men who have prevented this amalgam, as easy as it is necessary. They did not want to take account of the centuries, nor to distinguish between nuances, nor to reassure apprehensions, nor to pardon fugitive vanities, nor to let pointless complaints subside and foolish menaces evaporate. They have recorded the doings of wounded pride. In treating all nobles as enemies of freedom, they made countless enemies for freedom. Nobility was restored by a new distinction, persecution, and strong in this privilege, fought the better against the so-called free institutions, in whose names it was being oppressed. It found in its proscription legitimate reasons for resistance and infallible means of attracting interest to its cause. To accompany the abolition of improprieties with injustices, is not to put obstacles to their returning, but to offer them the hope of coming back along with justice.

[29. ]Above all, Aristotle attributes a great importance to the middle class. On this subject see Raymond Weil, Politique d’Aristote, Paris, A. Colin, 1966, pp. 94–97, Le citoyen et l’homme de bien, and pp. 159–173.

[30. ]See Constant’s Note O at the end of Book X.

[31. ]A reference to the National Convention, 1792–1795. See Constant’s Note P at the end of Book X.

[O. [Refers to page 188.]]For Titus Livy see Décades.48 See also Condillac, or rather Mably writing under his name, in Cours d’étude,49 Siéyès, Essai sur les priviléges.50

[P. [Refers to page 189.]]See gli ordinamenti della justizia, laws which subjected the nobles of Florence to special legal arrangements, excluded them from citizenship, authorized their condemnation without other proof than public rumor. These laws were carried by the people around 1294, at the instigation of Gianno della Bella (noble), who placed himself at its head.51

[O. [Refers to page 188.]]For Titus Livy see Décades.48 See also Condillac, or rather Mably writing under his name, in Cours d’étude,49 Siéyès, Essai sur les priviléges.50

[P. [Refers to page 189.]]See gli ordinamenti della justizia, laws which subjected the nobles of Florence to special legal arrangements, excluded them from citizenship, authorized their condemnation without other proof than public rumor. These laws were carried by the people around 1294, at the instigation of Gianno della Bella (noble), who placed himself at its head.51

[48]In particular Ch. 5 of Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live in Machiavelli, Oeuvres complètes, éd. cit., pp. 392–394. This chapter is entitled, more precisely, To whom more confidently to entrust the care of liberty, to the great or the people, and which of the two more often cause difficulty, he who wishes to acquire or he who wishes to conserve.

[49]Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Histoire moderne, Livre X, Ch. 4 Considérations sur l’Europe au moment du seizième siècle et par occasion sur les effets du commerce, in Cours d’étude . . . , op. cit., t. IX, pp. 456–471.

[50]Emmanuel Siéyès, Essai sur les privilèges, s.l.n.d. [1788], 48 p.

[51]Constant was mostly inspired for this note by Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres, éd. cit., pp. 114–115, n. 9.