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chapter eight: Modern Imitators of the Republics of Antiquity - 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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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


chapter eight

Modern Imitators of the Republics of Antiquity

The truths we have just developed are unrecognized today, as much by the speculative philosophers who during the eighteenth century, it must be added, with a courage worthy of praise, laid claim to the forgotten rights of the human race, as by more hotheaded and less enlightened men, who have wanted to put into practice the principles of these philosophers. From this have followed mistakes and absurdities which seem almost inexplicable to us, in the theorizing of some of our most famous writers. We will cite only one example of these, taken at random.

Ancient legislators had a deep hatred of wealth. Plato refused to give laws to Arcadia solely because of its opulence.31 All the men of government of antiquity saw in poverty the source of all virtue and glory. Modern moralists have copied these maxims. They have not considered that if wealth was corrupting among the warlike people of antiquity, this is because it was the fruit of conquest and pillage which, swiftly penetrating the lands of poor people unused to its possession, soon intoxicated them.

Wealth would become corrupting again, if owing to some violent upsets we fell back again in this respect into the condition of the ancient peoples, that is, if the poor and ignorant class, suddenly seizing the spoils of the educated class, had at their disposal riches they could use only deplorably and coarsely. When wealth is the gradual product of assiduous work and a busy life or when it is transmitted from generation to generation by peaceful possession, far from corrupting those who acquire it or enjoy its use, it offers them new means of leisure and enlightenment and consequently new motives for morality. Because they did not consider differences of period, our moralists have wanted to swim against the current. They have recommended privations to peoples schooled to the imperatives of power and riches and, by a singular contrast, while all the laws were calculated to encourage the acquisition [438] of wealth and discover new sources of it, all the moralizing aimed to present it as a scourge.32

The errors of our philosophers, innocent as long as they were merely theoretical, became terrible in application. During the French Revolution, when the flow of events put in charge of things men who had adopted philosophy in a preconceived way, these men thought they could make public power work as they saw it done in the free States of antiquity. They believed everything must still today yield to collective authority, that private morality must be silent before the public interest, that all the violations of civil liberty would be redressed by the enjoyment of political liberty in its widest sense. But collective authority did nothing but harm individual independence in every sense, without destroying the need for it. Private morality was silent; but since the public interest does not exert the same sway over us as over the ancients, it was to a hypocritical and ferocious egoism that private morality saw itself sacrificed. The great sacrifices, the acts of devotion, the victories won in Greece and Rome by patriotism over the natural affections, served among us as a pretext for letting loose the most unchecked individual passions, in a wretched parody of the most noble examples. Because inexorable but just fathers had once condemned their criminal children, their modern imitators had innocent enemies put to death.33 Lastly, the institutions which in the ancient republics surrounded political freedom, the foundation of civil freedom, with a strong guarantee, resulted only in the violation of civil freedom, without establishing political freedom.

Among the writers of the eighteenth century, there is one above all who has pulled opinion along this mistaken and dangerous course, namely the Abbé de Mably.34 Mably, whom people nicknamed the Spartan, was a pure-hearted man who cherished morality and thought he loved freedom, but was possessed assuredly of the falsest mind and the most despotic outlook ever to exist.35 As soon as he happened [439] upon a vexatious measure, in any country, he thought he had made a discovery and proposed it as a model. He detested most of all individual freedom, and when he came upon a nation which was completely deprived of this, he could not stop himself admiring it, even when it had absolutely no political freedom. He raved over the Egyptians, because he said with them everything was fixed by law. Every moment in the day was filled by some duty. Everything bowed before the legislator’s empire, even relaxation, even necessities. Love itself was subject to this honored intervention, law by turns opening and closing the nuptial bed.36 For some time people have repeated the same absurdities about the Egyptians. We are recommended to imitate a people suffering from a double servitude, pushed back by their priests from the sanctuary of all knowledge, divided into castes of which the lowest was deprived of all the rights of society and of humanity itself, retained by a yoke of iron in an eternal infancy, an immobile mass, equally incapable of educating or defending itself and constantly the prey of the first conqueror who came to invade, I will not say their fatherland, but their territory. These new apologists of Egypt must be recognized as more consistent in their theorizing than the philosophers who have heaped the same eulogies on it. They set no value on freedom, on the dignity of our nature, on the activity of the mind, on the development of the intellectual faculties. They want only to serve despotism, for lack of the ability to possess it.37 If enslaved Egypt seemed to Mably to merit an almost boundless admiration, solely because all individual independence was suppressed there, one can see that Sparta, which brought together the forms of republicanism with the same bondage for individuals, must have excited his even more enthusiastic admiration. This vast monastery seemed to him the ideal of the free republic.38 He had a profound contempt for Athens, and would readily have said of that first nation of Greece, what some grand seigneur or other of an academician said of the academy: What a frightful despotism; everybody does what he likes there! The regret [440] he expresses constantly in his works is that the law can get at actions only. He would have liked it to get at thoughts and the most fleeting impressions, and to pursue man without respite, leaving him no shelter where he could escape its power. He constantly took government for freedom, and all means for extending the action of government over the recalcitrant part of human existence, whose independence he deplored, seemed to him good. Mably is, after Rousseau, the writer who has had the most influence on our Revolution. His austerity, his intolerance, his hatred for all the human passions, his eagerness to enslave them, his excessive principles concerning the jurisdiction of the law, his relentlessness against individual freedom, which he treated as a personal enemy, the difference between what he recommended and what had existed, his ranting against wealth and even against property, all these were bound to please a group of men overheated by their recent victory, men who, conquerors of a power they called law, were very pleased to extend that power over everything. It was weighty authority for them, that a writer with no stake in the question, who always pronounced anathemas against royalty, had, buried away in his study, long before the Revolution, drafted in axiomatic form all the maxims necessary for organizing the most absolute despotism, under the name “republic.” Mably had noticed in antiquity, independently of law proper, what he termed institutions. It would be difficult to define precisely what he understood by this word. It was an ensemble of laws, habits, traditions, and ceremonies, calculated to appeal to the imagination and to lend to established constitutions the support of this vague but irresistible power. Mably did not reflect that the very philosophers of antiquity, who so sang the praises of institutions to us, were mostly speaking of an earlier time, and it was the same with these things as with ghosts. No one has seen any; but everyone has in his family some tale which attests their existence.39 Mably exalted therefore beyond measure the [441] institutions of antiquity and the need to establish ones like them, and our legislators began to establish institutions. But since institutions rest on habits, this was to want to create habits, that is to say, to create a portion of the past. They instituted national holidays, ceremonies, periodic assemblies. Soon it was necessary to require the observance of these fairs, attendance at these assemblies, respect for these ceremonies, under threat of severe penalties. A duty was made of what should be voluntary. Celebration of freedom was surrounded with constraint.40 Those in government were astonished that the decrees of a day did not immediately erase the memories of several centuries. They called habits ill will. The slow, gradual effects of childhood impressions, the direction imprinted on imagination by a long sequence of years, seemed to them acts of rebellion. The law being the expression of the general will, it seemed to them that it should make all other forces give way, even those of memory and time. All these efforts, all this harassment, gave way beneath the weight of their own extravagance. There is no saint so humble in the most obscure hamlet who has not battled successfully against the whole national government, ranged in arms against him. Supporters of all theoretical systems of this kind always mistake effect for cause. Because habits transform themselves into institutions, they think nothing easier than transforming institutions into habits. They want to support all the natural sentiments, honor, patriotism, paternal power, conjugal love, respect for old age, by means of institutions. This is to pursue a course opposite to nature. Institutions have to be created by the spontaneous motion of sentiments. For them to be powerful but not tyrannical, their origin must be lost in the night of time. For their head to reach toward heaven and cover us with its shade, their roots must be hidden in the earth’s bosom. They are useful as a heritage; they are merely oppressive when drafted as laws. Government is in rightful place only when it is a curb. Then none of its actions is worthless. But when it wants to encourage, direct, arouse, and enthuse and comes forward with pretentious talk, always followed with coercive measures, it is ridiculous in failure and despotic in constraint.

[442] One can include under the heading of ill-conceived institutions what some political writers41 have termed penalties for infamy and rewards of honor, isolated, spasmodic attempts, vicious in inspiration, liable to bias and contradiction and irrelevance, by means of which government wishes to put itself in the place of the most easily offended and delicate feelings, believing it can distribute honor and shame at will.

If the penalty for shameful behavior is accompanied by deprivation of certain rights, by exclusion from certain offices, then it becomes a positive punishment, not solely a case of disapprobation. If the honorific rewards the government bestows carry with them an entitlement to certain prerogatives, the rewards are no longer purely honorific. They come into the category of compensation which society can grant for services it has received. Then the vocabulary is inaccurate. But if both of these measures are separated from any drawback or any advantage of a different sort, then that is a nonsense. This is to require the government to play the part of public opinion. Shame diminishes and honor withers, when government arrogates to itself the right to apply them. Human intelligence must be perverted and the most delicate strands of inner feeling ruffled, to make men submit to government in questions pertaining to morality. Consider how under the monarchy itself, at a time when vanity was raised to its highest possible degree of susceptibility by all the artificial means it is in the nature of this government to employ, consider, I repeat, how many useless attempts and proclamations there were by government to stigmatize dueling.

People have often praised the moral effect of Roman censorship. But the censors had legal power and inflicted real punishments. They inflicted them arbitrarily in truth. This arbitrariness was counterbalanced, however, by the simplicity of ancient mores, and by the chance every citizen, as an almost immediate spectator of all the actions of his fellows, had to evaluate the justice of the censors. When these magistrates debarred the dictator Mamercus, who had reduced their terms of office to eighteen months, from entering the Senate, this vengeance excited the indignation of the Senate and the people, and Mamercus was amply compensated by public opinion.42 [443] The fact is, however, that all the fellow citizens of this dictator were gathered together in the same town, and witnesses and judges of the injustice he was experiencing. In a State like France, the power of the censors would be an intolerable tyranny. If the government of a large nation dared to declare, by way of a public act, without trial, that an individual was dishonored, it would not be the individual but this entire nation that this government would be declaring incapable of all sense of honor, and the nation would protest against this decree by not endorsing the government’s decisions.

Censorship degenerated even in Rome, when the size of the Republic, the complexity of social relationships, and the refinements of civilization had taken away from the institution the thing which served it as both a base and a limit. It was not censorship which had created good mores, but the simplicity of the mores which constituted the power and efficacy of censorship.43

In the present state of society, individual relations are made up of fine nuances, changeable and elusive, which would be distorted in a thousand ways if one tried to give them clearer definition. Public opinion alone can affect them. It alone can judge them because its nature is the same. Times of civil upheaval, I must confess, are particularly unfavorable to the power of opinion, which is a kind of moral sense which develops only in tranquillity. It is the fruit of leisure, security, and intellectual independence.

Revolutionary shocks and reactionary excesses make it disappear. Scaffolds, deportations, and massacres leave purely moral nuances powerless. Public opinion can exist only where there remains neither anything despotic nor any political divide. Public opinion and arbitrary power are incompatible. The former must overcome the latter or be suffocated. Divisions on party lines, which make this or that belief the blackest of crimes or the highest of virtues, are destructive of public opinion because its basis is falsified and it follows a totally mistaken direction. In such cases one has to wait and leave things to happen. I would add that the law should be silent, if I did not think that in these circumstances those who make the laws are aiming precisely [444] to falsify public opinion. They prevent man from retiring into himself, from consulting his own heart, from thinking according to his own lights. And as if his self-interest was not enough for them to corrupt him, they also want to stupefy him by giving themselves the false appearance of appealing to his own judgment and reason.

CONSTANT’S NOTES

BOOK XVII

On the True Principles of Freedom

  • Ch. 1. On the inviolability of the true principles of freedom. 383
  • Ch. 2. That the circumscription of political authority, within its precise limits, does not tend to weaken the necessary action of the government. 385
  • Ch. 3. Final thoughts on civil freedom and political freedom. 386
  • Ch. 4. Apologia for despotism by Louis XIV. 392

[31. ]Hofmann was unable to find a specific passage on Plato’s refusal to give laws to Arcadia, but notes that the philosopher’s contempt for wealth is to be found in Book V of the Laws. The French text he cites is in Oeuvres Complètes, t. XI/2, text edited and translated by Edouard des Places, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1951, pp. 99–102.

[32. ]See Constant’s Note W at the end of Book XVI.

[33. ]For these sacrifices of children by their father, see Mme de Staël, Des circonstances actuelles, éd. cit., p. 244.

[34. ]On Mably and his possible influence on the revolutionaries, see the clarifications by Ephraïm Harpaz, “Mably et la postérité,” Revues des sciences humaines, 1954, pp. 25–40; “Mably et ses contemporains,” ibid., 1955, pp. 351–366; “Le social de Mably,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale, t. XXXIV, 1956, pp. 411–425.

[35. ]See Constant’s Note X at the end of Book XVI.

[36. ]See Constant’s Note Y at the end of Book XVI.

[37. ]See Constant’s Note Z at the end of Book XVI.

[38. ]See Constant’s Note AA at the end of Book XVI.

[39. ]See Constant’s Note BB at the end of Book XVI.

[40. ]Constant himself, as President of the Commune of Luzarches, had scrupulously ensured that the observation of fairs and the revolutionary calendar be respected. See Hofmann’s thesis, Première Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 92–93.

[41. ]See Constant’s Note CC at the end of Book XVI.

[42. ]Aemilius Mamercus, consul and dictator in 438, 437, 433, and 426 , in 433 reduced the term of office of censors from five years to eighteen months. Constant probably got this from Machiavelli, Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live, Ch. XLIX, in Oeuvres complètes, op. cit., p. 485.

[43. ]See Constant’s Note DD at the end of Book XVI.

[[450] W. [Refers to page 366.]]“Greek politicians, who lived under popular government, did not recognize any force other than virtue which could sustain it. Those of today speak only of manufactures and commerce, finance, wealth, and even luxury.” Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, III, 3. He attributes this difference to the republic and the monarchy. It should be attributed to the dissimilar conditions of ancient and modern times.

[X. [Refers to page 367.]]The work of Mably, De la législation ou principes des lois, is the most complete code of despotism imaginable. Combine these three principles: 1. Property is an evil. If you cannot destroy it, weaken its influence in every way. 2. Individual freedom is a scourge. If you cannot annihilate it, restrain it at least as much as possible. 3. Legislative power is unlimited. It should be extended to everything and everything be made to bow before it. You will feel how difficult it is to escape from this terrible combination. So a constitution based on Mably would be the combined one of Constantinople and Robespierre. Here are some axioms transcribed with scrupulous fidelity.65 Control morality, p. 175.66 Do not be frightened of poverty.67 What does it matter if such and such an arrangement makes commerce flourish and doubles the State’s revenues? 176.68 The establishment of property casts you back into an abyss, p. 186.69 [451] What does the population matter? It is more valuable for the human race to have a few virtues than many advantages and to count only a million happy men than a multitude of wretched ones, 187.70 Diminish the State’s finances, 193.71 Forswear all public debt, 197.72 Ban useless arts and impose on the necessary ones a certain coarseness. Extend your sumptuary laws to everything, 199.73 Proscribe commerce. Render its agents vile, 200.74 Prevent selling, the alienation of goods, and wills, 202.75 Set up agrarian laws, ibid.76 Do not allow citizens to go abroad to amass wealth, 203.77 Establish state education and do not tolerate the arbitrary rules the paterfamilias devises for himself in this respect, 278.78 Be in fear of atheists and deists, 286.79 Life imprisonment for the former, 297.80 Do not permit deviation from the official religion, [452] 299.81 Lock up the deists. Instruct them in their prison and, if they are guilty twice of declaring their opinions, life sentence as for atheists, 302.82 Do not allow new religions, nor citizens to profess the traditional one without making use of its official ministers, 310,83 etc.

It will be agreed that it is strange that this should be the writer endlessly quoted in the national forum,84 as a fitting guide for the establishment of freedom. I will add that his historical erudition is as inaccurate as his political principles are wrong and persecutory. He adopts with blind credulity everything the historians have passed on to us on Lycurgus, without stopping for an instant over the difficulties of every kind which surround everything to do with this legislator. He constantly exaggerates the political influence of Sparta on Greece, without taking into account that Athens possessed at least as much influence as Sparta and counting for nothing the disproportion between these two powers. Sparta had a bigger area and more fertile than Athens, Megara, Corinth, Argos, and Sicyon combined. But he did not wish to recognize this disproportion because he needed to cite a great example in favor of the moral institutions of the Spartans. I must say, however, that when Mably leaves his exaggerations to touch upon less vague subjects, he shows a much better wit. In the third book of his Principes des lois, when he is dealing specifically with positive laws, he develops several very just ideas and several very useful truths. His Observations sur l’histoire de France85 are one of the best works on this matter. Even so, I think him one of our writers most full of false notions, ones most dangerous for freedom.

[[453] Y. [Refers to page 367.]]Entretiens de Phocion.86

[Z. [Refers to page 367.]]See the new Essais de morale et de politique87 and L’Esprit de l’histoire by M. Ferrand. “The religious and political laws,” says this latter, “were in perfect agreement with society’s duties. Both took hold of the citizen from the moment of his birth and together educated the man for society. Both followed him through all the jobs and activities of his life, to correct his whims and repress his passions. They inspected and ruled his work and even his pleasures. The Egyptian seemed to be always under this double protection, and this severe social constraint was what assured his freedom. The law assigned each person his job which ran from father to son. This rule perhaps denied Egypt some superior men, but it gave her something more worthwhile, continuity in useful men. The law laid down a uniform direction for these restless minds, who might have proved a trouble to the State, taking only their imagination as a guide.” (To choose his vocation and the sort of work he does, using only his imagination as a guide, is the distinctive quality of a restless mind!) “Read about the revolutions of all empires, always the work of a few men who wished to rise above their stations.” (This is to say often the work of a few men who felt that society was imposing on them unjustifiable constraints. Now, the more you multiply constraints of this kind, the more you multiply reasons for revolutions and therefore attempts at them.) “Our modern philosophers have endlessly repeated that the best laws are those which leave greater latitude to man’s will. Send them back, these scourges of humanity, [454] to the infancy of the human race.”88 (Actually one has to return to the infancy of the human race, that is, to the centuries of ignorance and barbarism, to believe that it might be useful or legitimate to constrain the will of man in cases which do not hurt other people.)

[AA. [Refers to page 368.]]Isocrates and Plato testify that the Spartans were for the most part so little schooled that they knew neither how to read, nor sign their name, nor calculate beyond their fingers.89

[BB. [Refers to page 368.]]Mably fails to recognize a difference between the ancients and the moderns we have already indicated elsewhere. All the modern peoples have been conquered by barbarians from the north. The ancient peoples seem not to have been conquered but only civilized by foreign colonies. Now, the goings-on of peoples who have been conquered and peoples who have not undergone this are very unlike. The latter [unreadable words in Constant’s text] to give themselves institutions they do not have. The former seek to rid themselves of institutions they have had imposed on them. Hence they have a habit of resistance which lasts and is directed not only at institutions imposed by force but at all kinds of institutions. The modern nations have struggled against theirs in all sorts of ways, in barbarous times by force, in corrupted times by mockery. Now, this last weapon is terrible, in that it is destructive not only of the past but also of the future.

[CC. [Refers to page 369.]]Filangieri.90

[DD. [Refers to page 371.]]Esprit des lois, VII, 14; XXIII, 21.91

[X. [Refers to page 367.]]The work of Mably, De la législation ou principes des lois, is the most complete code of despotism imaginable. Combine these three principles: 1. Property is an evil. If you cannot destroy it, weaken its influence in every way. 2. Individual freedom is a scourge. If you cannot annihilate it, restrain it at least as much as possible. 3. Legislative power is unlimited. It should be extended to everything and everything be made to bow before it. You will feel how difficult it is to escape from this terrible combination. So a constitution based on Mably would be the combined one of Constantinople and Robespierre. Here are some axioms transcribed with scrupulous fidelity.65 Control morality, p. 175.66 Do not be frightened of poverty.67 What does it matter if such and such an arrangement makes commerce flourish and doubles the State’s revenues? 176.68 The establishment of property casts you back into an abyss, p. 186.69 [451] What does the population matter? It is more valuable for the human race to have a few virtues than many advantages and to count only a million happy men than a multitude of wretched ones, 187.70 Diminish the State’s finances, 193.71 Forswear all public debt, 197.72 Ban useless arts and impose on the necessary ones a certain coarseness. Extend your sumptuary laws to everything, 199.73 Proscribe commerce. Render its agents vile, 200.74 Prevent selling, the alienation of goods, and wills, 202.75 Set up agrarian laws, ibid.76 Do not allow citizens to go abroad to amass wealth, 203.77 Establish state education and do not tolerate the arbitrary rules the paterfamilias devises for himself in this respect, 278.78 Be in fear of atheists and deists, 286.79 Life imprisonment for the former, 297.80 Do not permit deviation from the official religion, [452] 299.81 Lock up the deists. Instruct them in their prison and, if they are guilty twice of declaring their opinions, life sentence as for atheists, 302.82 Do not allow new religions, nor citizens to profess the traditional one without making use of its official ministers, 310,83 etc.

It will be agreed that it is strange that this should be the writer endlessly quoted in the national forum,84 as a fitting guide for the establishment of freedom. I will add that his historical erudition is as inaccurate as his political principles are wrong and persecutory. He adopts with blind credulity everything the historians have passed on to us on Lycurgus, without stopping for an instant over the difficulties of every kind which surround everything to do with this legislator. He constantly exaggerates the political influence of Sparta on Greece, without taking into account that Athens possessed at least as much influence as Sparta and counting for nothing the disproportion between these two powers. Sparta had a bigger area and more fertile than Athens, Megara, Corinth, Argos, and Sicyon combined. But he did not wish to recognize this disproportion because he needed to cite a great example in favor of the moral institutions of the Spartans. I must say, however, that when Mably leaves his exaggerations to touch upon less vague subjects, he shows a much better wit. In the third book of his Principes des lois, when he is dealing specifically with positive laws, he develops several very just ideas and several very useful truths. His Observations sur l’histoire de France85 are one of the best works on this matter. Even so, I think him one of our writers most full of false notions, ones most dangerous for freedom.

[[453] Y. [Refers to page 367.]]Entretiens de Phocion.86

[Z. [Refers to page 367.]]See the new Essais de morale et de politique87 and L’Esprit de l’histoire by M. Ferrand. “The religious and political laws,” says this latter, “were in perfect agreement with society’s duties. Both took hold of the citizen from the moment of his birth and together educated the man for society. Both followed him through all the jobs and activities of his life, to correct his whims and repress his passions. They inspected and ruled his work and even his pleasures. The Egyptian seemed to be always under this double protection, and this severe social constraint was what assured his freedom. The law assigned each person his job which ran from father to son. This rule perhaps denied Egypt some superior men, but it gave her something more worthwhile, continuity in useful men. The law laid down a uniform direction for these restless minds, who might have proved a trouble to the State, taking only their imagination as a guide.” (To choose his vocation and the sort of work he does, using only his imagination as a guide, is the distinctive quality of a restless mind!) “Read about the revolutions of all empires, always the work of a few men who wished to rise above their stations.” (This is to say often the work of a few men who felt that society was imposing on them unjustifiable constraints. Now, the more you multiply constraints of this kind, the more you multiply reasons for revolutions and therefore attempts at them.) “Our modern philosophers have endlessly repeated that the best laws are those which leave greater latitude to man’s will. Send them back, these scourges of humanity, [454] to the infancy of the human race.”88 (Actually one has to return to the infancy of the human race, that is, to the centuries of ignorance and barbarism, to believe that it might be useful or legitimate to constrain the will of man in cases which do not hurt other people.)

[AA. [Refers to page 368.]]Isocrates and Plato testify that the Spartans were for the most part so little schooled that they knew neither how to read, nor sign their name, nor calculate beyond their fingers.89

[CC. [Refers to page 369.]]Filangieri.90

[DD. [Refers to page 371.]]Esprit des lois, VII, 14; XXIII, 21.91

[65]Hofmann says that unless Constant found these axioms in a commentary by Mably, his claim of fidelity to Mably’s text is not upheld. Hofmann could find them in none of the most cited editions. In the instances which follow he has collated the axioms with the text of De la législation ou principes des lois, published in t. IX of the Oeuvres complètes de l’abbé de Mably (Lyon, J.-B. Delamollière, 1792).

[66]“For my part, I make do with demanding morality, and I am not at all scared of poverty” (p. 16).

[67]See previous note.

[68]An amalgam of two distinct passages in the original: “What does a superiority one owes to wealth matter?” (p. 17) and “Such and such an arrangement would make commerce flourish, some other would enrich the treasury and double the State’s revenues” (pp. 19–20).

[69]“You see with what wisdom nature had prepared everything to lead us to common ownership of assets, and prevent our falling into the abyss into which the establishment of property has thrown us” (p. 58).

[70]“I could think it more worthwhile for the human race to have a few virtues than many advantages. What will happen to the population? people will say. I reply that it would be better to count only a million happy men on the whole earth than to see on it that numberless multitude of the poor and enslaved who live only a half-life in degradation and poverty” (p. 68).

[71]“The laws will always put up only a useless resistance to the efforts of avarice and the vices which flow from it, if they do not start by diminishing the finances of the State” (p. 97).

[72]This formulation perhaps summarizes what Mably says (pp. 107–108) on rampant greed allied to public debt.

[73]“I hope that useless arts will never be reestablished among us; that they are forbidden. I hope they will let the necessary arts retain a certain coarseness, which suits them so well” (p. 122) and “I would not stop talking to you about the sumptuary laws, if I wished to have you know all their advantages. They must be extended to everything” (pp. 112–113).

[74]Summary of a long diatribe against trade (pp. 113–115).

[75]Summary of pp. 116–120.

[76]“You will never restrain these active and haughty feelings if you do not have recourse to agrarian laws” (p. 120).

[77]“What care must not the laws take in order that the citizens do not go abroad in order to amass wealth they will repatriate?” (p. 125).

[78]“The republic will never form excellent citizens, as long as education is not public and general. Will you let the paterfamilias make his own rules in this respect?” (p. 309).

[79]Phrase summarizing pp. 324 and following.

[80]On p. 354, Mably, contrary to Plato, who demands death for atheists, says he would believe “his law wiser, if it made do with sentencing an incorrigibly guilty man to lifetime incarceration.”

[81]Summary of Ch. 3 of the last book, On the Need for a State Religion (pp. 355 and following).

[82]“When a deist is locked up for violating the law of silence imposed on him, let nothing be forgotten with regard to instructing him and making him understand his fault [. . .] If after a long correction a deist still has the same thirst for fame and martyrdom, it will finally be necessary to reconcile yourself to treating him like an atheist” (pp. 364–365).

[83]Summary of pp. 388–389.

[84]See the article by Ephraïm Harpaz, “Mably et ses contemporains,” op. cit., pp. 360–366, for numerous examples which uphold Constant’s remark.

[85]Honoré-Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Observations sur l’histoire de France. The first edition had appeared in Geneva in 1765. In Oeuvres complètes de l’abbé de Mably, éd. cit., t. I–II.

[86]“All the moments of their day were filled with some duty [. . .] Everything was prescribed by law, even relaxation and human functions [. . .] Finally, love itself, that passion, Aristias, too often so imperious, so puerile, so fiery, so weak, was only a simple relaxation after work; it was the law which opened and closed the queen’s apartment to the prince.” Honoré-Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Entretiens de Phocion sur les rapports de la morale avec la politique, in: Oeuvres complètes de l’abbé de Mably, éd. cit., t. IX, pp. 71–72.

[87]Louis-Mathieu Molé, op. cit., pp. 211–214. If Constant calls Molé’s Essais new, this is probably to distinguish them from those Francis Bacon brought out in 1597 under the same title.

[88]Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., lère éd. (1802), t. I, pp. 63–66; 2e éd. (1803), t. I, pp. 72, 75–78. The passages quoted by Constant (he has not mentioned the numerous excisions) are the same in both editions; however, in the second, Ferrand is even more eloquent on this subject and has added between p. 72 and p. 75 a long development.

[89]Hofmann was unable to determine to what passages by Isocrates or Plato this observation refers, nor in which author’s work Constant found the reference.

[90]Gaëtano Filangieri, La science de la législation, éd. cit., t. IV, pp. 42–64, Ch. VII Des peines d’infamie.

[91]In Livre XXIII, Ch. 21 notably, where Montesquieu declares: “The corruption of morals destroys censorship, itself established to destroy the corruption of morals; but when this corruption becomes general, censorship no longer has any force.” Ed. cit., p. 692.