The Online Library of Liberty
A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Home
  • Front Page
  • About Liberty Fund
  • Other LF Sites
• The Forum
  • About the Forum
  • Resources
  • Reading Lists
    • Sign Up
    • Log In
  • Search the Forum
  • Archive
• The Library
  • About the Library
  • Starting Points
  • Latest Additions
  • Authors (by Period)
  • Titles (by Subject)
  • Groups & Collections
  • Portable Library DVD
  • RSS
  • Advanced Search

Liberty and Responsibilty in the Thought of Benjamin Constant

Topic

In the following 6 sessions we will explore the political thought of the French classical liberal Benjamin Constant. Liberty Fund has recently translated and published a key work of Constant which will be used throughout the discussions.

There is no reading for the 6th and final session which will be a review and concluding discussion.

Edition Used

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

Additional Reading

• Author: Benjamin Constant (1767-1830)
• Author: J-J. Rousseau (1712-1778)
• School of Thought: 19thC French Liberalism
• podcast/interview with Dennis O’Keeffe on Constant

• Back to Top

  1: BOOK I: On Received Ideas About the Scope of Political Authority - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK I: On Received Ideas About the Scope of Political Authority

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/108853 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK I

  On Received Ideas About the Scope of Political Authority

  • Ch. 1. The purpose of this work. 3
  • Ch. 2. Rousseau’s first principle on the origin of political authority. 6
  • Ch. 3. Rousseau’s second principle on the scope of political authority. 8
  • Ch. 4. Rousseau’s arguments for boundless political authority. 15
  • Ch. 5. That Rousseau’s error comes from his wanting to distinguish the prerogatives of society from those of the government. 17
  • Ch. 6. The consequences of Rousseau’s theory. 19
  • Ch. 7. On Hobbes. 21
  • Ch. 8. Hobbes’s opinion reproduced. 23
  • Ch. 9. On the inconsistency with which Rousseau has been reproached. 24

  chapter one

  The Purpose of This Work

  Research relating to the constitutional organization of government having been, since The Social Contract and The Spirit of the Laws, the favorite speculative focus of the most enlightened of our writers in France, is now very decidedly out of favor today. I am not examining here at all whether this disfavor is justified; but it is certainly quite understandable.1 In a few years we have tried some five or six constitutions2 and found ourselves the worse for it. No argument can prevail against such an experience.

  Moreover, if despite the universal distaste today for all discussions of this type, one wished to give oneself over to reflecting on the nature of governments, and their forms, limits, and prerogatives, one would probably make the opposite mistake to the [20] current one, but one no less gross and deadly. When certain ideas are associated with certain words, one may repeatedly seek in vain to show that the association is false. The reproduction of the words will for ages summon up these same ideas.3 It was in the name of freedom that we got prisons, scaffolds, and endless multiplied persecution. Quite understandably, this name, which signals a thousand odious and tyrannical measures, can be pronounced today only in a mood of distrust or malevolence.

  Extremes do not only touch but also follow each other. One exaggeration always produces a contrary one. This applies especially to a nation in which everyone’s aim is to show off, and as Voltaire said, everyone is more concerned to hit hard than accurately.4 The ambition of the writers of the day is at all times to seem more convinced than anyone else of the reigning opinion. They watch which way the crowd is rushing. Then they dash as fast as they can to overtake it. They think thereby to acquire glory for providing an inspiration they actually got from others. They hope we will take them for the inventors of what they imitate and that because they run panting in front of the crowd they have just overtaken, they will seem like the leaders of the band, though the latter do not even suspect they exist.5

  [21] A man of horrible memory, whose name should not soil any writing, since death has justly settled his personal account, said, on examining the English constitution: “I see a king there, and recoil in horror. Royalty is against nature.”6 Some anonymous writer, in a recently published essay, likewise declares all republican government unnatural.7 It really is true that in certain eras you have to go round the whole circle of follies before coming back to reason.

  Yet if it is proven that all research on constitutions, properly so called, must, after the upheavals we have suffered, necessarily be for some people a subject to go mad about, while for everyone else it is a matter of indifference, there are nevertheless principles of politics independent of all constitutions, and these seem to me still worth developing. Applicable under all forms of government, no threat to the basis of any social order, compatible with monarchy and republicanism alike, whatever versions either may take, these principles can be discussed frankly and freely. They are especially open to discussion in an Empire whose leader has just proclaimed, in the most unforgettable way, the freedom of the press, and declared independence of thought the first conquest of our century.

  Among these principles one seems to me of the greatest importance. It has been overlooked by writers of all parties. Montesquieu was not concerned with it. Rousseau in his The Social Contract based his eloquent and absurd theory on subverting it. All the ills of the French Revolution come from this subversion. All the crimes with which our demagogues have appalled the world have been sanctioned by it. This book is about the reestablishment of this principle, and its developments and consequences, as well as [22] its application to all forms of government, whether monarchical or republican.

  chapter two

  Rousseau’s First Principle on the Origin of Political Authority

  Rousseau begins by establishing that any authority which governs a nation must come from the general will.8 This is not a principle I claim to challenge. In our day people have tried to obfuscate it; and the evils which have been caused and the crimes committed on the pretext that this was to execute the general will, lend seeming support to the arguments of those who would like to locate the authority of government in another source.9 Nevertheless, all these arguments are powerless against the straightforward definition of the words we use. Short of reviving the doctrine of divine right, we ought to agree that the law must be the expression of the will of everybody or at least of a few people. Now, if it is the latter, what might be the source of the exclusive privilege conceded to this small number? If it is force, force belongs to anyone who can grab it. It does not constitute law, or if you recognize it as legitimate, this will be true whoever has seized it; and everyone will want to win it in turn. If you think that the power of this small group is sanctioned by everyone else, that power then becomes the general will.

  This principle holds for all institutions. Theocracy, royalty, and aristocracy, when they command minds, are the general will. When they do not command minds, they cannot be anything else but force. In sum, the world knows only two kinds of power. [23] There is force, the illegitimate kind; and there is the legitimate kind, the general will.

  The objections we may raise against this will, bear either on the difficulty of recognizing or expressing it, or on the degree of power granted to the authority emanating from it. One could claim, often justifiably, that what people call the general will is no such thing and that the things subjected to it should not be. In this case, however, it is no longer legitimacy that is being attacked but its rightful powers or the fidelity of its interpreters.

  This principle does not deny the legitimacy of any form of government. In some circumstances society may want a monarchy and in others a republic. So these two institutions may therefore be equally legitimate and natural. Those who declare one or the other illegitimate or against nature are either party mouthpieces and do not say what they think, or else they are ideological dupes and do not know what they are saying.

  There are only two forms of government, if we may even give them that title at all, which are essentially and eternally illegitimate, because no society could want them: anarchy and despotism. Moreover, I am not sure that the distinction which often favors the latter is not illusory. Despotism and anarchy are more alike than people think. In our era, people gave the name “anarchy,”10 meaning the absence of government, to a government which was the most despotic that has ever existed on earth: a committee of a few men, who endowed their functionaries with boundless power, with courts tolerating no appeal, with laws based on mere suspicions, with judgments without due process, with numberless incarcerations and a hundred judicial murders a day. This is to abuse terms and confound ideas, however. The Revolutionary government [24] was most certainly not an absence of government.

  Government is the use of public force against individuals. When it is used to stop them hurting each other, it is a good government. When it is used to oppress them, it is a frightful government, but in no sense is it anarchic. The Committee of Public Safety was government; so was the Revolutionary Tribunal. The law of suspects embodied government too. This was detestable, but certainly not anarchic. It was not for lack of government that the French people were butchered by executioners. On the contrary, it happened only because executioners were doing the governing. Government was most certainly not absent. Rather, an atrocious and ubiquitous government was always present. This was absolutely not anarchy, but despotism.

  Despotism resembles anarchy in that it destroys public safeguards and tramples on due process. It differs from anarchy only in that it then demands for itself the due process it has destroyed and enslaves its victims in order to sacrifice them.

  It is not true that despotism protects us against anarchy. We think it does only because for a long time our Europe has not seen a real despotism. But let us turn our gaze on the Roman empire after Constantine. We find that the legions were endlessly in revolt, with generals proclaiming themselves emperors and nineteen pretenders to the crown simultaneously raising the flag of rebellion. Without going back to ancient history, let us look at the sort of spectacle presented by the territories ruled by the sultan.11

  Anarchy and despotism bring back the savage state into the social state. [25] But while anarchy puts all men there, despotism puts itself there on its own and beats its slaves, pinioned as they are, with the chains it has cast off.

  Whatever may remain unexamined in this comparison, one thing is certain: this comparison will not suffice to tip the balance in favor of either of the two things concerned. So mankind cannot want either anarchy or despotism. Any other form of government can be useful, any other can be good, any other can be what a society desires and, as a consequence, can be legitimate.

  chapter three

  Rousseau’s Second Principle on the Scope of Political Authority

  If Rousseau’s first principle is an incontestable truth, this is not so of a second axiom, which he lays down and develops with all the prestigious force of his eloquence. “The clauses of the social contract,” he says, “boil down to just one, namely the total surrendering of each member along with all his rights to the community.”12 The implication is that the general will must exercise unlimited authority over individual existence.

  Political writers before and after Jean-Jacques Rousseau have mostly expressed the same view.13 None has rejected it formally.14

  “In all government there must be an absolute authority,” says the author of Natural Politics. “Wherever that authority resides, [26] it must employ as it chooses all the powers of the society” and work out what all the particular political orientations are in order to oblige them to fall in with the overall view. However the sovereign power is distributed, the overall quantum is unlimited.15

  Mably says it is an axiom accepted everywhere on earth that legislative power, that which declares and realizes the general will, must not be limited by anything.16

  The supporters of despotism have in this respect come close to Rousseau’s theory. “For a society to subsist,” says M. Ferrand (The Spirit of History, I, 134), “it is necessary that there exist somewhere a power greater than any obstacle,17 which directs individual wills and suppresses factionalist passions.”18

  Some writers,19 of whom Montesquieu is one, [27] have placed certain apparent restrictions on this doctrine. These have always been too vague, however, to serve to define fixed limits to political authority. To say that justice existed before the laws (The Spirit of the Laws, Livre I)20 is indeed to imply that the laws, and therefore the general will, of which the laws are only the expression, must be subordinate to justice. But what a set of developments this truth in turn demands if it is to be applied! In the absence of such developments, what follows from this assertion by Montesquieu? That the holders of power have often set off from the principle that justice precedes the laws in order to subject individuals to retrospective laws or deprive them of the benefits of existing ones, in this way hiding the most revolting iniquities behind a sham respect for justice. How crucial it is in matters of this sort to be wary of undefined axioms!

  M. de Montesquieu, moreover, in his definition of liberty, misconstrues all the limits of political authority. Liberty, he says, is the right to do anything the law permits.21 Doubtless there is no liberty at all when the citizens cannot do everything the law does not forbid. But so many things could be made illegal that there would still be no liberty.

  M. de Montesquieu, like most political writers, seems to me to confuse two things: freedom and constitutional security. Freedom consists in individual rights; social rights, on the other hand, provide constitutional security.22

  [28] The axiom of the people’s sovereignty has been thought of as a principle of freedom. It is in fact a principle of constitutional guarantee. It aims to prevent any individual from seizing the authority which belongs only to the political society as a whole. It determines nothing, however, about the nature of this authority itself. It in no way adds to the sum of individual liberties, therefore, and if we do not turn to other principles for determining the extent of this sovereignty, freedom could be lost, despite the principle of the sovereignty of the people, or even because of it.

  M. de Montesquieu’s maxim, that individuals have the right to do everything the law permits, is similarly a principle of guarantee. It means that no one has the right to stop someone else doing what the law does not forbid. It does not explain, however, what the law is or is not justified in forbidding. Now, it seems to me that this is exactly where freedom resides. It consists only in what individuals have the right to do and society has no right to prevent.

  Since the time of M. de Montesquieu some well-known men have protested against Rousseau’s maxim. Beccaria, in his treatise On Offenses and Punishments,23 and Condorcet, in Commentaries on Public Education,24 have reasoned from opposite principles. Franklin produced a pamphlet seeking to show that we should have the smallest extent of government possible.25 Paine defined [29] government authority as a necessary evil.26 Siéyès, finally, in an opinion delivered in Parliament, declared that political authority was not boundless.27 It does not seem, however, that the arguments of these writers have made much impression. People still speak endlessly of a power without limits residing in the people or its leaders, as of a thing beyond doubt; and the author of certain essays on morality and politics has recently reproduced, in support of absolute power, all the arguments of Rousseau on sovereignty.28

  The Constituent Assembly, at the start, seemed to recognize individual rights, independent of society. Such was the origin of the Declaration of Rights. The Assembly, however, soon deviated from this principle. It set the example by pursuing individual existence into its most intimate retreats. It was imitated and surpassed by the governments which replaced it.

  The party men, however pure their intentions, are bound to detest the limitation of political authority. They see themselves as its presumptive heirs and tend to look after their future property even when it is in the hands of their enemies. They distrust this or that kind of government, or such and such a class of governing politicians, but just let them organize government in their own way, [30] allow them to entrust it to the representatives they want, and they will not think they can extend it far enough.

  So we can regard Rousseau’s theory that political power is unlimited as the only one adopted to date. This is the theory which seems to me false and dangerous. In my view, this is the theory we must hold responsible for most of the difficulties the establishment of freedom has encountered among various nations, for most of the abuses which worm their way into all governments of whatever type, and indeed for most of the crimes which civil strife and political upheaval drag in their wake. It was just this theory which inspired our Revolution and those horrors for which liberty for all was at once the pretext and the victim. I do not mean that the countless iniquities we witnessed and suffered were not usually caused in the immediate sense by the factional interests of the men who had seized power. But these men had managed to get the machinery of public enforcement into their guilty hands only by veiling the interests which controlled them, by laying claim to seemingly disinterested principles and opinions which served them as a banner. Now, all their principles and opinions rested on the theory this chapter has related, rested, that is, on the supposition that society may exercise over its members an unlimited authority and that everything the general will ordains, is rendered legitimate by that alone.

  It is worth refuting this theory, therefore. It is useful in general to correct opinions, however metaphysical or abstract they seem to us, because vested interests seek their weapons in opinions.

  Interests and opinions differ, first of all, in that the former are hidden and the latter displayed, necessarily, since the latter divide while the former unite. Secondly, interests vary for each individual according to his situation, his tastes, or his circumstances, while opinions are the same, or seem so, as between all people who act together. Finally, each individual can direct only himself in the reckoning of his interests. When he wants other people to support him, he has to present them with opinions which mislead them as to his real views. If you expose the falsity of the opinion he advances, you deprive him of his main support. You annihilate his means of influencing those around him, [31] you destroy the flag, and the army vanishes.

  I know that today we have given up refuting ideas we want to fight, professing a general aversion for all theories, of whatever sort. People say all metaphysics is unworthy of our attention. But the antimetaphysical stance has always seemed to me unworthy of thinking people. Its declamations are doubly dangerous. They are as forceful against truth as against error. They tend to make reason wither, to hold our intellectual faculties up to ridicule and to discredit what is noblest in us. Secondly, they do not even possess the advantage commonly supposed. Averting ideas you think dangerous by scorning them or suppressing them violently, is to suspend their present consequences only very briefly, and to double their influence to come. We should not be misled by silence nor take it for agreement. For as long as reason is not convinced, error is ready to reappear at the first event which unleashes it. It then takes advantage of the very oppression it has experienced. Our efforts will be in vain. Thought alone can do battle with thought. Reasoning alone can correct mistakes of reasoning. When power repulses reason it does not fail only against the truth; it also fails against error. To disarm error you have to refute it. Anything else is rank charlatanism, renewed century after century, to the profit of a few, and the misfortune and shame of the rest.

  Indeed, if contempt for the intellectual life had been able to preserve men from its dangerous deviations, they would long ago have reaped the benefits of this much-praised protection. There is nothing new about contempt for the mind. It is not novel always to appeal to force against thought, nor to set up a small number of privileged persons to the detriment of all other people, the latter’s mental activity being treated as superfluous, and their reflection considered idle and dangerous. From the time of the Goths till today we have seen this mental outlook reproduce itself. From their day till this people have denounced metaphysics and theorizing; yet the theories have always made their reappearance. Before us, people said equality was only a chimera, a vain abstraction, a [32] meaningless theory. Men who wanted to define equality properly in order to separate it from the exaggerations which disfigured it, were treated as dreamers and troublemakers, and an ill-defined equality has never stopped returning to the attack. The Jacquerie, the Levelers, and the revolutionaries of our time have abused this theory, precisely because it had been forbidden rather than put right: incontestable proof of the inadequacy of the measures, taken by the opponents of abstract ideas, first to ward off their attacks, and secondly, so they said, to keep such ideas away from the blind and stupid species they so condescendingly governed. The effect of such measures is never more than temporary. When false theories have misled people, they are ready to listen to commonplaces against theory in general, some through exhaustion, others out of vested interest, but most by way of imitation. But when they have recovered from their weariness or been freed from their fears, they remember that theory is not a bad thing in itself, that everything has its theoretical side, that theory is no more than practice systematized into rules according to experience, and practice only theory applied. They feel that nature did not give them reason just so it could be mute or sterile. They blush at having abdicated the very core of their dignity as human beings. They adopt theories again. If these have not been corrected, if they have been mere objects of disdain, they take them up anew with all their vices intact and are once again entrapped by them in all the errors which led them to reject them before. To hold that because false theories bring grave dangers we must renounce all theories, is to take from men the surest remedy for precisely such dangers. It is to hold that because error has dire consequences, we should refuse ever to search for truth.

  So I have tried to fight faulty arguments with ones which seem just to me. I have tried to oppose false metaphysics with metaphysics which I believe to be true. If I have succeeded, I will flatter myself that I have been more helpful than those who demand silence. Their legacy to the future is a set of unresolved issues. In their narrow-minded and suspicious caution they compound the ill effects of wrong ideas by the very fact that they do not allow such ideas to be examined. [33]

  chapter four

  Rousseau’s Arguments for Boundless Political Authority

  Rousseau defines the social contract as involving the unconditional surrender of each individual, along with all his rights, to society as a whole (Constant’s emphasis).29 To reassure us as to the consequences of this total handing over of every aspect of our lives to the advantage of an abstract entity, he says that the sovereign, that is, the social body as a whole, cannot harm either the collectivity of all its members, or any one of those members individually; that every person makes a total surrender, so that the condition is the same for all members and none has an interest in making it onerous for others; that each person, giving himself to everyone else, gives himself to no one; that everyone acquires over all other members the same rights he cedes to them, and gains the equivalent of all he loses, along with more strength to protect what is his own.30 But he forgets that all the life-preserving properties which he confers on the abstract being he calls sovereignty, are born in the fact that this being is made up of all the separate individuals without exception. Now, as soon as the sovereign body has to use the force it possesses, that is to say, as soon as it is necessary to establish political authority, since the sovereign body cannot exercise this itself, it delegates and all its properties disappear. The action carried out in the name of all, being necessarily willy-nilly in the hands of one individual or a few people, it follows that in handing yourself over to everyone else, it is certainly not true that you are giving yourself to no one. On the contrary, it is to surrender yourself to those who act in the name [34] of all. It follows that in handing yourself over entirely, you do not enter a universally equal condition, since some people profit exclusively from the sacrifice of the rest. It is not true that no one has an interest in making things hard for other people, since some members are not in the common situation. It is not true that all members acquire the same rights they give up. They do not all regain the equivalent of what they lose, and the outcome of what they sacrifice is or may be the setting up of a power which takes away from them what they do have.

  How is it that these obvious considerations did not convince Rousseau of the error and dangers of his theory? It is because he let himself be misled by an oversubtle distinction. A double hazard is to be feared when we examine important questions. Men go wrong, sometimes because they misconstrue the distinctions between two ideas and sometimes because they base on a simple idea distinctions which do not apply.

  chapter five

  That Rousseau’s Error Comes from His Wanting to Distinguish the Prerogatives of Society from Those of the Government

  Rousseau distinguished the prerogatives of society from those of government.31 This distinction is admissible only when the word “government” is understood in a very restricted sense. Rousseau, however, took it in its widest sense, as the bringing together, not only of all properly constituted powers but of all the constitutional ways individuals have for contributing among themselves, in expressing their individual wills, to the formation of the general will.32 According to these stipulations, any citizen [35] who, in England, elects his representatives, or any Frenchman who, under the Republic, voted in a primary assembly, should be regarded as involved in government. Once the word “government” is taken in this way, any distinction between its prerogatives and those of society itself is rendered illusory and can become in practice an incalculable danger. Society cannot itself exercise the prerogatives bestowed on it by its members. Therefore it delegates them. It sets up what we call a government. From then on any distinction between society’s prerogatives and those of government is an abstraction, a chimera. For on the one hand, if society had a legitimate authority greater than the one it delegated, the part it did not delegate would, by reason of its not being exercisable, be effectively void. A right one cannot exercise oneself, nor delegate to others, is a right which does not exist. On the other hand, the recognition of such rights would inevitably entail the disadvantage that those in whom the delegated part had been invested would inexorably contrive to have the rest delegated to them too. An example will clarify my point. I assume that we recognize—it has often been done—that society has a right to expel a minority part of itself which has given it deep offense. No one attributes this terrible prerogative to the government, but when the latter wants to grab it, what does it do? It identifies the unfortunate minority, at once outlawed and feared, with all life’s difficulties and dangers. It then appeals to the nation. It is not as its prerogative that it seeks to persecute, on mere suspicion, wholly innocent individuals. But it quotes the imprescribable prerogative of the whole society, of the all-powerful majority, of the sovereign nation whose well-being is the highest law. The government can do nothing, it says, but the nation can do everything. And soon the nation speaks. By this I mean that a few men, either low types or madmen, or hirelings, or men consumed with remorse, or terror-struck, set themselves up as its instruments at the same time as they silence it, and proclaim its omnipotence at the same time as they menace it. In this way, by an easy and swift maneuver, the government seizes the real and terrible power previously regarded as the abstract right of the whole society.

  There really is a prerogative—when we are speaking abstractly—that the society does possess and does not delegate to the government, namely the right to change the organization of the government itself. To delegate this right would set up a vicious circle, since the government could use it [36] to transform itself into a tyranny. But this very exception confirms the rule. If society does not delegate this prerogative, neither does it exercise it itself. Just as it would be absurd to delegate it, so it is impossible to exercise it and dangerous to proclaim it.

  The people, Rousseau observes, are sovereign in one respect and subject in another.33 In practice, however, the two cases are confused. It is easy for powerful men to oppress the people as their subjects, to force them to manifest in their sovereign role the will which these powerful men are dictating. To achieve this, all that is needed is that the individual members of society be terror-struck and then that a hypocritical homage be rendered to the society en masse.

  Thus one can recognize as society’s only those rights which the government can exercise without their becoming dangerous. Sovereignty being an abstract thing and the real thing, the exercise of sovereignty, that is to say, the government, being necessarily delegated to beings of a quite different nature from the sovereign, since they are not abstract beings, we need to take precautionary measures against the sovereign power, because of the nature of those who exercise it, as we would take them in the case of an excessively powerful weapon which might fall into unreliable hands.

  chapter six

  The Consequences of Rousseau’s Theory

  When you have affirmed on principle the view that the prerogatives of society always become, finally, those of government, you understand immediately how necessary it is that political power be limited. If it is not, individual existence is on the one hand subjected without qualification to the general will, while on the other, the general will finds itself represented without appeal by the will of the governors. These representatives of the general will have [37] powers all the more formidable in that they call themselves mere pliant instruments of this alleged will and possess the means of enforcement or enticement necessary to ensure that it is manifested in ways which suit them. What no tyrant would dare to do in his own name, the latter legitimate by the unlimited extension of boundless political authority. They seek the enlargement of the powers they need, from the very owner of political authority, that is, the people, whose omnipotence is there only to justify their encroachments. The most unjust laws and oppressive institutions are obligatory, as the expression of the general will. For individuals, says Rousseau, having alienated their all to the benefit of the collectivity, can have no will other than that general will. Obeying this, they obey only themselves, and are all the freer the more implicitly they obey.34

  Such are the consequences of this theoretical system as we see them appear in all eras of history. Their most frightening scope, however, was the one they developed during our Revolution, when revered principles were made into wounds, perhaps incurably. The more popular the government it was intended to give France, the worse were these wounds. When no limit to political authority is acknowledged, the people’s leaders, in a popular government, are not defenders of freedom, but aspiring tyrants, aiming not to break, but rather to assume the boundless power which presses on the citizens. When it has a representative constitution, a nation is free only when its delegates are held in check. It would be easy to show, by means of countless examples, that the grossest sophisms of the most ardent apostles of the Terror, in the most revolting circumstances, were only perfectly consistent [38] consequences of Rousseau’s principles.35 The omnipotent nation is as dangerous as a tyrant, indeed more dangerous. Tyranny is not constituted by there being few governors. Nor does a large number of governors guarantee freedom. The degree of political power alone, in whatever hands it is placed, makes a constitution free or a government oppressive; and once tyranny subsists, it is all the more frightful if the tyrannical group is large.

  Doubtless, the overextension of political power does not always have equally dire consequences. The nature of things and people’s dispositions may sometimes soften the excesses; but such a political system always has serious drawbacks nevertheless. This doctrine creates and then carelessly casts into our human arrangements a degree of power which is too great to be manageable and one which is an evil whatever hands you place it in. Entrust it to one person, to several, to all, you will still find it an evil. You lay the blame on the power-holders and depending on the circumstances, you will have to indict in turn monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, mixed constitutions, and representative government. And you will be wrong. The condemnation must be of the extent of the power and not of those in whom it is vested. It is against the weapon and not the person wielding it we need to rail. There are things too heavy for human hands.

  [39] Look at the fruitless efforts of different peoples to remedy the evils of the unlimited power with which they think society invested. They do not know to whom to entrust it. The Carthaginians created in succession the Suffetes to rein in the aristocracy of the Senate, the Tribunal of the Hundred to suppress the Suffetes, the Tribunal of the Five to control the Hundred. Condillac says they wanted to put a brake on one authority, and they established a counterforce which was equally in need of restraining, thus always leaving the abuses to which they thought they brought a remedy to carry on.36

  The mistake of Rousseau and of writers who are the greatest friends of freedom, when they grant society a boundless power, comes from the way their ideas on politics were formed. They have seen in history a small number of men, or even one alone, in possession of immense power, which did a lot of harm. But their wrath has been directed against the wielders of power and not the power itself. Instead of destroying it, they have dreamed only of relocating it. It was a plague; but they took it as something to be conquered; and they endowed the whole society with it. Inevitably it moved from there to the majority and from the majority into a few hands. It has done just as much harm as before, and hostility to all political institutions has accumulated in the form of examples, objections, arguments, and evidence.

  chapter seven

  On Hobbes

  The man who reduced despotism to a theoretical system most cleverly, Hobbes, was quick to support unlimited political power, in order to declare thereby in favor of the legitimacy of absolute government by a single person. The sovereign, he says (and by this word he understands the general will), is irreprehensible in his actions. All individuals [40] must obey, and they cannot call upon him to account for his measures. Sovereignty is absolute, a truth which has always been recognized, even by those who have stirred up rebellions, or instigated civil wars. Their motive was not the annihilation of sovereignty; but rather to move its exercise elsewhere. Democracy is an absolute sovereignty placed in the hands of everyone; aristocracy is absolute sovereignty in the hands of a few; and monarchy is absolute sovereignty in the hands of one person. The people were able to give up this absolute sovereignty in favor of a monarch, who then became its legitimate possessor.37

  We can clearly see that the absolute character with which Hobbes endows political authority is the basis of his entire system. This word “absolute” changes the very nature of the question and involves us in a novel chain of consequences. This is the point where the writer leaves the road of truth in order to stride off by way of sophism to the conclusion he set for himself from the start. He shows that men’s conventions being insufficient to secure obedience, there has to be a coercive force to compel this, that given that a society must defend itself against foreign aggression, there has to be a common force to arm for the common defense; that the existence of conflicting claims among men means there must be laws to establish their rights. He concludes from the first point that the sovereign has an absolute right to punish, from the second that he has an absolute right to wage war, and from the third that he is absolute in legislative power. Nothing could be more false than these conclusions. The sovereign does have the right to punish, but only for culpable actions. He does have the right to wage war, but only when society is attacked. He does have the right [41] to make laws, but only when they are necessary and insofar as they are just. There is, therefore, nothing “absolute,” nothing arbitrary in these prerogatives. Democracy is power in the hands of all, but power only in such measure as is needed for the security of the society. Aristocracy is this same authority entrusted to a few; and monarchy is the same thing brought together in one person. The people can divest themselves of this authority in favor of a single man or of a small number, but their power remains limited, like that of the people who vested it in them. With this cutting out of a single word, one Hobbes had inserted gratuitously into the construction of a sentence, his whole frightful system collapses. On the contrary, with the word “absolute,” neither liberty, nor, as we will see subsequently, peace, nor happiness, is possible under any institutional arrangements. Popular government is only a convulsive tyranny; monarchical government only a more morose and taciturn despotism.

  When we see a distinguished author arrive by way of specious arguments at manifestly absurd results, it will prove instructive in itself and aid greatly in the refutation of error if, by way of research, we retrace the line of this writer’s thoughts, so to speak, to try and pinpoint where he started to deviate from the truth. Almost all writers start off from some true principle. Once this principle has been posited, however, all it takes to vitiate their whole theory is an invalid distinction, or an ill-defined term, or a superfluous word. In Helvétius, for example, it is an ill-defined term. His starting point is incontestable: all our ideas reach us through our senses. He concludes from this that sensation is everything. To think is to feel, he says, and therefore to feel is to think.38 This is where he goes wrong. The error stems from an ill-defined term, in this case “to feel” or “sensation.” To think is to feel; but to feel is not to think. In Rousseau, as we saw, the mistake came from an invalid distinction. He sets out from a truth, namely that the general will must make the law; but he distinguishes the prerogatives of society from those of government. He believes that society must possess boundless political power, and from there he goes astray. It is clear that in Hobbes a superfluous word is the cause of the trouble. He too has a correct starting point, namely that we need a coercive force in order [42] to govern human societies. But he slips into his sentence a single unnecessary epithet, the word “absolute,” and his whole argument becomes a tissue of errors.

  chapter eight

  Hobbes’s Opinion Reproduced

  A contemporary writer, the author of Essays on Morality and Politics, has revived Hobbes’s system, only with much less profundity and much weaker inspiration and logic. Like Hobbes, he sets off from the principle of unlimited sovereignty. He has assumed political authority to be absolute and transferred from society to a man he defines as the species personified, the individualized collectivity. Just as Rousseau had said that the social body cannot hurt either the collectivity of members nor any individual member,39 this writer says that the depository of power, the man become society itself, cannot harm society, because all the ill he could do to it, he would experience precisely himself, insofar as he is society itself.40 Just as Rousseau says that the individual cannot resist society because he has handed over all his rights to it, without reserve,41 this man claims that the authority of the [43] depository of power is absolute, because no member of the collectivity can struggle against the collectivity as a whole. He also claims that there can be no responsibility on the part of the depository of power, since no individual can be in dispute with the body of which he is a part, and that the latter can respond only by making him return to the order he should never have left. He then adds, so that we should in no way be fearful of tyranny: now, here is the reason his authority (that of the depository of power) was not arbitrary. “This was no longer a man. This was a people.”42 What a marvelous guarantee this switch in reasoning provides!

  chapter nine

  On the Inconsistency with Which Rousseau Has Been Reproached

  Because he had not felt that political power had to be limited, Rousseau was drawn into a quandary he was able to escape only by undoing with one hand what he had built with the other. He declared that sovereignty could be neither given away,43 nor delegated, nor represented, which was to declare, less roundly, that it could not be exercised. This destroyed in fact the principle he had just proclaimed. Those seeking to explain his [44] theory have accused him of inconsistency.44 On the contrary, his reasoning was very consistent. Terror-struck at the spectacle of the immense political power he had just created, he had no idea in whose hands to place so monstrous a power and had thought of no defense against the danger inseparable from sovereignty as he had conceived it, save an expedient which made the exercise of that sovereignty impossible. It was only those who adopted his principle, separating it from what made it less disastrous, who were bad reasoners and guilty politicians. It is the principle which needs rejecting, since so long as it does not produce despotism, it is only an inapplicable theory, since it leads to despotism as soon as people do try to apply it.

  So it is not inconsistency of which Rousseau must be accused. The reproach he deserves is that he set off from an invalid hypothesis and went astray in superfluous subtleties.

  I do not side at all with his detractors. A rabble of inferior minds, who see their brief success as consisting in calling into doubt every redoubtable truth, is excitedly anxious to take away his greatness. This is just one more reason to render him our homage. He was the first writer to popularize the sense of our rights. His was a voice to stir generous hearts and independent spirits. But what he felt so powerfully, he did not know how to define precisely. Several chapters of The Social Contract are worthy of the scholastic writers of the sixteenth century. What is meant by rights which one enjoys all the more for having given them away completely? Just what is a freedom in virtue of which one is all the more free the more unquestioningly one does what runs counter to one’s own wishes?45 These are deadly [45] theological sophisms such as give weapons to all tyrannies, to the tyranny of one man, to that of a few people, to the legally constituted kind, and to the kind dominated by popular fury! Jean-Jacques’s errors have seduced many friends of freedom, because they were established to counter other, more degrading mistakes. Even so, we cannot refute them strongly enough, because they put insuperable obstacles in the way of any free or moderate constitution, and they supply a banal pretext for all manner of political outrages.

  CONSTANT’S NOTES

  [1. ]The bibliographical researches of André Monglond, La France révolutionnaire et impériale. Annales de bibliographies méthodiques et descriptions des livres illustrés, Grenoble, B. Arthaud; Paris, Impr. nat., 1930 (1789)–1963 (1812), 9 vol., let us confirm Constant’s claim. From the time of the Consulate and above all the Empire, constitutional writings do indeed become rarer. The disfavor indicated, however, is much more a question of censorship than of any natural cause. See Henri Welschinger, La censure sous le Premier Empire, Paris, Perrin, 1887. We find in the work of Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres, edited and with an introduction by Marco Minerbi, Geneva, Droz, 1965, p. 82, a similar reflection to Constant’s but much earlier. “The French, surrounded with revolutions which have taught them all too well to mistrust political theories, have grown weary with an important branch of inquiry to which their new duties really summon them. Maybe I will strive in vain to persuade them that the subject has not been exhausted by all the writings which have so wearied them, that we have made scarcely any advance on the maîtres who wrote before the Revolution, and that lots of important questions still demand debate, lots of findings need verification, and lots of new ideas need an airing. They will find a great number of these new ideas in the book with which I am presenting them, and if they do not accept them, at least they will find rejecting them stimulating. Perhaps, they might even during the course of their criticism, encounter the lessons they do not want to take from me.”

  [2. ]Since this text dates from 1806, we are citing in effect the constitutions of 1791, 1793, an III, an VIII, an X, and an XII.

  [3. ]Constant had already enunciated his conception of the power of words on men and ideas in De la force du gouvernement, pp. 84–85. See Etienne Hofmann, Les “Principes de politique” de Benjamin Constant, Droz, 1980, Tome I, Première Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 119–120. (Hereafter this work is referred to as Hofmann’s thesis.)

  [4. ]Hofmann failed to track down this quotation from Voltaire. Neither the analytic tables of the subject matter which accompany the Oeuvres complètes (the one by Chantreau, Paris, 1801, and the one by Miger, Paris, 1840), though detailed, nor the compilation by Adrien Lefort and Paul Buquet, Les mots de Voltaire, Paris, Librairie illustrée (1887), includes it. Hofmann says this witticism may have been handed down only by oral tradition. The saying turns up again in Constant’s De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements, Paris, Bossange, 1824, I, 6, p. 112.

  [5. ]Alfred de Musset was to say in 1832 in his dedication to A. Tattet of La coupe et les lèvres (the cup and the lips):

  • • C’est un triste métier que de suivre la foule,
    • Et de vouloir crier plus fort que les meneurs,
    • Pendant qu’on se raccroche au manteau des traineurs.
  • • (It’s a sad life following the crowd,
    • And wanting to shout louder than the ringleaders,
    • When you’re clinging on to the stragglers’ coattails.)

  Alfred de Musset, Poésies complètes. Text edited and annotated by Maurice Allem, Paris, Gallimard, 1957, p. 135 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade).

  [6. ]This “man of horrible memory” is Georges Couthon, who, in his Discours prononcé à la séance des Jacobins du Ier pluviôse an II de la République (speech delivered at the session of the Jacobins on 20 January 1794) Paris, Impr. des 86 départements, s.d., declares in fact: “I see in this constitution a king. A king! I recoil in horror. A king! It is a monster which nature disclaims, a master she does not recognise, a tyrant she detests” (pp. 3–4; BN, Lb40 777).

  [7. ][Louis-Matthieu Molé], Essais de morale et de politique, Paris, H. Nicolle, 1806, VIII-254 p. This work had already appeared in December 1805; Constant speaks about it twice in his correspondence with Hochet. See Hofmann’s thesis, Première Partie, Ch. 3, p. 233 and n. 145. The whole second part of Molé’s collection of essays seeks to show that monarchical government is natural.

  [8. ]Du contrat social, Livre II, Ch. 1: “The first and most important consequence of the principles previously established is that only the general will can direct the power of the State according to the purpose for which it has been set up, which is the common good.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, published under the direction of Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Reymond, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, t. III, p. 368 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade).

  [9. ]Constant is perhaps thinking of Joseph de Maistre, whose Considérations sur la France, written in 1796, was a reply to De la force du gouvernement; and to Louis Amboise de Bonald, whose Théorie de pouvoir politique et religieux also came out in 1796. Let us note, however, that Constant never quotes them by name either in his formal corpus nor in his letters.

  [10. ]It is hard to know to whom Constant is referring. Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900, t. IX, La révolution et l’Empire, Partie 2e: Les événements, les institutions et la langue, Paris, A. Colon, 1937, p. 828, gives the example of the Ami des lois of 16 brumaire an V (6 November 1796), defining as anarchists those “who see the republic as booty devolving upon them alone, who demand institutions which perpetuate their tyranny and leave them total mastery of government decision making and the framing of the law.” F. Brunot shows very effectively how among the Thermidorians the term “anarchy” took on the meaning of “despotism” or “tyranny” in order to designate the Terror as just such a régime.

  [11. ]A reference to Sultan Selim III, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1798 to 1807. His reign was marked by disastrous wars against the European powers and internal revolts in the provinces under his jurisdiction.

  [12. ]Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 6, éd. cit., p. 360. Constant’s quotes are rarely a model of precision and accuracy, but Hofmann’s editing does not restore the original text unless the very meaning of a passage has been falsified by Constant or he has failed to indicate an important omission.

  [13. ]In the paragraphs which follow, Constant gives examples only of writers contemporary to Rousseau, or later than he: d’Holbach, Mably, Ferrand, and Molé. When he claims that these writers had the same view as Rousseau, he does not refer to the theory of the surrender of individual rights, which he has just quoted, but to the boundless authority of the general will over the individual.

  [14. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book I.

  [15. ]Paul Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach, La politique naturelle ou discours sur les vrais principes du gouvernement, London, 1773, t. I, p. 72. Constant is abridging radically and the last sentence is more a summary than a proper quote. Here is the beginning of the paragraph which Holbach entitled On Absolute Authority (French original De l’autorité absolue): “In all government there must be an absolute authority. Wherever that authority resides it must employ as it chooses all the powers of society. To this end it must not only make laws, but also possess power extensive enough to make them effective, or to overcome the resistances which individual passions may put in their way. These aims would not be fulfilled if the public authorities did not also have enough power to make those who belong within the jurisdiction of the state contribute to its flourishing, its preservation and security. It also has to decide what policy directions are most appropriate to securing these. In sum, this central power is constituted to work out what the particular orientations are and be strong enough to force them to fall in with its overall view. If such power had limits, there could be no vitality or vigor in government. The vices of individual citizens would endlessly vitiate, as pointless or dangerous, any association with no object other than the general flourishing of all. This truth has been felt by societies which are most jealous of their liberties. Surrounded by the most cruel factions, they have often found themselves obliged to submit, at least for a limited period, to a boundless authority. Such was the case with the Roman dictatorship.”

  [16. ]Hofmann searched in vain for this quote from Mably in two of his works referred to elsewhere by Constant: De la législation ou principes des lois and the Entretiens de Phocion sur les rapports de la morale avec la politique.

  [17. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book I.

  [18. ]Antoine Ferrand, L’esprit de l’histoire ou lettres politiques et morales d’un père à son fils, sur la manière d’étudier l’histoire en général et particulièrement l’histoire de France, Paris, Vve Nyon, 1802, pp. 134–135.

  [19. ]One would have expected Constant to cite Locke before Montesquieu. Perhaps he is assumed to number among this group. Constant’s silence on the English writer is at the very least strange. On this question, see Hofmann’s thesis, Seconde Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 329–332.

  [20. ]De l’esprit des lois, Livre I, Ch. 1: “Before there were laws, relations touching on justice were possible. To say nothing can be just or unjust unless it is required or forbidden by positive laws, is like saying that before we could draw circles their radii were not equal. We must therefore admit to relationships of justice prior to the positive laws which reestablish them.” Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, presentation and notes by Daniel Oster, Paris, E. du Seuil, 1964, p. 530 (L’Intégrale).

  [21. ]Ibid., Livre XI, Ch. 3, éd. cit., p. 586.

  [22. ]Constant returns to this distinction when he opposes “civil freedom” to “political freedom” in Book XVI, Ch. 7 and in Book XVII, Ch. 3 of this treatise.

  [23. ]Cesare Beccaria’s little book, Dei delitti e delle pene (on offences and punishments), published in 1764, which swiftly became a great success, was in no sense a refutation of Rousseau. The latter had exerted on the contrary a “deep influence” on Beccaria, as Franco Venturi shows in the introduction to the French translation of the work—Des délits et des peines, trans. by Maurice Chevallier, Geneva, Droz, 1965, p. xiv. All the same, speaking of the pact at the origin of human society, Beccaria maintains, contrary to Rousseau: “Necessity constrained men to cede part of their freedom. Now, it is clear that each person wants to hand over to the community only the smallest portion possible consistent with the commitment of everybody to the collective defence.” Ed. cit., p. 10, Hofmann’s italics. This is in opposition to the handover of all individual rights as envisaged by the Contrat social, and Constant’s view, though insufficiently nuanced, is upheld.

  [24. ]The Mémoires sur l’instruction publique of the marquis de Condorcet had appeared in the Bibliothèque de l’homme public, 2e année, t. I, Paris, Buisson, 1791. Constant’s references (pp. 53, 316, 317, and 372 of this treatise) are to this edition and not to t. IX of the Oeuvres complètes, edited by Garat and Cabanis, Brunswick, Vieweg; Paris, Heinrichs, 1804.

  [25. ]Constant is probably referring to two articles which came out in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1 April and 8 April 1736, under the title On Government and for a long time attributed to Benjamin Franklin. These texts are reproduced in The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, compiled and edited by John Bigelow, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887, vol. 1, pp. 425–431. In fact, these articles are by John Webbe, as the latter admits in The Pennsylvania Gazette of 28 July 1737. See in this regard The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1960, vol. 2, pp. 145–146. Whoever was their author, these articles certainly condemned excessive government. Thus, right at the start: “Government is aptly compared to architecture; if the superstructure is too heavy for the foundation, the building totters, though assisted by outward props of art.”

  [26. ]Thomas Paine, Common Sense, first edition, Philadelphia, R. Bell, 1776. At the beginning of the first chapter, entitled On the origin and design of government in general, Paine declares in fact: “Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary; in its worst state an intolerable one.” The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. by Moncure Daniel Conway, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894, vol. 1, p. 69 (photomech. reprod. New York, AMS Press, 1967).

  [27. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book I.

  [28. ]In Ch. 2 of the Second Part of his Essais (op. cit., p. 134), Molé writes, for example: “It was necessary to give meaning to this moral being [society] whose existence had been recognized. It was urgent that it be given all-seeing eyes and a sword to make itself obeyed.” As to whether Constant was right to identify traces of Rousseau’s influence in Molé’s work, see Hofmann’s thesis, Seconde Partie, Ch. 2, Section 2.

  [29. ]Constant is quoting from memory. The exact text is: “the total surrender of each member with all his rights to the whole community.” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 6, éd. cit., p. 360.

  [30. ]Here is the complete passage to which the author is referring: “For first of all, each person giving himself entirely, the condition is the same for everyone, and this being so, no one has an interest in making it burdensome to others. Moreover, the alienation taking place unreservedly, the association is as perfect as could be and no member has any longer anything to demand: For, if certain individuals retained some rights, since there would be no superior common authority which could judge between them and the public, each person being in some respect his own judge, would soon claim to be so in everything, the state of nature would continue and the society would necessarily become tyrannical or futile. Thus, each person giving himself to everyone, in fact gives himself to no one, and since there is no fellow member over whom one does not gain only the same rights one also cedes to him over oneself, one acquires the equivalent of everything one has lost with additional force for preserving what one has.” Ibid., pp. 360–361.

  [31. ]This criticism could be leveled also at Thomas Paine, who, in Common Sense, says: “Some writers have so confounded society with government as to leave no distinction between them.” Ed. cit., p. 69.

  [32. ]It is hard to see to which passage Constant is referring, since in Du contrat social, Livre III, Ch. 1 (éd. cit., p. 396), Rousseau defines government as: “an intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual dealings, charged with the execution of the laws, with the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political [. . .] I therefore call the legitimate exercise of executive power Government or supreme administration and the man or body charged with carrying out that administration the Prince or magistrate.” See Hoffman’s thesis, Seconde Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 322–323 and n. 53.

  [33. ]“. . . each individual, contracting, so to speak, with himself, finds himself involved in a double relationship; namely as a member of the sovereign in relation to private individuals, and as a member of the society in relation to the sovereign.” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 362.

  [34. ]It seems Constant has condensed two passages: first: “The constant will of all members of the State is the general will; it is through this that they are citizens and free,” Du contrat social, Livre IV, Ch. 2, éd. cit., p. 440, and second: “So long as the citizens are subjected only to such conventions, they obey no one else but only their own will,” ibid., Livre II, Ch. 4, éd. cit., p. 375.

  [35. ]See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book I.

  [36. ]Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Histoire ancienne, Livre VII, Ch. 7. In the edition published under the title: Cours d’étude pour l’instruction du prince de Parme, Geneva, Du Villard et Nouffer, 1780, t. V, pp. 473–474, we find: “They wanted to put a brake on one authority and doing this established another, which needed containing. They therefore left the abuses they thought they were remedying to continue.”

  [37. ]Constant is not quoting Hobbes, but summarizing his thought as one finds it in Leviathan, Ch. XVII and following.

  [38. ]Claude-Adrien Helvétius, De l’esprit, Paris, Durand, 1758, Premier Discours, Ch. 1, pp. 18–31. Helvétius is more precise in his definition. “To judge [not to think] is to feel.”

  [39. ]“As soon as the multitude is brought together thus in a single body, any offense to a member is an offense to the whole. Still less could one offend the whole body without its membership feeling the effects. Thus duty and interest alike compel the two contracting parties to support each other, and the same men must seek to bring together under this double relationship all the benefits which depend on it. Now, the sovereign power, being formed only by the individuals who compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs. It follows that the sovereign power has no need to issue guarantees to its subjects, because it is impossible that the body should wish to harm all its parts, and we will later see that it cannot harm any individual one of them.” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 363.

  [40. ]In Ch. 3 of his Essais (op. cit., p. 140), Molé declares in effect: “The government could not be arbitrary; men were afraid to depend on the fancy or the whims of him who exercised it. So man was not told to do what he thought right for the well-being of society. Rather, given that he was endowed with the force of society itself, he was mandated to conserve the conditions which constituted his existence. He punished outrages, he proceeded with the reparation of civil wrongs, and in all these ways he consecrated this first moral fact, that we should do nothing to others we would not wish done to ourselves.”

  [41. ]“In order, therefore, that the social contract is no worthless formulary, it tacitly includes the only undertaking which can give force to other people, namely that whoever refuses to obey the general will, will be constrained thereto by the whole society. This means nothing else than that he will be forced to be free.” Du contrat social, Livre 1, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 364. Cf. also Livre II, Ch. 4, pp. 372–375.

  [42. ]Constant summarizes here the longer passages of the original, whose corresponding text is as follows: “The authority therefore had to be absolute. An individual in danger runs away without consultation or permission. Often he owes his safe delivery only to secrecy and promptness. The authority, moreover, could not be counterbalanced without someone resisting it, and such resistance was absurd. It could never be legitimate. How could some parts of the association have struggled against it? There could exist no responsibility on the part of the depository of power. Under what right could a member enter into dispute with the being of which he is a part? The latter could not respond to him save by making him return to the order he should never have left” (op. cit., pp. 139–140). And later, Molé says again: “But understand his position and why his power is not arbitrary. This was no longer a man but a people” (op. cit., p. 141).

  [43. ]Du contrat social, Livre II, Ch. 1, éd. cit., pp. 368–369.

  [44. ]It is hard to know to whom Constant is referring, given that Rousseau’s critics are so numerous (see, for example: Robert Dérathé, “Les réfutations du Contrat social au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, t. XXXII, 1950–1952, pp. 7–54). We do, however, find in Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, Berlin, G.-J. Decker, 1788, t. II, p. 167, this reflection: “Rousseau, the most inconsistent writer ever to appear.” Now, Constant had read this work and even borrowed some passages from it. He could also therefore have made a note of this criticism.

  [45. ]Constant is undoubtedly referring to the paradoxes of Rousseau Hofmann has cited already: the first: “whoever refuses to obey the general will will be made to by the whole social body: this means only that he will be forced to be free,” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 364; the second: “So when the view opposite to mine carries the day, this proves only that I was wrong, and that what I thought was the general will, was not. If my individual opinion had carried the day, I would have done something other than I had wished. This is when I would not have been free,” ibid., Livre IV, Ch. 2, éd. cit., p. 441.

  [A. [Refers to page 9.]]Condorcet is an exception. He has very precisely established the limits of political power. See his Notes on Public Education. Nor is it in general true that the idea is new. It occurs in Franklin, Payne, Beccaria, and others. No one, however, has drawn out all the consequences flowing from it.

  [B. [Refers to page 10.]]Even those contrary to morality, such as for example a power which can condemn the innocent? Is this what M. Ferrand means?

  [C. [Refers to page 12.]]“Unlimited powers are a political monster and a great error on the part of the French nation. It will not make the same mistake again in the future. You will be spelling out again to the people this great truth, all too misunderstood in this country. Namely that the nation does not itself have these powers, these unlimited prerogatives which its flatterers have attributed to it. When a political association forms, one does not communalize all the rights every individual has in society, the whole power of the entire mass of individuals. In political life one communalizes in the name of public power, as little as possible and only what is necessary for maintaining each person in his rights and duties. Power on this scale is far short of the exaggerated ideas with which people have [46] blithely invested what they call sovereignty. Notice that I am speaking of the sovereignty of the people, because if there is such a thing as sovereignty, that is where it is. This word is so vastly inflated in the popular understanding, only because the French mind, still full of royal superstitions, has thought itself bound to endow it with the whole historical baggage of solemn pomposity and absolute powers which have glamorized unlawful sovereignty. We have even seen public feeling, in its vast magnanimity, enraged again for not giving it more. People seemed to be saying to themselves with a sort of patriotic pride, that if the sovereignty of great kings is so powerful, so terrible, the sovereignty of a great nation should be something more remarkable still. What I say is that to the extent that we enlighten ourselves, and distance ourselves from the days when we thought we knew what was what, and were really doing no more than idle wishing, the power of sovereignty will be brought back within its proper limits. Once again let it be said: the power of the people is not unlimited.” Siéyès, Opinion dans le Moniteur.46

  [D. [Refers to page 20.]]When people wanted to condemn the King to death, they said that the will of the people made the law, that insurrection, demonstrating the will of the people, was a living law, and that Louis XVI was condemned by that law.

  [C. [Refers to page 12.]]“Unlimited powers are a political monster and a great error on the part of the French nation. It will not make the same mistake again in the future. You will be spelling out again to the people this great truth, all too misunderstood in this country. Namely that the nation does not itself have these powers, these unlimited prerogatives which its flatterers have attributed to it. When a political association forms, one does not communalize all the rights every individual has in society, the whole power of the entire mass of individuals. In political life one communalizes in the name of public power, as little as possible and only what is necessary for maintaining each person in his rights and duties. Power on this scale is far short of the exaggerated ideas with which people have [46] blithely invested what they call sovereignty. Notice that I am speaking of the sovereignty of the people, because if there is such a thing as sovereignty, that is where it is. This word is so vastly inflated in the popular understanding, only because the French mind, still full of royal superstitions, has thought itself bound to endow it with the whole historical baggage of solemn pomposity and absolute powers which have glamorized unlawful sovereignty. We have even seen public feeling, in its vast magnanimity, enraged again for not giving it more. People seemed to be saying to themselves with a sort of patriotic pride, that if the sovereignty of great kings is so powerful, so terrible, the sovereignty of a great nation should be something more remarkable still. What I say is that to the extent that we enlighten ourselves, and distance ourselves from the days when we thought we knew what was what, and were really doing no more than idle wishing, the power of sovereignty will be brought back within its proper limits. Once again let it be said: the power of the people is not unlimited.” Siéyès, Opinion dans le Moniteur.46

  [46]Moniteur universel, 7–8 thermidor an III (25–26 July 1795), pp. 1236–1239, reproducing the speech Siéyès delivered on 2 thermidor an III (20 July 1795) in the Convention. The text is republished by Paul Bastid, Les discours de Siéyès dans les débats constitutionnels de l’an III (2 et 18 thermidor). This is a critical edition with an introduction and notes. Paris, Hachette, 1939, pp. 13–30. The passage quoted by Constant is on pp. 17–18.

• Back to Top

  2: Session I: The General Will: A Critique of Rousseau. Reading 2

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK II: On the Principles to Replace Received Ideas on the Extent of Political Authority

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/108873 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK II

  On the Principles to Replace Received Ideas on the Extent of Political Authority

  • Ch. 1. On the limitation of political authority. 31
  • Ch. 2. On the rights of the majority. 32
  • Ch. 3. On the insignificance of the way government is organized when political power is not limited. 35
  • Ch. 4. Objection to the possibility of limiting political authority. 36
  • Ch. 5. On the limits of political authority restricted to a minimum. 38
  • Ch. 6. On individual rights when political authority is thus restricted. 39
  • Ch. 7. On the principle of utility substituted for the idea of individual rights. 39

  chapter one

  On the Limitation of Political Authority

  A careful distinction must be made between Rousseau’s two principles. The first has to be accepted. All authority which does not issue from the general will is undoubtedly illegitimate. The second must be rejected. The authority which issues from the general will is not legitimate merely by virtue of this, whatever its extent may be and whatever objects it is exercised over. The first of these principles is the most salutary truth, the second the most dangerous of errors. The former is the basis of all freedom, the latter the justification of all despotism.

  In a society whose members have equal rights, it is certain that no member can on his own make obligatory laws for the others. It is wrong, however, to say that society as a whole enjoys this faculty without restriction. The body of all citizens is sovereign. This is to say that no individual, no group, no faction, can assume sovereignty except by delegation from that body. It does not follow, however, that the citizen body or those in whom it has vested the exercise of its sovereignty, can use it to dispose sovereignly of individual lives. On the contrary, there is a part of human existence which necessarily remains individual and independent, and by right beyond all political jurisdiction. Sovereignty exists only in a limited and relative way. The jurisdiction of this sovereignty stops where independent, individual existence begins. If society crosses this boundary, it becomes as guilty of tyranny as the despot whose only claim to office is the murderous sword. The legitimacy of government [50] depends on its purpose as well as upon its source. When that government is extended to purposes outside its competence, it becomes illegitimate. Political society cannot exceed its jurisdiction without being usurpative, nor can the majority without becoming factious. The assent of the majority is not enough in all circumstances to render its actions lawful. There are acts which nothing can endow with that character. When a government of any sort puts a threatening hand on that part of individual life beyond its proper scope, it matters little on what such authority claims to be based, whether it calls itself individual or nation. Even if it were the whole nation, except for the man it is harassing, it would be no more legitimate for that. If anyone thinks these maxims dangerous, let him think about the other, contrary dispensation which authorized the horrors of Robespierre and the oppressions of Caligula alike.

  chapter two

  On the Rights of the Majority

  No doubt individuals should submit to the majority. It is not that majority decisions have to be seen as infallible. Any collective decision, that is to say, any decision taken by a group of men, is exposed to two kinds of drawback. When it is dictated by passionate feelings, it is clear these can lead to mistakes. Even when the decisions of the majority are taken in a spirit of calm, however, they are exposed to dangers of another kind. They are formed by negotiation between divergent opinions. Now, if one of the opinions was right, it is clear that the transaction can have been achieved only to the detriment of truth. It may have corrected wrong opinions in some respects, but it has misrepresented the correct opinion or made it less accurate.

  It has been shown by mathematical calculations that, when an assembly is held to choose between a certain number of candidates, usually the victor is not the object of the most [51] complete agreement, but of the least repugnance.1 The same thing happens to majority opinions as happens to such candidates in an assembly. This is an inevitable ill, however. If we were to conclude, on the grounds of the possible errors of the majority, that we should subordinate our wills to the will of the minority, we would find ourselves with violent or mendacious institutions.

  The prerogative of the majority is that of the strongest. It is unjust. It would be still more unjust, however, if the will of the weakest were to prevail. If society has to make a decision, the strongest or the weakest, the most or the least numerous, must triumph. If the right of the majority, that is, the strongest, were not recognized, the right of the minority would be. This is to say that injustice would weigh down on a greater number of people. The liberum veto (the free veto) of Poland, which intended that the laws should have force only nemine contradicente (no one being opposed), did not make all the citizens free, but rather subjected them all to one person. It is in order to conserve the freedom of the greatest number that the most just lawmakers have found themselves obliged to undermine the freedom of all.2 We have to resign ourselves to disadvantages inherent in the nature of things and which the nature of things puts right. There is a restorative force in nature. Everything natural carries its remedy with it. That which is artificial, on the contrary, has disadvantages at least as great, and nature furnishes us with no remedy. But what she does do to counter the errors of the majority, is to circumscribe its rights within precise limits. If you say its power is boundless, you abandon all defenses against the consequences of its errors.

  The majority can make the law only on issues on which the law must pronounce. On those on which the law must not pronounce, the wish of the majority is no more legitimate than that of the smallest of minorities.

  I ask pardon for perhaps overextending this subject—it is so important—and for having recourse to an example in order to make these [52] truths more tangible. Let us suppose some men get together for a commercial undertaking. They pool part of their wealth. This is the common wealth. What is left to each man is his private wealth. As a majority, members can direct the use of common funds. If, however, that majority claimed the right to extend its jurisdiction to the rest of the wealth of other members, no law court would uphold this claim.

  It is the same with political authority. If the comparison is inexact, this is in respect of one point only, and this inexactitude works in favor of our argument. In the case of our private hypothetical association, there exists outside that association a constraint preventing the majority from oppressing the minority. A small group of men cannot take over the name of the majority in order to tyrannize the association. After all, this association may have entered contractual arrangements for which it is jointly liable, with an outside party. In politics, however, none of these conditions obtains. The political community is not responsible to any outside party. There are only two fractions: the majority and the minority. The majority is the judge when it acts within its competence, and becomes a faction when it exceeds this role. No outside force prevents the majority from sacrificing the minority, or a small band of men from calling themselves the majority in order to control everyone. It is therefore vital to make up for this missing external force, by fixed principles from which the majority never deviates.

  Political authority is like government credit. Governments, being always more powerful than their creditors, are by this very fact forced into more stringent scrupulousness. For if they deviate from this a single time, no coercive force being exercisable against them, confidence is frightened away and no longer to be reassured. Just so, the majority always having the power to trespass upon individual or minority rights, if it does not most scrupulously abstain from such, all security vanishes, for there is no guarantee either against the repetition of such offenses or ever-increasing excesses.

  A frequent source of error about the proper scope of political authority is the constant confusion of the common interest with the interests of all. The common interest concerns only society as a whole. The interests of all are simply the sum of individual interests. Apart from fractional interests which concern only an individual or fraction of society and hence fall outside all political jurisdiction, there are further things which concern all the members of society and which [53] nevertheless must not be subject to the force of the general will. These things interest each person as an individual and not as a member of the collectivity. Religion is a case in point, for example. Political authority must always act upon the common interest, but it must act on the interests of all only when the common interest is also at stake. The comparison I have previously used will explain what I mean. That part of their wealth individuals hold in common is their common wealth. You could call the sum of what each member retains privately the wealth of all, but if members have not pooled it, it is precisely the wealth of all rather than the common wealth. It is not one undifferentiated thing. It is the sum of all individual fortunes, independent one from another. These are not all of a piece, nor do they merge together. The polity can legitimately make use of the common fund but not of the private wealth of all. It is an error to conclude from the fact that an issue touches on all members of a society that it must be an issue of the common interest. It may be something which touches people only as individuals. Religion, for example, is a case in point. Before we concede the right of government to get involved in this issue, we need to see if it includes any point of common interest, that is to say, if the interests of individuals are of such a nature that they collide and cause mutual offense. It is only then that political involvement is called for, and even then only to prevent friction. If, on the contrary, these interests live side by side without troubling each other, they are not under political jurisdiction. It is de jure that they are not, and we will show that they must not be de facto, since such jurisdiction would merely harass them pointlessly. They should retain their independence and their complete individuality.

  Most political writers, above all those who wrote according to the most popular principles, fell into a bizarre error when they spoke about majority rights. They represented the majority as a real person whose existence is protracted and which always comprises the same parts. In fact, however, it happens all the time that a section of the population which was in the majority yesterday forms today’s minority. To defend the rights of minorities is therefore to defend the rights of all. Everyone in turn finds himself in the minority. The whole society is divided into a host of minorities which are oppressed in succession. Each one, isolated to be made a victim, becomes again, by a strange metamorphosis, a part of what is called the exalted whole, which serves as a pretext for the sacrifice of some other [54] minority. To grant the majority unlimited power is to offer to the people en masse the slaughter of the people piecemeal. Injustice and misfortune make their way round the whole society, becoming ever more oppressive of individuals in isolation in the name of all. At the end of this dreadful rotation, all people find they have lost more, irretrievably, as individuals, than they had transiently gained as members of society.

  chapter three

  On the Organization of Government When Political Authority Is Not Limited

  When political authority is not limited, the organization of government becomes a very secondary question. The mutual supervision of the diverse sections of the government is useful only in preventing one of them from aggrandizing itself at the expense of the others. But if the total sum of their powers is unbounded, if when they band together these government sections are permitted to invade everything, who is to stop them forming coalitions to engage in oppression at will?

  What matters to me is not that my personal rights shall not be violated by one such power-group, without the approval of another such, but that this violation be forbidden to all sections of government. It is not enough that the executive’s agents have to invoke the authorization of the legislature. Rather, it is that the legislature shall not authorize their actions except in a specified jurisdiction. It is not worth much that the executive power has no right to act without the assent of a law, if no limits are placed on this assent, if no one declares that there are things about which the legislature has no right to make laws, or, in other words, that there are areas of individual existence in relation to which society is not entitled to have any will.

  If political authority is not limited, the division of powers,3 ordinarily the guarantee of freedom, becomes a danger and a scourge. The division of powers is excellent in that it draws together, as far as possible, the interests of the governing and the governed. Men in whom executive power is vested have a thousand ways of evading the workings of the law. It is therefore to be feared that if they make the [55] laws, such laws will be worse for having been made by men who do not fear that they will ever fall on them. If you separate the making of laws from their execution, you achieve this end, that those who make the laws, and are thus governors in principle, are yet governed in application; whilst those who execute the laws, though they are governors in application, are yet among the governed in principle. If, however, in dividing power, you do not put limits on the competence of the law, it can happen that one set of men make the laws, without troubling themselves about the evils occasioned thereby, while another set execute them, in the belief that they are innocent of any harm arising from such laws, because they say they had no hand in their making. Justice and humanity find themselves between these two sets, without being able to speak to either. It would be a thousand times better, then, if the authority which carried out the laws were also charged with making them. At least it would appreciate the difficulties and pains of carrying them out.

  chapter four

  Objection to the Possibility of Limiting Political Authority

  There is one obvious objection to the limitation of political authority. Is it possible to limit it? Is there any force strong enough to prevent its breaking through the barriers we have prescribed for it? Some might say we can use various ingenious combinations to limit power by dividing it. We can put its different parts in opposition and in equilibrium. But how can we ensure that its total sum is not unlimited? How can power be limited other than by power itself?

  The limitation of political authority in the abstract would probably be a sterile quest, if one did not then back it up with the guarantees it needs in the organization of government. The investigation of these guarantees is not within the purview of this book. Let me merely suggest that it seems possible to me that we might discover political institutions whose foundations are such as to combine the interests of the various power-holders in such a way that their most obvious advantage, as well as the longest term and securest one, would be for them all to stay within their respective spheres and thereby be mutually [56] contained. Even so, the first question is still the limitation of overall authority. For before organizing anything, one needs to have determined its nature and extent.

  Without wanting, as philosophers too often have, to exaggerate the influence truth has on men, I will say next that it can be affirmed that when certain principles are fully and clearly demonstrated, they work in some sense as a guarantee of themselves. The most forceful interests have a kind of sense of decency which stops them from relying on errors which have been too obviously refuted. At the exact moment when the strife of the French Revolution was again stirring up into a ferment all the prejudices still existing, some errors of the same type did not dare to reappear, for the simple reason that they had been proved to be wrong. The defenders of feudal privilege did not dream of reviving the slavery which Plato in his ideal Republic and Aristotle in his Politics thought indispensable.4

  There forms around all the truths people manage to environ with incontestable proof a universal agreement which soon prevails. If it is widely recognized that political authority is not boundless, that such limitless power exists nowhere on earth, no one will ever again dare to demand such power. Experience itself shows this already. Even though political authority has not yet been limited in theory, it is nevertheless in fact more confined today than before. For example, people no longer attribute powers of life and death without trial even to society as a whole. Nor does any modern government claim such a right. If the tyrants of the ancient republics seem to us far more unbridled than the governments of modern history, this must partly be attributed to this. The most monstrous outrages by despotisms based on one man were often due to the doctrine of the boundless power of all. So political power can be curtailed. It will be guaranteed first of all by the same force which upholds all recognized truths, [57] that is, by public opinion. Afterward we can get busy with guaranteeing this in a more fixed way, via the specific organization of political powers. But having obtained and consolidated the first guarantee will always be a great good.

  chapter five

  On the Limits of Political Authority Restricted to a Minimum

  Two things are indispensable for a society to exist and exist happily. First it must be protected against internal disorder and secondly sheltered from foreign invasion. Political authority must therefore be specifically entrusted with repressing this disorder and repulsing this invasion. To this end it must be invested with the right to impose penal laws against crimes, with the right to organize armed force against external enemies, and finally, with the right to demand from individuals the sacrifice of a portion of their individual wealth in order to meet the expenses of these two purposes. The vital jurisdiction of political authority therefore comprises two branches: the punishment of offenses and resistance to aggression.

  We must even distinguish two kinds of offenses, those intrinsically harmful and those which offend only as violations of contracted undertakings. Society’s jurisdiction over the first kind is absolute. With regard to the second kind it is only relative. It depends on the nature of the undertaking and on the claim of the injured party. Even when the victim of an assassination or theft would like to pardon the guilty person, society should still punish him, because the offense committed is intrinsically harmful. When, however, the breaking of an agreement is agreed to by all the contracting or involved parties, society has no right to enforce prolonged compliance, just as it has no right to dissolve the agreement on the say-so of one party alone.

  It is clear that society’s jurisdiction cannot stop short of these limits, but it can remain within them. We can scarcely imagine a nation in which individual crimes [58] remained unpunished and which had prepared no means of resisting the attacks foreign nations might launch against it. But we could imagine one in which the government had no mission other than overseeing these two aims. Individual life and national security would be perfectly assured. The necessary minimum would be done.

  chapter six

  On Individual Rights When Political Authority Is Thus Restricted

  Individual rights are composed of everything independent of political authority. In the hypothetical case we have just presented in the last chapter, individual rights would consist in the option to do anything which does not hurt others, or in freedom of action, in the right not to be obliged to profess any belief of which one is not convinced, even though it be the majority view, or in religious freedom, in the right to make public one’s thought, using all the means of publicity, provided that that publicity does not harm any individual or provoke any wrong act, finally in the certainty of not being arbitrarily treated, as if one had exceeded the limits of individual rights, that is to say, in being guaranteed not to be arrested, detained, or judged other than according to law and with all due process.

  The rights of society cannot be meaningfully distinguished from those of government, because it is impossible to indicate a way in which society can exercise its rights without the government getting involved. The rights of individuals can be usefully distinguished from those of government and society, however, because it is possible, as we see, to indicate the things government and society must refrain from pronouncing on and to leave individuals perfectly free.

  chapter seven

  On the Principle of Utility Substituted for the Idea of Individual Rights

  A writer much to be recommended for the depth, precision, and originality of his thinking, Jeremy Bentham, has recently protested5 [59] against the idea of rights and above all of natural, inalienable, and imprescriptible rights. He has claimed that this idea is liable only to mislead us, and that in its place should be put the idea of utility, which he sees as simpler and more intelligible. Since this preferred route of his has led him to conclusions just the same as mine, I would rather not dispute his terminology. I must take issue with it, however, because the principle of utility, in the way Bentham presents it to us, seems to me to have the drawbacks common to all vague locutions, and moreover to have its own special dangers.

  No doubt by defining the word “utility” appropriately, one can contrive to base on this notion exactly the same rules as those which flow from the idea of natural right and justice. A careful examination of all the questions which seem to put what is useful in opposition to what is just, leads one always to the finding that what is not just is never useful. It is nonetheless true, however, that the word “utility,” in its common meaning, summons up a different notion from that conveyed by justice or right. Now, when usage and common reason attach a fixed meaning to a word, it is dangerous to change that meaning. In vain you go on to explain what you meant. The word stays what it was and your explanation is forgotten.

  “One cannot,” says Bentham,6 “reason with fanatics armed with a natural right each one understands as he sees fit, and applies as it suits him.” But by his own admission, the utility principle is quite as susceptible to multiple interpretations and contradictory applications. Utility, he says,7 has often been misapplied. Taken in a narrow sense, it has lent its name to crimes. “But we must not cast back on the principle faults which are contrary to it and which it alone can put right.” Why should this apologia be relevant to utility and not to natural right?

  The principle of utility has this further danger natural right does not, that it awakens in the human heart the hope of advantage rather than the feeling of duty. Now, the evaluation of an advantage is arbitrary: it is the imagination which settles it. But neither its errors nor its whims can change the idea of duty.

  [60] Actions cannot be more or less just; but they can be more or less useful. In hurting my fellow men, I violate their rights. This is an incontestable truth. But if I judge this violation only by its utility, I can get the calculation wrong, and find utility in the violation. The principle of utility is thus much vaguer than the principle of natural rights.

  Far from adopting Bentham’s terminology, I should like as far as is possible to separate the idea of right from the notion of utility. This may be only a difference of wording; but it is more important than one might think.

  Right is a principle; utility is only a result. Right is a cause; utility is only an effect.

  To wish to make right subject to utility is like making the eternal laws of arithmetic subject to our everyday interests.

  It is no doubt useful for the general transactions of men between themselves that numbers involve unalterable relationships. If we claimed, however, that these relationships exist only because it is useful that this should be so, there would be lots of opportunities for proving that it would be infinitely more useful if these relationships were manipulable. We would forget that their constant utility comes from their invariant character, and ceasing to be unalterable, they would cease to be useful. Thus utility, by having been too favorably treated on superficial grounds, and turned into a cause, rather than being left properly as an effect, would soon vanish totally.

  Morality and right are like that too. You destroy utility simply by placing it in the first rank. It is only when the rule has been demonstrated that it is good to bring out its utility.

  I ask of the very author I am refuting. Do not the expressions he wants to forbid to us refer to better grounded and more precise ideas than those he claims should replace them? Say to a man: you have the right not to be put to death or arbitrarily plundered. You will give him quite another feeling of security and protection than you will by telling him: it is not useful for you to be put to death or arbitrarily plundered. One can show, as I have already acknowledged, that that is indeed never useful. But in speaking of right, you present an idea independent of any calculation. In speaking of utility, you seem to invite that the whole question be put in doubt, by subjecting it to a new verification.

  What could be more absurd, cries Bentham’s ingenious and learned collaborator,8 [61] than inalienable rights which have always been alienated, or imprescriptible rights which have been taken away or abandoned? But to say that such rights are inalienable or imprescriptible is only to say that they should not be alienated or taken away or abandoned. One is talking of what ought to be the case, not of what is the case.

  By reducing everything to the principle of utility, Bentham condemned himself to an artificial evaluation of the results of all human actions, an evaluation which goes against the simplest and most customary ideas. When he speaks of fraud, theft, etc., he has to admit that if there is loss on one side, there is gain on the other. Then his principle, in order to reject the charge of identical actions, has to be that the benefit of the gain is not equivalent to the ill of the loss.9 The benefit and the ill being separate, however, the man who commits the theft will find that his gain matters more to him than another’s loss. Any idea of justice being now out of the question, he will henceforth calculate only his gain. He will say: for me my gain is more than equivalent to the loss by other people. He will thus be held back by nothing except fear of discovery. This theory wipes out all moral motivation.

  In repudiating Bentham’s first principle, I am far from belittling that writer’s merits. His work is full of original ideas and profound perspectives. All the consequences he derives from his principle are precious truths in themselves. It is not that the principle is false; it is only the terminology which is wrong. Once he manages to detach himself from his terminology, he brings together in a most admirable structure the soundest notions on political economy, on the caution with which governments should intervene in people’s lives, on population, on religion, on commerce, on the penal laws, on the appropriateness of punishments to crimes. He happened, however, like many estimable writers, to mistake a rewording for a discovery, a rewording to which he then sacrificed everything.

  CONSTANT’S NOTES

  [1. ]A probable reference to the Essai sur l’application de l’analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix by the marquis de Condorcet (Paris, Impr. royale, 1785), in which pp. lix–lxx of the Discours préliminaire deal precisely with the choice between several candidates taken in an assembly.

  [2. ]The example of Poland comes, as is indicated in a note by Sismondi, in his Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres (éd. cit., p. 89), from Leszek Leczinski, La voix libre du citoyen, ou observations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, s.l., 1749. Constant had had this manuscript by Sismondi from October 1800 until the start of 1801.

  [3. ]Constant will return to this question of the separation of powers and the interests of the governing and the governed, in Book XVII, Ch. 3.

  [4. ]This last sentence is very close to a passage by Madame de Staël, Des circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la république en France, critical edition by Lucia Omacini, Paris-Geneva, Droz, 1979, p. 26: “In the struggle of the French Revolution, the most inveterate aristocrats did not dream of proposing the reestablishment of slavery, while Plato in his ideal Republic does not suppose we can do without it.”

  [5. ]Jeremy Bentham, Traités de législation civile et pénale, précédés de principes généraux de législation, published in French by Etienne Dumont, Paris, Bossange, Masson et Besson, an X, 1802, 3 vol. The criticisms which Constant leveled at Bentham were probably drafted in the summer of 1802, hence the use of the adverb “recently,” and this chapter was to form part of a grand political treatise written at that time.

  [6. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book II.

  [7. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book II.

  [8. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book II.

  [9. ]Jeremy Bentham, Traités de législation . . . , éd. cit., t. I, pp. 94–95: “As to the motive of cupidity, in comparing the pleasure of acquiring by usurpation with the pain of losing, the one would not be equivalent to the other.”

  [A. [Refers to page 40.]]
  
  Principes de législation, Ch. 13.10

  [B. [Refers to page 40.]]
  
  Ibid., Ch. 5.11

  [C. [Refers to page 41.]]
  
  M. Dumont of Geneva.12
  
  Constant’s title for Ch. 3 is slightly different inside his text from what appears on this page.

  [A. [Refers to page 40.]]
  
  Principes de législation, Ch. 13.10

  [B. [Refers to page 40.]]
  
  Ibid., Ch. 5.11

  [C. [Refers to page 41.]]
  
  M. Dumont of Geneva.12
  
  Constant’s title for Ch. 3 is slightly different inside his text from what appears on this page.

  [10]Ed. cit., t. I, p. 136. Here is the complete sentence: “One can no longer reason with fanatics armed with natural right, which everyone understands as he likes, applies as suits him, in which he does not have to concede a thing, or take anything back, which is at once inflexible and unintelligible, which is venerated in his eyes like a dogma and from which one cannot deviate without committing a crime.”

  [11]Ed. cit., t. I, p. 27: “One can do harm thinking one is following the principle of utility. A weak and limited mind makes mistakes, by not taking into consideration more than a small number of the goods and bads. A passionate man goes wrong by attaching too much importance to a good which blinds him to all the disadvantages. What typifies the bad man is indulging in pleasures hurtful to others. And that itself supposes the absence of some kinds of pleasures. But one does not shift onto the Principle the blame for faults which are contrary to it and which it alone can rectify.”

  [12]Hofmann failed to find this quotation in Dumont’s Discours préliminaire on Bentham’s Traités de législation (éd. cit., t. I, pp. v–xxxvi). Might not Constant have transcribed once more a remark Dumont might have made orally, in discussions he had with Mme. de Staël and her friends? Dumont stayed at Coppet in 1802, and Constant could have made a note of one of his reflections. On this subject see Norman King, “‘The airy form of things forgotten’: Madame de Staël, l’utilitarisme et l’impulsion libérale,” Cahier Staëliens, No. 11, Dec. 1970, pp. 5–26.

• Back to Top

  3: Session I: The General Will: A Critique of Rousseau. Reading 3

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: Additions to the Work Entitled Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/109149 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  Additions to the Work Entitled Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

  Book I:

  Exposition of the Subject

  Chapter 1:

  The Purpose of the Work1

  This work, started long ago, has continued under several successive governments in France. Measures are recalled and censured in it which no longer apply. So are others, however, which still obtain, and consequently I do not think people will believe that I have sought to please today’s government by attacking yesterday’s. I have followed the principles,2 independently of circumstances, and I have not deliberately turned aside either for praise or blame. So many errors which seemed to have become dead letters, so many sophisms one might have thought discredited, so many iniquitous practices apparently dead and gone, have reappeared, sometimes under the same names, sometimes with new ones, that I have come to think that I must speak out against these things, whether past or present, equally strongly. So many truths one might have considered universally recognized have been called into question or even put aside, without our being deigned a word of explanation or excuse, that I thought I must not enunciate a single truth, however obvious it might appear, without bringing to mind the evidence for it. My purpose has been to compose an elementary work. A work of this kind, on the fundamental principles of politics, has seemed to me to be lacking in all the literatures I know.

  [512] This work originally contained two parts, constitutional institutions and the rights of individuals, in other words, the means of public security and the principles of freedom. Since the first are contestable and the second incontestable, I thought I should present the latter separately.

  I have therefore removed from my work everything on the forms of government. I had treated the full extent of this subject. The division of citizens into governors and governed, political powers, executive power and its exclusiveness, whether temporary or for the lifetime of the person in whom it is vested, the dangers of this exclusiveness in the election of the Head of State, the mode of election established in France, the tendency to military government of elective exclusiveness, the complexity of executive power, the objections which the history of so many ancient republics as well as modern revolutions furnishes against that complexity, the abuses natural to executive power, however it is composed, the guarantees against these abuses, the limitation of controls on the law of peace and of war, the right to resist taxes, the independence of the judiciary, accountability, the organization of the armed forces, the legislative power, abuses thereof, safeguards instituted or to be instituted against these abuses, the unlimited power which gives the executive exclusive initiative, the division into two chambers, the veto, the dissolution of legislative assemblies, popular election, in other words, and the advantages found only therein, the two systems substituted successively in France for popular elections, the formal description of a constitution in which all powers would be elective and all the rights of citizens recognized, the weak aspects of this constitution and the means of remedying these, such have been my research preoccupations. A generation must feel young and think forcefully, however, to involve itself with such discussions. In the amphitheater in Constantinople, amid the factions of the blues and the greens,3 they would have been out of place. They would have brought out the suspicions of the former and wearied the frivolity of the latter.

  [513] When political questions have caused long agitation and numerous misfortunes, there is established in many minds a conviction that on everything connected with government reasoning is valueless. The errors of theorizing seem much more tiresome than abuses of practice. Since they are indeed more unlimited and incalculable in their results, the attempts of faulty theorizing have a disadvantage from which such abuses are free. A man bends to institutions he finds established, as to the rules of physical nature. He arranges, according to their very faults, his interests, his economic reckoning, and the planning of his life. All his relationships, hopes, means of employment, and happiness are organized around that which exists. During revolutions, however, since everything changes at every instant, men no longer know where they stand. They are forced by their own needs, and often also by the way they are threatened by government, to behave as if that which has just appeared must always subsist; and predicting nevertheless the next changes, they possess neither the individual independence which ought to result from the absence of security, nor security, the only compensation for the sacrifice of freedom.

  It is therefore not surprising that after repeated revolutions, any idea of improvement, even abstract and separated from any particular application, is odious and inconvenient and that the aversion it inspires extends to everything which seems to indicate the possibility of a change, even in the most indirect way. It is quite understandable, moreover, that those with the reins of government favor this natural disposition. Even if we attribute to the governors the purest of intentions, they are bound to reserve for themselves the privilege of meditating on the good they want to do; or if they entrust this delicate task to some of the subordinate collaborators surrounding them, this can only be in part. They are happy to see that submissive and flexible minds are undertaking to indicate to them some of the detail needed for achieving their purpose or, better still, to make available to them by minor innovations the means government thinks it has discovered. The independent thinker, however, who claims to grasp at a glance the overall picture, which the governing group allow people to concern themselves with at the very most only in bits, and then functionally and without passing judgment, the philosopher who goes back to the first principles of power and of social organization, even when he isolates himself from present things, and fixing on his memories or his hopes, wishes only to speak with regard to the future or pronounce only on [514] the past, seems to them nevertheless a presumptuous rhetorician, a tiresome observer, a dangerous sophist.

  In this way the fatigue of the people combines with the anxiety of its leaders to circumscribe the domain of thought on all sides. It has been said that under the monarchy there was an intermediary class, the nobility, who conserved some independence but only insofar as this decorated and consolidated submission. Similarly, in the state of things we are describing, there forms an intermediary class which demands from reason only what is necessary to limit its sway. Educated men, but without power, elegant subalterns, who take style as the purpose and some restrained and secondary ideas as the means, set themselves up as organs of opinion, the supervisors of thought. They raise an altar to literature, in contravention of philosophy. They declare on which questions human intelligence may exercise itself. They allow it to frolic but subordinately and with circumspection, in the space they have granted it. Anathema on it, however, if it transgresses that space, if, not abjuring its celestial origin, it gives itself over to forbidden speculations, if it dares to think that its noblest destiny is not in the ingenious decoration of frivolous subjects, adroit adulatory praise, and sonorous declamation on unimportant subjects, but that heaven and its own nature have made of it an eternal tribunal, where everything is examined, weighed, and in the last resort judged.

  When an inopportune mind wishes to launch itself thoughtlessly from abstract theory to violent practice and, trusting to its own perhaps incomplete and defective speculations, destroy and change everything, madness is probably present and crime even more so. Only perfidiously, however, could immobile, solitary thought be compared with solitary action or reckless advice. Action is for the moment; thought’s judgments are for centuries. It bequeaths future generations both the truths it has been able to uncover and the mistakes which seemed to it truths. Time, in its eternal progression, gathers and separates them.

  In Athens, a citizen who deposited on the altar an olive branch surrounded with sacred little bands could freely explain himself on matters political.

  I might be accused rather of dealing with obvious things and establishing inapplicable principles. Men who have renounced reason and morality find all one says in this direction so many paradoxes or commonplaces; and since truths are disagreeable to them, above all in their consequences, what constantly happens is that they disdain any initial assertion as not needing demonstration and protest against the second and the third as unsustainable and paradoxical, [515] although the latter may obviously be the necessary and immediate conclusions of the former.

  Stupidity is singularly fond of repeating axioms which give it the appearance of profundity, while tyranny is highly adroit in seizing upon stupidity’s axioms. Hence it arises that propositions whose absurdity astonishes us when they are analyzed slip into a thousand minds, are repeated by a thousand tongues, while men who want to agree are continually reduced to demonstrating the obvious.

  I have quoted a lot in my book and mainly from living authors, or those recently dead, or from men whose very name is authoritative, such as Adam Smith, Montesquieu, and Filangieri. I have made a point of affirming that often I was only reproducing, with softened expression, opinions to be found in the most moderate of writers.

  One habitual ruse of the enemies of freedom and enlightenment is to affirm that their ignoble doctrine is universally adopted, that principles on which rest the dignity of the human race are abandoned by unanimous agreement, and that it is unfashionable and almost in bad taste to profess them, thinking taken very seriously in France. I have tried to prove to them that this so-called unanimity is a lie.

  An example more imposing still than the theories of even the most estimable writers has, it is true, come to the rescue of my principles, precisely while I was laboring to expound them. It is the conduct of the American government, such as it was pronounced by the President of the United States on his installation and such as it has been for the last ten years.4

  “Although the will of the majority,” said Mr. Jefferson, on 4 March 1801, “must prevail in all cases, that will, to be legitimate, must be reasonable. The minority possess equal rights which equal law must protect. To violate these rights would be an oppression. It is sometimes said that man must not be entrusted with his own self-government. But then how could one entrust to him the government of others? Or have angels perhaps been found, in the form of kings, to govern us? To prevent men from doing each other mutual harm and to leave them otherwise full freedom to manage themselves in the efforts of their work and in their progress toward improvement, that is the sole purpose of a good government. Equal and right justice for all men, whatever [516] their condition or their belief, religious or political, peace, trade, straightforwardness with other nations, without insidious alliances with any, the maintenance of the governments of the individual States in all their rights, as the most convenient administration for our domestic interests and the most certain bulwark against antirepublican tendencies, the conservation of the federal government, in its full constitutional vigor, as the guarantee of our peace within and our security without, scrupulous attention to the right of election by the people, a sweet and sure correction of abuses, which otherwise the sword or revolutions destroy, when no peaceful remedy has been prepared, an unreserved acceptance of the decisions of the majority, a well-disciplined militia, our best safeguard in time of peace and during the first moments of a war, until regular troops can back it up, the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, economy in public expenditure, in order that the working class be taxed only lightly, faithful settlement of our debts and an inviolable respect for public confidence, the dissemination of education and an appeal to public rationality, against all abuses of whatever sort, religious freedom, press freedom, freedom of persons under the protection of habeus corpus and trial by juries impartially chosen, such are the essential principles of our government. The watches of the night of our wise men and the blood of our heroes have been consecrated to their triumph. This is the profession of our political faith, the educational text of the citizens, the touchstone by which we can appreciate the services of those in whom we put our confidence; and if we deviated from these principles in moments of error and alarm, we would have to hasten to retrace our steps and regain the path which alone leads to peace, freedom, and security.”5

  These principles, put into practice with so much success in a huge, flourishing republic, are those which I have tried to establish in this book, and I have devoted myself to this task with all the more zeal and confidence in that having some time carried out legislative functions in the State which they named the French Republic, [517] I find myself free again6 without having done a thing or expressed an opinion, which forces me to alter in the slightest detail the intellectual system which I believe to be the only true or useful one, and the only one worthy of good men.

  Notes Referring to the Original Chapter

  1. Extremes do not only touch but also follow each other. “Everything which tends to restrain kings,” said M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, “is received with delight, because people remember the abuses of royalty. Perhaps there will come a time when everything which tends to restrain the rights of the people will be received in the same fanatical spirit, because the dangers of anarchy will be no loss strongly felt.” II, 232.7

  2. the first conquest of our century. Order of the day of His Majesty the Emperor in the Moniteur of 22 January 1806: “There is no censorship at all in France. Every citizen in France can publish such books as he judges suitable, provided he accepts accountability. No work may be suppressed, no author may be prosecuted save by the courts or following a decree by His Majesty where the text would threaten the first prerogatives of public security and interest. We would be falling again into a strange situation, if a simple clerk could arrogate to himself the right to prevent the publication of a book or force an author to retract from or add anything to it. Freedom of thought is the first conquest of the century. The Emperor wishes it conserved,” etc.8

  Chapter 2:

  Rousseau’s First Principle on the Origin of Political Authority

  Notes

  1. the world knows only two kinds of power. [518] There is force, the illegitimate kind. “A town,” said Louis XIV, speaking of Genoa, “formerly subject to my ancestors and which had no other rights of sovereignty than those it drew from its rebellion.” Mémoires I, 24. If republics, formerly subject to monarchies, have no other rights of sovereignty than their rebellion, then kings could well have no other rights than their usurpation.

  Chapter 3:

  Rousseau’s Second Principle on the Scope of Political Authority

  Notes

  1. the general will must exercise unlimited authority over individual existence. “The voice of the greatest number,” (says Rousseau), “always obliges everyone else. This is a consequence of the contract itself. One may ask how a man can be free and forced to comply with wills which are not his own. How can those opposing be free and subject to laws to which they did not consent? The question is badly put. The citizen consents to all the laws, even to those passed in spite of him and even those which punish him if he dares to break one of them. The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will. When a law is proposed in the people’s assembly, what is asked of them is not precisely whether they approve of the proposition or reject it, but whether or not it conforms to the general will which is their own. Each one giving his vote gives his opinion thereon, and from the counting of votes the declaration of the general will is derived. Therefore when the contrary opinion to mine is carried, this means only that I was in error and that what I had estimated to be the general will was not such. If my minority opinion had carried, I would have done something other than I had wished. It is then that I would not have been free.”9 Rousseau merely pushes the theory back here and expresses it in other words. How does it arise that the declaration of the majority makes the general will clear to the eyes of the minority? It makes clear only that that will is of the majority. What should have been said is that the society has agreed that when a determination is necessary, the will of the majority constitutes law. Then, although it may not be true that when a minority obeys an opinion contrary to its own, [519] it is all the freer for it, although it may be still less true that an individual, whose individual opinion had prevailed, would not be free and would be doing something other than his will, in the very act of doing it, it is conceivable that each person submits to the sacrifice, because others agree to submit to it. This, however, can be only when a resolution is needed. Otherwise the sacrifice has no purpose.

  Chapter 4:

  Rousseau’s Arguments for Boundless Political Authority

  Notes

  1. He (Rousseau) forgets that all the preserving qualities which he confers on the abstract being he calls sovereignty are born in the fact that this being is made up of all the separate individuals without exception. Jean-Jacques’s system and all the reasoning it rests on are forgetful of reality, a terrible, vicious flaw. Man is counted in it as some numerical value. When the words all or everyone are spoken, we are led to believe that the discussion is of units or collections of units, which differ not at all among themselves and cannot change their nature. It is taken as shown that none of these figures can encroach on another. These figures being moral beings, however, the result of the bringing together of ten of these figures is not directly proportional to their numerical value, but proportional to the moral value of each one of them. This means that just adding them together one does not get the modified sum of their respective strengths, but only the tenfold multiplication of the individual force of one of them.

  Chapter 6:

  The Consequences of Rousseau’s Theory

  Notes

  1. They ask it from the owner of political authority, the people. “The people’s name is a forged signature to justify its leaders.” Bentham.

  [520] Chapter 8:

  Hobbes’s Opinion Reproduced

  Notes

  1. This was no longer a man, this was a people. One sees how easily Rousseau’s system leads to the most absolute despotism. Furthermore, we have remarked already that the supporters of this kind of government had avidly seized on it. Men, by uniting, says M. Ferrand, have surrendered, at a word from the general will, all the forces of individual will. Préface de l’esprit de l’histoire.10 Does not this sentence seem to be from Rousseau?

  Note that M. Ferrand and others never stop reproaching freedom’s friends for losing themselves in abstractions. When, however, they speak to us of the general will personified and of the sovereign who is no longer a man but a people, can we say they avoid them?

  Chapter 9:

  On the Inconsistency with Which Rousseau Has Been Reproached

  Notes

  1. He (Rousseau) has declared that sovereignty cannot be alienated, nor represented, nor delegated. “Sovereignty,” he says, “cannot be represented politically, for the same reason it cannot be alienated. It consists in the general will, and the will is not amenable to representation. It is the same or it is different. There is no in between.”11 This idea of Rousseau arises because he has never defined either the nature or above all the limits of the general will. If we call the will of the members of a society on all things the general will, doubtless it cannot be represented; but if we call the general will only the will of the members of society on those things which society makes common to them, it can be represented, that is to say that a smaller association can be made with the same purpose and can make its decisions according to the same interests as the larger. [521] “The people’s deputies,” he continues, “are not and cannot be its representatives; they are only its commissioners; they cannot conclude anything definitively.”12 It would be just as right to say, however, that the majority cannot conclude anything definitively; since the majority is only the representative of the whole and one is aware of the absurdities this system leads to. “Any law,” he says, finally, “which the people personally have not ratified is null; it is not a law.”13 Rousseau does not explain, however, how the ratification of the majority binds the minority. The power of the majority is explained only by considering it as representing everybody.

  Book II:

  On the Principles to Replace Received Ideas on the Extent of Political Authority

  Chapter 1:

  On the Limitation of Political Authority

  Notes

  1. When this government is extended to purposes outside its competence, it becomes illegitimate. Under Pericles the sale of five thousand citizens, because they had been born to foreign mothers, was tyrannical. The institutions under Lycurgus concerned with the private lives of citizens were tyrannical. Our laws on the mercantile system are tyrannical. See Smith IV, chapters 1–8.14 Peter I’s law that his subjects should cut off their beards was tyrannical. Finally, any law which prescribes to someone what he must do for his own utility is tyrannical. The law can decide between one man and another and between a man and society. Any law, however, which regulates the conduct of a man in relation to himself, and only himself, is tyrannical. All these tyrannical laws are nonetheless justified in Rousseau’s theory.15 [522]

  2. Even if it were the whole nation, except for the man it is harassing, it would be no more legitimate for that. “Pellitur a populo victus Cato; tristior ille est qui vicit, fascesque pudet rapuisse Catoni. Namque hoc dedecus est populi, morumque ruina. Non homo pulsus erat: sed in uno victa potestas, romanumque decus.” Petronius.16 (Cato, defeated, is driven out by the people. Less fortunate is that man who defeated him, and is ashamed to have seized the symbols of authority from Cato. For this is the dishonor of the people and the ruin of morals. It was not a man who was driven out, but in one man was the power and honor of Rome defeated.)

  Chapter 2:

  On the Rights of the Majority

  Notes

  1. than that of the smallest of minorities. Law has been defined as the expression of the majority will.17 This definition is very faulty and very dangerous, in that it appears to give the general will unlimited power. It should be added: on those things where the general will has a right to will.

  2. fixed principles from which the majority never deviates. With the system of unlimited rights of the numerical majority, one would be poised to make the whole world one people. For how would a notional territorial line change that right? If thirty thousand neighbors do not want the same thing as a nation of thirty million, by what right do they resist? And if we granted them the right to resist, how would a city already an enclave not have the right to become a neighbor again? [523]

  3. They represented it [the majority] as a real person. It is never fundamentally the majority who oppress. People steal its name and then use the arms it has supplied. The interest of the majority is never to oppress. The sum of misfortunes which exists in a society extends more or less to all members and increases when there is injustice. To harm an individual or class is to harm the whole.

  Chapter 3:

  On the Insignificance of the Way Government is Organized When Political Power Is Not Limited.

  Note

  1. there are things about which the legislature has no right to make laws. There are unalterable principles, of which the whole nation is guardian, that the nation itself cannot infringe, and which are not numbered in the mass of opinions which it submits to those it charges with exerting its will. The reason is simple, namely that the nation itself has no right to a will contrary to these principles.

  Chapter 7:

  On the Principle of Utility Substituted for the Idea of Individual Rights

  Bentham says that if the supporter of utility found an action in the catalogue of virtues which resulted in more pain than pleasure, he would expunge it from this catalogue. I, 5.18 This is remarkable, in that he says elsewhere19 that it is bad to speak of natural rights, because each man wants to judge them according to his individual judgment. But is this not what he makes the supporter of utility do? In all systems one has to come back to individual judgment.

  If one wants to judge according to conscience, says Bentham, I, 31, one will not be able to distinguish between an enlightened conscience and a [524] blind one.20 If, however, one wishes to judge according to the principle of utility, neither will one distinguish good and bad calculations on this basis. “In the immense variety of ideas on natural laws,” says Bentham, Principles of Legislation, Ch. 13, “won’t every person find reasons to resist human laws?”21 He will find the same, however, in the principle of utility, applied in his way.

  Book III:

  On Arguments and Hypotheses in Favor of the Extension of Political Authority

  Chapter 1:

  On the Extension of Political Authority beyond Its Necessary Minimum, on the Grounds of Utility

  Notes

  1. writers of all persuasions. “All government is instituted for men’s happiness. Therefore everything which can assure their happiness must be a part of government.” Ferrand, Esprit de l’histoire, I, 107.22

  2. In some respects Montesquieu. Bentham in his Principles of legislation, Ch. 12, entitled On the limits which separate morality from legislation, begins with a false proposition. “Morality,” he says, “is the art of directing men’s actions in such a way as to produce the greatest possible sum of happiness. Legislation has precisely the same end.”23 It is through confounding thus the purpose of legislation and that of morality that we have given legislation the growth which has become so disastrous. Bentham feels it himself, for he says a little further on that the means of legislation are very different, and its jurisdiction much more extensive than that of morality, that there are acts useful to the community which the law must not require and harmful acts [525] that it must not forbid.24 He concludes with this obvious maxim: “Do not make the power of the laws intervene except to stop men hurting each other.”25 The definition he begins with, however, is equally inexact. The purpose of legislation is far more to safeguard men against the evil they might do themselves than to procure for them the greatest sum of possible happiness. The definition of morality and legislation seems to me to be that the first indicates to men how they might be happy, in rendering their fellows happy, and that the second preserves them from what might, on the part of their fellows, prevent them from making themselves happy, without hurting others. The singular thing here is that Bentham joins two definitions which contradict each other and which I oppose equally. For he says elsewhere that any law is a necessary evil.26

  3. in this theoretical system political authority has absolutely no limits nor can have. Why is judicial power the least dangerous of all the powers? Because its nature is perfectly understood. People know it is essentially rigorous, that it is indispensable, but that the good it produces is only the absence of ill. Furthermore, it is not easily extended beyond its limits and when people have wanted to abuse it, they have had to distort it and turn it into a political power instead of a judicial one. Those holding other powers have not wished to be confined to such narrow limits. Consequently they have tried to deceive people over the nature of their duties. Instead of presenting themselves as guardians of public order, that is to say, as a sort of political constabulary, they have posed as the fathers of the people. They have benefited from being surrounded by affection, or telling themselves this, rather than mistrust, and have been able to abuse their powers much more easily.

  [526] 4. Nothing simpler than the questions on which these functions call governments to pronounce.27 “In the system of natural freedom,” says Smith, IV, 9, V, 1, “the sovereign has only three duties to fulfill, three duties in truth of great importance, but clear, simple, and within the grasp of an ordinary mind. The first is the duty to defend the society from any act of violence or invasion on the part of other independent societies; the second is the duty to protect, as far as possible, each member of the society against the injustice and oppression of any other member, that is to say, the duty to establish a proper administration of justice; and the third of setting up and maintaining certain public works and institutions which the private interest of an individual or group of individuals would never get around to setting up or maintaining because the profit would never reimburse the expenditure of an individual or group of individuals, although with regard to a whole society this profit more than reimburses the expense.”28

  Chapter 3:

  Are Governors Necessarily Less Liable to Error Than the Governed?

  Notes

  1. less impartial than the governed. It is a mistake to take it that there is a huge gulf between those who lay down and those who accept the law. Their respective educations are always in a certain ratio and do not shift much. Nature grants no privilege to any individual. No one runs ahead of his country and era by much, and those who do so most are perhaps the least proper to dominate them.

  2. It is not the same with the numberless functions, etc. The marquis de Mirabeau, [527] in the first book of his L’ami des hommes,29 establishes a very accurate distinction between positive and speculative laws. According to him, positive laws limit themselves to maintenance; speculative ones extend to guidance. He does not draw extensive consequences from this distinction. His purpose was not to fix the limits of government functions, and although in the rest of his book he may constantly be led by the force of things to restrain these functions de facto, he nevertheless admits their legitimacy in law and strives only to indicate how they may be at their most useful and advantageous. We whose purpose is different will adopt the same distinction, but in order to follow up all it results in. When the government punishes a harmful action, when it penalizes the violation of a contractual undertaking, when it builds or repairs roads or canals, it fulfills a positive function. When it comes down hard on an action which is not harmful on the grounds that it could lead indirectly to one that is, when it imposes on individuals certain rules of conduct which are not a necessary part of the work to which they are contracted, when it harasses the management of property or the carrying out of work, when it seeks to dominate public opinion, either by punishments or rewards, or by seizing control of education, it arrogates to itself a speculative function, since it is basing itself on calculations, on suppositions, on hypothetical cases, in short, on speculations. Government in its positive functions does not act in a spontaneous way. It reacts in response to facts, to antecedent actions, which have taken place independently of its will. In its speculative function it does not have to react against facts or acts already performed, but to foresee future actions. It acts spontaneously therefore. Its action is the product of its own will.

  The positive functions of government are of an extremely simple nature, and in their exercise its action is neither equivocal nor complicated. Its speculative functions are of a different nature. They have no factual base, not being exercises over factual things. They start from a supposition, a presumption. They can vary, extend, and become infinitely complicated. Positive functions often let government stay motionless. Speculative functions never let it do so. Its hand, which at times prevents, at times controls, at times creates, at times repairs, can [528] sometimes be invisible, but never stay inactive. Its action taking its source from its will, it must necessarily reason, suppose, guess. This indicates clearly how difficult it is in so many respects to draw the limits of speculative functions. Sometimes government places barriers of its own choosing just short of criminal activity, with a view to then establishing penalties against the overturning of these barriers. Sometimes it has recourse to prohibitive measures, against actions which, neutral in themselves, seem to it nevertheless dangerous in their indirect consequences. Sometimes it builds up coercive laws to compel men to do what seems useful to it. At other times it extends its scope to what people believe. On yet further occasions it modifies or limits the tenure of property, arbitrarily regulating its forms and deciding on, ordering, or prohibiting its transmission. It subjects the work of production to numerous impediments, encouraging it on one side, restraining it on another. Actions, conversations, writings, mistakes, truths, religious ideas, philosophical systems, moral attachments, inner feelings, uses, habits, customs and manners, institutions, all that is vaguest in man’s imagination, most independent in his nature, everything there belongs to the government domain. It enfolds our existence on all sides, takes hold of our first years, surveys and restrains our least movements, sanctifies or combats the most uncertain of our conjectures, modifies or directs our most fugitive impressions.

  The difference, then, between speculative and positive functions is that the latter have fixed boundaries, rather than the unlimited ones the former have, once they are accepted.

  The law or governmental action, according to which the government might send citizens to the frontiers to defend these when they are attacked, would be a law or positive government action, since obviously its purpose would be to repel an aggression committed and prevent the native territory being invaded. The law or government action according to which the government might oblige citizens to carry the war into the country of another nation, which it suspected of considering an attack, would be a law or action of a speculating government, since that government would not be acting on a factual basis, against some committed action, but following a speculation, against a presumed one. So, in the first case, government authority would be limited, since the government could not take action against a fact, if there were no such fact. In the second, on the contrary, government authority would be limitless, speculation always being at the government’s discretion.

  Another difference between positive and speculative functions is that when the government limits itself to the former, [529] it cannot make mistakes; but when it arrogates the latter to itself, it exposes itself to error of every kind.

  When government passes a law against assassination or theft, since its severity is directed only against determinate actions, it cannot go astray. If, however, government makes laws against the decay of trade or the stagnation of industry, it runs the risk of taking for means of encouragement things which are not such. A law against theft or assassination can be more or less perfect and therefore more or less attain its purpose. It is impossible, however, that it will work completely against this purpose. A law to encourage trade can destroy it. A law to favor production can run counter to it.

  There is therefore in the speculative functions of government a double drawback. Not being susceptible to limitation, they lay themselves open to arbitrariness. Obliging government to act on suppositions, they multiply the chances of mistakes.

  Chapter 4:

  Are Governmental Mistakes Less Dangerous Than Those of Individuals?

  Notes

  1. freely set himself straight. Nature has given our errors two great correctives, personal interest and experience. If personal interest makes mistakes, the very losses incurred will enlighten it. What our interests have undergone will put them on a far more secure track than prohibitions could. The man with a vested interest will not have seen proof that prohibitions are necessary. For him their value exists only in the foreboding of governments. Individual interest will never see them as safeguards, only as obstacles.

  2. it is better to run the natural risk of individual mistakes. “Everything man does for himself,” says Godwin, Political Justice, VI, Ch. 8,30 “is a good. Everything his fellow citizens or country do for him, against his consent, is an ill.” Godwin is right, and it is an ill in several respects. First, there is a violation of each person’s rights. Justice prefers that every man be judge of what constitutes his own happiness. When you strike a blow against this individual prerogative, even if you are right a thousand times over [530] in the individual case, you are spurning a general principle, which cannot be upturned without the widest and most serious consequences. Secondly, however, it is very doubtful whether, even in the individual circumstance, you are likely to be right. You are subject to error every bit as much as the man whose interest you claim to know better than he himself. On this matter you are much more liable to error than he, for he is very much better acquainted with the overall details of his existence than you who perceive only one side of it, you to whom that one-sided and incomplete awareness can suggest very wrong notions. Thirdly and finally, nothing is beneficial save by consequence, persistence, and agreement and unless it lasts. Now, what you do for a man, against his will, he will undo. Whatever work you have built up at the expense of part of his freedom, with the remainder of that freedom, he will try to destroy it. There will therefore be no cohesion, no continuity, no persistence: instead there will be struggle. If you are right and the violence you are doing the man really is in his interest, do you know what the result will be? It is that you will separate him from his interests and he will not be wrong to separate himself from them. For the interest of his independence is much more important to his happiness than the individual interest in whose name you are claiming to subjugate him. If he gave in to you in this case, in which you are right, you would demand the same submission in another case in which perhaps you would be wrong. It is therefore in his lasting interest to resist you, even when you are acting in his interest of the moment.

  Chapter 5:

  On the Nature of the Means Political Authority Can Use on the Grounds of Utility

  Notes

  1. calmly set out again to make what they called laws. We have seen better still. We have seen our legislative assemblies forget the laws they have passed and pass them a second time.

  Book IV:

  On the Proliferation of the Laws

  Chapter 1:

  Natural Causes of the Proliferation of the Laws

  The laws have been defined as the expression of the general will. This is [531] a very false definition. The laws are the declaration of men’s relations between themselves. From the moment society exists, it establishes certain relations between men. These relations are true to their nature, for if they were not true to their nature, they would not become established. These laws are nothing other than these relationships observed and voiced. They are not the cause of these relationships, which on the contrary are anterior to them; on the contrary, they declare that these relationships exist. They are the declaration of a fact. They create, determine, and institute nothing, except forms and procedures such as to guarantee that which existed before their institution. It follows that no man, no fraction of society, nor even the whole society can, properly speaking and in an absolute sense, attribute to itself the right to make laws. The laws being only the expression of relations which exist between men and these relations being determined by their nature, to make a new law is only a new declaration of what existed previously.

  The law is not in the gift of the legislator. It is not his spontaneous work. The legislator is to social order what the physician is to nature. Newton himself was able only to observe it and tell us the laws he recognized or thought he recognized. He did not to all appearances delude himself that he was the creator of these laws.

  One thing excuses governments for the proliferation of the laws. This, that everybody solicits them to this end. Does a man think up a new project? Soon he is asking the government for it. Men who most favor freedom are not free from this error. The economists, etc.

  Chapter 2:

  The Idea Which Usually Develops about the Effects Which the Proliferation of the Laws Has and the Falsity of That Idea

  The complicated institutions of government and legislation have created such a number of artificial relations between men that there is no longer room for their true nature. Their moral existence, their will, their judgment find themselves choking under their civil, political, and legal existence, an existence if not opposite to the former, at least totally modified. There has been done for the entire life of man what constitutions did for [532] primary assemblies.31 Reports have been drafted in advance, in which only the name and the date have been left blank and on the basis of which the human race resigns itself docilely to modeling all its actions. Men today have nothing in their own right. In the case of the inner life, there are positive religious dogmas. For external activity there is the law; with the result that when law or religion collapse, men no longer have any guidance and no longer know what they must do.

  I read in the Declaration of Rights that no man is a good person if he does not strictly and rigorously observe the laws.32 Does this mean that if I am a good son, a good husband, a good father, a good friend,33 but I forget or I break one of the thirty-two thousand laws which compose our code, I will not be a good man? I perceive in this doctrine a morality every bit as artificial as that of the fakirs of India, who attach virtue or crime to the observance or nonobservance of practices with no value or danger.

  Chapter 3:

  That the Principal Benefit Which Supporters of Democratic Government Are Looking for in the Proliferation of the Laws Does Not Exist

  The more a government measure is contrary to justice and reason, the more it entails disorder and violence, and then the need for the measure is justified in terms of this disorder and violence. If, on the grounds that most crimes are committed on the highways and that by forcing citizens to stay at home in their houses we would prevent these crimes, the law told them not to leave their homes and put guards everywhere to arrest the lawbreakers, the citizens, condemned either to neglect the looking after of their interests and to interrupt their reciprocal dealings or to disobey the law, would probably take the second course. The guards would come forward to arrest them and they would put up some resistance. Brawls, threats, fighting on the [533] highways would multiply more than ever and the legislator would conclude from this the necessity of the law which was the initial cause of all these calamities. He would take the effect for the cause: this is the history of many laws.

  Often, when the execution of a law meets a thousand obstacles, people imagine these obstacles could be lifted by a new law. This new law is eluded in turn. This is remedied by a third law. You go on like this to infinity. If after you are worn out with fruitless attempts you go back to the first law, fertile source of so many secondary laws, and try to repeal it, you will for the most part see that everything would go better for it, and you would succeed by this repeal, not only in freeing yourself from a bad law, but from a whole series of laws necessary to assure, even imperfectly, the carrying out of your first law.

  “You have never in your life,” says the Abbé Galiani, p. 250, “bound anything, whether with string or with thread, without giving it one twist too many or making one extra knot. It is in our instinct, whether we are small or great, always to go beyond the natural measure, following the force of our intention.”34 I conclude from this that one should bind things as lightly as possible.

  After the earthquake at Lisbon,35 the marquis de Pombal, in order to prevent the people leaving en masse, set up a cordon of cavalry on the banks of the Tagus and had the roads leading out into the country guarded by large detachments of infantry. No quake occurred, and so these precautions had no inconvenient consequences. If it had been repeated, however, it is clear that the obstacles put in the way of the people’s flight would have increased the despair and unhappiness, since one would have had to battle against the soldiers as well as the elements.

  Chapter 4:

  On the Corruption Which the Proliferation of the Laws Causes among the Agents of the Government

  Even when the government stays strictly within the limits prescribed by its purposes, it always more or less corrupts the instruments it uses. To corrupt is to substitute for moral considerations, which would decide for us if they were the only ones to make themselves heard, considerations of another kind. [534] Any addition to, any change in, the motives which must determine men’s conduct, any threat, any promise, be it of pecuniary recompense, or of power, is a form of corruption. Now, this form of corruption is inseparable from government, within whatever narrow limits you enclose it. It needs agents who, sometimes, function without thought and obey without conviction. These agents are necessarily corrupted. If, along with the natural functions with which it is invested, the government adds functions which do not belong to it, such as, for example, influencing the opinions and outlook of the governed, the corruption of its agents will increase indefinitely. When the government is only an instrument of repression, punishing crimes people have been able to commit, its agents have only little latitude. They are in the inevitably wrong and unhappy situation of obeying without being convinced, and for motives of a quite different nature from conviction. Nothing is left to their arbitrary decision, however. In everything which is not purely repression, though, the solitary barrier having once been breached, despotism no longer finds anything to slow down its march. There results from this a much wider terrain for the corruption of agents. This corruption is aggravated further by the contempt it arouses. The natural feeling that the government should leave citizens free in the occupational, wealth-seeking, and moral part of their lives is so strong that the very men who have not adopted this political view look on the agents of the other approach with nothing but aversion and disdain. Now, this contempt tends to corrupt them more and more. In this way, through its wrong measures, the government, in order to achieve a good which it does not attain, and which it is not in its capacity to attain, creates a real ill. Its true purpose is not to do good but to prevent ill and to do so by way of penal laws. It corrupts in this case only a very small number of those who carry out these laws, and the dealings of these men with society being neither frequent nor complicated and always hostile, the corruption penetrates the social body less. Whereas when the government wants to do positive good, since it corrupts its agents in the same way and since there are more of them, and their dealings with society are more frequent, more various, and less hostile, the harm is much greater.

  Coercive laws, intended to force the governed to such and such an action, have one further drawback than prohibitive laws, intended only to forbid such and such an action to the governed. The absence of action is more difficult to determine than the action itself. Against this negative crime a more constant, positive, and inquisitorial surveillance is called for.

  [535] In cases where coercive laws were absolutely necessary, rewards should be attached to obedience rather than punishments attached to transgression. Since the State cannot be lavish with rewards, however, there should at the same time be as few as possible laws of this kind.

  Chapter 5:

  Another Drawback of the Proliferation of the Laws

  There were excesses in our old institutions. There are still more in our present ones. Most of the time it is a matter not of adding to them, but reducing them. I deliver you from a ferocious animal, said Voltaire, and you ask me what I am putting in its place.36 This witticism could be applied to many laws. Let us guard against concluding, from the host of laws which have been established, that a host of laws is necessary to public order. Let us consider which laws would seem indispensable to us if the idea of the laws came up for the first time.

  Book V:

  On Arbitrary Measures

  Chapter 1:

  On Arbitrary Measures and Why People Have Always Protested Less about Them Than about Attacks on Property

  It is in Ch. 15 of Livre XXVI of The Spirit of the Laws that Montesquieu establishes principles much more favorable to property than to freedom. Examining his arguments carefully, however, we see that they apply with as much force to freedom as to property. “It is,” he says, “a paralogism to say that the individual good must yield to the public good. That holds only in the cases where it is a question of the authority of the city, that is to say, the freedom of the citizen. This does not hold in cases where the ownership of goods is at stake, because the public good is always that each person invariably keeps the property which the civil laws bestow on him.” How is it, however, that Montesquieu has not felt that the public good was always also that each person keeps his legitimate freedom? Why is it untoward that, on the grounds of the public good, blows should be struck at property? It is because a single attack of this kind takes away from all [536] property all guarantee and because the whole system of property is destroyed. It is the same, however, with freedom. “Let us take it as a maxim,” he continues, “that when it is a question of the public good, the public good is never that one should deprive an individual of his goods nor even that one should take away the least portion of them.”37 We can say as much for freedom, and experience shows it.

  Chapter 2:

  On the Grounds for Arbitrary Measures and the Prerogative of Preventing Crimes

  Notes

  1. government suspicions. The need to prevent crimes is sometimes only a pretext for government idleness, its members sometimes preferring to enchain us than to survey us. They must learn, however, that government is painstaking work and that it is to us, the governed, that peace and freedom belong, while the portion of the governors is enthrallment, anxiety, and work. Governments too often mistake public security and individual safety. Legislators and magistrates in all countries, the peace of the State depends on the sacrifice of your peace. If you must be spared all alarm, freed from all solicitude, released from every care, your work has lost its whole point, and what will you have left then? Prestige and power. No, this is not what your portion is. The society which raises you to the post you occupy commits you thereby to an indefatigable watchfulness. It is to you to watch the sky and the winds, to avoid rocks, to steer the ship and hold the rudder unremittingly. It is not right to leave the passengers to their anxieties, in order to give the pilot a chance to sleep.

  2. Of being nuanced infinitely. [Constant’s whole sentence is: “The exemplary nuances here are infinite.”] At a time of trouble, it may be legitimate and wise to order the citizens to carry some means of identification or to provide themselves with some such from the public authorities. If this requirement bore on one individual class only, however, it would be supremely unjust.

  Additions

  Sometimes the legislators, to palliate the injustices they commit, under the pretext of preventing crime or providing for public safety, resort to a subterfuge as odious [537] as it is illusory. They seem to pity those they hurt, to groan themselves under their harassment, and seek to make amends for this by tokens of esteem and interest. This, however, is to deprive the oppressed of their last remaining support. When a citizen is pursued by a powerful man, if it is a matter of taking his life, his reputation, or his property, it is to be hoped that hearts will be moved and that he will find defenders. When the victim is adorned with flowers, however, when he is seemingly honored, when it is claimed that injustice adds to his glory, the path of the crime is made smooth. This is not a punishment, those who want the ruin of an innocent tell you, this is a precaution, which becomes almost a triumph for the person who is its object. Ostracism transported to modern times.

  As prohibitive laws are much more favorable to the encroachments of authority than are the penal laws, government is pleased to exaggerate the small influence of the latter in order to have wider recourse to the former.

  Chapter 4:

  On the Effect of Arbitrary Measures in Terms of Moral Life, Industry, and the Duration of Governments

  Notes

  1. When there is no security, there is no moral life. Despotism is hurtful in that it prevents any long-term reckoning of the world. Now, moral life especially needs this kind of reckoning. The moment perhaps favors vice; time alone favors virtue.

  2. of production. The large-scale enterprises of merchants are always necessarily intertwined with public affairs. In monarchies, however, public affairs are most of the time as suspect to merchants as they seem to them secure in republican States.

  Additions

  Despotism in favor of virtue is infinitely more dangerous than despotism in favor of crime. When scoundrels violate due process at the expense of honest men, one knows that this is one crime more. The very violation of due process makes you pay particular attention to it. You learn uncomplainingly and through misfortune to regard such process as sacred, as protecting and conserving the social order. When good men violate due process at the expense of scoundrels, however, the people no longer know where they stand. Due process and the law appear to them like obstacles in the way of justice. They somehow get used to these things and put together some sort of theory of an equitable [538] despotism, which is the overthrow of any kind of thinking, because in the body politic, only due process is stable and resistant to men. The foundations themselves, that is, justice and virtue, can be disfigured. Their names are at the mercy of whoever wants to use them. A feature of all political parties is that they do not hate despotism as such, the first thing in need of hate in a free society, but only this or that despotic act, which seems contrary to their purposes and interests. Once talk of circumstances is allowed, circumstances can always be invoked against principles. Factions march from one circumstance to another, constantly outside the law, sometimes with pure intentions, sometimes with perfidious projects, eternally asking for large-scale measures, in the name of the people, of freedom, of justice. In everything public well-being demands, there are two ways of proceeding, the one legal and the other arbitrary. The first is the only one permissible and always in the long run the one the government finds itself the better for. As long as arbitrary government is considered only as something simply to be snatched from one’s enemy so one can put it to use, that enemy will strive in his turn to seize it, and the struggle will be forever, because arbitrary measures are inexhaustible.

  In republics, all arbitrary measures, all formulae intended to serve as a pretext for oppression, rebound on their authors. I find a striking example of this in the Acts of the Constituent Assembly and I will use to recount it the words of one of its members: Clermont-Tonnerre, IV, 90: The National Assembly wanted to declare absolute freedom of religious opinion. The Catholic priests, the supporters of the dominant religion, forced the Assembly to modify this principle by adding this sentence: provided that the manifestation of religious opinion does not threaten public order. Soon this same dominant religion was cruelly abused by this obscure and vague sentence, whose adoption its influence had secured. The overardent friends of the Revolution took advantage of the redraft they had opposed to crush, against all reason, those who had wrung it out of them.38

  [539] The ancients believed that places soiled by crimes had to undergo an expiation; and my belief is that land sullied by an act of despotism needs, for purification, a resounding punishment of the guilty person. Every time in any country I see a citizen arbitrarily incarcerated without seeing shortly afterward the hireling who arrested him and the jailer who received him, and the politician, whoever it was, who violated due process, dragged into the same prisons, I will say: this nation does not know how to be free, nor wish to be so, nor merit it, having not yet learned the first notions of freedom.

  If it were given to man to invert, just once, the order of the seasons, whatever advantage he might derive from this privilege in a particular circumstance, he would nonetheless experience as a result an incalculable disadvantage, in that subsequently he would no longer be able to rely on the unvarying regularity and uniform sequence which serve as a base for his working activities.

  Chapter 5:

  On the Influence of Arbitrary Rule on the Governors Themselves

  By giving themselves the prerogative of prevention, governments so multiply their duties that their responsibility becomes endless. Their respect for the most solemn treaties, their consideration for individual freedom, can be considered criminal.

  Book VI:

  On Coups d’Etat

  Chapter 1:

  On the Admiration for Coups d’Etat

  Notes

  1. cannot legitimate in individuals. Men in coming together merely put in common what each of them before possessed in isolation. A thousand individuals who link up, in that linking up give a guarantee and some force to the previous rights they had, but do not create for themselves any new rights. The rights of the majority are only the aggregation of the rights of each one. Nations are only aggregations of individuals. Their rights are only the joining up of individual rights. So what could this public morality be which some wish to oppose to private morality? Public morality consists only in the aggregation of individual duties and rights. Now, injustice, not being anyone’s right, cannot be the right of all. How could individuals acquire by coming together rights which they did not have in isolation?

  2. which you wish to seize. The Triumvirs, says M. Ferrand, I, 392,39 “agreed to withdraw from a republic whose loss had become inevitable those who insisted on wishing to defend it.” Approval of banishments.

  Book VII:

  On Freedom of Thought

  Chapter 2:

  On Freedom of Thought

  Notes

  1. praiseworthy tolerance. Each man, says M. Ferrand, must have the freedom to think what he pleases, but not to propagate his opinions if they are dangerous, just as he is permitted to have some poison in his closet but not to distribute it nor to make use of it.40 Among the sentences which prove the extent to which men are the dupes of words, this one, which has been repeated by many a writer, is one of the most remarkable. We find it anew in the preambles of edicts, in all the sweet-talking discussions of tolerance [541] which were employed to try to slow its development. It is a fact that enlightened men believed for some time that they should be obliged to those in government for this alleged indulgence. The government made it meritorious on their part that they allowed us to think what seemed reasonable to us! But how could they stop us doing so? By what means did they penetrate the secret of our thoughts, that we had been forbidden to express? They claimed our gratitude and imposed a shameful silence on us and did us all the harm they could. They said they respected our independence of thought. Yes, just as long as they did not know what it was, just as long as it stayed silent and sterile, locked up inside us, deprived of all expression, bereft of all social communication, of that fertile source of accuracy and perfecting. Man has a need, however, to express his thought. Thought itself is something real only when it is expressed. What could government do against thought it knew nothing of? It is insolent scorn on tyranny’s part that it should claim to grant as a favor something it cannot refuse.

  Chapter 3:

  On the Expression of Thought

  Notes

  1. speech and writing. Independently of speech and the press, individuals have another way of expressing their opinions, that is to say, coming together to discuss them. All our memories rebel against the exercise of that faculty, one so dangerous when it is abused. I will most assuredly not excuse those wild and monstrous gatherings which flung the nation into excesses of all kinds. I know only one circumstance which justifies meetings of opinion between unsophisticated individuals: this is the need to speak up for oppressed individuals. A sort of contagious courage forces the weak to appear strong. An assembly, in moments of danger, is normally directed by the bravest. Esprit de corps makes up for the lack of a sense of justice, and usurpation by a minority cannot take place. In all other circumstances, however, the groups which citizens arrange between themselves to discuss their opinions are more harmful than useful. They are mostly controlled by so-called reformers who substitute themselves for current thinking and the public will. They are a small minority who want control in the name of everybody. These men surround their theories with a force quite other than truth. They set up within the associations they dominate a sort of government, which has all the [542] weight of proper government, without any of its advantages. Government by clubs is the most degrading tyranny, the most inhuman and the coarsest. Should we conclude that the government has the right to ban these associations, to limit the number of members, to forbid the discussion of certain dangerous questions? All laws of this kind are evaded or arbitrary. They require moreover the resources of corruption, since one section of society has to be degraded in order to spy on and denounce the other. Now, any time when, in the case of any objective whatsoever, it is impossible to make a law which is at once precise and feasible and does not need corrupt agents, this objective neither demands nor admits of law. Another remedy must be looked for, and this remedy is freedom. Let government not forbid associations; let it maintain, however, true freedom. Let it defend the freedom of individuals against associations seeking to stifle it. These associations, in losing all means of doing harm, would soon lose all their importance. If the individuals who get together harm the safety of those not forming part of their association, let the government come down hard on these disturbers of peace and order, not as members of a society or sect, but as disturbers. It would be easy to prove that during the French Revolution, the clubs acquired their monstrous power only because right from the start, in order to group citizens under their banners against their will, they used forceful means which the government should have punished. A penal law carried out, for there would have been no need to make any, penal laws existed already, would have been of more value than any number of prohibitive laws. It would have been more certain in effect and more easy of execution. Since, however, prohibitory laws are more favorable to encroachments by government and to its idleness than penal laws are, it likes to overstress how little influence the former have, and to make wide use of the latter. People suppose that political questions are more likely to stir up human passions than are questions of any other sort. This is an error. The intrinsic importance of a question has less impact on the ardor with which men become agitated than that which they attach to themselves. Party bias has less to do with understanding the thing in dispute than with the commitments pride has assumed, the sacrifices people have made, the dangers they run, the allies who surround them, and the enemies they are fighting. In the amphitheater of Constantinople, there was murder over the chariot races and the colors blue and green, just as bitter as murder on the crossroads of Paris in the name of religion and liberty.41 People sought [543] lettres de cachet against gluckistes and piccinistes,42 as they did against Jansenists and Atheists. So regard associations like individuals. Ignore them if they are peaceful. Be harsh with them if they trouble the peace. Punish acts. Leave the rest to freedom. But know how to ensure and guarantee it. You will find it, essentially and infallibly, a healing force.

  2. from unthinking enthusiasm. I admit for an instant that certain books may corrupt manners or shake the principles of morality. Men should be taught to preserve themselves from these dangers by their own efforts and reason and through defending themselves. If all you do is force to one side corrupting ideas and dangerous sophisms, men will find themselves unprepared when they meet them and will let themselves be disarmed or perverted much more quickly. Children, whose head we have always wrapped for fear they might fall over and hurt it, fall one day when their head is not wrapped, and they crack it. If it is in the interests of one individual to spread bad maxims, it will be in the interests of a thousand others to refute them.

  3. the instruction servitude gives. The sudden achievement of freedom intoxicates slaves. The enjoyment of freedom forms men worthy of possessing it.

  It is absurd to wish to conceal truths contrary to the established constitution. The established order being reversible, the less men have reflected on the errors it contains and the less they are prepared for the order which must replace it, the more disorder and misfortune will there be in its overthrow and the sequences thereof.

  “A people assured of its rights enjoys them in calm and peace. If it misuses them, it is because it mistrusts them. Its haste is the effect of its fear.” Bentham, III, 190.

  4. the exaggeration which defies its laws. “Under the Ancien Régime in France, it was enough that a book on moral science was published in Paris to inspire an unfavorable prejudice.” Bentham, III, 178. The true censorship is that of an enlightened public, which withers dangerous opinions and encourages useful discoveries. The audacity of a lampoon, in a free society, will not save it from general contempt. By a contradiction easy to explain, however, the public’s indulgence in this respect is always proportionate to the severity of the government. Bentham, III, 20. [544]

  Chapter 4:

  Continuation of the Same Subject

  Notes

  1. about China. The press in China is as free ostensibly as in England, that is to say that each person may be by occupation a printer. The expeditious way, however, in which in this country any type of fraud is punished, without the formality of any juridical institution, is enough to stop the freedom of the press. The printer, seller, reader of any written thing which offends the government are equally liable to be punished by a caning. The publication of a work containing reflections on the conduct of the government or its principal agents would be followed by the certain death of the author and publisher. So nothing appears on government and politics except in the Peking Gazette. M. de Pauw observes in his Recherches that China is governed entirely by the birch whip and the bamboo cane.43 To these two things he should have added the annual calendar and the imperial gazette. For these are two instruments of constant use in the government’s hands. This gazette serves to spread to all corners of the empire praise of the virtues and fatherly affection of the sovereign, who occupies the throne. It takes the form of a small pamphlet. It is published every two days. The missionaries claimed that the punishment for a lie inserted in this gazette would be immediate execution. It is famous, however, for descriptions of battles which have never been joined and for announcing victories which have never been won. The missionaries explained themselves badly. They meant only that the editor of the gazette would be punished if he took it upon himself to insert some article which had not been sent to him by the government. [545]

  Chapter 5:

  Continuation of the Same Subject

  Notes

  1. All man’s faculties go together. “As for the evil which can result from censorship, it is impossible to evaluate, since it is impossible to say where it stops. It is nothing less than the danger of stopping all human intellectual progress in all occupations. If that had been true just of men in official positions, what would the result have been today? Religion, law, medicine, morality, all would still be in darkness.” Bentham, III, 22–23.

  2. must perish and fall. Governments would like men to be pliant so that they will obey them and brave so that they will defend them, ignorant so they will never hold any opinion of their own, and enlightened so they will be skillful instruments. This combination of opposed and incompatible things can never last long however.

  3. changes of scene. The observation that when a government, putting obstacles in the way of thought, prevents its subjects from being busy on their own account, it must itself keep them busy and therefore it must do extraordinary things, is circumstantial. Governments which obstruct individual activity also have the option of doing nothing and remaining inactive, by forcing the nation to remain thus. This is what they often do. Then they and the nation become stupefied.

  Caesar, once he had taken away the Romans’ freedom and thereby their one and only pastime, had to announce to them the war against the Parthians. Louis XIV, having succeeded in making the yoke of government heavier, threw France into a series of wars, caused the devastation of the Palatinate, and turned Europe upside down, just to give sustenance to the anxiety of a newly enslaved nation. Nothing is more natural. Under this kind of administration, the government puts itself in the place of the nation. The talk is no longer of the nation, as in free States, but of the government. Now, in such circumstances, the government must constantly prepare what to have discussed. Members of the government find themselves vis-à-vis the governed, in some degree in the situation of favorites vis-à-vis the king, though their connections may otherwise be very different. Louvois pushed Louis XIV into a disastrous undertaking, so as to take away from him any time to think about the behavior of his ministers. Governments which [546] take away from the governed the legitimate exercise of their various talents must use gigantic undertakings to keep them in a state of continual stupefaction.

  4. silent wastes. There are, I know, men so fixated on the need for power, so devoured by a bitter, somber egotism, that even this picture will not shock them. Thought must die, so that they can dominate,44 and were arts, science, and letters to die with thought, they would happily strip the human race of all the dignity of its nature, to perpetuate their hold over that wretched, mutilated species. One might think some genie of evil had cast them onto earth from some unknown planet, when it gave them a man’s face, for the ruin of humanity.

  Addition

  Thought is a human need like all the others. It is impossible to bid this need be silent by asking men to settle for a different one. All man’s needs want to be satisfied.

  Book VIII:

  On Religious Freedom

  Chapter 1:

  Why Religion Was So Often Attacked by the Men of the Enlightenment

  Notes

  1. revolt against its commands. Need of freedom of conscience, making the most delicate of women emigrate to an uncivilized land, where they perished, for lack of food. Recherches sur les Etats-Unis, I, 34.45

  Chapter 2:

  On Civil Intolerance

  Notes

  1. without government permission. The Lutherans and the Calvinists got together in Strasbourg. “This gathering required government approval, [547] without which Protestant communities are not allowed to change their teachings.” Journal des Débats, 6 thermidor an X [25 July 1802].

  Chapter 3:

  On the Proliferation of Sects

  M. Hume gives rather ingenious reasons for religions being salaried, but then they should all be so. Smith, V, 1.46

  Chapter 7:

  On the Utilitarian Case for Religion

  Bentham, following his single principle, that of utility, wishes to submit religion to the calculus. Does he not feel, though, that he is undermining it at its very core, by presenting it as useful, rather than presenting it as divine? I would add that he is degrading it. I would add further that he is presupposing one lot of men judging religion and imposing it on another lot. For the rest his principles are good, such as nonintervention by government in religious matters. Bentham, III, 134.47

  Chapter 8:

  Another Effect of the Axiom That the People Must Have a Religion

  Those who defend religion today defend it as a prop of despotism.

  Chapter 9:

  On Tolerance when Government Gets Involved

  The Interim [Edict] of Charles V48 is one of the most agreeable [548] examples, not-withstanding the consequences, of all those which history offers us of tolerance on the part of government.

  Government is in error, furthermore, when, dazzled by the chimera of a pointless and impossible harmony, it wishes to reconcile different beliefs. The least dissimilarities, unnoticed as long as government does not interfere, become germs of discord if it does. Frederick William, the father of Frederick the Great, astonished at not seeing the same discipline rule the religion of his subjects as ruled his barracks, wished one day to reconcile the Lutherans and the Reformed church. He extracted from their respective doctrines what caused their disagreements and ordered them to be in agreement. Until then these two sects had lived separately but in a perfect understanding. Condemned to union, they immediately began a bitter war, attacking each other and resisting the government. On the death of Frederick William, Frederick II ascended the throne. He set all opinion free. The two sects battled, without drawing his attention; they talked without being heard. Soon they lost hope of success and the vexation of fear. They fell silent. The differences subsisted and the dissensions were pacified.

  On the question of belief there is only one principle: complete freedom. Any time people want to depart from this, they fall into more or less shocking absurdities, but always equally dangerous ones, because all of them stand together and one necessarily harks back to the others. The idea of granting tolerance to already existing opinions and refusing it to those which might come to birth starts from the presupposition that believing or not believing is an effect of the will. According to this principle, one thinks oneself singularly human in lending oneself to the weaknesses which habit has made necessary and justified in prohibiting any novel deviation. It is forgotten that the essence of the human spirit is to go forward, to follow the chain of its ideas, to draw the consequences of these principles, and that these consequences being as proven for that human spirit as the principles from which it draws them, it is an absurdity to accept the latter while outlawing the former. This is to claim to tolerate the cause provided it does not produce an effect. This outlook, however, so absurd when it is spelled out, has been followed by several philosophers, so difficult is it to disengage oneself from prejudices and so strongly do the very prejudices one has conquered leave a false orientation in the mind which has shaken them off. [549] Complete intolerance is less inconsistent than this type of softened intolerance. If government has rights over public opinion, why should it not exercise its rights over ancient error as much as on the novel kind? If government has no such rights, why should it claim to have them over the future and not the past? Is it because it would seem to it easier to exercise its rights over the future? Vain hope. The need to draw consequences is no less imperative than that of believing what seems to us proven. The mind cannot condemn the premises it has agreed to sterility, and the tyranny which wishes to prevent it going from ideas to ideas is every bit as vexatious and against nature as that which orders it to abjure the ideas it has adopted. Governments founded on prejudices and yet hugely ambitious in recent years for philosophical glory have avidly adopted the approach I am fighting against here. It was indeed particularly convenient for them. To give to the people a little piece of the truth while detaching from truth the quality which makes it victorious, that is, extension and conquest, this would have been at once to the advantage of error and the honor of enlightenment. Truth, however, does not admit of such mutilation. However it is divided and fragmented, its smallest fraction carries within itself an aptitude for conquest. It enlarges, it develops, it brings its consequences on, forms its army, and you will see it ranged in battle, when you still think its sparse elements are in the isolation to which you are pleased to condemn it.

  Book IX:

  On Legal Safeguards

  Chapter 1:

  On the Independence of the Courts

  Notes

  1. its immovable members. From the fact that in Athens the people as a whole pronounced judgments, M. de Montesquieu concludes that in republics the power to judge must be revocable at pleasure.49 One might note, however, that then it is the whole people who do the judging and, given that, also note that each republic is in a single town and has no more than twenty thousand citizens. When this writer appears not to [550] wish that the power of judges be permanent, Esprit des lois, XI, 6, he speaks less of judges than of juries. This is made clear by this sentence: “judges ought to belong to the same circle as the accused and his peers.”50 Elsewhere he recognizes that judicial power submitted to the people is so dangerous that the Roman legislators permitted the accused to go into exile before the trial, I, 59.51 Judges could be temporary among the ancients but cannot be so now, our more complicated social relationships being such as to permit a thousand late but sure acts of vengeance against an independent judge who has reverted to ordinary citizenship. It is good that legislative power depends on the people. It is good that judicial power does not.

  2. the sale of offices.52 Under a despotic monarchy, the sale of offices, as a further guarantee of fixed tenure, was good. The choices of the monarch would surely not have been better. A distinction must be made among the functions of French courts, between those functions connected with legislation, courts always being challenged over these, and those connected with the administration of justice. The first would have been better discharged by an assembly appointed by the nation. It is a good thing, however, that the latter were removed from government remit. This was a shelter against despotism.

  3. l’esprit de corps in the judiciary. Esprit de corps is one of the best barriers against servility toward government or factions, in a nation in which everybody lets himself get dragged along by the dominant opinion. Nobody dares to hold an opinion against everybody else’s. Esprit de corps, on the contrary, acts as a shield, and individuals who want to resist the dominant opinion, reassured by that ally, link up with it. An irremovable body of judges is necessary so that a judge, when he judges according to his conscience, is not afraid of offending the government under which he may soon find himself an ordinary citizen again. In a nation which on the one hand is used to despotism and finds it rather convenient for its natural impatience and on the other carries to extremes all the views it has seized upon, the independence of the courts is the sole thing which can make that nation lose the habit [551] of despotism and endow it with principles it cannot abuse. The claims laid against despotism by courts, being always founded on facts, carry with them a conviction and a weight of which theories separated from facts are not capable.

  4. that no judgment is without appeal. “The maxim which says that the criminal shall have no appeal is the most absurd ever to enter the mind of man. He who has lost his case, in the first instance, by some trivial law, may appeal to a higher court, while he who has been unjustly condemned to be burned alive by nine municipal magistrates cannot appeal. Now if imbecility itself came to dictate our laws, it would not say anything worse or more horrible than that. For the result of it is that a trivial law is a more important object than the honor and life of a man consigned to the most cruel torments.” De Pauw, Recherches sur les Grecs, II, 6.

  5. the institution of the jury system. The main arguments of one author who has attacked the jury system (Gach, president of a court of first instance in the Department of the Lot)53 rest on the lack of zeal, and the carelessness, ignorance, and frivolity in France. He does not indict the jury system but the nation. It must be remembered, however, that if his arguments are sound, we would have to renounce the jury system in France. We surely know, however, that an institution may at first seem little suited to a nation, because of lack of familiarity, and yet become suitable, if the institution is intrinsically good, because the nation gets used to it and acquires the capacity it was lacking.54 It would be repugnant to me to think a nation careless of the first of its interests, the administration of justice and the protection afforded to innocence accused. The French, says Gach, will never be well-informed nor determined enough [552] to fulfill the purposes for which juries were instituted. Such is our indifference to everything connected with public administration, such is the power of egotism and individual interest, the tepidness, the absence of public spirit, that the law establishing trial by jury cannot be carried out.55 But who does not feel that what we need is a public spirit to overcome this tepidness and this egotism? This public spirit would be created by the habit of justice and freedom. Is it to be thought it would exist among the English without the overall pattern of their political institutions? Where the institution of the jury is constantly suspended, however, the freedom of the courts violated, the accused arraigned before commissions, this spirit cannot come to birth. People indict the setting up of juries. It is the way they are undermined which should be indicted. Gach invokes twelve years’ experience.56 Twelve years of revolutions! The jury, he says, will not be able, as the spirit of the institution requires, to separate its inner conviction from documentary evidence, the evidence of witnesses and other evidence, things which are not necessary when conviction exists and insufficient when it does not.57 But this is chicanery. There is no principle for separating these things. On the contrary, these are the elements of conviction. The spirit of the institution is solely to the effect that the jury not be bound according to a numerical or legal calculation, but by the impression which the overall mix of objects produced in documentary evidence, witnesses’ evidence, and other evidence has given it. Now, the enlightenment of simple good sense is enough for a jury to know and be able to declare whether, after having heard the witnesses, read through the details of objects, and compared the evidence, it is convinced or not.

  If juries, he continues, find a law too severe, they will absolve the accused and declare the circumstance not in keeping with their conscience. He considers the case of a man accused of giving shelter to his brother and thereby incurring the death penalty.58 This example, for me, far from militating against the jury as an institution, constitutes its greatest praise. It shows that this institution puts [553] obstacles in the way of laws contrary to humanity, justice, and morality. We are men before we are jurors. So, far from blaming the juror who, in this case, pronounced contrary to his conscience and thus failed in his duty as a juror, I would praise him for fulfilling his duty as a man and running in a way within his power, to the help of a man ready to be condemned to death for an action which is not a crime. The example given by Gach does not prove that there should not be juries. It proves that there should not be laws which pronounce a death penalty against a man for giving shelter to his brother. With this type of reasoning, the objection militates against any judicial organization, since one could invent laws so atrocious that no judge, with a jury or not, replaceable or permanent, would wish to apply them.

  There is a good definition of the jury: “It is,” says Lauze de Péret (De la garantie individuelle), “the reason of the guilty party, in his normal state of innocence, who stands in judge of that same reason, led astray for the moment by the crime.”59

  The jury judges morally, the judge materially. The jury judges in the way the good sense of every individual would judge, as the good sense of the accused himself would judge, if he were not partial because his own case is involved. The judge pronounces according to the laws dictated by the common interest of the society.

  When punishments are excessive, says Gach, or seem so to juries, they will absolve the guilty person, although they will be totally convinced as to his crime. I reply that this is the fault of the punishments and not of the juries.60 Punishments must not be excessive, and if they seem excessive to juries, this is because they are so, since jurors have no interest in finding them such. It will be said that this is to submit punishments to constant revision by juries. I reply, however, that only in extreme cases will juries resolve to stray from their functions. For, I repeat once more, they are as citizens interested for the sake of public safety in not so straying. Now, in extreme cases, that is to say, when they find themselves between the sense of justice and humanity and the letter of the law, it is not an evil if they so deviate. There should not be a law which so repels the humanity of the common man that juries, selected from within a nation, cannot make up their minds to agree to the application of that law; and the establishment [554] of permanent judges, whom habituation would reconcile to so barbarous a law, far from an advantage, would be an evil.

  People say that juries will fail in their duty, at some time out of fear, at another out of mercy. If it is out of fear, the fault belongs to civil administration’s being too negligent. If it is a matter of pity, it is too harsh a law which is at fault.

  Several objections against the institution of juries, drawn from their irresolution, from their susceptibility to seduction, could, apart from a few things, apply to judges. If we consider a country in which judges were sometimes harassed and slighted by the government and sometimes abandoned by that same government to the vengeance of the families or accomplices of accused persons, as juries were during the French Revolution, is it to be believed that judges would be much firmer and less shakeable than juries?

  The drawbacks of the jury system are all on the side of indulgence. Those of the judges are on the side of severity.

  “If there is no country,” says Gach, “where the arts and sciences are cultivated with more success than they are in France by a small number of privileged intelligences, no more is there anywhere the mass of the nation wallows in a more profound ignorance of everything connected with the laws and public administration.”61 Why is this so? It is because there has always been in the sanctuary of the laws and in public administration a great deal of arbitrariness, and the nature of government distanced French people from these things, and because, to draw closer more precisely to the subject we are dealing with, the formal understanding of criminal trials in France was restricted, and this raised a barrier between justice and the citizens. Change all these things and you will see the national character lose that frivolity and break out of that ignorance, which are only the result of all the bad institutions and which some people cite as a reason for perpetuating them. A people does not remain indifferent to what touches its freedom, its security, its honor, and its life, when it is allowed to get involved in it. When it is indifferent to these great things, it is because it has been forcibly kept from them. The jury system is in this respect all the more necessary to the French people in that the nation seems temporarily not fit for it. It would find in it not only the general advantages inherent in this institution, but also the particular advantage of rebuilding its moral education. [555]

  Chapter 3:

  On Punishments

  Notes

  1. do not lose all their rights. When individuals disrupt the security of society through criminal activity, they lose some of their rights, which this society has the authority to restrain, in order to stop them hurting it. Normally, however, this principle is pushed much too far. The guilty man, separated from his fellow citizens, handed over to the jailers, then to the executioners, seems a being apart, whom nature spurns, whom public pity forsakes, and whom humanity repudiates. I am talking here only of a convicted felon, for it is obvious that short of an overthrow of all justice, the accused, not yet tried, retains all the rights compatible with the measures necessary for his not escaping his trial. The criminal, however, even when convicted, is not stripped of all his rights. One he has is to demand that his trial be public, because human actions are made up of a host of nuances which law cannot grasp. Even when the guilty person is given a punishment, if his action is attenuated by some of these nuances which legal justice could not take into account, public opinion ought to compensate him for this. In the second place, he has the right that the punishment he undergoes is not revolting to human nature and is not open to arbitrary aggravation by the whim of those carrying it out.

  2. all experimentation with torture. People believe too much in frightful tortures. In Athens the death of condemned people was very sweet, since each chose the manner of his own death. There was no more crime there than elsewhere.

  3. life sentences. I am always fearful that once life sentences are accepted, one or other of the numerous prisons whose establishment would be necessary might not sooner or later turn itself into a State prison, a metamorphosis all the easier in that almost everywhere, for plausible reasons of public safety, only government permission can open the entrance to these lugubrious habitations. I do not like citizens getting used to passing coldly by a prison without asking who it is who is locked up in it, without finding out whether anyone there is a languishing victim of some illegal act, without being able to get in so as to convince himself with his own eyes that the wretchedness of the detainees is not at all aggravated by the harshness or greed of their guards. [556]

  4. happiness in debasement. Indelible branding has the same drawback as public works. It prevents any return to virtue and it points to criminals happy in their shame. Bentham allows it for counterfeiters, because in branding the latter it does not remove from them their means of subsistence. “Despised as knaves,” he says, “they will still be employed as people of talent.”62 But will this not be a very immoral thing, to show people known knaves, employed as people of talent? And if, as is probable, they get used to their shame, what spectacle is more corrupting than satisfaction in opprobrium?

  5. the establishment of colonies. Bentham makes a rather strong objection to the establishment of colonies. Deportation is a good thing, he says, for those without resources in their own country. For it is nothing else than a free passage to the place of deportation for him who has committed a crime. II, 426.63 There is a means of preventing this drawback. This would be to have the deportation preceded by some positive punishment, such as a more or less long imprisonment. This precaution would deter someone tempted to commit a crime in order to get to a new country. The punishment must be separated from the new abode, however. The guilty party must begin his new career without being pursued by society. The good fortune of which the guilty partake in their new refuge would not have a demoralizing effect, like that sometimes experienced by those condemned to public works. The people would not witness this, and they would have proof of the punishment previously undergone by the criminal.

  Additions

  Say in this chapter that punishments must be varied and refer to Bentham’s work.64

  Speak in this chapter of the right which those who have been unjustly detained, or condemned, in a word, have suffered from the errors of the law, to be compensated at public expense.

  Book X:

  On the Action of Government with Regard to Property

  Chapter 4:

  On the Status Property Should Occupy in Political Institutions

  Notes

  1. by treating it with disfavor. What I say of property, that once it exists, it has to be given power, I say of all institutions; in countries where there is a nobility, that nobility must be given strong legal authority. If we do not want to give it such, all aristocratic distinctions must be abolished. In a word, one must will what one wants. The nobility, in the condition it was in in France, immediately before the Revolution, was an absurd and dangerous institution, precisely because it offended without having powers of containment.

  2. or annihilated. “Woe,” says Ganilh, II, 251, “to governments which separate power from wealth!” He adds: “and wealth from freedom!” Indeed, what is needed is that everybody be in a position to acquire some wealth and that those who possess it be entrusted with conserving it.

  3. should comprise proprietors. Can nonproprietors, people will say, be represented by proprietors? In the same way as the represented by the representatives. For representatives, by becoming such, cease in many respects to be in the same situation as the represented.

  Chapter 5:

  On Examples Drawn from Antiquity

  Notes

  1. Examples drawn from antiquity. Cicero, De officiis, Livre II, ch. 21, edition d’Olivet, III, 359, quotes this sentence from the Tribune Philippe; non esse in civitate duo millia hominum qui rem haberent.65 And he reproaches him with a criminal action in having held such a discussion with the people, because he was inclined to the sharing of wealth. But if in the year 649 , the era of the Tribunate of Lucius Marcus Philippus, there were in the immensity of the Roman realm [558] only two thousand citizen proprietors, had not property, rather than being a blessing granted by society, become an intolerable abuse, and out of respect for the people, should not a pointless respect for property be abjured? No; but the organization of property needed correcting, being very defective in Rome. Palliatives had been tried. Laws against deeds of trust and entailments and those which gave an equal part to all the sons and daughters tended to divide landed properties. The aristocracy, however, tended to bring them together. This was not the vice of property but of aristocracy.

  Among the ancients, where property was not familiar and mobile, political rights could not attach to proprietors alone without injustice. In modern times the opposite obtains.

  Among the ancients, the poor were always indebted to the rich. In modern times it is usually the rich who are indebted to the poor. It is important to examine the outcomes of this difference. One of the most striking is that relations between proprietors and nonproprietors are utterly different in the two cases. Among the ancients, the rich demanded from the poor what the latter did not have, money, and that demand requiring for its satisfaction violence, and usually not being satisfied despite this violence, there resulted continual hatred and opposition between these two classes. In modern times the rich demand from the poor what the poor can always supply, labor, and the result is a much greater mutual accord. This could be identified as a reason property could not serve as the basis of political rights in antiquity and can in modern times.

  Chapter 7:

  That Territorial Property Alone Brings Together All the Advantages of Property

  Notes

  1. business property. Agriculture has a further advantage over business which I have not mentioned. [559] It demands much more intelligence and makes much more use of it than jobs in industry do. Smith, I, 10, 264. See Mirabeau, Ami des hommes, on the difference between the farming groups and the artisans, I, 54 and following.

  Chapter 8:

  On Property in Public Funds

  Additions

  A certain disadvantage of the use of public debt is that it facilitates the undertaking of war, because instead of providing for the expenditure it demands, by taxes which will always be more or less difficult to control and a heavy burden, we defray it by borrowings which are easy to get hold of, on account of the inducements which go with them and the burden of which weighs only in a partial and remote way on the people. Smith, V, 3.66

  “It has been said that a public debt attached to the government’s fate all the creditors of the State, and that these creditors, linked with its good fortune and bad alike, became its natural supports. This is very true; but this means of self-preservation, applying to a bad order of things as to a good, is in every respect as dangerous to a nation as it can be useful.” Say, V.67

  “The growth of public debt distorts the public spirit by multiplying in some nations the number of people who have an interest contrary to the common interest. The rentiers want, above everything, all the wealth of the royal treasury, and since the weight of taxes is the easiest source of this, taxpayers and the people above all who make up the biggest part of these and have no money to lend, find today in the very bosom of the State an opposing faction whose influence grows every day. The growth of public debt increases the power of government by accustoming a large part of the nation to fear above everything the slightest shaking in the works of government or the slightest change in its practices. Administration of Finances, II, 378–379.

  [560] This is a remarkable effect of complexity in the political organization of the government machinery. The natural interest of any nation is to pay the fewest contributions possible. The creation of a public debt means that the interest of a large part of the nation is in the growth of taxation.

  The contradiction is apparent. The credit which on the one hand weakens government power on the other hand fortifies it.

  Chapter 9:

  On the Amount of Landed Property Which Society Has the Right to Insist upon for the Exercise of Political Rights

  Note

  1. is to swallow small ones. If the rich alone can be powerful, the powerful will become richer every day.

  Chapter 10:

  That Owners Have No Interest in Abusing Power vis-à-vis Nonowners

  Notes

  1. no longer form a distinct class. It is because the different classes of society are mingling that all political power can be put in the hands of the property owners. If they formed an exclusive class they would pass unjust laws because they would become exclusive in outlook. This is what has happened in Europe across several centuries. Owners have for a long time, for example, wanted to limit the duration of leases the better to conserve the properties in their possession. They fancied that a lease agreed by their predecessors ought not to prevent them, year after long year, from enjoying the full value of their lands. Greed, however, always perceives things badly. The proprietors did not foresee how such a rule would erect obstacles to all improvement and thereby harm their true interests in the long run.

  2. their most faithful supports. What, however, if owners formed an interest for rendering landed property inalienable? It would be as governors, not as owners, that they would perform this tyrannical act; and let it not be said that this is to evade the objection by verbal trickery. It is so true that this would be in their governmental capacity, that if you supposed government to be in the hands [561] of nonowners, these governors would be just as able to form an interest to make the functions of government inalienable. Secondly, if the countries in which owners adopted such a resolution contained rich nonlandowners, the latter would leave the country and the disadvantages of the resolution would fall back on landowners. If this country contained only poor nonlandowners, even when landowners did not adopt such a resolution, the acquisition of landed property would be closed to nonproprietors, who would have no means of acquiring it.

  Chapter 15:

  On Laws Which Favor the Accumulation of Property in the Same Hands

  Notes

  1. of entailments. Entailments, says Smith, III, 2,68 were invented to perpetuate a state of affairs which was in itself a great calamity, I mean the distribution among a very small number of conquerors of an enormous area of lands, and which as a result were inevitably for the most part uncultivated. Given this state of affairs, entailments were reasonable. There was no public justice. Force was the only guarantee against spoliation. Force was located only in sizeable property which provided a certain number of vassals sufficient for the holder’s self-defense. To make properties smaller was to lay them open to invasion by neighbors. Entailments therefore had a reasonable purpose in the given situation, although the situation itself was a vicious one. Entailments, however, as is the way with most human institutions, have outlasted this purpose.

  Entailments, insofar as they favor the perpetuation of immense indivisible properties, are unfavorable to farming. A very considerable landowner necessarily neglects a large part of his property. One has only to compare, says Smith, III, 2, the large estates which have remained in the same families without interruption since the times of feudal anarchy, with the possessions of small owners nearby, to judge without any other argument how unfavorable to cultivation overlarge properties are. Properties are like States. Properties which are too small are disadvantageous because the owner is too poor to cultivate them well. Those which are too large, however, [562] are just as disastrous because the owner has neither the interest nor the time to survey all the parts of them equally. Entailments tie down individuals and generations without taking into consideration the changes which may arise in the condition of either.

  Chapter 16:

  On Laws Which Enforce the Wider Spreading of Property

  Notes

  1. to strengthen paternal power. Some have wanted paternal power fortified in institutional ways, and they have sought to underpin it, as with all impracticable ideas, by ancient example. Among the ancients the scope of paternal power, against which other philosophers have widely inveighed, was not a disadvantage. Nor is the legal diminution of that power, one which so many moralists eloquently deplore today, a very great evil. The reconciliation of these two apparently contradictory claims lies in the differences between the ancients and us. See Book XVI.

  It is not to be doubted nevertheless that the revolutionary shake-up took the diminution of paternal power too far. To remedy this abuse, however, we do not need to establish institutions but to destroy some. Do away with your laws forbidding wills, greater freedom granted to fathers will reestablish their power. Remove the obstacles and the drawbacks will disappear. It is by interfering with everything that you pile these up, and then you complain about them and think you can remedy by even more laws the inconveniences which occur only because there are too many laws already. All the good things about paternal power derive from its being purely natural and moral. If you incorporated it into law, you would destroy its nature. It is not necessary for laws to combat it, but it is necessary that they do not interfere with it. It exists independently of law and must continue thus. To undermine it is unjust. To wish to add to it is pointless, and everything which is pointless becomes disastrous when legislated. Otherwise do not intrude the crudities of government into the delicacy and independence of nature. What you think you are sanctioning, you are corrupting. You are spoiling what you are trying to improve. [563] Paternal power is necessarily arbitrary. Such power is good when it is in the nature of things. It would be disastrous if it existed by law. Paternal power offers us an example of what I constantly say, that usually the abolition of a law would produce a number of advantages which seem mutually quite alien, and for each one of which separately, a host of laws are made which again have their particular drawbacks. The abolition of all entailments on the one hand, and perfect freedom to make wills on the other, that is to say two legal excisions, would produce at once the reestablishment of paternal power and a more equal distribution of wealth. These are advantages which it is believed one can get to by positive laws, but such outcomes one arrives at only imperfectly and pays for in multiple inconveniences, while the absence of two positive laws would produce them much more securely at the same time as it would, by delivering individual freedom and therefore taking away from men certain reasons for violating the law, be just for that reason a very great good.

  Chapter 17:

  The Consequences of Attacks on Property by the Government69

  Materials70

  We are not speaking here of confiscations and other political attacks on property. One cannot consider such violence as routine practice for ordered government. These acts are of the nature of coups d’Etat and all arbitrary measures whose consequences we have examined above. It is therefore against coups d’Etat and against arbitrary measures that we need to take a stand. Confiscations are only one part of these and an inseparable part. When men’s life and freedom are not respected, how could their property be so?

  The spoliation which occupies us in this chapter is that which governments allow themselves, to reduce their debts or increase their resources sometimes on the pretext of necessity, sometimes of justice, but always claiming the interest of the State. For just as the zealous apostles of the people’s sovereignty think that public freedom gains from the constraints put [564] on individual freedom, our financiers today believe that the State enriches itself by the ruin of individuals.

  These attacks on property are divided into two classes.

  In the first, I put part or total bankruptcies, reductions in national debt, either in capital or interest, the payment of these debts in instruments of a lower value than their nominal value, the debasement of money, fiscal retainers, delayed payments, etc.

  I put in the second category the acts of government against men who have dealt with government departments in order to supply them with the wherewithal for their military and civil activity, retrospective laws or measures against the newly rich, chambres ardentes,71 the cancellation of contracts, concessions and sales made by the State to individuals.

  There has been recourse to a great variety of names to designate these things. “The obscurities of language,” remarks an English author (Bentham, I, 348), “have served financiers in deceiving the simple. They have said, for example, a retainer and not a theft.”

  It is rather curious to note that the same artifice has served legislators who have made manifestly unjust laws. The émigrés during the French Revolution were punished by death and the confiscation of their goods. When the wish was to treat deported people the same way, that is to say, men who had been forced to leave their country, while others were being punished for having left it, it was said bluntly that they belonged among the émigrés, which drove the word out of use and extended the thing.72 Just as all injustices have a deep similarity between themselves, so there is also analogy in the language of all injustices.

  [565] Once a national debt exists, there is only one way to soften its harmful effects, and that is to respect it scrupulously. One gives it in this way a stability which assimilates it, as far as its nature permits, to the other forms of property.

  One cannot accept as a means of diminishing the bad effects of public debts that of not paying them. This would be to want to fight an inevitable evil by a pointless and even larger one. Bad faith can never be a remedy for anything. Far from attaining the desired purpose, one would add to the immoral consequences of a property which gives its possessors different interests from the nation of which they are a part, the even more disastrous consequences of uncertainty and arbitrariness. Arbitrary government and uncertainty are the prime causes of what has been called agiotage [gambling]. It never develops more forcibly and actively than when the State is in violation of its agreements. All the citizens are in such circumstances forced to seek in the risks of speculation some compensation for the losses which the government has made them undergo.

  Any distinction between creditors, between credits, any enquiry into the transactions of individuals, any research of the route public bills of exchange have followed, of the hands they have passed through till their maturity date, is criminal mismanagement. A government contracts debts and in payment gives government paper to those to whom it owes money. These are forced to sell the instruments it has given them. On what pretext would it proceed from this sale to query the value of these instruments? The more it questions the value, the more they will lose. It will rely on this new depreciation in order that they cash in at a price even lower. This double progression reacting on itself will soon reduce credit to zero and individuals to ruin.

  The original creditor has been able to make of his claim what he wanted. If he sold his credit, the fault is not in him, whose need has forced him to this, but in the State which paid him only in promissory notes which he has found himself forced to sell. If he has sold his credit at a giveaway price, the fault is not in the purchaser who has bought it with unfavorable prospects; the fault is again with the State which has created these unfavorable prospects, since the credit sold would not have fallen to a giveaway price if the State had not inspired mistrust.

  Setting it so that a note loses value as it passes to a second hand in any circumstances the government is not in a position to know, since these circumstances are free and independent variables, you cause circulation, which has always been regarded [566] as a means of wealth, into a cause of impoverishment. How can one justify this policy which refuses creditors what they are owed and discredits what it has given them? On what basis can the courts condemn the debtor, a creditor himself of a bankrupt government? Well then! Dragged off to a prison stripped of what belonged to me because I have been unable to clear the debts I have contracted on public trust, I will pass in front of the palace whence emanated these thieving laws. On the one side sits the government which robbed me, on the other the judges who punish me for having been robbed.

  Any nominal payment is criminal mismanagement. Any issuing of paper which cannot be at will converted into specie, any alteration in the value of money, are false acts. The governments which have recourse to these guilty expedients are nothing but forgers armed with public power.73 The government which pays a citizen in false values forces him into payments of like nature. In order not to enervate economic exchanges and render them impossible, it is obliged to legitimate all such operations. By creating the need for some people to behave in this way, it furnishes everybody with the excuse. Egotism, far more subtle, more adroit, more prompt, and more diversified than government, rushes forward at the given signal. It confounds all precautionary measures by the speed and complexity of its frauds. When corruption has the justification of necessity, it knows no more limits. If the government wants to establish a difference between its transactions and those of individuals, the injustice of it is only the more scandalous.

  A nation’s creditors are only a part of that nation. When taxes are imposed to pay the interest on the national debt, the matter weighs on the whole nation. After all, the State’s creditors, as taxpayers, pay their share of these taxes. By a State bankruptcy, on the contrary, the debt is thrown on the creditors alone. This is therefore to conclude that since a burden is too heavy for a whole nation, it will be carried more easily by a quarter or an eighth of it.

  Any enforced reduction in repayment is government default. You have dealt with individuals according to conditions you have freely offered. They have fulfilled these conditions. They have lent you their funds, which they have withdrawn from branches of production which offered them positive returns. You owe them everything you have promised them. The fulfillment of your promises is the legitimate indemnity of the sacrifices they have made and the risks they have run. If you regret having suggested onerous conditions, the [567] fault is yours and in no way theirs, since all they have done is accept them. The fault for this is doubly yours, since it is your earlier breaches of trust above all which have made your conditions onerous. If you had inspired full confidence, you would have obtained better conditions.

  If you reduce the debt by a quarter, who will prevent you reducing it by a third, by nine-tenths, by the whole lot? What guarantees will you be able to give to your creditors or to yourself? Whatever one does, the first step makes the second one easier. If strict principles had held you to the fulfillment of your promises, you could have cast about for funds in an ordered and economic way. You, however, have sought yours in fraud. You have regarded it as acceptable that they are at your disposal, they absolve you from all work, privation, and effort. You come back to them constantly, since you no longer have any sense of integrity to hold you back.

  Such is the blindness of governments when they abandon the paths of justice, as it is of those who have deluded themselves that by reducing their debt through an act of government, they would rally credit which seemed to be flagging. They have set off from a badly understood principle which they have badly applied. They have thought that the less they owed, the more confidence they would inspire, because they would be better placed to pay their debts. They have confused, however, the effect of a legitimate release and the effect of a default. It is not enough that a debtor can fulfill his commitments; he must further want to, and there must be means to hold him to it. Now, government which takes advantage of its authority to annul part of its debt proves that it lacks the will to pay. Its creditors cannot constrain it thereto. What do its resources matter therefore?

  A public debt is not like commodities of basic necessity and ongoing need. The fewer there are of these commodities, the more valuable they are. They have intrinsic value, and their relative value grows with their scarcity. The value of a debt, on the contrary, depends only on the reliability of the debtor. Once this reliability is shaken, value is destroyed. You can reduce the debt in vain, to half, a quarter, or an eighth. What is left of it is only all the more discredited. Nobody needs nor wants a debt which does not get paid. When it comes to individuals, the power to fulfill their commitments is the main condition, because the law is stronger than they. When it is a question of governments, however, the principal condition is will.

  There is another kind of default in relation to which governments seem to conduct themselves with even less scruple. Involved in useless ventures, maybe through ambition, or imprudence, or indiscreet activity, they contract with merchants [568] for the supplies necessary for these enterprises. The terms they get are disadvantageous. This has to be. The interests of a government can never be defended with as much zeal as private interests. This fate is common to all transactions where the parties cannot look after themselves, and it is an inevitable one. In this situation the government takes a dislike to certain men who have merely taken advantage of the profit inherent in their situation. It encourages harangues and calumnies against them. It exaggerates its own losses, this is to say its own ineptitude, and because it has been ignorant and inept, it believes it has the right to be violent and unjust. It cancels its deals, it delays or refuses the payments it has promised. It takes general measures which, to reach a few suspects, without proper investigation, surround a whole class. To palliate this iniquity, it needs to represent these measures as hitting only those at the head of the enterprises from which their incomes are being removed. The hostility of the people is worked up against certain odious or tarnished names. The men who are plundered, however, are not isolated. They have not done everything on their own. They have used artisans and manufacturers who have given them real value and service. It is on the latter that the plundering, which seems to be being carried out only against the former, comes to fall. These same people, who, always credulous, applaud the destruction of a few fortunes, allegedly immense ones, which therefore irritate them, do not work out that all this wealth, based on works whose instrument they had been, tended to reflect back even on them, while the destruction of this wealth took away from them themselves the payment for their own work.

  Governments always have a more or less great need for the men who deal with them. A government cannot buy with cash transactions as an individual can. It must either pay in advance, which is impracticable; or what it needs must be supplied to it on credit. If it ill-treats the suppliers, what happens? Honest men withdraw, not wishing to work in a business enfeebled from the start. Only rogues come forward and, foreseeing that they will not be paid properly, they take the question of payment into their own hands. A government is too slow, too encumbered, too lumbering in its movements, to follow the nimble decision making and rapid maneuvers of individual interest. We have seen governments wanting to vie with individuals in corruption, but the corruption of the latter was always more skillful. The only effective course for government is loyalty.

  The first effect of disfavor cast on a branch of trade is to drive away from it all the traders whom greed does not seduce. The first effect of a despotic system is to inspire in all good men the desire not to encounter this despotism [569] and to avoid transactions which could connect them with this terrible power.

  In all countries, economies founded on the violation of public trust have unfailingly met their punishment in the transactions which have followed. The returns to wickedness, despite its arbitrary withholdings and its violent laws, are always paid a hundredfold more than the returns to honesty would be.

  Governments lose all credit by enforced reductions of public debt. They unsettle the value of their credit by evaluating it according to the loss it experiences. In this case their own negotiations become ruinous. By changing the value of money, they lose as creditors of the taxpayer and in their purchases what they gain as debtors.74 By treating suppliers unjustly, they make honest people withdraw, and they find only rogues with whom to deal.75 Lastly, by destroying credit, they range against them all the creditors of the State, and from this come revolutions.

  In England the State’s undertakings have always been sacred since 1688. So the State’s creditors are one of the classes most interested in preserving the government. In France under the monarchy, violations of public trust having been frequent, the creditors of the State, at the first announcement of a deficit, showed themselves eager for a revolution. “Each man believed he saw his safety in taking away from the sovereign the administration of finance and locating it in a national council.” Bentham, Principes du Code civil.76

  Despotism with regard to property is soon followed by despotism with regard to persons. This is first because despotism is contagious and secondly because the violation of property naturally provokes resistance. In this case the government deals severely with the oppressed person who resists, and because it wanted to seize his property from him, it is led to aim a blow at his freedom.

  Add that by throwing men into uncertainty about what they own, you provoke them to encroach upon what they do not own. Without security, the economy becomes a matter of trickery, and moderation, imprudence. When everything can be taken away, one must grab as much as possible, because that gives one more chance of retaining something [570] from the spoliation.77 When everything can be taken away, as much as possible must be spent, because everything spent is so much snatched away from despotism.78

  “Kings,” says Louis XIV in his Memoirs, “are absolute lords and have naturally the full and free disposition of all their subjects’ goods.”79 When kings regard themselves as absolute lords of all their subjects possess, however, the subjects hide what they possess or dissipate it. If they hide it, this is how much is lost to agriculture, trade, industry, and to prosperity of all kinds. If they lavish it on frivolous, coarse, or unproductive pleasures, this again is so much deflected from worthwhile uses and efficacious economic decisions. Louis XIV believed he was saying something favorable to the wealth of kings. He was really saying something which would be bound to ruin kings by ruining nations.

  Chapter 18:

  To Be Done. Conclusions from the Above Considerations

  Materials

  In order to sum up the principles which must guide the action of government on property, I will say that government must constrain property when there is an obvious need for public safety.80 This prerogative distinguishes its jurisdiction over property from its jurisdiction over persons, for it would not have the right to make an attempt on the life of a single innocent, even if this were for the safety of a whole nation. In all the cases, however, in which public safety is not threatened, government must guarantee property and leave it free.

  Book XI:

  On Taxation

  Chapter 4:

  On Various Types of Taxes

  Notes

  1. the price cannot rise. Commodities or merchandise do not rise in price solely because they cost more on account of their scarcity. Ordinarily, when an output costs more to produce than its market value, or at least when it costs such a lot and has so feeble a market price that profit is nil or very little, producers turn away from this production and concentrate on another more profitable one. If, however, they could not turn aside from this production, they would have to continue to concentrate on it even at a loss, and the output remaining at the same level, the price would not increase. Little by little, doubtless, the number of producers would diminish, and output being smaller, its price would rise because of its scarcity. If this production, however, were of a fundamental necessity, this would be a new misfortune. Argument against the land tax. First of all, it ruins the farmers, who, being able to produce only the same output and being able to ruin themselves only the more swiftly if they do not produce it, cannot like manufacturers make production scarcer in order to make it dearer. Next, it ruins agriculture, and before equilibrium between the costs and the value of commodities can be established, the people suffer from dearth.

  On all occasions when the producer cannot diminish his workforce nor his output, the tax weighs heavily on him. The case here is that of an owner of land.

  2. revoltingly iniquitous. For the financial drawbacks of the tax on patents, see Sismondi, Législation de commerce, II, 89 and following.

  3. as to the third. “Fraud is the defect of the tax on consumption (indirect tax). Injustice is the defect of the tax on rent (direct tax).”Canard, Principes d’économie politique.81 [572]

  Chapter 5:

  How Taxation Becomes Contrary to Individual Rights

  Notes

  1. as the lottery. What governments believe they gain in money by the lottery tax, they lose and more, even in money, by the harm this tax does to production and by the crimes which it makes the working class commit, crimes which, leaving aside moral considerations and envisaging them only in fiscal terms, are an expense for the State.

  Chapter 6:

  That Taxes Bearing on Capital Are Contrary to Individual Rights

  Notes

  1. encroach upon capital. See on the effect of consumption of capital by nations, Sismondi, I, 4.82 “If the expenditures of the three productive classes exceed their incomes, the nation must inevitably impoverish itself.” Sismondi, I, 94 and following.83

  2. The State which taxes capital. Government economy is what most favors a country’s prosperity, because it leaves more capital at the working disposal of individuals.

  Chapter 7:

  That the Interest of the State in Matters of Taxation Is Consistent with Individual Rights

  Notes

  1. Several of the mines in Peru. From 1736 the tax on mines in Peru had been reduced from a fifth to a tenth. Smith, I, 11.84

  [573] Chapter 8:

  An Incontestable Axiom

  Notes

  1. Levying always produces an ill. The first general effect of a tax is to diminish the seller’s profit by reducing consumption in the areas of production taxed. What follows is that those who cultivated these areas abandon them to take up more lucrative ones. They increase the competition in these and consequently reduce the profits. Therefore the tax has an influence on all the sources of rent. Before the tax is spread over all of them, however, and the burden of the taxed branch is shared between all the others, in such a way as to produce equilibrium, there operates a more or less lasting friction, which makes the tax disastrous. “Any old tax is good, any new tax pernicious.” Canard, Principes d’économie poltitique.85

  2. the most deplorable. “Republics die from luxury,” says Montesquieu, “monarchies from poverty.”86 He concludes from this that economy is suitable for republics and luxury for monarchies. A singular conclusion: for what does the observation itself, on which he bases this conclusion, mean? That republics enrich themselves by prudent economy and monarchies ruin themselves by luxury.

  Chapter 9:

  The Drawback of Excessive Taxation

  Notes

  1. any pointless tax is a theft. “What the well-being of the State demands, obviously enough, is decisiveness and a characteristic touch of inspiration. The taxes appropriate to this public well-being, of which a sovereign is judge and guardian, are proof of justice. What exceeds this measured proportion ceases to be legitimate. There is therefore no other difference between individual excesses and those of the sovereign, if only because the injustice of the former comes from simple ideas which each person can easily distinguish, while the latter, being linked to government complexities, whose extent is as vast as it is involved, no one can judge [574] other than by conjecture. . . .87 It is a violation of the most sacred trust to use the sacrifices of the people on careless largesse, on pointless expenditures and undertakings foreign to the good of the State. . . .88 The unreasonable extent of taxation is moreover a constant source of ills and vexations.” Administration des finances, I, Ch. 2.89

  Chapter 10:

  A Further Drawback of Excessive Taxation

  Addition

  Excessive taxation is often excused by the alleged necessity of encircling governments with an aura of magnificence. The claim is that to inspire men with respect for their institutions we must bedazzle them with the brilliance of those who hold power. This axiom is equally false in republics and monarchies. In the latter, the unassuming stance of the monarch, being voluntary and thereby meritorious, produces a much deeper impression than the display of a wealth extorted from the governed. Frederick II [the Great] and Charles XII inspired more real respect in this regard than Louis XIV. Ostentation is even less necessary in republics. It is possible that an aristocracy requires that the opulence of the governing class impress the people. This opulence, however, must belong by heredity to this class and must not be raised from daily taxation, a source at once ignoble and odious. As to elected governments, ostentation there produces none of the effects attributed to it. What is done with the avowed purpose of striking, dazzling, or seducing inevitably fails in this purpose. No personal veneration results from trappings which themselves have nothing personal about them. This borrowed magnificence is like our actors’ makeup. Pomp has influence on the nation as spectator, when it is brought into the government by the individual and not when it is so to speak conferred on him, in his governmental capacity. The advantageous effects we expect from ostentation are made up of memories, habits, [575] and traditional reverence. Governments which do not have these supports must renounce these means. If pomp is pointless, however, there is an elegance of form proper to governments; this elegance chimes with the greatest simplicity, just as the most brutal vulgarity goes with display and ostentation. This formal elegance commands true respect. It is the slow and sure effect of education and of life’s whole experience. It is the guarantee of justice, its consequences far more important than one might think. Vulgar men can be moved; but for each occasion when they will be, how many occasions will there be when they remain insensitive and brutal? We should not forget, moreover, that to move vulgar spirits will require an intensification of the sounds and symptoms of grief. Now, as to silent but profound grief, they will not even notice it. How many timid or delicate impressions will recoil before their loathsome and wild persons? How many innocents will there be whose offended pride will freeze the tongue and strangle speech?

  Vulgarity and violence are the two greatest scourges in men with power. They put an insurmountable barrier between them and everything noble, enlightened, delicate, and profound in human nature. Vulgar men, irascible men, even when their intentions are pure, are responsible for all the good that they are not asked to do and all the ill which is done without people daring to complain.

  An author famous for his writings on how to relieve the burdens of the downtrodden poor, M. de Rumford, says in his memoirs on poorhouses and workhouse prisons, that care of physical needs contributes much to the moral improvement of men, and that he has often observed the most rapid change in criminals themselves, when purer air, better clothes, and healthier food had lifted them, so to speak, into another world. The absence of physical care, he says, creates a sorrow, a malaise which puts the soul into an irritable frame and throws something convulsive and wildly disordered into feelings and actions.90

  Here I am speaking as much of the coarseness of appearance and of that irascibility which powerful men wish to use as a resource so that they will not have to apologize for it as a vice. These things throw our being into a kind of convulsive agitation, which chokes all the [576] sweeter feelings. Man has an influence on himself by his voice, his gestures, his discourse, and just as his inner sensations act on the behavior he adopts, so these adoptions react on his inner life. At some stages of our Revolution, people fell into the most ridiculous contradictions. They had wanted to clothe the government with magnificence and sanctify the vulgarity of its membership. It had not been grasped that what was good in popular institutions was simplicity, the absence of pointless pomp and of an ostentation humiliating to the poor man, and what was good in aristocratic institutions was the elegance of the mores, the loftiness of spirit, and the delicacy of feeling, results all of an education whose provision wealth had permitted. There had been brought together the drawbacks of two systems, stupid ostentation combined with ferocious brutality.

  Book XII:

  On Government Jurisdiction over Economic Activity and Population

  Chapter 1:

  Preliminary Observation

  Additions

  It is proven that the economy flourishes only under freedom; but if the contrary were demonstrated, the restrictions put on freedom on the pretext of special support for production have consequences so disastrous for general contentment and for morality that it would be better to let the economy languish than attack freedom.

  Chapter 4:

  On Privileges and Prohibitions

  Notes

  1. Thus we have three real losses. Here is a fourth one of them. Manufactures which, by keeping going thanks to privileges, diverting funds from those which do not need privileges to sustain themselves, cause the latter to deteriorate owing to shortage of sufficient funds. Sismondi, Législation de commerce, II, 53.

  2. combinations which make up for this. Of two things one must occur, either a commerce cannot take place without a state-supported company, and then the company has nothing to fear from the competition [577] of individual firms, or if the company has something to fear from this, then the trade can be conducted without a privileged company, in which case a company of this kind is an injustice.

  3. will enlighten all the citizens. It is obvious that each individual in his particular position is far better placed to judge the type of activity his capital can most advantageously set to work than any politico or legislator will be able to do for him. Smith, IV, 2.91

  4. it ruins itself. Commercial companies have this disadvantage, that their directors are like governments. Governments soon develop an interest different from that of the governed. The directors of these companies soon have an interest different from that of the company.

  5. bankruptcy. A very remarkable example of the unfortunate effects of state-supported companies is the history of French trade with the Indies, from 1664 to 1719. The company, created in 1664, had an exclusive monopoly. By 1708 it had lost close to twenty million. During this time, merchants from St. Malo engaged in interloping, beset with all the difficulties and dangers of smuggling. They profited by it. In 1708 these traders had the idea of buying the privileges of the company which impeded them and became themselves a privileged company. Their profits ended immediately and within eleven years they took the losses of the Company of the Indies, whose monopoly they had acquired, to thirty million. Savary, Dictionnaire de Commerce, IV, p. 1075.92

  6. wardenships. Apprenticeships prevent individuals from following this or that trade. Guild masters and wardenships are organizations which determine their own numbers and the conditions of admission.

  7. the most iniquitous. When one of the conditions of apprenticeship is paying to be accepted into the trade, this is the height of injustice. For it is to keep from work those who have most need for work.

  8. the most absurd. The result of fixing the number of people [578] working in each trade is that it is more likely than not that this number will not be proportionate to the needs of consumers. This is because there can be too many or too few. If there are too many, the men in this trade, being unable to take up another since the guild masters in any other would drive them away, work at a loss or do not work and fall into poverty. If there are too few, the price of the labor rises, agreeably to the greed of these workers.

  9. the surest spur to such perfecting. A singular pretension of government, which, as Sismondi says, II, 285, wants to teach manufacturers their craft and consumers to know their taste!93

  10. to appraise their merits. I exempt from full freedom of trade professions which touch on public safety, architects, because an unsound house affects all citizens, pharmacists, doctors, lawyers.

  11. the price of the goods. Apprenticeships are oppressive from the consumers’ viewpoint because by diminishing the numbers of workers, they increase the labor costs. Therefore they harass the poor man and cost the rich one a surcharge.

  12. the English towns. England, despite its system of prohibitions, has always tended to liberalize production. Apprenticeships have been restricted to existing trades since the statute of Elizabeth which established them, and the courts have welcomed the most subtle distinctions tending to remove from these statutes as many trades as possible. For example, you have to have had an apprenticeship to make carts but not to make carriages. Blackstone.94

  [579] 13. no corporation. Notice how freedom, as the simple absence of law, brings order to everything. Combinations of individuals practicing the same trade are mostly a conspiracy against the public. Shall we conclude from this that these combinations should be forbidden by prohibitive laws? Not at all. By forbidding them the government condemns itself to much bother, to surveillance, to punishments which would entail grave drawbacks. Just let government refuse to sanction these combinations. Let it not recognize any right to restrict the number of men in this or that job. Just doing this will deprive combinations of any purpose. If twenty persons in a particular trade wish to combine to push up the price of their work to too high a level, others will come forward to do the job at a lower price.

  14. the rigging of daily wages. See on the efforts of guild masters to lower and workmen to raise the daily wages and of the impotence of government intervention in this regard, Smith, I, 132–159, Garnier’s translation.95 The rigging of the daily wage is the sacrifice of the larger party to the smaller.

  15. the national wealth. It is to be remarked that at the same time that French manufacturers demand [import] prohibitions to support their manufactures, they all complain of the lack of capital. (See the Statistics from the départements published by the government.)96 This proves that there is not enough capital for the existing businesses. Now, if they abandoned prohibitions and if free admission of foreign products were to cause the abandonment of part of the industry, the capital would relocate in the direction of the remaining parts. It would no longer be consumed feeding failing manufactures, and truly viable manufactures would gain thereby, as well as the whole body of consumers.

  16. and perfect itself. The prohibitions on products of foreign manufacture tend to extinguish emulation by indigenous products. “What is the point,” says Sismondi, II, 163, “of seeking [580] to do better when the government has undertaken to find buyers for the very persons who do the worst?”

  17. this greater value. One would think, to see the precautions which governments take against the exportation of specie, that people export it at a loss, simply to play tricks on them.

  18. must remain free. “All the times when we chide a nation about the means for fulfilling its obligations, it is as if, in order to increase the credit of a merchant, we forbade him to pay his debts.” Sismondi, I, 200.

  19. It will not be exported unprofitably. To justify the precautions taken against the exportation of specie, people greatly exaggerate the fantasies, foolish expenses, and prodigality of individuals. These things, however, make up only an infinitely small part of the total expenditure; and to prevent this very small ill, a much worse one is done, and there is even incurred, by way of payment for spies and legal proceedings, a much greater expense.

  The fantasies which lead to the unproductive flight of specie are expenses particular to the rich. Now, the rich man will always have ways of getting his specie out, since he will always be able to pay the smuggling premium.

  The supporters of bans on the export of specie say quite correctly that specie, in facilitating exchange and accelerating circulation, creates commerce. Are they not forgetting, however, that commerce creates money, that is to say, brings back specie? They write always as if the purpose of those who demand freedom for the exportation of specie were to drive out everything which is in the country, and they expound very well the benefits of specie and the drawbacks of its disappearance. See Ferrier, Du gouvernement, pp. 13–18.97 Permitted exportation, however, is not forced exportation. The logic of the defenders of prohibitions is to suppose that all dangerous and injurious things would be done as soon as they were not forbidden. They assert this very complacently, and then they fully demonstrate the evil which will result from it, for example, in the case of specie. They do not examine whether even when its leaving is not prohibited, specie would, indeed, leave. They give themselves over to a pathetic picture of the evils [581] a country would experience if it were deprived of all its specie. This is a logical ruse which deceives much of the world. You affirm one thing; you demonstrate from it a second thing, which is incontestable; and you conclude from the obviousness of the second assertion the truth of the first, although there is no connection between the two. “If France,” says Ferrier, “saw herself losing every year just twenty million, at the end of fifty years, her specie would be reduced by half.” Manufactures would fall, etc. The second assertion is true, doubtless, once one has admitted the first. The difficulty is that the first is not true and can never be true. This is a thing which happens frequently in all disputes. One of the combatants wittingly changes the question, and the other one, not noticing that the question has changed, lets himself be drawn into following his adversary and battling on a false terrain. The opponents of free exportation, instead of proving that exportation set free would cause all the specie to leave, have assumed the thing proven and then demonstrated the bad effects of its leaving. Then their antagonists, instead of proving that free exportation drives out only the superfluous specie, have been pushed by the heat of the discussion to combat everything their opponents said and begun to maintain that all the specie’s leaving would not be a bad thing. See Smith.98 Thus sophisms by one group set the logic of the opposing group.

  To judge this question sanely, one must set off from two principles. First, on all the occasions a people have too little specie, it will not exit, even if exportation is allowed. Secondly, all the times there is too much specie, it will be impossible to prevent its exit, even if exportation is forbidden.

  20. piled up law after law. Contradictory measures by governments. They strictly forbid exportation of specie, and they create paper money whose natural and inevitable effect is to expel the specie from their country. See Smith,99 Sismondi,100 and Say.101

  21. of a middleman class. A law which everywhere and always has been judged extremely useful is that which forbids any hand to intervene between the farmer and the urban consumer. Is it not obvious, however, that the manufacturer [582] is always distracted from his work by the sale of output, that he can produce more and better output if some capitalist takes care of sales? Why make an exception in this respect of agriculture? If the peasant has to take his commodities to town, he necessarily loses considerable time. He spends what he gets for his products on luxurious town living. The men get drunk and the women corrupted. This way of things depraves and ruins the country people. Mirabeau, Monarchie prussienne, I, 169.102

  22. competition. “As soon as a branch of commerce or any specialized work is of use to the public, this will be all the more true when competition is more freely and generally established in it.” Smith, II, Ch. 2.103 The principle of competition applies to everything. “The establishment of several banks issuing promissory notes is better,” observes Say, II, Ch. 15,104 “than the establishment of one. Then each establishment of this kind seeks to merit the favor of the public by offering it the best conditions and the soundest security.”

  23. that the minimum is missing. Whoever carefully examines the dearths and famines which have afflicted some part of Europe, during the course of this century and the two preceding ones, on a number of which we have very precise data, will find that no dearth has ever arisen through any coming together of domestic sellers of wheat nor of any other cause than a real scarcity of wheat, perhaps caused sometimes and in a particular place by the ravages of war, but in by far the largest number of cases, by bad years, while a famine has never derived from any other cause than by violent measures of government and by improper means used by government to try to remedy the difficulties of high prices. The trade in wheat, without restrictions, harassment, or limits, which is the most efficacious safeguard against the misfortunes of a famine, is also the best palliative for the dire consequences of scarcity. “For there are no remedies against the consequences of real starvation. They can be alleviated only.” Smith, IV, Ch. 5.105 He shows very clearly in the same [583] chapter that the more you put discredit on the wheat trade and the more you surround it with dangers, by causing those who devote themselves to this trade to be looked on as monopolists, the more you cause those who devote themselves to this trade, despite the discredit and the dangers, to want to be compensated for this by large profits. The people then find themselves in years of scarcity in the hands of unscrupulous men, who get revenge for the people’s disdain by taking advantage of their distress.

  24. to forbid producing. The Maremma of Tuscany produced four times more wheat than was necessary for feeding its inhabitants, before exportation was forbidden. The grand dukes of the House of Medici prohibited it, and the lands remained uncultivated. Sismondi, II, 128.106 The exportation of wool is severely forbidden in England. What has the result been? That the number of rams has diminished and that wool has become more rare and of lower quality. The first fact was established by a Parliamentary inquiry in 1802. The second all English people recognize. Sismondi, II, 35.107

  25. a habitual calamity. See some excellent ideas in Bentham, Principes du Code civil, Ch. 4,108 on the intervention of laws regarding subsistence.

  26. when it comes to the means of carrying it out. On grain legislation, in the Bibliothèque de l’homme publique, XII, pp. 110 and following.109 “Any commodity, without exception, must be traded freely if one wants it in abundance. It is enough to harass and restrict its sale to cause its cultivation to be neglected and to make it rare.”110 Permission to certain individuals to export does more harm than good, since without bestowing more freedom it adds uncertainty to irritation. Thus it is false reasoning to conclude from the harm permission to individuals causes that general freedom would be harmful too. When exportation is forbidden, what happens? Wheat becomes dirt cheap; during that year it is squandered, and [584] in the following years very little and poor quality is grown and there is famine. If people do not want a general system and rely on the prudence of the government, the government’s committing the least error results in the greatest inconvenience, and not only that, but individual interest, which is the best and only guarantee of supplies, knowing it can be thwarted at each second by the arbitrariness, the whim, or the mistakes of the government, loses its assurance and thereby its dynamism. It puts its cunning in the service of fraud rather than in useful economic calculation. First, because its calculation can be unexpectedly hampered. Secondly, because on all the occasions when fraud is possible, there is more to gain by it than from any other financial operation, p. 111. The disadvantages of warehouses, pp. 119–120, 178. Laws against monopolies. Sequence of measures which harass people and are always useless, pp. 148–164. The excellent edict of 1774, p. 192. The need to take precautions on account of the people’s prejudices, pp. 205–211. Excellent report presented to the Assembly of Notables on the commerce in grain. Prohibitions encourage sudden exportation at rock-bottom prices, because they get lifted precisely when grain is cheap, p. 222. To the price of wheat maintained at a modest level by the government there must be added the expenses of the measures necessary to keep it at that level. For nothing is as dear as vexations. Now, these expenses fall back on taxpayers, p. 228. The prohibition on exporting is an indication of shortage, which has the infallible effect of raising prices, p. 234.111

  27. and the most convenient. See Smith on the effects of prohibitions with regard to exportation of and cornering in grains, III, 2.112

  28. the question of the rate of interest. The law must not guarantee usurious rates. At the same time, however, it must grant an assured guarantee to legal rates. For if it does not protect legal rates against all risk, the difficulty of getting oneself paid these rates would cause a resurgence of usury. By firmly guaranteeing legal rates and not usurious ones, the law reconciles everybody. Lenders will prefer legitimate profit, if it is safe, to a larger profit which is precarious. If, on the contrary, no profit is assured, lenders will seek, risks being equal, the largest [585] profit. N.B.: I do not know if all this is fair and does not contradict my principles. Perhaps the best and the simplest is for the law to guarantee all rates of interest however high they may be. Then the security will generate competition and this by itself will bring rates down.

  29. failed against it. Frederick William, father of Frederick the Great, was violently prejudiced against the Jews. He harassed them in a thousand ways. He also had to give them privileges, to compensate them for his harassments. He allowed them, for example, exclusive right to lend at usurious rates, because they did not enjoy as much security for the funds they lent as Christians did. A singular arrangement, according to which he authorized the villainy of the former because he had left them defenseless before the villainy of the latter.

  30. must not be fixed. Rising interest rates are not always the sign of a bad financial situation. Rates can rise when the scale of capital employed becomes greater, through a more extensive market or a new commerce opening up to a nation. The lowering of interest rates is therefore like falling profits. Such a fall is a sign, sometimes of prosperity, sometimes of the opposite, Sismondi, I, 78. The rate of interest has not fallen in America, despite the rapid growth of public wealth, because the need for capital grows, through the progress of industry, at the same time and even faster than the stock of capital. The rise and fall of interest rates and the rise and fall of profit levels, being sometimes a sign of prosperity and sometimes of the opposite, cannot serve as a rule for steering government measures. N.B.: This is contrary to note 28 above.

  31. It causes the flight. In Italy, many rich people have scruples about lending at interest. What is the result? That they hide their specie. This fact is proved by the extreme credulity with which the public adopts all the stories of the discovery of treasure. Sismondi, I, 144. Thus the fruit of the religious teaching which forbids lending at interest is only the vanishing of a supply of funds which would have stimulated industry. We ask who gains from this religious teaching.

  [586] 32. in Athens. Freedom of trade was always full and complete in Athens. There was no monopoly or exclusive privilege. Neither was there any law against usury. Those, however, who demanded excessively high interest rates were scorned by public opinion. De Pauw, I, 372.

  33. Public scrutiny will moderate them. “Usury has constantly been awoken when the wish was to limit the rate of interest or abolish it entirely. The fiercer the measures were and the more severely were they carried out, the more the price of money rose. This was the result of the natural process of things. The more risks the lender ran, the more he needed to be compensated by a high insurance premium. In Rome, during all the time of the Republic, the rate of interest was enormous. The debtors, who were the plebeians, constantly menaced their creditors, the patricians. Mahomet forbade the rate of interest.” What happens? In Muslim countries money is lent usuriously. The lender indemnifies himself for the use of the capital he parts with and again for the danger of the contravention. The same thing happened in Christian countries, above all in relation to the Jews. Say, Livre IV, Ch. 14.113

  Additions

  1. “The production encouraged mostly by a system of prohibitions is that which serves to benefit rich and powerful people. That which brings advantages to the poor and needy is almost always neglected or crushed.” See Smith, IV, 8.114

  2. Governments formerly had the policy of blocking the invention or the establishment of machines which economize on labor. Montesquieu approves of them.115 This was on the pretext [587] that these machines reduced a number of workers to inactivity and poverty. Following the invention of the machine-made stockings frame, the intendants of several provinces inveighed against a discovery which they said would reduce fifty thousand individuals to beggary. The inventor was forbidden to profit from his secret or to communicate it. They even made sure he was put in the Bastille. What happened? On his release he took refuge in England, the English turned his discovery to profit, and ten years afterward France was obliged to procure it with much more expense and difficulty. Since that time, industry of that type has multiplied its products. The poor have benefited, because they are now better clothed, and beggary, far from increasing, has diminished. Say.116

  Chapter 5:

  On the General Effect of Prohibitions

  Notes

  1. men preparing for every kind of crime. “There are always many inconveniences from the unnecessary imposing of laws contrary to individual interest and easy to infringe in secret, since this is a way of enticing men to free themselves by degrees from the burden of their conscience. To forbid what one cannot prevent and to expose citizens to continual inquisition, to attach grave punishments to crimes which one can never recognize and yet can always suspect, is to weaken the respect due to the law.” Administration des finances, III, 55–56. “All the times we forbid a thing naturally permitted or necessary, we simply make dishonest people out of those who do it.” Esprit des lois, XXI, 20.

  [588] 2. artificial crimes. Can a country whose law forbids alike theft, murder, the sale or purchase of such and such a material and such and such a commodity, have any just ideas on moral good or evil?

  3. to consider criminal. “Such a smuggler,” says Smith, V, 2,117 “doubtless guilty of breaking the laws of his country, nevertheless often finds he is incapable of violating those of natural justice. He was born to be in every way an excellent citizen, if the laws of his country had not taken it upon themselves to make criminal actions which in no way at all receive this character from nature.”

  4. in North America. The bad effect of government action on production is seen in the influence of commercial regulations in Georgia. Pictet, Tableau des Etats-Unis, II, 308.118

  Additions

  1. The Tartars, on their arrival in China, noticed that there were many disadvantages for agriculture in the irregularity of Cantons which were overpopulated, those underpopulated, and those totally unpopulated. They thought seaborne commerce was the source of the trouble, since it drew to the coast families from landlocked provinces where the fields were left fallow. They had the idea of forbidding seaborne commerce and in six provinces of demolishing houses less than three leagues from the sea, and forcing the inhabitants to withdraw deeper into the country. What happened? These people built no houses at all and waited in holes dug in the earth till the Tartar prohibitions fell into disuse. For the least enlightened men have a singular instinct, a prescience which warns them that everything excessive passes away. Indeed, the Tartars relaxed the ban on fishing and seaborne commerce. These families, persecuted so that they would cultivate the soil and who, instead of cultivating it, dug holes in it so they could live in them, left their holes and set themselves up again on the coasts. De Pauw. Egyptians and Chinese.119 [589]

  2. Regulations were passed in France to keep watch on the conservation of woods belonging to individuals, so they could not cut them down without permission. The result of these regulations was that individuals feared to plant trees which they had no right to cut down. Steuart, Political Economy, I, 146.120

  Chapter 6:

  On Things Which Push Governments in This Mistaken Direction

  Notes

  1. about the business outlook. Men in public administration who are guided by the business outlook think the measures which enrich merchants or manufacturers, and quickly to boot, also increase the national wealth. They do not reflect that the wealth of these merchants or manufacturers is formed only at the expense of other individuals in the nation. People do not believe the nation is likely to be enriched when a man who has a gaming house makes a large fortune at the expense of many individuals. The nation is no more enriched when a manufacturer, by virtue of a monopoly, acquires an immense fortune at the expense of many individuals. See Sismondi, Législation du commerce, II, 115 and following.121 The interest of merchants and leading manufacturers is always opposed to that of the public. Consequently, any proposals coming from this group as to law or the regulation of commerce must be received only with extreme suspicion. Smith, I, 11.122 Transplantation of the economic decision making of a particular interest group to the administration of public affairs. An individual would gain a lot from being able to make counterfeit money with impunity. Governments have believed they would gain comparably from so doing.

  2. large roads. Smith points out on this occasion, I, 11,123 that the roads were opened and that from [590] this time these petitioners, despite their fears, saw their rents increase and their cultivation improve.

  Chapter 7:

  On the Supports Offered by Government

  Notes

  1. A regime of subsidies: See for the absurdity of subsidies the example of the one granted by the English government for the transport of grain in Ireland. Tableau de la Grande Bretagne, I, 305, 333, 338, 351–352.124

  2. of constraint and harshness. A provincial intendant in France, with a view to encouraging the production of honey and the work of the bees, demanded statements of the number of hives kept in his province. In a few days all the hives were destroyed. Administration des finances, tome not given, p. 238.125

  3. from their natural usage. “Any system which seeks, either by special subsidies to attract to a particular type of industry a larger amount of society’s capital than would naturally make its way there, or by special obstacles forcibly to deflect an amount of capital from a particular industry, in which it would otherwise seek employment, is a system truly subversive of the purpose it espouses as its first and last objective. Very far from accelerating society’s progress toward opulence and real growth, it retards it. Very far from increasing, it diminishes the real value of the annual output of land and of the work of society.” Smith, IV, 9.126

  4. will not bring the same zeal. One could regard as a subsidy the practice whereby workers in Persia are paid by the court, even when they are not working or are ill. Since people are always disposed to praise the government, Chardin bestows eulogies on this practice, Voyages de Perse, II, p. 19.127 One can consider [591] from the same point of view the practice in Siam whereby those who excel at their work are employed for six years by the court. La Loubère, Relation de Siam, Tome I, Partie II.128

  Chapter 8:

  On the Equilibrium of Production

  Notes

  1. A people’s first need is to subsist. The Chinese missionaries attribute the famines so frequent in China to the distillation of rice. Who does not feel, however, that in a country where grain is short, it would be more useful to sell it than to distill it, since there would be more need for bread to eat than for spirit to drink. De Pauw, Egyptians and Chinese, I, 80.

  2. the marquis de Mirabeau. See the Ami des hommes for supports for agriculture, I, pp. 44–54.

  Chapter 9:

  Final Example(s) of the Adverse Effects of Government Intervention

  Notes

  1. Only by not acting. In his Mémoires, Livre XIX,129 Sully regards the proliferation of edicts and regulations in relation to commerce and industry, as a direct obstacle to the prosperity of the State. See Garnier’s observations in his [592] Preface to Smith, on the nonintervention of the government in industry, xxii–xxiii.130 It is the same with men as it is with flocks of sheep. It has been remarked that flocks of sheep prospered particularly in enclosed meadows because they were allowed to pasture freely there and they were troubled by neither the shepherd nor his dog. “Such is the misfortune of France,” says Sismondi, I, 166, “that she always borrows from each theory of political economy whatever is most ruinous in it. Following the political economists she crushed the countryside with the land tax. Following the mercantilists she shackled commerce with her customs houses and impoverished consumers. Following the disciples of Law, she dissipated public wealth twice over along with that of the capitalists, first by the creation of banknotes and then by promissory notes.”131

  Chapter 10:

  Conclusions from the Above Reflectionsa

  Addition

  “The regulations of commerce,” says Smith, IV, 7,132 “have this double drawback, that not only do they cause the birth of very dangerous ills in the state of the body politic, but furthermore these ills are such that it is often difficult to cure them without occasioning, at least for a while, even greater ills.” “When we consider closely,” says Say, I, 35,133 “the harm which the regulatory system causes when it is set up, and the evils to which one can be exposed in abolishing it, we are naturally led to this reflection: if it is so difficult to give freedom to industry, how much more reserved ought we to be when it is a matter of taking it away?”

  Chapter 11:

  On Government Measures in Relation to Population

  Notes

  1. see Mirabeau, l’Ami des hommes, I, p. 33, on the monastic institutions. Ibid., p. 38, why the condition of Protestant States is better than that of Catholic States.

  [593] 2. All detailed legislation. See Mirabeau, Ami des hommes, I, 39.

  Book XIII:

  On War

  Chapter 1:

  From What Point of View War Can Be Considered As Having Advantages

  Notes

  1. now only a scourge. The new way of making war, the development of arms and artillery, have lessened the good effects of war. Modern courage has the character of indifference. Gone is that élan, that will, that pleasure in the development of the physical and moral faculties which hand-to-hand combat produced. See Mirabeau, l’Ami des hommes, on necessary wars and wars undertaken through the fantasy of governments, I, 27–29.134

  2. limitless power. The prompt establishment of boundless power is the remedy which can, in these cases (those of extremely large States), prevent breakup: a new misfortune on top of enlargement. Esprit des lois, VIII, 17.

  Addition

  Let government not get this wrong. It would search in vain to the ends of the earth after glory, tribute money, empire, and the world’s wealth. All it would earn is astonishment. Without morality and freedom, success is only a meteor, which gives life to nothing in its path. People scarcely raise their heads to contemplate it for an instant, before each person continues on his way, silent and cheerless, striving to flee from despotism, misfortune, and death. [594]

  Chapter 5:

  On the Mode of Forming and Maintaining Armies

  Addition

  One of the functions of government being to repel foreign invasions, it follows that governments have a right to demand of individuals that they contribute to the national defense. It is impossible to restrict this right within precise limits. Its extent depends entirely on the attacks to which the society finds itself exposed. Governments can set themselves certain statutory limitations in this respect for the convenience of the citizens and the greatest possible facility in the organization of the armed forces. For example, they can fix the age before and after which no military service can be demanded, decide on the necessary exemptions from such service, and establish due processes to ensure that their laws in this regard will not be disobeyed. None of these rules, however, can be regarded as absolute. For a rule of this nature to be absolute, one would need the enemy’s consent, since the robustness of the defense must always be proportionate to the violence of the aggression. One can never therefore affirm that any citizen or class whatsoever will not be obliged to contribute to that defense, since one can never affirm that the contribution of everyone will not be required. What has brought into people’s minds the idea of absolute and irrevocable dispensation or exemptions is that governments have often taken their defensive measures hugely beyond what was necessary, because they had the ulterior motive of turning them into means of attack. So individuals, unable to put limits on the warlike disposition of their governors, have sought at least to protect themselves from some of the consequences of this mania, by supposing that there could be between them and the government certain undertakings in virtue of which it would forgo using them in war. Governments for their part have encouraged this idea, seeing in this never more than very limited renunciation the authorization for them to deploy, as their fancy took them, all those not covered by it. In reality, however, an absolute dispensation is an absurd thing. It is to promise a man that he will be exempt from defending his country, that is, from defending himself, if an enemy comes to attack it. Governments have very clearly sensed this absurdity. They have taken advantage of it in order to say to those without absolute dispensation that they could not refuse to participate in any venture, however faraway or pointless. When the danger came close to their borders, however, they knew very well to tell these bearers of so-called irrevocable dispensations that it was part of their duty as well as in their interest to fight. Doubtless the application of this principle varies according to the extent and circumstances of a country. [595] In a very large realm, it is almost impossible that all the citizens should ever be reduced to taking up arms. The principle exists notwithstanding that, however. In this way the state of the modern world restrains or modifies this principle. The need to fight scarcely bears on any save the group particularly dedicated for more or less of the time to military service. The dwellers in towns, the artisans, the bourgeois, the farmers in the countryside, in a word, all those not formally enrolled, are not held to any resistance toward the enemy.

  Book XIV:

  On Government Action on Enlightenment

  Chapter 3:

  On Government in Support of Truth

  Notes

  1. for finding it. The claim governments make for the control of public intellectual life becomes supremely ridiculous under representative institutions, where opinions, being publicly discussed, come deprived of all mystique. No opinion in this case can be imposed with that fearsome solemnity, born of the union of force and mystery, which accompanied the promulgation of the Zend-Avesta135 and the Koran. “It is far from being the case,” says Bentham,136 “that as much intellect, careful reckoning, and prudence have been employed to defend society as to attack it or to prevent crimes rather than commit them.” What Bentham says springs from the fact that individuals are always more reflective and adroit than governments. It is an error to assume a huge gulf between those who dictate the laws and those who receive them. Their respective degrees of enlightenment are always in a certain ratio, and they do not diverge. Nature grants no privileges to any individual. No one gets far ahead of his time and place, and those who do are perhaps the least proper to dominate them.

  2. of any government whatever. Political despotism, whether it follows or violates the rules of justice, is, [596] says Aristotle, the overthrow of all law.137 I will likewise say that the influence of government on thought, whether in the particular circumstances it is exercised in a manner consistent with truth and reason, or contrary to them, is nevertheless in principle the overthrow of all reason and truth. One cannot put the truth to use if one does not know whence it comes, and how and by what chain of reasoning it derives. Dialogues sur le commerce des blés, 162.138

  3. belittled our own judgment. He who, to uphold the authority of an opinion, uses force rather than reasoning may have pure intentions but really causes the greatest of evils. “To summon up in defense of the truth any help other than the facts is the most foolish of errors. He who accepts the truest proposition under the influence of government is not accepting a truth but a lie. He does not understand the proposition, for to understand it would be to grasp the force of the argument which accompanies it, the meaning of all its terms, and their respective compatibility. What he is accepting is what is convenient for submission to usurpation and injustice.” Godwin, Political Justice.139

  Additions

  The history of the introduction of Greek philosophy in Rome is a remarkable example of the impotence of government [597] either against truth or error. There was much truth but also error in the philosophy brought to the Romans by the Athenian embassy.140 On the one hand, the progress of enlightenment had driven the Greek philosophers into rejecting absurd fables, to lifting themselves up to more refined religious notions, to separating morality from vulgar polytheism and placing its principles and its security in the heart and reasoning of man. On the other hand, in the schools of several philosophers, the abuse of a subtle dialectic had unsettled the natural and incontestable principles of justice, submitted everything to interest groups, and in this way sapped the dynamic of all action and stripped virtue itself of what is most noble and pure in it. First of all, the Senate took up Greek philosophy en bloc, an initial mistake which the government could not avoid committing, since it is part neither of its business nor its power to devote itself to the in-depth analysis of any viewpoint whose surface features are all it can ever grasp. The Senate, having taken philosophy en bloc, suffered more for ill than good. This was bound to be so. The sophistry of Carneades, which, glorifying a contemptible flair for impartially attacking directly opposite opinions, spoke in public, sometimes for, sometimes against, justice, should have inspired very critical safeguards against this hitherto unknown intellection. As a result, the Senate banned all Greek philosophy, a second and doubly unfortunate mistake. For in the first place, the Senate was banning, on appearances it had misunderstood, the thing which alone, at a time of moral corruption, could call Romans back to the love of freedom, truth, and virtue. Cato, who decided on the ban on Greek philosophy, did not know that a century after him, this same philosophy, better studied and understood, would be the sole refuge of his grandson against the treasons of fortune and the haughty clemency of Caesar. In the second place, the stern measures taken by the Senate against Greek philosophy served only to prepare for it a triumph whose very delaying made it all the more complete. The representatives from Athens were sent back precipitately to their country. Stern edicts against all foreign doctrines were frequently renewed. Pointless efforts! The impetus had been triggered. It could not be stopped by government means.

  Now let us suppose that the Senate of Rome had intervened neither for nor against Greek philosophy. The enlightened men of this capital of the world would have examined the new [598] doctrine impartially. They would have separated the truths it contained from the sophisms which had been introduced by means of these truths. It was, to be sure, not difficult to show that the arguments of Carneades against justice were only wretched quibbles. It was not difficult to reawaken in the heart of Roman youth the indelible feelings which are in the heart of all men, and to raise the indignation of these still youthful minds against an exposition which, consisting entirely in equivocation and chicanery, ought by the simplest analysis soon to find itself covered with ridicule and scorn. This analysis, however, could not be the work of government, which ought only to render it possible by leaving discussion free. For discussion, when it is banned, takes place nonetheless, but imperfectly, with confusion, intense emotion, resentment, and violence. Some would like to replace this discussion by edicts and soldiers. These means are convenient and seem sure. They have the air of bringing everything together, ease, brevity, dignity. They have only one fault: they never work. The young Romans kept all the more obstinately in their memory the discourses of the Sophists, whose persons it seemed to them had been unjustly driven out. They regarded the dialectic of Carneades, less as an opinion needing examination than as a good in need of defense, since they were threatened with having it snatched from them. The study of Greek philosophy was no longer a matter of simple speculation, but of what seemed far more precious still, at a stage of life when the mind is endowed with all the forces of resistance, a matter of triumph over government. The enlightened men of riper age, reduced to choosing between the abandonment of all philosophical study or disobedience to the government, were forced to the latter course by the enjoyment of letters, a passion which grows every day because its enjoyment is of itself. The former followed philosophy into its Athenian exile; the latter sent their children there. And philosophy, returning later from its banishment, had all the more influence, in that it arrived from afar and had been acquired with more difficulty.

  The Aristotelian metaphysics was anathematized by this fearsome power, which made passions and thoughts and sovereigns and subjects bend under its yoke. It was against the ashes of a philosopher dead for twenty centuries that the Council of Paris, under Philip the Fair, directed its thunderbolts, and this dumb dust emerged victorious from the combat. The metaphysics of the preceptor of Alexander was more than ever adopted in the schools; it became the object of a religious veneration. It had its apostles, its martyrs, its missionaries, and the theologians themselves bent the dogmas of Christianity, in order to reconcile them with the maxims [599] of the peripatetics, so irresistible is public opinion in its progressive advance, and so far is power, civil, religious, and political, forced in spite of itself to follow that advance, happy in order to save appearances, to sanction what it wanted to forbid, and to put itself at the head of the movement it had initially claimed to be stopping.

  The Interim of Charles V is a memorable example of the ideas governments contrive for themselves as regards their authority on public opinion. The Interim, as we know, was an order to believe provisionally such and such dogmas, until it was decided which dogmas one should believe. It is an idea which can be conceived by governments only in a state of drunkenness, that of telling man to believe as true for a while that which one announces can be declared false later.

  Chapter 4:

  On Government Protection of Enlightenment

  Notes

  1. in the widest sense of that expression. Human faculties can be divided into two classes, those whose purpose is to satisfy needs or to procure present enjoyment, and those which lead to future improvement. Agriculture, commerce, the exact and natural sciences must be placed in the first class; the second takes in morality, the knowledge of earlier opinions and facts, everything which tends to establish relations between us and the past generations or to prepare such relations between us and the generations to follow. We can call the first faculties work faculties, the second intellectual faculties.

  2. almost all encourage them. We have seen men who cultivated the sciences, indifferent to the situation of their fellow citizens and their country, continuing their studies with the same composure in the midst of the most bloody proscriptions and under the most degrading despotism, and indiscriminately permitting diverse tyrannies to make use of their discoveries or to take pride in their success. Considered from this point of view, the arts and sciences are truly only a kind of work of a more difficult nature, of a more extensive use than that of the manufacturer and artisan, but nevertheless separated from the great purpose of, [600] and no less foreign to, what good minds understand particularly by philosophy. Doubtless, even then scientists serve philosophy by their results, but we cannot attribute to those who devote themselves in this way any merit. It occurs in spite of them or without their knowing. Insofar as there is any within them, they make science into a vulgar trade, which provides only nourishment for curiosity and an instrument for government, of whatever kind it may be. Once it gets involved in protecting them, power tends to give them their direction.

  3. the agreed sphere. The hope of favors from government leads men committed to science to choose compliantly the subject of their research according to the fantasy of the powers of the moment. They deny themselves the leisure they need. They no longer believe themselves accountable for their own time, to themselves, to the public, to posterity, but to their patrons and protectors. They hasten to publish conjectures which are still uncertain, as though they were definitive findings; they put forward as discovery that which is not such, or which is worse still, they recoil before the truths to which the sequence of reasoning and experiment leads them, if these truths get too close to certain opinions which are in disfavor. All their faculties are vitiated by the intrusion of motives foreign to the nature of their study and to the love of what is true and to freedom of thought.

  4. persecution is the more valuable. How much brilliance persecution promotes. Socrates, before falling victim to the anger of the Athenians, was so obscure that when Aristophanes cast him in the open-air theater in The Clouds, delegates of the allied towns, who were at the opening performance, went home very disgruntled that they had been occupied for such a long time with the spectacle of a man called Socrates, in whom they took no interest. Elien, Histoires Diverses, II, 13.141

  Additions

  Governments which claim to favor enlightenment fasten haphazardly on the viewpoints which they protect. Sometimes, by charlatanry or gracious condescension, they submit themselves to a vain show of discussion; but to them reasoning is just superfluous politesse. Their mulishness guarantees them the obedience of all who surround them. Look at Frederick the Great disputing with the philosophers, Frederick the Great, of all men the most fit to relinquish power. Intellection constitutes his avant-garde; but you are aware, behind it, of the force, almost shameful, of his complacency, and of the despotism which sees itself as infallibly right.

  [601] No one wants the influence of enlightenment more than I; but it is precisely because I want it, because I prefer it to any other sort of approach, that I do not want a distorted version. It is in order to conserve in all its vigor the domination of the whole of the educated class that I reject, with revulsion, its subordination to a small section of itself, often the less enlightened part. I would hope to prevent the free, gradual, and peaceful activity of all from being slowed down, and even halted, by privileges granted to the few.

  To listen to the writers on government policy for education, one would think that we have only to tear open a veil, to make a long-concealed light shine.

  The Athenians had a tribunal for assessing plays. Never did any tribunal pronounce more absurd judgments. This was the tribunal which crowned the tragedies of Dionysius the Elder, who had been accused of letting himself be suborned. De Pauw, Recherches sur les Grecs, I, 145, 184–187.142 Elien, Histoires Diverses, II, 8.143 Diodore de Sicile, XVII. Quintilian.144

  There are two parts to the existence of man in society, the one he holds in common, which he makes dependent on other people, and the other, which he keeps private and independent. I call the first social existence, the second, individual existence. Man has obviously more means for perfecting his individual existence than his social existence. For he is obliged to adjust the latter to the faculties of the majority of his fellows, and cannot thus go beyond the common ground, whereas he is free to take his individual existence to whatever degree of improvement his faculties allow him. The result is what we have said more than once, that when it is necessary to submit the individual to society, society’s way of thinking, that is to say, the common way of thinking, however imperfect it may be, must prevail sovereignly. In all other cases, however, individual ways of thinking must stay free. It is not that individual abilities cannot come together to act with more force or perseverance. It is necessary, though, that they come together freely, that they are not forced to mingle and place themselves by contract on a common basis. Any time [602] they come together, there is on both sides some curtailment of faculties. Any transaction between individual minds to form a collective one takes place at the expense of the more perfect ones.

  Chapter 5:

  On the Upholding of Morality

  Notes

  1. attributed to it. The government by its wrong measures or its so-called promotion of morality does as much harm to morality as to freedom. It substitutes for subtle motives and the instinct for good, which drive our decent actions, motives which deprive these actions of any morality or merit, just as in the case of opinions, it substitutes for the chain of reasoning which should lead us to the truth by way of conviction, reasons which, not belonging to rational argument or to evidence, lead us to believe that the truth has all the disadvantages of error. For the perfection of the species it perverts individuals, just as for the happiness of the species it oppresses them.

  Additions

  See Mirabeau, The Friend of Men. On the prerogative of the sovereign on the affections, I, 9. On the efforts of governments to lead men to frugality by honor and by example, p. 22.

  In China the law has sought to regulate everything. In the event, however, it has regulated only manners. It has not regulated moral behavior. The people there are overwhelmed with constraints and lost in corruption.

  Morality, like sentiment, like affection, belongs uniquely to individual human resilience. The individual pronounces according to a thousand nuances, a thousand ramifications, a thousand subtleties which it is impossible to determine precisely and therefore to submit to collective authority. The true judge of morality is the heart of man, and the executor of its judgments is opinion, free and hence individual opinion, separated from government and in no way distorted by its association with power. There is an important distinction which must not be misunderstood. Since most actions opposed to morality also upset public order, society must repress these actions. This is not, however, because of their intrinsic merit or demerit. It is because they are contrary to the purpose of the public security for which political government was instituted. We must be wary of confusing two absolutely different things, the aversion which an action invokes in the individual being insofar as it is immoral, and the severity which the political body [603] exercises against that action insofar as it is perturbative. When an immoral action is at the same time contrary to social order, it should be envisaged in two ways: as immoral such that public opinion stigmatizes it; as contrary to order such that government represses it. These are two different tribunals whose competences are, and must forever remain, distinct. They do so remain; for we see every day force being exercised and public opinion refusing to ratify its judgments. The edict on duels, says M. Ferrand, gave new life to the viewpoint it was intended to destroy, IV, 333.145 This distinction, however, must still be recognized in theory, so that it can never be obscured in practice. If we confused these two things, we would give to the collective body a necessarily boundless jurisdiction over moral life, since for all the issues on which the collective body pronounces, there exists no higher body which can quash its decisions. Because we have not sanctified this distinction in a sufficiently formal way, there has come about some kind of notion of a liaison between morality and the collective authority, a liaison which, being purely artificial and arbitrary, is not amenable to definition and renders morality, which is at once the holiest of individual properties and the most unchangeable rule of this universe, a protean thing, modifiable by government, at the mercy of institutions, and able to vary in each country, in each century, under each government.

  Coercive laws, which under various penalties would enforce actions commanded by morality, such as gratitude, would have this bad effect, that they would substitute motives of fear for natural ones.

  When government interferes only to maintain justice, dangerous feelings moderate and sociable ones are developed. From the single principle of equality flow all the forms of improvement. Once the rights of all are guaranteed, that is to say, once individuals are prevented from using violence against each other, the result is that the sole means of happiness is the exercise of virtue. If governments would content themselves with guaranteeing the rights of everybody, riches would no longer be anything save means of physical enjoyment and not of oppression, privilege, or superiority over other men. Now, physical pleasures being necessarily very limited, the rich would soon wish to draw from their opulence another advantage. They would use it to gain the affection of their fellows, since this opulence would no longer [604] enable them to dominate the latter. This use of wealth would have led to all the social virtues without the intervention of government. It is the same with all those questions over which governments arrogate to themselves a moral influence.

  Bentham, I, 101, gives a very good example of the bad effects of intervention by government, aimed at repressing certain vices.146

  Chapter 6:

  On the Contribution of Government to Education

  Notes

  1. a body of doctrine. From the fact that an idea is useful as an individual one, one should not always conclude that it would be equally so were it to be established as a dominant or collective one. Mirabeau said: there exist no national truths.147 I say: there exist no governmental truths. Thought in its nature is one and individual. It is impossible to make a collective being of it. It can be tortured, choked, or killed. But its nature does not change.

  2. active and independent. It is necessary to arrange as far as possible that the teachers need a lot of pupils, that is to say, to distinguish themselves by their work and their knowledge. The only way of attaining this purpose is not to give them a salary sufficient for their ease, but only such that an accident, or illness, or some circumstance which took away their pupils from them for a while, would not reduce them to poverty. To wish to replace this dependence, which teachers must have on the public, by making them dependent on an alien authority, such as that of the government or some of its agents, is a bad measure in several respects. First, there are other ways of pleasing that authority than by zeal, activity, and knowledge. Secondly, that authority does not have the necessary enlightenment. It can be exercised capriciously and insolently, and it is in the nature of power that it often is exercised thus. . . . “Everything which obliges or commits a number of students to remain in a college or a university independently of the merit [605] or reputation of the masters,” such as on the one hand the necessity of taking certain degrees, which can be conferred only in certain places, and on the other scholarships and aid granted to poor students, have the effect of lessening the zeal and reducing the need for knowledge on the part of the masters privileged thus under any arrangement whatever. . . .148 What has happened in relation to government has happened rather generally in relation to education. Most public establishments have the appearance of having been set up not for the benefit of the scholars but for the convenience of the masters. Smith, V, I.149

  3. human knowledge. All the fine establishments in America are private, the great hospital in Philadelphia, the reform school, the libraries, the canals, the bridges, the schools known as academies, the charitable pharmacies, the marine societies, the locks on the waterways, the high roads. Pictet, Tableau des Etats-Unis.150

  Additions

  “Morality must be learned everywhere and taught nowhere.” Say, V, 8.151

  Is a candidate required to prove himself? The proper thing to do is not to consult the professors, who are judges and partial, who must find everything which comes from their school good, and everything which does not come from it bad. . . . We have to determine the candidate’s merit and not the place where he studied nor the time he studied there; since the demand that a certain course be taken in a designated place is to displace another course which could be a better one. To prescribe a certain course of study is to proscribe any other more expeditious possibility.152

  It is impossible, people will say, for the government not to control educational establishments which it funds or where it pays the salaries. It is impossible [606] to separate instruction entirely from education. Instruction itself would suffer, since lacunae would necessarily result. Yes, but then the government must allow individuals the right to set up private schools and all parents the right to choose between government-managed education and education managed by private individuals.

  Garnier, in his Notes on Smith,153 shows very clearly that the government when it offers free education, other than of the elementary sort, deflects the manual workers of society in a detrimental and worthless way from their natural occupations. See also Smith’s observations on the drawbacks of scholarships, I, 10.154

  You can teach facts by rote, but reasoning never.

  “The natural arrangement of education, leaving the choice, the manner, and the burden of education to the parents, can be compared to a series of experiences, whose purpose is the perfecting of the general intellect. Everything advances and develops through this emulation of individuals, through this difference between ideas and between minds, in a word, through the variety of individual stimuli. But if everything were thrown into a single mold, if teaching were to assume everywhere the character of legal government, errors would perpetuate themselves, and there would be no more progress.” Bentham, II, 200–201.

  Book XV:

  The Outcome of Preceding Discussion Relative to the Action of Government

  Chapter 1:

  The Outcome of the Preceding Discussion

  Notes

  1. less bad and more good. Everything in nature has its disadvantages, but the institutions consistent with nature have the advantage that since nature is essentially conservative, it has ensured that these disadvantages will not be without remedy, whereas in institutions contrary to nature, [607] since the conserving force is not there, the disadvantages which they entail are often irreparable. Thus by requiring that each man be charged with looking after his own interests, nature has without doubt exposed the human race to two very great evils. Strong feeling and false reckoning are such that individuals often acquit themselves very badly in the task entrusted to them. If, however, fearful of the danger attaching to this natural arrangement, we have the idea of charging one man to watch over the interests of another, or of several others, what is the result of this artificial institution? First of all, the same disadvantages arise as from the natural institution, since the same passions, the same erroneous reckonings, can be found in the person who has been entrusted with interests which are not his own. The natural institution, however, carried its own remedy. Every man suffers from the errors he commits in his own affairs and does not delay in putting things right. The artificial institution, by contrast, is without remedy. The man who, against nature’s wish, decides for another, does not suffer in the least from the errors he commits. They bear upon other people. They do not enlighten him at all; he does not put them right therefore. Moreover, what would be implied if he gained from it? A further risk. He whom you have deprived of the right of looking after his interests will perhaps resist the man you have put in his place, and both will find themselves the worse for it. On all occasions when that which is natural, that is to say just, that is to say conforming with equality (equality, justice, nature: it is the same thing), seems to you to entail disadvantages and you do not know their remedy, trust in experience, which will straightaway show them to you, unless you have brought, which happens almost always, something artificial to the natural institution, and then it is usually this addition which is creating the disadvantages or blocking the restorative power of action. Whenever an institution which is against nature is suggested to you and you do not see its disadvantageous side, it is only experience which you are lacking. The disadvantage exists and will soon develop.

  2. in the name of rendering it happy. “It is absurd to reason on men’s happiness other than in terms of their own desires and sensations. It is absurd to wish to demonstrate in a set of calculations that a man is fortunate, when he thinks himself unfortunate.”155 Bentham’s argument against slavery, but which applies to everything. Government has been defined as the institution aimed at creating the happiness of men. There is a great difference between guaranteeing the happiness individuals create for themselves, or create between themselves, and taking over their role in the construction of their happiness. It is almost always [608] by claiming to do it that governments cease to do so.

  Addition

  The ordinary goings-on of governments: they begin by doing harm. They notice this. Instead of stopping the harm they have done, by warding off the cause, and returning to a salutary inaction, they build up various types of counteractivities and produce, inadequately and painfully, through two opposing pressures, what would have existed naturally, but more completely and less painfully, from freedom alone.

  Chapter 5:

  Further Thoughts on the Preceding Chapter

  Notes

  1. frequent relations between the diverse classes. It is a disadvantage for any mode of election if the electors and the elected are separated. See Smith on the advantageous influence of popular election in giving rise to some consideration for the lower class of farmers.156

  Chapter 6:

  On Ideas of Stability

  Notes

  1. disproportionate with the rest of things. We find fault with innovators for making laws of opposite outlook to existing public opinion, and we are right. They prefer the future, or what they call the future, to the present, and they have no right to do this. The law, however, which perpetuates itself when it is no longer the [609] expression of national sentiment, makes a mistake of the same kind, with the sole difference that it is before the past which it wants the present to bow. Now, time plays no part in it. Past public opinion no longer exists; it cannot motivate laws. No more does future public opinion exist; perhaps it never will. It too cannot motivate laws. Present public opinion is the only one which really exists.

  2. And what would novelty have produced more unfortunate? China is a precise example of a nation where everything has been rendered static. So our new political writers go into ecstasies about or on Chinese institutions, institutions which have had the result, however, of China having been constantly conquered by foreigners less numerous than the Chinese. To make the Chinese static it has been necessary to destroy in them the energy which would have served to defend them.

  Addition

  At the moment when certain institutions were established, since they were proportionate to the condition of morals and received opinions, or rather that they were the actual effect of these opinions and morals, they had a relative utility and goodness. These advantages have lessened to the extent that the human spirit and institutions have become modified. Governments often think they do great good by reestablishing institutions in what they call their purity. This purity, however, turns out to be precisely the thing most contrary to contemporary ideas and the most liable in consequence to do harm. From this difference between institutions which are static and ideas which are progressive, there results the bulk of the contradictions and false arguments of governments and writers. They see that in a certain period a certain institution was useful, and they imagine that if now it is harmful, this is because it has degenerated. It is precisely the opposite. The institution has stayed the same, but the ideas have changed and the cause of the evil to which you want to bring a solution or remedy is not in the degeneration of the former but in the imbalance between the two. Government connections with the law are a matter on which it is very important to come to some agreement. Two types of imperfections must be distinguished in the laws, one their opposition to morality, the other their imbalance with regard to current ideas. A law can be at variance with morality through the effect of ignorance and universal barbarism. This, then, is the misfortune of the age. A law can be at variance with morality through the effect of error or of the specific corruption of a government. Then it is the crime of the lawmaker. [610] Antiquity offers us an example of the first kind of imperfection, in the tolerance of ancient philosophers for slavery. Modern times supply us with examples of the second, in the unjust decrees which were enacted during our Revolution. In this latter case the evil is much more incalculable than in the former. The legislator puts himself not only in opposition to morality, but to public opinion. Not only does he outrage the former, but he oppresses the latter. He fights simultaneously against what ought to be the case and against what is. From this there follows an important truth. It is that no anterior example can legitimate an injustice. This injustice was excusable when the human spirit had not recognized it as such, only as an inevitable misfortune. With the enlightening of the human spirit, the excuse ceases and the government which prolongs or renews the injustice renders itself guilty of a double outrage.

  The laws which bear the impress of general intellectual imperfection are in balance with the period for which they exist. More perfect laws would clash with ideas. According to this reckoning, the needs of the people not being the origin of their laws, and their authors acting spontaneously and fallibly, the people find themselves exposed to all the drawbacks attached to the imbalance of laws with ideas and to all those whose provenance may be in the mistakes of lawmakers.

  Chapter 7:

  On Premature Ameliorations

  Additions

  At all times when improvements are the natural and real product of the general will, this is to say, of what are felt to be the needs of everybody, expressed through the freedom of the press, the sole faithful and independent interpreter of public opinion, these improvements have at least a relative worth. When, however, the government makes itself judge, it looks for that relative worth in its own ponderings, its own opinions, in its own enlightenment, and the improvements, which are supposed to be acquiring the highest degree of perfection possible, are sometimes contrary to the general wishes and not in line with current ideas, and sometimes contrary to the eternal and universal principles of morality. Governments which arrogate to themselves the right to improvement are, when they are corrupt, hypocrites, and even when they are well-intentioned, wholesale gamblers with the system, to whose multiform errors the people find themselves [611] constantly sacrificed. The laws which bear the impress of general intellectual imperfection are in harmony with the time for which they exist. More perfect laws would clash with the ideas.

  There are improvements which, taken abstractly, are incontestable. As long as the nation does not want them, however, this is because it does not need them, and time alone, and free expression of individual opinion, through the press, can make it want them. Government must not even be accorded the right to promote these improvements. This would be to attribute to it a function which belongs only to enlightened individuals. Now, government cannot be composed of such individuals, and enlightened individuals, moreover, have useful power by way of public opinion, only because they do not possess formal power.

  “Oh hammer-blow reformers, you are the most unfortunate of gardeners.” Mirabeau, The Friend of Men, I, 78.

  I often say we should respect the habits of peoples, yet at the same time I propose many things which seem contrary to these habits. It must be observed, however, that I propose only negative things. This is to say that I counsel governments not to exert their authority in favor of such and such a set of restrictions, which they believe in their interest to maintain. By no longer exerting their authority in this direction, they do not hurt existing practices at all. They permit each person to continue to do freely what formerly they commanded him to do. It can happen that for a long while the acquired habit may be the stronger. Bit by bit, however, if it is contrary to the real interest of individuals, they will free themselves from it, one after the other, and the good will be accomplished without any great shock. Imagine a herd whose owner had, for a long time and by misjudgment, kept it on arid, sterile soil, surrounding it with a fence. If to have it transported to a better pasture you have it taken out by force, by exciting the dogs against it and frightening it with shouts, you may well find that several of the beasts will be wounded hurling themselves outside and even that the fright may be so great that many scatter and get lost. Just take down the fence, however, and leave the flock in peace. It will stay some time on the land where it is used to pasturing; but bit by bit, it will spread out all around, and after some time and imperceptible movement it will arrive in the fertile meadow where you want to transport it.

  People always give great praise to statesmen who work for the future. Is it truly necessary, however, is it really natural, that in the matter of government men work for the future, that is to say, for generations who do not exist yet [612] and of whose condition, ideas, dispositions, and circumstances one is in ignorance?

  Charlemagne is always praised to us as a great legislator, and to prove it they tell us that his monarchy fell only when his laws fell. The talent of a legislator, however, would have lain in making laws which did not fall. The praises given to all these legislative talents are like those accorded to constitutions, by its being said that they would work perfectly if everyone were willing to obey them, as if the art of constitutions were not by definition to get oneself obeyed by everybody.

  Greece owes the brilliance of her annals more to the progressive way in which she civilized herself than to any circumstances unique to her. Greeks were left by happy chance to the sure and slow movement of domestic civilization. The foreign colonies which came there carrying the seeds of some arts were not strong enough to conquer, nor refined enough to corrupt, nor informed enough to enlighten. The leaders of these colonies were ordinarily either criminals fleeing the punishment menacing them in their own country, or ambitious people driven out by enemy factions. Wandering at random, they were blown by the winds onto some unknown shore. They found there inhabitants who, constantly exposed to incursions by neighboring nations, and to seeing themselves carried off along with their beasts and wives, had conceived an invincible hatred against all foreigners. The newcomers were bound to add to this hatred by the violence necessary for their subsistence and for their safety. Thus the early days were spent in continual stress on both sides and reciprocal massacres. Established finally on a small territory, the new colonists found that all that surrounded them were numerous and untamed hordes, whom they could conquer but not subdue and to whose incursions they were frequently exposed. As to their original homeland, the emigrants could not, given the reasons which had forced them to abandon it, keep up any relationship with it. On the contrary, it often happened that their compatriots were their most mortal enemies. Thus it is easy to see that the civilization of Greece must not be attributed to the colonies which established themselves there. It was time alone which civilized the Greeks, and this slower way is also the best of all ways.

  One can reduce the other ways to three, civilization by conquerors, civilization by the conquered, and last, civilization by tyrants. The Americans furnish us with an example of the first, the barbarians of the north and the Chinese with one of the second, and the Russians with a case of the third.

  [613] When it is the conquerors who take on the education of the conquered, they begin by degrading their pupils. Their interest of the moment does not demand that they make men of them, but slaves. It is therefore to form humble and hardworking slaves, deft and docile machines, that these teachers, with power to hand, strive successfully. It is only after eight or ten generations that the sad remains of the indigenous peoples, their community reduced to a hundredth part of the numbers of their ancestors, begin to mingle with their oppressors, and to civilize themselves imperfectly, through the imitation of their corrupted mores and through the adoption of their erroneous opinions.

  When, on the contrary, subjugated peoples civilize their masters, they enervate them without softening them, and they degrade them without policing them. The vices of luxury come to join with the ferocity of barbarism, and from this mixture are born the most dire effects. In the history of these peoples, the rapine, the violence, the devastation which characterize the uncivilized man, are accompanied by the cowardice, the weakness, the shameful pleasures of man, corrupted by a long abuse of civilization.

  Lastly, when a despot wants to police his slaves, he thinks he need only wish this. Accustomed to seeing them tremble and grovel at the least sign, he thinks they will enlighten themselves similarly. To hasten their progress, he conceives of no other expedients than those of tyranny. He believes that, in this way, he is preparing his peoples for enlightenment, freedom’s very daughter. He wants his subjects to learn, think, and see only as he does, and he gets irritated equally by nostalgia for the old mores and by the censure of new institutions. What are the results of these mad efforts? Let us cast a glance on that vast empire whose rapid progress people often vaunt. We will see there the great, prizing above everything else servile imitation in the practices of their neighbors; the sciences in the hands of foreigners who, obscure in their own country, come to seek wealth and renown in a nation they despise; and the people reduced to a condition of slavery, with no inkling that they are supposed to be undergoing enlightenment.

  Those who make law by means of the lash seem to me like chickens which, bored with sitting, break their eggs in order to make them hatch.

  When you set up an institution without the popular consciousness being ready for it, this institution, however good it may be in principle, is not an organization, but a mechanism.

  [614] “We do nothing better than what we do freely and by following our natural talents.” The Spirit of the Laws, XIX, 5.

  What we say about speculative functions, etc., in the Additions to Ch. 1, Book III, must be placed in this chapter.

  Chapter 8:

  On a False Way of Reasoning

  Additions

  Diverse and almost constant causes of error. First, confusion of ideas. Secondly, the effect taken for the cause. Thirdly, negative effects advanced as proofs of positive assertions. Fourthly, interest placed on the commitment to the purpose, without examination of the means. Fifthly, because of instead of despite.

  Book XVI:

  On Political Authority in the Ancient World

  Chapter 2:

  The First Difference between the Social State of the Ancients and That of Modern Times

  Notes

  1. within very narrow limits. “The citizens,” says Sismondi, IV, 370, “find consolation for the loss of their liberty in the acquisition or sharing of a large power. This compensation exists only in a State where the citizens are few in number and where consequently the chance of coming to supreme power is large enough or close enough to mitigate the daily sacrifice which each citizen makes of his rights to this power. Thus in the republics of Antiquity there was no civil liberty. The citizen had seen himself as a slave of the nation of which he was a part. He gave himself over entirely to the decisions of the sovereign, without challenging the legislator’s right to control all his actions, to constrain his will in everything. On the other hand, however, he was himself in turn this sovereign and this legislator. He knew the value of his suffrage in a nation small enough that each citizen could be a power, and he felt that it was to himself as sovereign that as a subject he sacrificed his civil freedom.157 One senses [615] how illusory such a compensation would be” in a country which counted millions of active citizens.158

  Chapter 4:

  The Third Difference between the Ancients and the Moderns

  Notes

  1. Ignorance of the compass. “Men, not knowing the use of the compass, were scared of losing sight of the coast, and given the state of imperfection in the art of shipbuilding, they did not dare to abandon themselves to the impetuous waves of the ocean. To traverse the Pillars of Hercules, that is to say, to navigate beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, was for long regarded in Antiquity as the most daring and astonishing enterprise. The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, the most skillful navigators and the most knowledgeable shipbuilders in these ancient times, did not even attempt this passage until very late, and they were for a long time the only people who dared do it.” Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, 3.159

  2. his interests and his fate bound up. “Modern nations which are complete and able to exist by themselves remain almost in the same condition when their governments are overthrown.” Say, IV, Ch. 12.160

  3. They move their assets far away. When a citizen found only savages outside his country, and thus only death or deprivation of all human society were the consequences of expatriation, the fatherland to which one owed life and all the goods which make it precious could demand many more sacrifices than today, when a citizen, leaving his country, finds everywhere almost the same mores, the same physical commodities, and in many respects the same moral ideas. When Cicero said: “Pro qua patria mori, et cui nos totos dedere et in qua nostra omnia ponere et quasi consecrare debemus,”161 [616] it was the case that the fatherland contained then everything a man held dear, and that to lose his fatherland was to lose his wife, his children, his friends, all his affections, all his possessions. The time of patriotism has passed. To be able to demand sacrifices from us, the fatherland must be dear to us, and to be dear to us, it must not strip us of all that we love. Now, what do we love in our fatherland? Freedom, security, public safety, the ownership of our goods, the possibility of rest, activity, glory, and a host of rights of all kinds. The word “fatherland” brings into our imagination much more the coming together of all these enjoyments than the topographical idea of a particular country. If it is suggested to us that we sacrifice all these enjoyments to the fatherland, this is to suggest that we sacrifice to the fatherland, the fatherland itself. This is to want to make us dupes of words. This applies equally to society. There are only individuals in society. Society means all individuals. Now, to sacrifice the happiness of all individuals to society, that is to say, to all individuals, is that not a contradiction in terms?

  4. a stranger or an enemy. Hatred of strangers among the ancients, in the midst of the greatest civilization. Nations, says the jurist Pomponius, Leg V O de captivis, with whom we have no friendship, no hospitality, no alliance, are not our enemies. However, if one thing which belongs to us falls into their power, they are its proprietors. Free men become their slaves, and they are in the same situation with respect to us.162

  Additions

  Among the ancients, individuals were often fed or drew their resources from the wealth of the public. Among the moderns, the wealth of the public is made up of the wealth of individuals.

  The spoils of the vanquished and the ransoms of prisoners were the sole funds allocated by the Spartans to public needs.

  [617] “It is in following absurd ideas drawn from the mores of the Romans, that Valerius Maximus and Juvenal spoke of Demosthenes as if he had been the son of a blacksmith, who lived only by the labor of his hands. On the contrary, this was a most illustrious citizen and most distinguished by his wealth.”163 His father had possessed two manufacturing plants, where he worked fifty-two slaves. Demosthenes in his first address against his tutor Aphobes. The noblest families of Attica had factories themselves. Pauw, Philosophical Dissertations on the Greeks, I, 68.164

  Montesquieu remarks in The Spirit of the Laws, XX, 2, that commerce unites nations but does not similarly unite individuals,165 from which it results that nations being united, they mingle, that is to say that there is no patriotism, and the individuals not being united, they are no longer anything but traders, that is to say, they are no longer citizens.

  The spirit of the ancients was so uncommercial that Aristotle numbered brigandage among the means of acquisition.

  “Today lands are discovered by sea voyages. In former times, seas were discovered by land voyages.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, XXI, 9.

  Chapter 7:

  The Result of These Differences between the Ancients and the Moderns

  Notes

  1. are intolerable. Even when the spirit of the age did not incline toward civil liberty, the size of societies would make that freedom necessary. Laws on mores, celibacy, and idleness are impossible in a large state, and it would be vexing beyond measure to carry them out, if they were tried.

  [618] 2. as the guarantee of the latter. It would be less absurd today to want to turn slaves into Spartans than to create Spartans by means of freedom. In former times, where there was freedom, people bore privation; today, everywhere there are privations, one would need slavery to get people to resign themselves to these. The people who most value the good things life has to offer, including its physical pleasures, are at the same time the only free people in Europe. Among the ancients, the enlightened class placed more importance on mores than on political freedom and the common people more importance on political freedom than on individual freedom. With us it is only, on the one hand, thinkers and, on the other, the common folk who place importance on political freedom. Say why.

  Additions

  Among the ancients the function of the citizen prosecutor was honorable. All citizens took this function upon themselves and sought to distinguish themselves in the accusation and pursuit of guilty people. With us the function of the prosecutor is odious. A man would be dishonored if he took on the function today without an official appointment. That is to say that among the ancients, public interest went before individual safety and freedom, while with us, individual safety and freedom go before the public interest.

  Chapter 8:

  Modern Imitators of the Republics of Antiquity

  Notes

  1. After Rousseau. In his treatise on the government of Poland, J.-J. Rousseau brings out very shrewdly the obstacles which confront the introduction of new mores and habits in a nation and even the danger of starting up a struggle against these mores and habits.166 Unfortunately, [619] only his absolute principles have been taken up, his Spartan fanaticism, everything which was unworkable and tyrannical in his theories, and in this way, his most enthusiastic supporters and admirers, fixing on only what was defective about him, have managed to make him of all our writers the most fertile in false notions, in vague principles, and the one most dangerous for freedom.

  2. institutions into habits. In enlightened times, observes Mr. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works,167 men rarely run the risk of establishing customs recommendable only by their purpose and usefulness. The people who respectfully follow the wisdom of their ancestors, will despise that of their contemporaries and consider such institutions only from the point of view which would give rise to ridicule. For an institution to be efficacious, its author must be God or time. It could well be with institutions as with ghosts. No one has seen one, but everybody has among his ancestors someone who has seen one.

  3. shame diminishes and honor withers. Bentham has included in his penal code168 offenses against honor and reparations for these offenses. He has brought to this enumeration his characteristic penetration. His actual chapter on this subject, however, is a proof of the impossibility of doing anything by law which belongs solely to the domain of public opinion. He wants the man who thinks himself insulted to be able to force the alleged offender to declare that he had no intention of being scornful of him. The question, however, cannot be resolved before a court because the very supposition is humiliating. The response would not be, as Bentham supposes, a simple disclaimer, even in the case in which the intention to insult had not existed in the first place, because the disclaimer, being open to the charge of duress, is such that any man of honor would refuse it. Finally, the reparation laid down by the court could well be shameful for the defendant, but it would in no sense be honorable for the plaintiff. Public opinion must be left to itself with its drawbacks and advantages.

  [620] Additions

  The ancients, having less need of individual freedom than we, attached the highest importance to laws about social mores. We give a comparable importance to constitutional mechanisms.

  Among the Greeks and the Romans, the poor and the rich really formed two classes, of which one was composed of creditors, the other of debtors, and the inadequacy of the means of trade and production prevented these two classes from mixing. This meant that among the ancients insurrections were much more genuine than in our case. Now, that which is true is in all cases less violent than that which is artificial. An artificial insurrection, independently of the violence of an insurrection, has the further violence necessary to produce it; and moreover, calculation is much more immoral than nature. I have seen during the Revolution men who had organized artificial insurrections, suggesting massacres, to give the insurrection, they said, a popular or national air. When I see the blind confidence which many moderns have accorded the assertions of the ancients on the power of institutions and the series of conclusions they draw from some fact often reported as a vague rumor or contained without explanation in a single line, I am reminded of the traveler who, having seen an Arab prince who, having nothing better to do, whittled a stick with his knife, concluded from this that the thing was a fundamental and very wise institution of this State, namely that all men, including princes, learned a trade.

  The ancients accepted their institutions as improvements. We struggle against ours as if they were imposed by conquest.

  Book XVII:

  On the True Principles of Freedom

  Chapter 1:

  On the Inviolability of the True Principles of Freedom

  Notes

  1. a singular error. “There has been a confusion,” says Montesquieu, XI, 2, “between the power of the people and the freedom of the people.” By an error of the same kind, Bentham regards as indirect means of government many things which are only the absence of all government intervention. He observes, for [621] example, III, 7, that the rivalry between the Catholic and Protestant churches has contributed a lot to the reform of papal abuses; that free competition is the best way of lowering either the prices of goods or the rate of interest. It is, however, a complete abuse of vocabulary to call these things indirect means of government.

  Chapter 3:

  Final Thoughts on Civil Freedom and Political Freedom

  Notes

  1. is something superfluous. In everything relating to man, we have to distinguish two things, the purpose and the means. In human societies, happiness is the purpose and security the means. Security is therefore not a good in itself. On the contrary, it has a number of drawbacks; but since it is the necessary means for achieving the purpose, we have to resign ourselves to its drawbacks. In private affairs, where the formalities we observe entail costs, delays, discussions, as well as in public affairs, where the authorization accorded to government restrains individual freedom, it would assuredly be more convenient to put our trust in the good faith and wisdom of each person. Public security is necessary, however, because the adverse results even of the perversity of a small number would be greater for all than that which results from formal prescriptions and agreed restrictions. Public security, though it is not an absolute good, is therefore a relative good, since it is of greater value than the evil it prevents. Two consequences flow from this. First, the security having to be complete and certain, in order to render it such we have to make all the indispensable sacrifices, but things must not go beyond that; since if it is right to endure necessary inconveniences, it is folly to add to them anything superfluous. Secondly, any system in which the disadvantages of security exceed the strict minimum is essentially vicious. Let us apply these principles to the political institution. We recognize its necessity, so we must accord it everything needed to make it secure. Everything it needs, I stress, but nothing that it does not need, such as what is demanded under various pretexts by the holders of various powers, ambitious delegates who never think their prerogatives sufficient either in intensity or extent.

  2. are scarcely necessary. “In surrounding the sovereign with the necessity of being just, it will impose on the subject the obligation [622] to submit.” Ferrand, I, 146.

  3. excesses will reach their peak. The interest of a despot is never the same as that of his subjects. One single man clothed with despotic power has no means of governing according to his fantasy other than by brutalizing all those he governs. As long as we are not reduced to the level of simple machines, the possessor of power is threatened. Instruments reason. Agents have scruples. Those who have none pretend in order to raise their political price. Moreover, you cannot buy everybody. The despot is rich only from what he takes from his subjects. Now, those he buys want him to give them more than they had. Therefore to enrich some he must plunder others, either directly by taking their goods or indirectly by taxing them. The result of this is that, short of the brutalizing of everybody, there are always two classes under despotism who are not devoted to the government, the one which has been stripped of everything and is disgruntled, and that which without being plundered is not enriched. This one keeps its independence, and independence is as troublesome for despotism as disgruntlement.

  4. a brilliant reign, during which France drained itself in continual wars, toward the end of which three million French people were persecuted, banished, treated with the most revolting barbarism, and after this reign, a long reign in which the most excessive corruption developed in which France lost her foreign reputation, in which the finances fell into irreparable disorder, in which all the elements of trouble, discontent, and overthrow accumulated to the point when the best-intentioned prince could not put them right, and then the most bloody of revolutions. Truly a fine outcome for the cruelties of Louis XI and Richelieu.

  5. the French monarchy was overthrown. The following passage is curious to reread in the Mémoires of Louis XIV, when we reproach him with what happened seventy-four years after his death to his grandson. After having painted what he calls the wretchedness of kings who are not absolute,169 he continues thus: “But I have spent too long on a reflection which will seem to you pointless or which can at most help you to recognize the wretchedness of our neighbors, since it applies all the time in the State where you are to reign after me. [623] You will find no authority which is not honored to hold its origin and character from you, no administrative body whose opinions dare to deviate from terms of respect, no company which does not believe itself obliged to put its principal greatness in the good of serving you, and its sole security in its humble submission.” Mémoires, I, 62–63.170 How difficult absolute monarchy is to maintain in a large State. Clovis established an absolute monarchy. Under his successors it divided and fragmented. The great lords became sovereign and Clovis’s line ended by being deprived of a royal authority, already virtually nullified. Charlemagne reestablished it. It disappeared again under Louis the Debonair, and the feudal system, one of the most opposed to monarchy as we understand it, rose on its ruins. A new revolution put Hugues Capet on the throne, but royal authority did not revive. It did not reestablish itself positively until the reign of Louis XIII, and a hundred fifty years later the monarchy fell.

  6. Apologists for despotism. Do you want to judge despotism in relation to the different classes? For educated men think of the death of Traseus171 and Seneca, for the common folk think of the burning of Rome and the devastation of the provinces, for the emperors themselves, of the death of Nero and that of Vitellius.

  Additions

  It is not true that despotism protects us against anarchy. We think it does only because for a long time our Europe has not seen a real despotism. But let us turn our gaze on the Roman empire after Constantine. We find that the legions were constantly in revolt, with generals proclaiming themselves emperors and nineteen pretenders to the crown simultaneously raising the flag of rebellion. Without going back to ancient history, let us look at the sort of spectacle presented by the territories ruled by the sultan.

  When a violent revolution overthrows a despotic government, moderate men and men of peace judge despotism more favorably, first, because present ills make us forget past ones; secondly, because in centralized states revolutions are sometimes caused by government weakness, and that weakness, although fatal in its consequences, nevertheless gives to the governed temporary rights which they come to regard [624] as the inherent advantages of absolute power while they are only the effects of its weakness and steps to its destruction.

  If human wickedness is an argument against individual freedom, it is an even stronger one against despotism. The fact is, despotism is simply the freedom of the few against everybody else. Those governing have all the temptations and therefore all the vices of private men and power to boot.

  A man can write good tragedies without being acquainted with the rules of dramatic art. If his tragedies are good, however, this is because he will have observed the rules without being aware of them. Similarly, a prince may make his people happy although in the constitution of the State there are no guarantees thereof. If this prince makes his people happy, however, it is because he conducts himself as if there were political guarantees in the constitution of the State. These examples prove the worthlessness neither of rules of art nor of political guarantees. They prove that one may act sometimes by instinct in ways consistent with these. From the very fact, however, that in acting thus one does well, it can be inferred that it would be better were these things known and established in advance. Political freedom is an art like all the others. Now, an art, as Laharpe puts it very well, Course in Literature, II, 252, is only the outcome of experience reduced to method. The purpose of this art is to spare those who follow us the whole road those who have preceded us followed, and which would have to be retrodden if we did not have guides.172

  Chapter 4:

  Apologia for Despotism by Louis XIV

  Additions

  “If we wanted,” says Louis XIV, I, 271, “to deprive ourselves of all things as soon as they might bring us any ill, we would soon be deprived, not only of everything which makes our greatness and our convenience, but also of everything which is most necessary to our subsistence. The foods which nature chooses for the nourishment of man serve sometimes to choke him. The most salutary remedies [625] are infinitely harmful when they are badly managed. The most prudent laws often bring to birth new abuses, and religion, which ought to be only the object of our profoundest reverence, is itself liable to suffer the most terrible profanities from the world, and yet there is no one who would dare to conclude from all this that it would be better to go without meat, cures, laws, and religion.” Do not these arguments apply to freedom with as much force as to all these things?

  Book XVIII:

  On the Duties of Individuals to Political Authority

  Chapter 1:

  Difficulties with Regard to the Question of Resistance

  Additions

  Governments which have their origin in the national will, or what they name such, find themselves in an embarrassing situation with regard to resistance. If they declare that resistance is always a crime, they recognize that they have participated in this crime and have inherited its outcomes. If they affirm the legitimacy of resistance, they authorize it against their own acts, once they are unjust or illegal.

  Chapter 2:

  On Obedience to the Law

  Notes

  1. If the law created offenses. Those who claim that it is the law alone that creates offenses enter a vicious circle on this question: why is it an offense to disobey the law?

  2. which he denies elsewhere. When we find, says Bentham, I, 5,173 in the list of offenses some neutral action, some neutral action, some innocent pleasure, we must not hesitate to transfer this alleged offense to the class of legitimate acts, to grant our pity to alleged criminals and reserve our indignation for the so-called virtuous who persecute them.

  [626] 3. retroactivity. Most bad laws are made only to serve a purpose demanding a retroactive effect. Almost all the laws which passionate feelings and factions produce would be void if they were not retroactive.

  4. decorates with the name of law. Laws like those which wanted to force the French to leave their parents and children, separated from their country by political opinions, to perish of poverty and hunger in distant climes, raised against themselves all honest and generous sentiment. These impious laws are always evaded while they are extant, and repudiated with horror at the first moment of calm and freedom.

  5. to a law he believes wicked. Ambitious or greedy men who want to be executors of bad laws say that in accepting power their aim is only to do as much good as possible; this means that they are ready to do all the wickedness they are commanded to do.

  Additions

  The Law of Solon: each citizen will be allowed to cut off the life not only of a tyrant and his accomplices but even of a magistrate who maintains his office after the destruction of democracy. Andocides, On Mysteries,174 Travels of Anacharsis, Introduction, p. 120: a good law against instruments.175

  “To say that there is nothing just nor unjust save what positive laws ordain or forbid is to say that before any circle was drawn the radii were not all equal.” The Spirit of the Laws, I, 1.

  Chapter 3:

  On Revolutions

  Notes

  1. and directs these means. “Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the ease with which the great number is governed by the small and the implicit submission with which men [627] subordinate their feelings and their passions to those of their leaders. When we seek out, however, by what means this miracle is effected, we find that, since strength is always on the side of the governed, the governors never have any support save public opinion. It is therefore on public opinion alone that all government rests, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and to the most military as well as to the most popular and the freest. The sultans of Egypt and the Roman emperors might well have been able to drive their unarmed subjects before them like brute beasts; but when it came to their Praetorians or their Mamelukes, they had to act according to their views and interests.” Hume, Essays, IV, 27.176 “Opinion is of two kinds, interested opinion, and opinion as to justice. The latter has always had much more influence than vested interest. This can easily be shown by the attachments all nations have to their ancient governments and even to the names which have received the sanction of Antiquity. Whatever unfavorable judgment we come to on the human race, it has always been profligate of its blood and its treasure, for what it thought was the maintenance of public justice. Probably at a first glance no proposition could seem more vitiated by the facts. Men, having joined a faction, violate shamelessly and remorselessly all the virtues of morality and justice in order to serve that faction; and yet, when a faction is securely grounded, people rest on the principles of law. It is then that men show the greatest perseverance and the greatest devotion to these principles.” Ibid.177

  Additions

  When arbitrary governments oppress citizens, friends of freedom sometimes confuse the right of resistance with the right to mount a revolution. There is nevertheless a great difference, and this difference is very important. Resistance, properly called, tends simply to repulse oppression,178 while the purpose of revolutions is to organize government under new forms. These two things are absolutely distinct. Resistance is a positive, individual, imprescriptible right which is subordinate only to considerations arising from utility, the chance of success, the danger of upset, and the comparison of the ill which it can entail with the one it wishes to prevent. To make a revolution, however, is never a right; it is a power with which one is accidentally cloaked. [628] The evils of revolutions establish nothing against the legitimacy of resistance; the legitimacy of resistance establishes nothing in favor of revolutions. It has to be said, though, that since resistance often leads to revolutions, this danger must form part of the reckoning of the oppressed and encourage them either to tolerate the evil they suffer or to do what they can so that the resistance they put up does not entail excessively violent shocks and fatal upheavals. Revolutions and resistance, by nature distinct, are subject to totally different rules. An isolated man, a minority, has the right to resist. At all times when individuals are oppressed, it matters not whether they are a majority or a minority in society. In their respect the guarantee has been violated. If we rejected this opinion as disruptive, we would fall first of all into all the pitfalls of giving the majority endless power, since if majority acceptance could legitimate the oppression of the minority, there is all the more reason the positive will of the majority could have this result. Secondly, to permit resistance only when most people are repressed would be, regardless of the injustice of these arrangements, in fact to forbid resistance in all cases. The trick of governments which oppress citizens is to keep them separated from each other and to make communications difficult and coming together dangerous. Then oppression by the majority can never be identified. In sum, the nature of political guarantee is such that it cannot be violated in the case even of one person without its being destroyed for everybody. In matters of despotism, one single victim represents the whole collectivity. I do not speak here only of right. When it comes to its execution, it is clear that we have to bring circumstances into account. The exercise of our most obvious prerogatives must be subordinated to considerations of utility. Ill-considered recourse to force, even against the most outrageous encroachment, is fatal and must therefore be condemned. The man who, threatened with an arbitrary arrest, stirred up his village, would be guilty not for resisting but for his wild enterprise and the ills it could entail. If a minority or even a single man, however, has the right to resist, no minority of any sort ever has the right to stage a revolution.

  From the absence of this distinction a great confusion of ideas has resulted. When today some unfortunate persecuted person uses the means still available to him to protest against despotism or evade it, he is not seen as a man under attack defending himself, but as aggressively ambitious; and oppressed people who invoke the help of the law are regarded as factions which infringe it. As happens commonly, the two opposing groups [629] have seized on this confusion to take advantage of it. Oppressive governments have asked for nothing better than the depiction, as future usurpers, of those who resisted present usurpation; and those aspiring to tyranny have been quick to call themselves victims in order to legitimate their rebellions.

  Resistance is legitimate anytime it is founded on justice, because justice is the same for everybody, for one person as for thirty million. A revolution is legitimate, however, just as it is useful, only when it is consistent with universal sentiment. This is because new institutions can be salutary and stable, in a word, free, only when they are desired by the whole society in which they are being introduced. The surest way for a government to gain the goodwill of public opinion is to leave it free. It is only ever tyranny which alienates the opinion of the majority; for the majority has nothing to gain from opposition to government. Therefore the less tyranny we have, the less risk will there be of the alienation of public opinion.

  Chapter 4:

  The Duties of Enlightened Men during Revolutions

  Notes

  1. Therefore there is always a duty to fulfill. It is in persuading ourselves that it is useless to struggle against the violence of extraordinary situations, that we make them, indeed, irresistible. Each person says to himself: even if I fulfilled my duty, others would not fulfill theirs, and I would sacrifice myself fruitlessly. This reasoning results indeed in no one’s doing what he should. If on the contrary each man said to himself: even if other people did not fulfill their duty, I wish to fulfill mine, it would turn out that everybody would do as he ought. We create the impossibility of the good by resigning ourselves to this impossibility.

  2. would bring it back down and it would collapse. The public spirit is the fruit of time. It forms through a long sequence of acquired ideas, sensations experienced, successive modifications, which are independent of men and are transmitted and modified again from one generation to another. The public spirit of 1789 was the result, not only of the writings of the eighteenth century, but of what our fathers had suffered under Louis XIV, our ancestors under Louis XIII. The public spirit is the heritage of the experiences of the nation, which adds to this heritage, its experiences of every day. To say that the public spirit must be re-created is to say that we must take the place of time, and this [630] usurpation at least is beyond the usurpers’ power. The assemblies and political clubs have exactly that pretension, wishing to replace with superficialities what they are lacking in depth. They put themselves in the place of the people to make them say what they do not say. They take upon themselves the question, the answer, and even the praise which it seems to them their own opinion merits. There is always a public spirit, that is to say, a public will. Men can never be indifferent to their own fate nor lose interest in their futures. When governments do the opposite of what the people want, however, the latter grow weary of expressing it, and since a nation cannot, even through terror, be forced to tell itself lies, they say that the public spirit is asleep, holding themselves the while ready to choke it, if ever it should allow the suspicion that it is awake.

  Additions

  Enlightenment gets men to perceive a way forward from existing institutions; the disturbance revolutions cause either puts out the light or overreaches it.

  The first device of the United Provinces after their uprising: a vessel without mast or sails, in the midst of the waves, with these words: incertum quo fata ferant.179

  The French revolutionaries have wanted, like Medea, to rejuvenate the old man in a bath of blood and the old man got out of the bath, as that had to be so, a thousand times older than before.

  A revolution interrupts all inquiry and abstract reflection, all those patient works of the mind to which the human race owes its progress. Such works require security; their needs embrace the future. How shall one commit oneself to them when nothing guarantees a peaceful philosopher a day of life, an hour of tranquillity? Enlightenment requires impartiality and detachment. How does one stay impartial amid stirred-up passions, disinterested when all interests are compromised?

  Against what abuses are revolutions directed? Against the subservience of public opinion. Are not opinions a thousand times more subservient, however, during and long after a revolution? Is not every word, every gesture, every outpouring of friendship, every cry of unhappiness attributed with a fearful influence? Has there ever been a revolution in which the discussion of the prevailing viewpoint has been allowed? You complain about attempts by the government to dominate thought, and is not such domination the very stuff of revolutions? You intend to make men free, and your method is to influence [631] by fear! You inveigh against usurping governments, and you organize a government a thousand times more usurping in its principles and more terrible in its measures! Is slavery then a means of leading men to freedom? Is terror an education calculated to make them brave, independent, and magnanimous?

  Revolutions make the power of the majority terrible; whereas in ordinary times the majority and the minority are day-to-day variable things, revolutions turn them, in a lasting way, into different parties of slaves and masters, oppressed and oppressors.

  Popular factions treat public opinion with all the more contempt in that the leaders of these factions call themselves the people and therefore public opinion.

  The wider the realm of education is, the less violent revolutions are. The more prejudices and vague notions subsist, the bitterer the struggle and the more doubtful success. A year of delay is a year gained. During this year, new truths can be discovered or truths formerly known but still locked up in a small number of heads can be more completely clarified or more universally spread. A few more of the facts can win over a thousand opponents.

  When truths which are still within the grasp of only a few people are introduced violently and excessively into political institutions which must rest on general agreement, many men who rightly find fault with this dangerous haste are inclined to carry over their disapproval onto the truths which are its purpose. This disposition is natural; but it is out of place and can become disastrous. It is always by a false reckoning that one devotes oneself to a bad cause, whatever the reason for this effort. We must start from the proclaimed truth even if it is inconvenient. When this truth is cast unprepared into a working politics which should comprise only recognized truths, we ought, rather than striving in vain to restrain it, since it does not compromise, to surround it instead as quickly as possible with the factual backing it has not yet acquired. The impatient and impetuous men who have arrived at this truth only by instinct do not know how to give it this factual backup. By condemning oneself to defending error, one discredits reason and moderation itself. These two very precious things feel the effect of being used to support principles which are not perfectly and rigorously true, and the element of false reasoning to which they are linked reflects on them and weakens them. Anyway, some enlightened men do not take this approach. There are some who cleave to the principles right through the turbulence and dangers. The elite [632] of the nation is divided. This very small minority finds itself split again. Equally respected names provide patronage to the two extreme parties, to the one which wants to retain the mistake as much as to the one which carries truth beyond limits. Disorder increases and is prolonged by the very fact that conscientious men are disunited on the means of repressing it.

  There are times when all the harshnesses of freedom are of use to despotism.

  Chapter 5:

  Continuation of the Same Subject

  Notes

  1. in sybaritic voluptuousness. Revolutions destroy the equilibrium between obligations and sacrifices. What is in settled times only a simple straightforward duty becomes a courageous effort, a heroic act of devotion. In a storm, which threatens with death anyone who does not grasp hold of a plank, a raging egotism seizes each person. Each unfortunate soul struggling against the waves is afraid that one of his fellow unfortunates, attaching himself to him, may drag him to the depths of the sea. Likewise, in the imminent dangers of political convulsions, men untie themselves from everything which formerly united them. They are frightened that a friendly hand may slow them down as it rests on them. They separate themselves off in order to defend themselves the more easily. Wealth becomes the sole means of independence, the cardinal happiness, the unique hope of safety. People flatter themselves that their wealth is appeasing tyranny or that they are disarming its agents. Prestige is no longer sought. There exists neither glory for the powerful nor interest for the victim. Wealth is precious when it comes to leaving a country or when one fears a public crisis every day or a personal banishment. It is more sensible to ransom your life than to prove your innocence, to come to terms with the greed of your judges rather than convincing them at the level of justice. It is no longer a question of arguments but of motives, nor of truth, but of calculation. The absence of security detaches one at once from all sympathy for the sorrows of others and from all confidence in one’s own existence. Tenderness is stoically repudiated; people hurl themselves into sybaritic voluptuousness.

  Additions

  The oath sworn by the inhabitants of one of the Philippines: this is true, as it is true that one man never kills another.

  [633] Those who spoke of religious freedom were called fanatics. Those who spoke of persecutions were called philosophers. Lacretelle.

  Political fanaticism struggles more over the cause than over the effect.

  Let the friends of freedom never forget that if crime or persecution penetrate their army, it is freedom which will bear the judgment and, sooner or later, the innocent will bear the punishment of the guilty whom they thought were their allies.

  Unhappiness consists less in the actual suffering which injustice causes its victims than in the contagious passions which it excites: vengeance, terror, foul lying, culpable expectation, shameful calculation. Injustice invokes these passions which hasten to her voice. They draft their cries of fury as legal decisions. They clothe their rage with abstract forms. Persecutors and persecuted, all of them thrash around hating each other, and suffering. He whom chance preserves from personal grief is diminished by the sight of the crime or consumed with indignation; and such is the condition of this nation whose general happiness was the sole concern of your vast conceits, and legitimated your outrages.

  To have an opinion triumph, it is not enough to have it adopted blindly; it must be adopted in such a way that its very adoption turns upon itself. This is the case with fanaticism for freedom.

  Suffering no longer figures in the reckoning of our discussion nor in our laws. At the time of the project for the deportation of the nobility,180 no one pleaded the case as to the physical and moral pain with which this measure would strike down the proscribed caste. In the execution of the laws on conscription,181 the unhappiness of old men losing at a stroke the last objects of their affections and the last resource of their wretched old age was treated with utter disdain; and even those who argued against the atrocious law of hostages182 did not cite the suffering of the victims except as a secondary consideration. Any interest in the adversaries seemed to the party men a treason. Pity seemed seditious and sympathy conspiratorial.

  The blood which revolutions spill is not the worst evil they cause. An earthquake which engulfs a hundred thousand individuals at a stroke is appalling only because of the sorrow [634] of those who survive. When man perishes by the hand of man, however, death has very different and far more terrible effects. The depravity of murderers, the anguish of victims, the regret, the indignation, the rage of those who are robbed of the dearest objects of their affections, the resentments which pile up, the mistrust which spreads, the vengeance-seeking which erupts, the breaking of bonds, the punishments which call forth further punishments, such are the real misfortunes.

  When it is an enraged people who are threatening the property and persons of the citizens, the latter can have recourse to the law, but when the law itself becomes the instrument of proscription, all is lost.

  If you drag the people far from the moral order in order to achieve a purpose, how will you restore morality to the people, when the purpose is achieved?

  Chapter 6:

  On the Duties of Enlightened Men after Violent Revolutions

  Notes

  1. mediocre talents. Thus Swift paints the Lilliputians for us, as they come running from all sides, surrounding Gulliver in their thousands as he sleeps on the ground, and taking advantage of his sleep to tie him up.

  2. all the excesses of degradation. Certain men who reason soundly on a thousand questions do so badly on one particular and sometimes very important one. This disparity in their faculties and the way their logic suddenly abandons them thus are quite astonishing. The key to this unfortunate enigma is not in their intelligence but in their character. Their sophisms do not derive from errors but from a fact. Some circumstance has distorted their judgment, damaging some vital sensibility. On that day they were weak, cowardly maybe, and cowardice made them cruel. This memory haunts them, and their whole stance is only a generalized excuse, which we cannot understand as long as we do not know the circumstance.

  Addition

  A maxim of certain men: a revolution is a town taken by assault. Fools kill, wise men plunder.

  Note

  3. never cut themselves off from freedom. It is never right to claim that the people’s wish is for despotism. They can be dropping with fatigue and want to rest [635] awhile, just as the exhausted traveler can fall asleep in a wood although it is infested with brigands. This temporary stupor, however, cannot be taken for a stable condition.

  Addition

  “Most of the nations of Europe are still governed by moral rules. If, however, through long abuse of power or large-scale conquest, despotism established itself to a certain degree, there would be no moral rules nor moral climate left intact; and in that beautiful part of the world, human nature would suffer for a while the insults it already gets in the other three parts.” The Spirit of the Laws, Livre VIII, Ch. 8.

  In some countries some people do not begin to pity the oppressed until they see that the latter have a chance of becoming oppressors.

  If the soldier’s mission is perilous, who would dare say that the friend of freedom’s mission is without danger? The soldier fights in the open fields. He is filled with warlike audacity. He gives and receives honorable wounds. He dies covered with laurels. Who will tally the number of peaceful and selfless men, however, who, from the depth of their retirement, want to enlighten the world, and who, seized by tyrannies of all kinds, have died slowly in dungeons or at the stake? Only intellectual activity is always independent whatever the circumstances. Its nature is to survey the objects it is evaluating and to generalize on what it observes. Individuals count for nothing to intellectual activity, which is neither seduced by nor fears them. It takes up again across the centuries, despite revolutions and over the tombs of generations swallowed up by time, the great task of the search for truth. The courage of generals and the suppleness of ministers can serve tyranny and freedom alike. Thinking alone is unyielding. Never can despotism make it into an instrument, and hence arises the hatred which all tyrants bestow on it.

  So redouble your efforts, eloquent, brave writers. Study the old elements of which human nature is composed. You will find everywhere morality and freedom in everything which at all times produced true emotions, in the characters which have served as the model for heroes, in the feelings which have served as an inspiration for eloquence, in everything which since the beginning of the world bound nations to their leaders and the esteem of posterity to the memories of past centuries. You will find these principles everywhere, serving some people with an ideal model, marking out for others the road to glory, and always gaining universal assent. And say all this well to government lest it gets it wrong. See page 493, above, Book XIII, Chapter 1, Addition.

  [636] What do perfidious interpretations and absurd objections matter to us? Do we not know that the men who attack us are of a different kind, speaking a different language from us? Of these, some were born just the way we see them. The others got that way by relentless work. They have broken with their own hands, by what they have striven successfully to do to themselves, everything in them that was noble and sensitive. They have acquired a degradation far better calculated and far more complete than those which nature alone had the responsibility for degrading. Between them and us there is nothing in common. We must pass through that ignoble rabble just as Captain Cook’s little troop crossed, amid the screams of the savages, the newly discovered islands. These courageous navigators have perished. Civilization, however, benefits from their conquests, and a grateful Europe deplores their loss.

  No, never does a whole people become unworthy of freedom, never does a whole people give up on it. Amid times of the most profound degradation, when the impossibility of success forces even the bravest to inaction, there remain spirits which suffer and seethe in silence. Joy of a friend of liberty in Rome, during the election of the emperor. Tacitus.

  Your sycophants can bring you in homage their cold irony against courage and virtue. You can ban courage and virtue from your presence. You will not banish them from the earth nor even from your empire. The hatred of oppression has been transmitted from age to age, under Dionysius of Syracuse, under Augustus, Domitian, under Louis XI and Charles IX.

  There are beings to whom the spirit of evil seems to have said: I need you to frustrate everything which is good, to bring low everything which is high, to wither everything which is noble, and I endow you with a cold smile, an impassive look, skillful silence, and bitter irony.

  The moral, philosophical, and literary system of the nineteenth century. A great revolution has taken place. It has had its effects, but it has also had its causes. To conserve the effects, that is to say, the power and the wealth that have been gained, to destroy the causes, that is to say, the principles. To seduce weak heads by the appearance of rational arguments, frivolous minds by elegance and luxury.

  FIN

  A Few Additional Points

  [637] There is nothing more revolting than the laws of England relating to the settlement of the poor in the parishes. These laws, by obliging each parish to look after its poor, have at first the appearance of benevolence. Their effect, however, is that no poor person, or more precisely, poor man, having only his work for subsistence, can leave one parish to set up in another without the consent of the latter, a consent which he never obtains, an initial blow to individual freedom and a very serious blow, since such a man as cannot earn his living by the type of work he has adopted in the parish where he is domiciled is prevented from going to another where he would earn it more easily. The second result is that the poor rate in each parish, falling on all the individuals of that parish, leads everybody to be interested in opposing the moving in of a poor man or even one who, having only his work to support him, would be impoverished by illness or lack of employment. Hence there is persecution and harassment against the poor working man who tries to change his residence, a persecution demoralizing for those who carry it out, and cruel for him on whom it falls. Smith, I, 10.183 As harassment always rebounds on its authors, the result of these contraints is often that one parish has a surplus of labor while another is in deficit. In this case the price of a day’s labor rises to an excessive level, and this increase is a burden to the same proprietors who, for fear of seeing the costs of maintaining the poor fall on them, are opposed to the setting up of individual workmen in their parish. Thus from society’s having intervened to ensure the subsistence of the poor, work has become difficult for them and they have been subjected to a number of vexations.

  A bad decision by governments: when a town is poor, they believe that by setting up some establishment there, not on the basis of commerce or of industry but of luxury, they will enrich it. It is thus when it comes to reviving the poor towns of France or Holland, and the talk is of setting up bishoprics and law courts there, that is to say, men who consume without producing. See on this error and on the effect of these measures, Smith, II, Ch. 3.184

  Great nations are never impoverished through the prodigality and bad conduct of individuals, but sometimes very much so by [638] those of their government. Smith III, 3,185 and the reflections which follow on the system of luxuries and prices.

  A State enriching itself only by productive consumption, the question is decided against luxury. See, on the disadvantages of unproductive consumption, Sismondi, I, 4. “The more the propertied classes maintain unproductive workers, the less they can maintain productive ones,” Sismondi, I, 4, 117.186

  If regulations are suppressed, said an apologist for prohibitions in the middle of the last century, sovereigns are no more than great men distinguished by a certain glamour, but marked by no utility. I understand. Rules are not made for the benefit of the governed, but so that those in government will not seem useless!

  A government which wishes to seize hold of public opinion in order to control it is like Salmoneus who wanted to hurl a thunderbolt.187 He made a great noise with his brass chariot and scared the passers-by with his flaming torches. One fine day the thunderbolt came out of the clouds and consumed him.

  Et cum singulorum error publicum fecerit, singulorum errorem facit publicus. Seneca, Epistulae, 81.188 With this difference, that in the first case there is less force.

  “The need to study the countries of modern Europe in all respects, and the possibility of achieving a deep knowledge of their affairs, has always seemed to me to derive from one of the greatest ills of humanity. Indeed, if the ambition and greed of all governments just on their own force them to inform themselves carefully of their respective strengths, the motive which leads them at least in general to strive to know down to the most minute details that which concerns their own domains is neither more reasonable nor of a different nature; and if to avoid ruffling too vigorously men and their doings, I concede that there are a number of administrators in whom [639] the mania for surveying everything in their country springs from a purer source, from the sincere desire the better to fulfill their duties, would I have any less the right to conclude from all this that their inquisitive activity is a great evil which derives from that other murderous sickness of wanting to overgovern? When those who rule empires hold to good principles, there are two concerns only: maintaining external peace by a good system of defense, and conserving domestic order through the exact, impartial, and unvarying administration of justice. Everything else will be left to individual effort, whose irresistible influence, bringing about a greater sum of access to various rights for each citizen, will unfailingly produce a larger quantity of public happiness. No sovereign, no minister, no committee, can on his own know the business of a thousand men, and each individual sees his own very well in general.” Mirabeau, Prussian Monarchy, Introduction.189

  Mistakes in legislation are a thousand times more disastrous than all other calamities. The implication is that we must reduce as far as possible the chance of these mistakes. Now, if the only purposes of the government are preservation and public safety, the chance of mistakes will be considerably reduced. There are just a few simple means for achieving public security and preservation. For the improvement of happiness, there are complicated and countless ones. If the government gets the former wrong, its error is only negative, as also are the consequences of this error. It does not do all it should, it does not attain in everything the purpose it ought to, but the bad that faults of this nature entail is reparable. This is an ill whose effect ceases with its cause. If, on the contrary, the government gets its attempts at improvement wrong (and as I said, there are a thousand times more chances of making mistakes following this course), its errors are prolonged, men adapt to them, habits form, interests gather around this corrupt nexus, and when the mistake is recognized, it is almost as dangerous to destroy it as to let it continue. In this way mistakes of this second kind produce ills whose intensity and duration are incalculable. Not only do they entail ills qua authorized mistakes, they entail even more of them when they are recognized. Government often hesitates to destroy them. In that case, vacillating and indecisive, it acts very uncertainly, making despotism bear down on all the citizens. Finally, new problems appear even when the government has made [640] its mind up. Decisions are reversed, the agreed links are torn apart, customary behavior is offended, and public trust is shaken.

  “Compare the effects in governments which obstruct the publication of thought and those which give it free rein. You have on one side Spain, Portugal, Italy. You have on the other England, Holland, and North America. Where is there more decency and happiness? In which of these is more crime committed? In which is society more gentle?” Bentham, III, 20.

  “What is a censor? It is an interested judge, an unrivalled judge, an arbitrary one who conducts clandestine proceedings, condemns without hearing, and decides without appeal.” Bentham, III, 22.

  Between the lawmaker and the member of government, when one or the other exceeds his prerogative, there is this difference, that the legislator has a ferocious pride and the minister a puerile vanity. The one wants to be obeyed rather than flattered, because flattery coming from many people will convince him less of his merit than obedience would. The other likes to be flattered more than he wishes to be obeyed, because to dispense with obedience after having demanded it would seem to him a second proof of power.

  The lawmaker’s clumsiness, says Bentham, often itself creates an opposition between the natural and the political sanction, III, 24.190 He therefore admits that there are natural sanctions.

  One can say in general of all banks, as much of deposit banks as of those which issue bills, for whose value they are supposed to have the cash, what Say says, Livre II, Ch. 14,191 of deposit banks only. “It has been called into question whether such a thing could survive in a State whose government was without responsibility or limits. Only public opinion can decide on a question of that sort. Everyone may have an opinion, but no one is obliged to disclose it.”

  Ganilh shows manifestly, in his digression on public credit, II, 224–251,192 that this essential and so to speak unique agent [641] is incompatible with absolute power.

  Banks, said Montesquieu, are incompatible with pure monarchy. This is to say, in other words, that credit is incompatible with arbitrary power.

  The same men who, touchy zealots of independence, when they struggle against the government, believe they cannot check its powers sufficiently, exhaust themselves in multiplying and enlarging them, when from being opponents of governments they become its inheritors. It is in the writings of the most austere reformers, the most implacable enemies of existing institutions, that one finds the most absolute principles on the jurisdiction of political authority.

  CONSTANT’S NOTES

  The typeface used for this book is Monotype Baskerville, which is based on the types of the English type founder and printer John Baskerville (1706–75). Baskerville is the quintessential transitional face: it retains the bracketed and oblique serifs of old style faces such as Caslon and Garamond, but in its increased lowercase height, lighter color, and enhanced contrast between thick and thin strokes, it presages modern faces.

  Printed on paper that is acid free and meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48-1992. (archival)

  Book design by Barbara Williams, Durham, North Carolina

  Typography by G. . .S Typesetters, Austin, Texas

  Printed and bound by Worzalla Publishing Company, Stevens Point, Wisconsin

  [1. ]M. Patrice Thompson has published this addition to Book I, Ch. 1 in his book La religion de Benjamin Constant: Les pouvoirs de l’image, Pisa, Paccini, 1978, Annexe II, pp. 552–557. Hofmann admits that the whole passage reads like an introduction to Principles of Politics, but he has preferred to keep it as an addition in the way that Constant presented it.

  [2. ][“Principles,” as in the title of the work. Translator’s note]

  [3. ]The blues and greens were originally the respective colors of the charioteers who competed for the prize in the races in the hippodromes of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, above all in the sixth and seventh centuries; the two rival factions which disturbed the Empire at that period were also designated by the same device, the aristocrats standing up for the blues and the people for the greens. This historical allusion was common in Constant’s time, when it evoked the profound and irremediable antagonism between those who supported the Revolution and those who supported monarchical reaction. Bentham, without referring to the history of his own time, speaks of it in order to denounce the futility of political hates: “Have we not seen the citizens of Rome and Constantinople divide themselves into implacable factions on behalf of actors, charioteers, and gladiators? And to give importance to these shameful quarrels, did they not pretend that the success of the Greens or the Blues presaged plenty or famine, the victories or reverses of the Empire?” Op. cit., t. I, p. 15.

  [4. ]This brief introduction to the quotation from Jefferson which follows makes it apparent that the drafting took place in 1810.

  [5. ]Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801, the whole text of which can be found in the complete edition by Henry Steele Commager, Documents of American History, New York, F. S. Crofts, 1947, pp. 186–187. In the Lausanne manuscript of the Additions, Jefferson’s text is in English.

  [6. ]Constant was a Tribune from January 1800 to January 1802.

  [7. ]Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Opinion sur une motion de M. Mirabeau, combattue par M. Barnave, in: Recueil des opinions . . . , op. cit., t. II, p. 232.

  [8. ]On the direct causes of this curious proclamation, which must have surprised Constant greatly, see Gustave Le Poittevin, La liberté de la presse depuis la Révolution, 1789–1815, Geneva, Slatkine-Mégariotis Reprints, 1975, pp. 159–161 (Reprint de l’éd. Paris, 1901).

  [9. ]Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contract social, Livre IV, Ch. 2, éd. cit., pp. 440–441.

  [10. ]“[Men] have not been able to join up and enjoy the benefit of civil liberty, without renouncing the fatal prerogatives of savage freedom, without submitting, at a word from the general will, all the forces of each individual will.” Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., 1803 edition, Préface, pp. xxi–xxii.

  [11. ]Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social, Livre III, Ch. 15, éd. cit., p. 429.

  [12. ]Ibid., pp. 429–430.

  [13. ]Ibid., p. 430.

  [14. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, pp. 1–503.

  [15. ]The examples supplied in this note 1 of Ch. 1 come from Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions . . . , op. cit., p. 112.

  [16. ]Petronius, Satiricon, CXIX, vers. 45–49. In place of hoc dedecus est populi the text has hoc dedocoris populo. The French text, translated from the Latin by Alfred Ernout, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1922, p. 137, runs in English: “Cato was beaten and repulsed by the people. His conqueror, more humiliated than he, blushed to have carried off the fasces [rods of authority] of a Cato, for, and this is what shows the infamy of the citizens and the ruin of manners, this is not a man excluded from power, rather in him it is the power and honor of Rome which fall.”

  [17. ]This in any case is the formulation of Article 6 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, of 26 August 1789.

  [18. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit. The exact text is: “If the supporter of the principle of utility should find, in the banal catalogue of the virtues, an action which led to more pain than pleasure, he would not hesitate to regard that alleged virtue as a vice.”

  [19. ]See, for example, ibid., t. I, p. 11. “Since each man having the same right as another to lay down his feeling as a rule for all feelings, there would no longer be a common measure nor universal court to which one could appeal over it.” See also ibid., p. 133.

  [20. ]The exact text says: “For if one judges everything by feeling, there is no longer any way of distinguishing between the injunctions of an enlightened conscience and those of a blind one.”

  [21. ]Ibid., p. 137.

  [22. ]Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., 2e éd. (1803). The correct citation is: “All government must be instituted for the happiness of the men who are subject to it. . . .”

  [23. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. I, p. 98.

  [24. ]It is worth citing the whole paragraph to which Constant refers: “But although these two arts (morality and legislation), or two sciences, may have the same purpose, they differ greatly as to their extent. All actions, be they public or private, belong to morality. This is a guide which can lead the individual, as if by the hand, in all the details of his life, in all his relations with his fellows. Legislation cannot, and if it could it ought not to, exercise a continual and direct intervention on men’s conduct. Morality prescribes to every individual the doing of all that is advantageous to the community, his personal advantage included. But there are many acts useful to the community which law must not command. There are likewise many harmful acts which it should not forbid, although morality does. Legislation, in a word, has just the same core as morality, but not the same circumference.” Ibid., pp. 98–99.

  [25. ]Ibid., p. 103.

  [26. ]Hofmann was unable to find this definition by Bentham.

  [27. ][N.B.: This commentary should have been included under Additions, Book III, Ch. 3. In Hofmann’s text it appears as point 4, Ch. 1. It is not clear whether the error is from Constant or Hofmann or both. Translator’s note]

  [28. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 557.

  [29. ]Hofmann could not find the distinction in the place indicated by Constant.

  [30. ]Benjamin Constant, De la justice politique, op. cit., p. 270.

  [31. ][Assemblies of citizens, voted in, and acting as an electoral college. Translator’s note]

  [32. ]“Nobody is a man of goodwill if he is not a frank and religious observer of the laws.” Article 5 of the Duties enumerated in the Déclaration des droits et des devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen, put at the head of the Constitution, 5 fructidor an III (22 August 1795).

  [33. ]A reference to Article 4 of the same Déclaration: “Nobody is a good citizen if he is not a good son, a good father, a good brother, a good friend, and a good husband.”

  [34. ]Ferdinando Galiani, Dialogues . . . , op. cit., pp. 249–250.

  [35. ]Which ravaged the city in 1755.

  [36. ]Hofmann could not find this quotation, which might come, as so often with the “words” of Voltaire, from an oral source.

  [37. ]Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre XXVI, Ch. 15.

  [38. ]Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Réflexions sur le fanatisme, in: Recueil des opinions, op. cit., t. IV, p. 90.

  [39. ]L’esprit de l’histoire, 2e éd, t. I, p. 392.

  [40. ]Hofmann could not find this sentence in L’esprit de l’histoire.

  [41. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of the Additions.

  [42. ]The rival supporters of the operas by Gluck and Piccini in the late eighteenth century.

  [43. ]Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, Berlin, G.-J. Decker, 1773, t. II, p. 332: “This government resorts mainly to the birch and the baton.”

  [44. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of the Additions.

  [45. ]Hofmann was unable to find this reference in the work of Cornelius de Pauw.

  [46. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 199–202, in which he cites a passage in Hume’s History of England.

  [47. ]Constant is criticizing here the whole of Ch. 18 of the fourth part of the Principes du code pénal: pp. 134–137, entitled Emploie du mobile de la religion.

  [48. ]The Interim of Augsburg was an edict proclaimed on 15 May 1548, provisionally regulating conflicts between Protestants and Catholics.

  [49. ]Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre XI, Ch. 6, where in particular this passage occurs: “The power to judge must not be lodged in a permanent Senate, but exercised by persons drawn from the body of the people.”

  [50. ]The exact sentence is: “The judges should be of the same social condition as the accused and his peers.”

  [51. ]In Livre XII he evokes “an Athenian and Roman law which permitted the accused to retire before the judgment.” The reference to t. I, p. 59, probably means that Constant is referring to the 1749 Amsterdam edition of L’esprit des lois.

  [52. ][Under the ancien regime, not only were many administrative positions in the government apparatus hereditary, but as a complement to this, their holders could also sell them. Translator’s note]

  [53. ]The man named Gach, first name unknown, wrote a brochure entitled Des vices de l’institution du jury en France, Paris, Petit, an XIII (1804). Perhaps it is this work Constant invokes in his letter of 19 April 1806 to Prosper de Barante (published in the Revue de deux mondes, t. XXXIV, 1906, p. 242). He would not have been able to read it in this case until after redrafting his Book IX of Principes de politique, and that would explain why he speaks of Gach only in the Additions and not in the text.

  [54. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of the Additions.

  [55. ]Hofmann holds that Constant has been imprecise. The proper text is: “Juries will never be well-informed enough nor determined enough to fulfill the intentions, the principal object of the jury system [. . .] Such is our indifference to everything connected with public administration; such among us is the power of egotism and individual interest, the tepidness, or rather the absence of public spirit, that the new law which will establish trial by jury will not be carried out in its most essential particulars.” Gach, op. cit., pp. 10–11.

  [56. ]“I have for my part the strongest of all authorities, that of the facts, of the experience of twelve years.” Ibid., p. 12.

  [57. ]Constant is not quoting but summarizing Gach’s book, pp. 38–39.

  [58. ]Constant is not quoting but summarizing. Ibid., pp. 40–41.

  [59. ]P.-J. Lauze de Péret, Traité de la garantie individuelle et des diverses preuves en matière criminelle, Paris, Impr. de Caillot, 1805, p. iv.

  [60. ]Constant does not quote but summarizes Gach’s book, op. cit., p. 42.

  [61. ]Gach, op. cit., p. 90.

  [62. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, p. 421.

  [63. ]Constant does not quote, as one might think, but rather interprets Bentham’s thought in this place.

  [64. ]This is above all the Third Part of the Principes du code pénal, entitled Des peines, op. cit., t. II, pp. 380–434.

  [65. ]“There are not in the city two thousand people who have any property.” Cicero, Les devoirs, II.21.73. Text edited and translated by Maurice Testard, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1970, t. II, p. 55.

  [66. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 490–491.

  [67. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, p. 523.

  [68. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre III, Ch. 2, t. II, pp. 413–421.

  [69. ][This is new material. There is no Ch. 17 in the original Book X. Translator’s note.]

  [70. ]A large part of this “material” comes from Constant’s discourse before the Tribunat on 28 ventôse an IX (19 March 1801) on the public debt, published in Archives parlementaires . . . , op. cit., t. II, pp. 652–660.

  [71. ][The name given to the extraordinary commissions under the ancien régime, authorized to punish the condemned by burning. Translator’s note]

  [72. ]Constant is referring to the laws which followed the coup d’Etat of 18 fructidor an V, and which reactivated those of the Terror. See on this subject the extensive treatment by Georges Lefebvre, Le Directoire, Paris, A. Colin, 1971, Ch. 8, pp. 87–96. See also Jacques Godechot, Les institutions . . . , op. cit., pp. 454–456.

  [73. ]See Constant’s note D at the end of the Additions.

  [74. ]See Constant’s note E at the end of the Additions.

  [75. ]See Constant’s note F at the end of the Additions.

  [76. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, p. 79.

  [77. ]See Constant’s note G at the end of the Additions.

  [78. ]See Constant’s note H at the end of the Additions.

  [79. ]Mémoires de Louis XIV, op. cit., t. I, p. 156. The original text says: “All the goods possessed, as much by the people of the church as by laymen, to be used at any time as by wise stewards, this is to say, according to the general need of the State.”

  [80. ]See Constant’s note I at the end of the Additions.

  [81. ]Nicolas-François Canard, Principes d’économie politique, Paris, F. Buisson, 1801, p. 175.

  [82. ][Hofmann says the reference is almost certainly wrong. Translator’s note]

  [83. ]This time the figures do refer to the tome and pages of Sismondi.

  [84. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, pp. 354–355.

  [85. ]Nicolas-François Canard, op. cit., p. 197.

  [86. ]De l’esprit des lois, Livre XII, Ch. 4. Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II. p. 380, criticizes this same quotation from Montesquieu by saying: “A constant truth which proves that frugality enriches States and prodigality ruins them. If prodigality ruins monarchies, however, it could not be suitable for them, since it is not suitable for any State to become dependent and poor.”

  [87. ]Jacques Necker, op. cit., t. I, p. 43.

  [88. ]Ibid., p. 47.

  [89. ]Ibid., p. 48; the fuller text reads: “Until now I have looked at the unreasonable extent of taxation only in terms of justice; one can also identify in this extent a constant source of ills and vexations.”

  [90. ]Hofmann believes this reference is to Benjamin, comte de Rumford, Essais politiques, économiques et philosophiques, t. I, Geneva, G.-J. Manget, 1799, pp. 44–45 and 97–99.

  [91. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, pp. 52–60. Constant does not give an exact reference.

  [92. ]Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce, Geneva, Cramer et Cl. Philibert, 1750, t. IV, col. 1075–1097, s.v. Compagnie des Indes. Constant found this information in Sismondi, De la richesse commerciale . . . , op. cit., t. II, pp. 309–310 and n. 2.

  [93. ]This is not a quotation, but an interpretation of the following text: “This first law on corporations was backed up by a host of regulations on how artisans must work, on the qualities their work must have, and on the visits of the judges to whom it is fitting to subject them. As if the consumers for whom the work is intended, and who buy only what suits them, were not the best of all judges for the inspection of the goods.” Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., t. II, pp. 284–285.

  [94. ]Hofmann was unable to find anything on carts and carriages in the six-volume French version of Blackstone’s commentaries, Paris, Bossange, 1822–1823, though it has a detailed index.

  [95. ]Contrary to his usual practice, Constant refers here to the tome and the pages of the work by Adam Smith cited. In his normal referencing this would be Livre I, Ch. 8.

  [96. ]The reference and the example very probably come from Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., Livre III, Ch. 2, t. II, pp. 156–220.

  [97. ]François-Louis-Auguste Ferrier, Du gouvernement considéré dans ses rapports avec le commerce, Paris, A. Egron, an XIII (1805). The pages indicated by Constant correspond to Ch. 2 De l’argent, considéré comme moyen d’échange—En quel sens il est richesse pour le pays.

  [98. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre IV, Ch. 1 Du exportation du numéraire, t. III, pp. 3–52.

  [99. ]Ibid.

  [100. ]Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 5 Du numéraire, t. I, pp. 136–137.

  [101. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre II, Ch. 17 Du papier monnaie, t. II, pp. 42–52.

  [102. ]Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, De la monarchie prussienne sous Frédéric le Grand, London, 1788, t. I, pp. 167–168.

  [103. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, p. 310.

  [104. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, p. 21.

  [105. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 215.

  [106. ]Constant does not quote but summarizes the argument of these pages, pp. 128–129.

  [107. ]Constant should have said pp. 133–135.

  [108. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, pp. 13–14.

  [109. ]Marquis de Condorcet, De la législation des grains depuis 1692. Analyse historique à laquelle on a donné la forme d’un rapport à l’Assemblée nationale, in Bibliothèque de l’homme public, Paris, Buisson, 1790, t. XII, pp. 105–243.

  [110. ]Ibid., p. 20. Only this sentence is a quotation. What follows it is a summary of pp. 110–111.

  [111. ]Constant’s three last references do not correspond perfectly to Condorcet’s text, although one cannot be sure to which passages they would relate better.

  [112. ]This second chapter of Livre III is called Comment l’agriculture fut découragée en Europe après la chute de l’empire romain, op. cit., t. II, pp. 413–439.

  [113. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre IV, Ch. 14, t. II, pp. 279–280. [Hofmann points out that Constant’s quote is accurate at the beginning but later drops into paraphrase. Translator’s note]

  [114. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 465.

  [115. ]Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre XXIII, Ch: 15, where he says, for example: “These machines, whose purpose is to compress skill, are not always a good thing. If a product is at a middling price, which suits the buyer and the workman who made it equally well, machines which would simplify production, that is to say diminish the number of workers, would be pernicious.”

  [116. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 7, t. I, p. 36. There is a total confusion as to the invention of the machine-made stockings. It was an Englishman, William Lee, who invented machine-made stockings, at the end of the sixteenth century. The circumstances surrounding this discovery have remained obscure, and the legend has somewhat modified the facts. What is certain, however, is that William Lee, faced with his compatriots’ lack of interest in his machine, emigrated to France, perhaps invited by Henry IV, who had promised to bestow certain privileges upon him. The assassination of the king in 1610 called everything into question. We do not know whether William Lee died wretched in France or returned to England. In any case, his frame was repatriated and the stocking industry flourished in that country in the middle of the seventeenth century. Finally, in 1656, Louis XIV decided to establish a stocking industry in his castle in Madrid. He entrusted this duty to Jean Andret, who brought back the secret from England. For more details, see L’histoire générale des techniques, published under the direction of Maurice Dumas, t. II Les premières étapes du machinisme, Paris, PUF, 1965, pp. 236–249.

  [117. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 440–441.

  [118. ]Charles Pictet de Rochemont, Tableau de la situation actuelle des Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Paris, Du Pont, 1795. Constant’s reference is not faithful.

  [119. ]Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens . . . , op. cit., t. I, pp. 81–82.

  [120. ]James Steuart, An inquiry into the principles of political economy, being an essay on the science of domestic policy in free societies, J. Williams and R. Moncrieffe, 1770, t. I, p. 146.

  [121. ]Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., t. II, pp. 115–118.

  [122. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, pp. 163–165.

  [123. ]Ibid., t. I, pp. 307–308.

  [124. ]The author of the Tableau de la Grande Bretagne, quoted earlier, Alexandre-Balthazar de Paule, baron de Baert-Duholant.

  [125. ]Hofmann did not manage to locate this anecdote in Necker’s work.

  [126. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 556.

  [127. ]Voyages de M. le chevalier [Jean] Chardin en Perse et autres lieux de l’Orient, Amsterdam, J.-L. de Lorme, 1711. Hofmann could not find the reference. Constant got it from Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens . . . , op. cit., t. I, p. 277.

  [128. ]Simon de la Loubère, Du royaume de Siam, Amsterdam, A. Wolfgang, 1691, t. I, Deuxième Partie, pp. 212–213. The example and the reference are supplied by de Pauw, ibid., and Hofmann notes that Constant repeats the latter’s error. The Siamese had to serve six months a year at court and not six years.

  [129. ]Mémoires de Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, Liège, F.-J. Desoer, 1788, t. V, pp. 219–220. The sentence which Constant presents is word for word from Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 321–322.

  [130. ]The Roman numerals refer to Garnier’s Preface to Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I.

  [131. ][Assignats or promissory notes were issued by the Revolutionary governments. Translator’s Note]

  [132. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 384.

  [133. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 35, t. I, p. 292.

  [134. ]Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, L’ami des hommes . . . , op. cit.; in the places indicated by Constant, one finds the idea that wars do not particularly cut down populations, but are especially fatal on account of the physical damage they entail.

  [135. ][The Zend-Avesta are the sacred writings of the Parsees, usually attributed to Zoroaster. Translator’s note]

  [136. ]Hofmann has not been able to locate this remark by Bentham.

  [137. ]Perhaps Constant is referring to Politics, I. III. 4: “Certain people think there is a science, that of the power of the master, and that it is the same for the head of the family, the master, the statesman and the king, as we said at the beginning. For others the denomination of master is against nature: it is only in virtue of the law that one is a slave and the other free; in nature there is no difference; consequently such authority is not just, since it is violence.” Aristotle, Politique, translated by Jean Aubonnet, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1960, t. I, pp. 16–17.

  [138. ]Ferdinando Galiani, op. cit., p. 162: “A truth that pure chance brings to birth like a mushroom in a meadow is no good for anything. We do not know how to use it if we do not know where it comes from, how and by what chain of reasoning it derives. A truth outside its intellectual ancestry is as harmful as error.”

  [139. ]William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice . . . , op. cit. (1793 edition), t. II, pp. 551–552.

  [140. ][This was a temporary and not a permanent embassy, a three-man visit in 153 , including Carneades, the head of the Academy founded in Athens by Plato. Carneades outraged Roman opinion by delivering two speeches on successive days, for and against justice. Translator’s note]

  [141. ]Histoires diverses d’Elien, translated from the Greek with commentary, Paris, Moutard, 1772, p. 60.

  [142. ]Hofmann says that the first page (p. 145) of Cornelius de Pauw cited carries no reference to the judgment of theatrical pieces.

  [143. ]Histoires diverses d’Elien, op. cit., p. 49.

  [144. ]Hofmann was unable to locate the references to theatrical judgments in Diodorus Siculus or Quintilian.

  [145. ]Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., (2e éd. of 1803) t. I, p. 333.

  [146. ]The example Bentham chose is drunkenness and fornication. He concludes by saying: “Instead of having suppressed a vice, the law will have sown some new and more dangerous ones.”

  [147. ]Constant quotes (accurately) the comte rather than the marquis de Mirabeau; Hofmann could not find the sentence in question in the sizeable work of the famous orator.

  [148. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre V, Ch. 1, t. IV, p. 146.

  [149. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, p. 149, “The discipline of colleges and universities in general is not instituted for the advantage of the scholars, but for the interest, or to put it better, for the convenience, of the masters.”

  [150. ]Charles Pictet de Rochemont, op. cit., t. II, pp. 90–100.

  [151. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, p. 438.

  [152. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre V, Ch. 1, Art. 2, De la dépense qu’exigent les institutions pour l’éducation de la jeunesse. Constant does not cite or summarize, but refers to the whole body of this Article 2, t. IV, pp. 146 and following, especially.

  [153. ]Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur, in: Adam Smith, op. cit., t. V, pp. 1–10, Note I, entitled: How far should government get involved in education?

  [154. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, p. 271.

  [155. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, p. 181.

  [156. ]Constant refers to the following passage: “One encouragement, however, which is far more important than all the rest, is that in England the peasant class enjoys all the security, independence, and regard which the law can procure for it.” Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre III, Ch. 4, t. II, p. 485. Nowhere else did Hofmann find any reference to the regard which comes with popular election. Elsewhere Smith has suggested that voting by shepherds is associated with social unrest. Livre V, Ch. 1, t. IV, pp. 239–240.

  [157. ]Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen-âge, Paris, H. Nicolle, 1809, t. IV, p. 369.

  [158. ]Ibid., p. 370.

  [159. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, p. 42.

  [160. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., p. 264.

  [161. ]Cicero, De legibus, II, 2, 5. [It is for the fatherland that we must die, to it we must wholly devote ourselves, in it we must place and consecrate, so to speak, everything which is ours. Translator’s note]

  [162. ]Sextus Pomponius, Ad Q. Mucium, Liber XXXVII, De captivis et de pos liminio. The title means, “Concerning prisoners of war and the right to reclaim their former status.” The text runs: “For if we have neither friendship nor mutual hospitality nor a treaty made for the purpose of friendship with some nation, the latter are, to be sure, not at war with us, but that which comes to them from our property becomes theirs, and a free man of ours, taken prisoner by them, becomes their slave too; and it is the same if something comes to us from them.” Otto Lenel, Palingenesis iuris civilis, Leipzig, 1889, t. II, col. 77.

  [163. ]Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 68.

  [164. ]Ibid., pp. 67–68. Constant is summarizing, rather than citing.

  [165. ]Here is what Montesquieu says in the indicated place: “But if the spirit of commerce unites the nations, it does not unite individuals in the same way. We see that in the countries which are driven only by the spirit of commerce, there is traffic in all human actions and all the moral virtues: the littlest things, those that humanity demands, are made and exchanged there for money.”

  [166. ]Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projetée, published for the first time in the Collection complète des oeuvres de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, citoyen de Genève, Geneva, 1782, t. I, pp. 418–539. Constant is probably referring to this passage called Application: “But a great nation which has never mingled with its neighbors must because of this have many mores which are singular to it and which perhaps are degraded day by day by the general momentum in Europe for adopting the tastes and mores of the French. The ancient usages should be maintained and reestablished and suitable ones be introduced, which are proper to the Poles. These usages, if they were neutral or even bad in certain respects, provided they were not essentially so, will always have the advantage of enhancing the affection of the Poles for their country and of giving them a natural repugnance for mingling with strangers. I regard as good fortune their having the appearance of individuality. Guard this advantage with care.” In Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, éd. cit., t. III, p. 962.

  [167. ]Hofmann could not find this passage in Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works.

  [168. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, pp. 335–351, in Ch. 14 De la satisfaction honoraire, and pp. 352–358, in Ch. 15 Remèdes aux délits contre l’honneur.

  [169. ]See Constant’s Note J at the end of the Additions.

  [170. ]Mémoires de Louis XIV, op. cit., t. I, pp. 62–63.

  [171. ][Constant probably means Thrasea Paetus, stoic philosopher and senator, who was condemned by Nero in 66 and took his own life. Translator’s note]

  [172. ]Jean-François Laharpe, Lycée ou cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, Paris, H. Agasse, an VII (1799), t. II, p. 252.

  [173. ]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. I, p. 5.

  [174. ]Andocides, Sur les mystères, I, 96–98, in Discours, text edited and translated by Georges Dalmeyda, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1930, pp. 47–48.

  [175. ]Jean-Jacques Barthélémy, Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, Paris, Venice, J. Storti, 1790, t. I, p. 120. [Presumably Constant means “instruments of justice.” Translator’s note]

  [176. ]David Hume, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, Basil, J.-J. Tourneisen, new ed. 1793, t. I., pp. 27–28. Constant’s translation is very close to the original text.

  [177. ]Ibid., pp. 28–29, passim.

  [178. ]See Constant’s note K at the end of the Additions.

  [179. ][“Unsure whither the fates are carrying us.” Constant gives no attribution for the Latin, but it is in Virgil, Aeneid, III, 7. Virgil has described how Aeneas and his companions after the siege of Troy wander about and land on the coast of Africa, where Dido, the queen of Carthage, invites them all to dinner. Aeneas then narrates the earlier events to her, and in this passage a large band of survivors gather under his leadership, build ships, and set sail without knowing where they are going. Translator’s note]

  [180. ]This proposition was first made by Boulay de la Meurthe, 3 vendémiaire an VI (24 September 1797), after the coup d’Etat of 18 fructidor. See Georges Lefebvre, La France sous le Directoire (1795–1799), Paris, Editions sociales, 1977, p. 453.

  [181. ]References to the mass levy proposed by Jourdan on 9 messidor an VII (27 June 1799). Compare ibid., p. 673.

  [182. ]The law of hostages was adopted 22–24 messidor an VII (10–12 July 1799); see ibid., p. 676.

  [183. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, pp. 283–285.

  [184. ]Ibid., t. II, pp. 336–351.

  [185. ]Constant draws the moral lesson from Ch. 3 Comment les villes se formèrent et s’agrandierent après la chute de l’Empire romain. Ibid., t. II, pp. 439–462.

  [186. ]This is the tome, chapter, and page of Sismondi’s book.

  [187. ][Salmoneus, King of Elis, in the Peloponnese. Translator’s note]

  [188. ]Seneca, Lettres à Lucilius, 81, 29. The exact text is “et cum singulorum error publicum fecerit. . . . ” (The error of individuals has made the general mistake; today the general mistake makes that of individuals.) [Seneca is talking about the things which Stoic philosophers used to despise—wealth, honor, power, etc., and he writes more fully as follows: “For they are not praised because they are desirable, but they are desired because they have been praised, and when the mistaken belief of individuals has caused a general one, the general one causes the mistaken belief of individuals.” The French text is from the translation by Henri Noblot, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1965, p. 100: “L’erreur des particuliers a fait l’erreur generale; aujourd’hui l’erreur generale fait celle des particuliers.” Translator’s note]

  [189. ]Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, op. cit., t. I, p. aIV.

  [190. ]Here is the text by Bentham: “The means we are going to present are such as will end in several cases this internal discord, diminish this tension between motives, which often exist only through the clumsiness of the lawmaker, by the clash he has created himself between the natural and the political sanction, between the moral sanction and the religious one.”

  [191. ]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 16–17.

  [192. ]Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. II, pp. 224–251.

  [A. [Refers to page 452.]]What can one imagine more frivolous than the differences between colors on racehorses? This difference, however, created the bitterest factions in the Greek empire, the Prasini and the Veneti, who did not suspend their animosity until after they had caused the downfall of that unfortunate government. Hume, Essays, VIII, p. 54.193

  [B. [Refers to page 455.]]“In a free nation, it is often an unimportant matter whether individuals reason well or badly. It is enough that they reason. . . . Likewise, under a despotic government, it is equally pernicious whether one reasons well or badly. It is enough that such thinking is taking place at all for the very basis of government to be scandalized.” Esprit des lois, Livre XIX, 27.

  [[642] C. [Refers to page 460.]]I say this only of fixed and legal institutions, not of mores and practices which law cannot change.

  [D. [Refers to page 471.]]Say, II, 5.194

  [E. [Refers to page 474.]]There are arguments by Montesquieu such as one can hardly conceive he has allowed himself: this is above all when he deals with production, trade, or money. “The Roman Republic,” he says, “was not in a position to settle its debts. It made some copper money. It gained on its creditors by 50 percent. This operation gave a great shock to a State which needed as little upset as possible. The purpose was to free the Republic from its creditors. The purpose was not to free up the citizens among themselves. That required a second operation. It was ordered that the penny [denarius], which had till then been worth only six as,195 should now be worth sixteen. The result was that while the republic’s creditors lost a half, the creditors of individuals lost only a fifth.” Esprit des lois, Livre XXII, Ch. 11. But with what did the creditors of the Republic pay their own creditors?

  [F. [Refers to page 474.]]On the injustice of revocations, annulments of treaties, etc., see Ganilh, I, 303.

  [G. [Refers to page 474.]]Men get used to regaining quickly that which can be taken from them quickly. They strive to regain by cunning what has been taken from them by violence.

  [H. [Refers to page 474.]]“In such an order of things,” says Bentham, Principes du Code Civil, Ch. 11, “there would be only one wise course for the governed, that of prodigality. There would be only one mad course, that of economy.”196 See Ch. 9 and 10 of the same work.

  [[643] I. [Refers to page 475.]]The valley of Chamonix is protected from avalanches only by woods belonging to a host of individuals. If these woods were cut down, the valley of Chamonix would be covered with snow as another valley called “white path” [sic] was for the same reason. The ownership of these woods, however, being spread between a crowd of poor individuals, each one of these individuals must be all the more tempted to cut down his section of the wood in that the cutting down of this section would do no harm in isolation. It is clear that in such a case the government must intervene to counterbalance this individual tendency and that it has the right to restrain the free disposal of individual property. I do not know, however, whether it would be the duty of society to compensate the owners. Whatever the case, however, it is clear that this right derives from a local circumstance. It is the same with diverse restrictions of several kinds which it would take too long to talk about.

  [J. [Refers to page 516.]]“This subjugation which forces the sovereign to take the law from his people is the last calamity which may befall a person of our rank.”197

  [K. [Refers to page 521.]]Hence it follows that the best constitutions are those in which the powers are combined in such a way that one can resist the branch of government which is oppressive, without resisting the whole government.

  [A. [Refers to page 452.]]What can one imagine more frivolous than the differences between colors on racehorses? This difference, however, created the bitterest factions in the Greek empire, the Prasini and the Veneti, who did not suspend their animosity until after they had caused the downfall of that unfortunate government. Hume, Essays, VIII, p. 54.193

  [D. [Refers to page 471.]]Say, II, 5.194

  [E. [Refers to page 474.]]There are arguments by Montesquieu such as one can hardly conceive he has allowed himself: this is above all when he deals with production, trade, or money. “The Roman Republic,” he says, “was not in a position to settle its debts. It made some copper money. It gained on its creditors by 50 percent. This operation gave a great shock to a State which needed as little upset as possible. The purpose was to free the Republic from its creditors. The purpose was not to free up the citizens among themselves. That required a second operation. It was ordered that the penny [denarius], which had till then been worth only six as,195 should now be worth sixteen. The result was that while the republic’s creditors lost a half, the creditors of individuals lost only a fifth.” Esprit des lois, Livre XXII, Ch. 11. But with what did the creditors of the Republic pay their own creditors?

  [H. [Refers to page 474.]]“In such an order of things,” says Bentham, Principes du Code Civil, Ch. 11, “there would be only one wise course for the governed, that of prodigality. There would be only one mad course, that of economy.”196 See Ch. 9 and 10 of the same work.

  [J. [Refers to page 516.]]“This subjugation which forces the sovereign to take the law from his people is the last calamity which may befall a person of our rank.”197

  [193]David Hume, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, Basil, J.-J. Tourneisen, 1793, t. I, p. 54.

  [194]Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 449–465.

  [195][This was a Roman copper coin, originally twelve ounces, reduced by successive deliberate government devaluations to only half an ounce by the early second century Translator’s note]

  [196]Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, p. 49.

  [197]Mémoires de Louis XIV, op. cit., t. I, p. 60.

• Back to Top

  4: BOOK VII: On Freedom of Thought - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK VII: On Freedom of Thought

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/108933 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK VII

  On Freedom of Thought

  • Ch. 1. The object of the following three books. 103
  • Ch. 2. On freedom of thought. 103
  • Ch. 3. On the expression of thought. 105
  • Ch. 4. Continuation of the same subject. 112
  • Ch. 5. Continuation of the same subject. 117
  • Ch. 6. Some necessary explication. 123
  • Ch. 7. Final observations. 124

  chapter one

  The Object of the Following Three Books

  In the following three books we are going to deal with freedom of thought and of the press and with legal safeguards.

  Political freedom would be a thing of no value if the rights of individuals were not sheltered from all violation. Any country where these rights are not respected is a country subjected to despotism, whatever the nominal organization of government may otherwise be.

  Till a few years ago these truths were universally recognized. Lasting errors and a long oppression, under wholly contrary pretexts and quite opposite banners, have thrown all ideas into confusion. Questions one would think worked to death if one judged the case in terms of eighteenth-century writers, will seem never to have been the object of human meditation judging by most of the writers of today.

  chapter two

  On Freedom of Thought

  “The laws,” says Montesquieu, “have responsibility for the punishment of external actions only.”1 The demonstration of this truth might seem unnecessary. Government has nevertheless often failed to recognize it.

  It has sometimes wanted to dominate thought itself. Louis XIV’s dragonnades,2 the insane laws of Charles II’s implacable Parliament, the fury of our revolutionaries: these had no other purpose.

  At other times the government, renouncing this ridiculous ambition, [128] dresses up its renunciation as a voluntary concession and a praiseworthy tolerance. An amusing merit, this granting what you cannot refuse and this tolerating what you do not know about.

  As to the absurdity of any attempt by society to control the inner opinions of its members—a few words on the possibility of the idea and on the means available are enough.

  There is no such possibility. Nature has given man’s thought an impregnable shelter. She has created for it a sanctuary no power can penetrate.

  The means employed are always the same, so much so that in recounting what happened two hundred years ago, we will seem to be saying what happened not long ago under our eyes. And these unchanging means always work against their purpose.

  One can deploy against mute public opinion all the resources of an inquisitorial nosiness. One can scrutinize consciences, impose oath after solemn oath,3 in the hope that he whose conscience was not revolted by an initial act, will be so by a second or a third. One can strike at people’s consciences with boundless severity, surrounding obedience the while with relentless distrust. One can persecute proud and honest men, reluctantly letting off only those of flexible and obliging spirit. One can show oneself equally incapable of respecting resistance and believing in submission.4 One can set traps for the citizens, invent far-fetched formulae to declare a whole nation refractory,5 place it outside the protection of the laws when it has done nothing, punish it when it has committed no crimes, deprive it of the very right to silence,6 and finally pursue men into the sorrows of their final agony and the solemn hour of death.7

  What happens? Honest men are indignant and feeble ones degraded. Everyone suffers and no one is won back. Enforced oaths are an invitation to hypocrisy. They affect only what it is criminal to affect: frankness and integrity. To demand assent is to make it wither. To prop up an opinion with threats invites the courageous to contest it. To offer seductive motives for obedience is to condemn impartiality to resist.

  [129] Twenty-eight years after all the abuses of power devised by the Stuarts as a safeguard, they were driven out. A century after the outrages against the Protestants under Louis XVI, the Protestants took part in the overthrow of his family. Scarcely ten years separate us from revolutionary governments which called themselves republican, and by a fatal but natural confusion the very name they profaned cannot be spoken save with horror.

  chapter three

  On the Expression of Thought

  Men have two ways of showing what their thinking is: speech and writing.

  There was a time when speech seemed worthy of the total surveillance efforts of government. Indeed, if we consider that speech is the indispensable instrument of all plots, the necessary precursor of almost all crimes, the means of communication for all criminal intentions, we can agree that it would be desirable if we could circumscribe its use, in such a fashion as to make its disadvantages disappear while it retained its usefulness.

  Why, then, have all efforts to achieve this very desirable goal been renounced? It is because experience has shown that the measures necessary to achieve this produced ills worse than those one was wishful to remedy. Espionage, corruption, informing, calumnies, abuse of confidence, treason, suspicion between relatives, dissensions between friends, hostility between unconcerned parties, a commerce in domestic infidelities, venality, lying, perjury, despotism: such were the elements constituting government interference with speech. It was felt that this was to pay too dearly for the advantage afforded by surveillance. In addition, we learned that it was to attach importance to what should have none. Keeping a record of imprudence turned it into hostility. Stopping fugitive words in flight was to lead to their being followed by bold actions, and it was better, while coming down hard on the deeds which speech might perhaps have led to, to let that which had no results at all just evaporate. Consequently, except in some very rare circumstances—some obviously disastrous eras or very touchy governments which do not disguise [130] their tyranny at all—society has introduced a distinction which renders its jurisdiction over the word softer and more legitimate. The declaration of an opinion can in a special case produce an effect so infallible that such an opinion must be regarded as an action. Then, if the action is culpable, the utterance must be punished. But it is the same with writings. Writings, like speech, like the most simple movements, can be part of an action. They must be judged as part of that action if it is criminal. But if they do not constitute part of any action, they must, like speech, enjoy complete freedom.

  This answers both those men who in our times singled out certain wise heads and prescribed the need to cut them off, justifying themselves by saying that, after all, they were only expressing their opinions; and those others who want to take advantage of this delirium in order to subject all expressions of opinion to the jurisdiction of government.

  If you once grant the need to repress the expression of opinion, either the State will have to act judicially or the government will have to arrogate to itself police powers which free it from recourse to judicial means. In the first case the laws will be eluded. Nothing is easier than presenting an opinion in such variegated guises that a precisely defined law cannot touch it. In the second case, by authorizing the government to deal ruthlessly with whatever opinions there may be, you are giving it the right to interpret thought, to make inductions, in a nutshell to reason and to put its reasoning in the place of the facts which ought to be the sole basis for government counteraction. This is to establish despotism with a free hand. Which opinion cannot draw down a punishment on its author? You give the government a free hand for evildoing, provided that it is careful to engage in evil thinking. You will never escape from this circle. The men to whom you entrust the right to judge opinions are quite as susceptible as others to being misled or corrupted, and the arbitrary power which you will have invested in them can be used against the most necessary truths as well as the most fatal errors.

  When one considers only one side of moral and political questions, [131] it is easy to draw a terrible picture of the abuse of our rights. But when one looks at these questions from an overall point of view, the picture of the ills which government power occasions by limiting these rights seems to me no less frightening.

  What, indeed, is the outcome of all attacks made on freedom of the pen? They embitter against the government all those writers possessed of that spirit of independence inseparable from talent, who are forced to have recourse to indirect and perfidious allusions. They necessitate the circulation of clandestine and therefore all the more dangerous texts. They feed the public greed for anecdotes, personal remarks, and seditious principles. They give calumny the appearance, always an interesting one, of courage. In sum, they attach far too much importance to the works about to be proscribed.

  In the absence of government intervention, published sedition, immorality, and calumny would scarcely make more impact at the end of a given period of complete freedom than spoken or handwritten calumny, immorality, or sedition.

  One reflection has always occurred to me. Let us suppose a society before the invention of language, making up for this swift and easy means of communication with other less easy and slower ones. The discovery of language would have produced in this society a sudden explosion. Gigantic importance would surely have been attached to sounds which were still new and lots of cautious and wise minds might well have mourned the era of peaceful and total silence. This importance, however, would gradually have faded. Speech would have become a medium limited in its effects. A salutary suspiciousness, born of experience, would have preserved listeners from unthinking enthusiasm. Finally everything would be back in order, with this difference: now social communication and consequently the perfectioning of all the arts and the correcting of all ideas would have gained an extra medium.

  It will be the same with the press wherever just and moderate government does not set about struggling with it. The English government was not at all unnerved by the famous letters of Junius.8 It [132] knew how to resist the double force of eloquence and talent. In Prussia, during the most brilliant reign, to add luster to that monarchy, press freedom was unlimited. Frederick II in forty-six years never once directed his authority against any writer or writing. This in no way upset the peace of his reign, though it was shaken by terrible wars and he was embattled with the whole of Europe. Freedom spreads calm in the souls and reason in the minds of the men who enjoy this inestimable good, free from anxiety. What proves this is that when Frederick II’s successor adopted the opposite course, a general unrest made itself felt. Writers got into conflict with the government, which also found itself abandoned by the courts. If the clouds which rose all around this horizon, formerly so peaceful, did not culminate in a storm, this is because the very restrictions that Frederick William tried to impose on the expression of thought were influenced by the wisdom of the great Frederick. The new king was held in check by the memory of his uncle, whose magnanimous shadow seemed still to watch over Prussia. His edicts were drafted more in a style of apology than menace. He gave homage to freedom of thought in the preamble to the very edicts aiming to repress it,9 and measures which were in principle abuses of power were softened in execution by a tacit moderation and by the tradition of freedom.

  Anyway, government has the same means of defending itself as its enemies have for attacking it. It can enlighten public opinion or even seduce it, and there is no reason to fear that it will ever lack adroit and skillful men who will devote their zeal and talent to it. The government’s supporters ask nothing better than to make themselves out to be courageous and to represent [133] government apologias as difficult and dangerous. In support of their claims they choose the example of the French government, overthrown, they say, in 1789, because of freedom of the press.10 In fact it was not freedom of the press which overthrew the French monarchy. Press freedom did not create the financial disorder which was the real cause of the Revolution. On the contrary, if there had been freedom of the press under Louis XIV and Louis XV, the insane wars of the first and the costly corruption of the second would not have drained the State dry. The glare of publicity would have restrained the first of these kings in his ventures, the second in his vices. They would not have left the unfortunate Louis XVI with a realm which it was impossible to save. It was not press freedom which inflamed popular indignation against illegal detentions and lettres de cachet.11 It was on the contrary popular indignation which, to counter governmental oppression, grasped not press freedom but the dangerous resort to satire, something which all the precautionary measures of the police never manage to take away from the enslaved people. If there had been freedom of the press, on the one hand there would have been fewer illegal detentions, and on the other, people would not have been able to exaggerate them. The imagination would not have been struck by suppositions whose plausibility was heightened by the very mystery surrounding them. Finally, it was not press freedom which brought about all the infamies and lunacy of a revolution all of whose ills I acknowledge. It was the long deprivation of press freedom which had made the common people of France credulous, anxious, and ignorant and thereby often savage. It is because for centuries we had not dared to demand the rights of the people that the people did not know what meaning to attach to these words suddenly pronounced in the middle of the storm. In [134] everything people see as freedom’s excesses I recognize only the instruction servitude gives.

  Governments do not know the harm they do themselves in reserving to themselves the exclusive privilege of speaking and writing on their own acts. People believe nothing affirmed by a government which does not permit one to reply to it and everything said against a government which does not tolerate scrutiny.

  It is these detailed and tyrannical measures against writings, as though they were hostile phalanxes, these measures which, attributing to them an imaginary influence, enlarge their real influence. When men see whole codes of prohibitive law along with hosts of interrogators, they must think attacks repulsed in this way very formidable. Since so much trouble is being taken to keep certain writings away from us, they must say to themselves, the impression they would have on us must probably be a very profound one. They probably contain compelling facts.

  The dangers of freedom of the press are certainly not prevented by government means. The government does not succeed in its ostensible aim. The end it does achieve is to curb the thinking of all timid or scrupulous citizens, to deny all access to the complaints of the oppressed, to let abuses become deep-rooted, without any representation being made, to surround itself with ignorance and darkness, to sanctify despotism in its lowest agents, against whom people dare publish nothing, to drive back into men’s inner thoughts bitterness, vengeance, resentment, to impose silence on reason, justice, and truth, without its being able to require the same silence from the audacity and exaggeration which defy its laws.

  These truths would be incontestable even in the event that we agreed about all the disadvantages attributed to press freedom. How will matters stand if a deeper analysis leads us to deny these drawbacks and if it is shown that the calamities with which freedom of the press is reproached have for the most part been the result only of its enslavement?

  Ordinarily, at the very moment when a dominant faction exercises the most scandalous despotism over the press, it directs this instrument against its opponents and, when by its own excesses this faction has brought about its fall, the inheritors of its power [135] argue against press freedom, citing the ills occasioned by mercenary writers and authorized spies. This leads me to a consideration which seems to me to weigh very heavily in the question.

  In a country still vigorously contested by various groups, when one of these manages to restrain press freedom, it has much more unlimited and formidable power than ordinary despotisms. Despotic governments do not allow freedom of the press; everybody, however, governors and governed, keeps equally quiet. Public opinion is silent; but it remains what it is. Nothing leads it astray or causes it to deviate. But in a country where the reigning faction has seized the press, its writers argue, invent, and calumniate in one direction the way one could do it in all if there were freedom to write. They discuss as though it were a question of convincing. They lose their temper as if there were an opposition. They insult people as if there were a right of reply. Their absurd calumnies precede barbarous persecutions. Their ferocious jests are a prelude to illegal condemnations. The public, far removed, takes this parody of freedom for freedom itself. It draws its opinions from their mendacious, scurrilous satires. It is persuaded by their show of attack that the victims are resisting, just as from afar the war dances of savages might make one believe they are fighting against the unfortunates they are about to devour.

  In the large-scale polities of modern times, freedom of the press, being the sole means of publicity, is by that very fact, whatever the type of government, the unique safeguard of our rights. Collatinus could expose Lucretia’s body in the public square in Rome and everybody was apprised of the outrage done to him.12 The plebeian debtor could show his indignant fellow citizens the wounds inflicted on him by the greedy patrician, his usurious creditor. In our era, however, the vastness of states is an obstacle to this kind of protest. Limited injustices always remain unknown to almost all the inhabitants in our huge countries. If the ephemeral governments which have tyrannized France have drawn on themselves public detestation, this is less because of what they have done than because of what they have owned up to. They bragged about their injustices. They publicized them in their [136] newspapers. More prudent governments would act silently, and the public outlook, which would be disturbed only by dull rumors, intermittent and unconfirmed, would remain uncertain, undecided, and fluctuating. No doubt, as we have already remarked, the repercussive explosion would be only the more terrible, but this would be one ill replacing another.

  All defenses—civil, political, or judicial—become illusory without freedom of the press. The independence of the courts can be violated in scornful mockery of the best-drafted constitution. If open publication is not guaranteed, this violation will not be checked, since it will remain covered by a veil. The courts themselves can prevaricate in their judgments and overthrow due process. The only safeguard of due process is, once again, open publication. Innocence can be put in irons. If open publication does not warn the citizens of the danger hovering over all their heads, the dungeons, abetted by the universal silence, will retain their victims indefinitely. Persecution can be for opinions, beliefs, or doubts, and when no one has the right to call public attention to himself, the protection promised by the laws is only a chimera, another danger. In countries where there are representative assemblies, national representation can be enslaved, mutilated, and calumniated. If printing is only an instrument in the hands of the government, the whole country will resound with its calumnies, without truth finding a single voice raised in its favor. In sum, press freedom, even if it were accompanied by no legal consequence, would still have an advantage in a number of cases, such as when senior members of government are ignorant of the outrages being committed, or in others when they may find it convenient to feign such ignorance. Press freedom meets these two difficulties. It enlightens government and prevents it deliberately closing its eyes. Forced to learn of the facts which happen unbeknown to it and to admit it knows of them, it will less often dare to legitimate the abuses it finds convenient to permit, seemingly in ignorance of them.

  All the thoughts just presented to the reader apply only to the relations of government to the publicizing of opinion. Individuals whom this publicity offends, either in their interests or their honor, always retain the right to demand reparation. Every man has the right [137] to invoke the law in order to repulse the ill done to him, whatever weapons it employs. Individual campaigns against calumny have none of the disadvantages of government intervention. No one has an interest in claiming he has been attacked nor in having recourse to strained interpretations in order to aggravate the charges directed against him. Trial by jury would moreover be a guarantee against these abuses in interpretation.

  chapter four

  Continuation of the Same Subject

  In the previous chapter we dealt with press freedom only in a rather administrative way. More important considerations, however, in connection with politics and morality, demand our attention.

  Today, to restrain the freedom of the press is to restrain the human race’s intellectual freedom. The press is an instrument such freedom can no longer do without. Printing has been made the sole means of publicizing things, the only mode of communication between nations as much as between individuals, by the nature and extent of our modern societies and by the abolition of all the popular and disorderly ways of doing this. The question of press freedom is therefore the general one about the development of the human mind. It is from this point of view that it must be envisaged.

  In countries where the populace does not participate in government in an active way, that is, everywhere there is no national representation, freely elected and invested with significant prerogatives, freedom of the press in some degree replaces political rights. The educated part of the nation interests itself in the administration of affairs, when it can express its opinion, if not directly on each particular issue, at least on the general principles of government. When, however, a country has neither press freedom nor political rights, the people turn away from public affairs. All communication between governors and governed is broken. For a while, the government and its supporters can regard that as an advantage. The government does not encounter obstacles. Nothing impedes it. It acts freely, but this is simply because it is the only living thing and the nation is dead. Public opinion is the very life of States. When public opinion is not renewed, [138] States waste away and fall into dissolution. There were institutions in the past in all the countries of Europe, which, though involved in many abuses, nevertheless, by giving certain classes privileges to defend and rights to exercise, fostered in them a level of activity which saved them from discouragement or apathy. It is to this cause that we must attribute the energy certain individuals possessed until the sixteenth century, an energy of which we no longer find any trace. These institutions have been destroyed everywhere or been modified to such an extent that they have lost their influence almost entirely. But around the very same time they collapsed, the discovery of printing furnished men with a new means of discussion, a new motor of intellectual movement. This discovery and the freedom of thought which resulted from it have over the last three centuries been favored by certain governments, tolerated by others, while yet others have smothered them. Now, we are not afraid to say that the nations in which this intellectual activity has been encouraged or allowed are the only ones which have conserved force and life, and those whose leaderships have imposed silence on all free opinion have gradually lost all character and energy. The French under the monarchy were not completely deprived of political rights until after Richelieu. I have already said that defective institutions which nevertheless endow the powerful classes with certain privileges they are ceaselessly busy in defending have, in their favor, amid their many disadvantages, the fact that they do not leave the whole nation to degradation and debasement. The beginning of the reign of Louis XIV was still disrupted by the war of the Fronde, a puerile war in truth, but one which was the residuum of a spirit of resistance, habituated to action and continuing to act almost without purpose. Despotism grew greatly toward the end of this reign. The opposition still maintained itself, however, taking refuge in religious quarrels, sometimes Calvinists against Catholicism, sometimes between Catholics themselves. The death of Louis XIV was the period when government was relaxed. Freedom of opinion gained ground each day. I do not at all want to say that this freedom was exercised in the most decent and useful way. I mean only that it was exercised and that in this sense one could not put the French, in any period up until the overthrow of the monarchy, among those peoples condemned to complete servitude and moral lethargy.

  [139] This march of the human spirit finished, I agree, with a terrible revolution. I am more willing than anyone to deplore the evils of this revolution. I think I have shown elsewhere that it had many other causes than the independence and the airing of thought. Without coming back to this matter here, however, I will say that those who in their bitterness blame freedom of the press have probably not thought of the effects the complete destruction of that freedom would have produced. People can see very well in every instance the evils which took place, and they believe they can see the immediate causes of these evils. They do not notice as clearly, however, what would have resulted from a different chain of circumstances. If Louis XIV’s successor had been a tetchy prince, despotic and skillful enough to oppress the people without making them rebel, France would have fallen into the same apathy as neighboring monarchies, formerly no less formidable and populous. But the French have always maintained an interest in public affairs, because they have always had, if not the legal, at least the practical right to be interested in them. In recent years the temporary humbling of France during the Seven Years War and during the years just prior to the Revolution has been much exaggerated.13 But it would be easy to show that this decline, for which the philosophers are stupidly blamed, resulted from bad government, from bad appointments made, to my mind, not by philosophers but by mistresses and courtiers. This decline did not stem from a lack of energy in the nation. France proved this when she had Europe to battle with.

  Spain, four hundred years ago, was more powerful and populous than France. This realm, before the abolition of the Cortes, had thirty million inhabitants. Today it has nine. Its ships plied all the oceans and commanded all the colonies. Its fleet is now weaker than those of the English, the French, and the Dutch. Yet the Spanish character is energetic, brave, and enterprising. Whence comes then the striking difference between the fortunes of Spain and France? From the fact that when political liberty had vanished in Spain, nothing came to offer the intellectual and moral activity of its inhabitants a new lease of life. Probably people will say Spain’s decadence is due to the faults of its government, to the Inquisition which controls it, and to a thousand other immediate causes. All these causes, however, [140] relate to the same root. If thought had been free in Spain, the government would have been better, because it would have been enlightened by the intelligence of various individuals. As for the Inquisition, everywhere you have freedom of the press, the Inquisition cannot happen, and everywhere there is no press freedom, there will always be creeping around, in one shape or another, something very like the Inquisition.

  Germany furnishes us with a very similar and even more striking comparison, in view of the disproportion between the two objects compared. One of the two great monarchies which share that country was formerly a colossus of power. She grows weaker each day. Her finances are deteriorating and her military strength leaking away. Her internal activities are powerless against the decay which undermines her. Her foreign activities are ill-coordinated and her setbacks inexplicable. For all that, her cabinet has often been presented by the political writers as a model of ongoing prudence and secrecy. There is in that realm, however, neither political freedom nor intellectual independence. Not only is the press there subjected to severe restrictions, but the introduction of any foreign book is strictly prohibited. The nation, separated from the government as by a thick night, takes only a feeble part in its proceedings. It is not within the government’s power to have the people slumber or bestir itself according to government convenience or passing fantasy. Life is not something you can by turns take away and give back.

  It is so true that we must attribute the misfortunes of the monarchy I am talking about to this defect in its domestic life, that the region which has always furnished the best troops and most zealous defenders is a country which, formerly free, has retained its sense of loss, its memories, and a certain show of freedom. The heredity of the throne was not recognized in Hungary until the Assembly of 1687, amid the most bloody executions. The energy of the Hungarians has been sustained under the Austrian government only because that government has not borne down on them for more than a century and a bit. Note that this country is at the same time the most malcontent part of the monarchy. Malcontent subjects are still worth more to their masters than subjects lacking zeal because they lack interests.14

  Prussia, on the contrary, where public opinion has never been completely smothered and where this opinion has enjoyed the greatest freedom since Frederick II, has successfully struggled against many disadvantages, all the less easy to surmount because they were inherent [141] in her situation and local circumstances. Until about the beginning of the last century, the era of her elevation to the status of monarchy, Prussia showed the effects of the upheaval that the Reformation wrought in all German thinking. The Electors of Brandenburg had always stood out among the chiefs of the league formed to support freedom of religion, and their subjects had joined them in word and deed in that great and noble enterprise. The warlike reign of Frederick William had not weakened that outlook when Frederick II replaced him. He left thought the widest possible latitude, permitting the examination of all political and religious questions. His very dislike of German literature, of which he knew little, was itself very favorable to the complete freedom of German writers. The greatest service government can do to knowledge is not to bother with it. Laisser faire is all you need to bring commerce to the highest point of prosperity; letting people write is all you need for the human mind to achieve the highest degree of activity, cogency, and accuracy. Frederick’s conduct here was such that his subjects identified themselves with him in all his undertakings. Although there was in Prussia no political liberty, no cast-iron safeguards, a public spirit took shape, and it was with this spirit, as much as with his troops, that Frederick repulsed the European coalition against him. During the Seven Years War he experienced frequent reverses. His capital was taken and his armies dispersed; but there was some kind of moral elasticity which communicated itself from him to his people and from his people to him. The Prussians had something to lose by the death of their king, for they would have forfeited their freedom of thought and of the press and that indefinable but real share that the exercise of these two faculties gave them in his undertakings and administration. They lent him their best wishes; they had a good reaction on his army; they gave him the support of a kind of climate of opinion, a public-spiritedness, which sustained him and doubled his strength. I do not in writing these lines seek to conceal the fact that there is a class of men who will see in them only a cause for derision and mockery. Whatever the cost, these men want there to be nothing moral or intellectual in the government of the human race. They set such faculties as they have to proving the futility and impotence of these faculties. I will ask them, however, to reply to the examples I have [142] cited and tell us why, of the four remaining monarchies, the two strongest formerly, having smothered all intellectual activity and development in their subjects, have gradually fallen into an ever growing weakness and lethargy, and why the other two, of which the first has tolerated, mostly despite itself, the existence and force of public opinion and the second favored it, have raised themselves to a high degree of prosperity and power. I repeat that arguments based on the faults and inconsistencies of the governments in these two first monarchies would not be admissible. This is because they would have committed fewer faults if freedom had surrounded them with more enlightenment, or if, even when they had committed these faults, their nations had conserved some energy just by exercising disapproval, however impotent. Then their nations, like the French nation, would have been ready to revive at the first signal.

  I did not want to base my case on the English example, though it would have been much more favorable to it. However one judges England, it will, I think, be agreed that she has a stronger and more active national spirit than any other people in Europe. But one could rightly have attributed England’s energy to her political constitution, and I wanted to show the advantages of press freedom independently of any constitution.

  Had I wished to multiply the evidence, I could have spoken again about China. The government of that country has contrived to dominate thought and transform it wholly into a tool. Sciences there are cultivated only by its orders, under its management and authority. No one dares to cut out a new path for himself nor to deviate in any way from prescribed opinion. The result is that China has been persistently conquered by strangers less numerous than the Chinese. To arrest the development of people’s minds it has been necessary to break in them the energy which would have served them in standing up for themselves and their government.

  “The leaders of ignorant peoples have always finished,” says Bentham, “by being victims of their narrow and cowardly policies. Those nations grown old in infancy under tutors who prolong their imbecility in order to govern them the more easily, have always offered the first aggressor an easy prey.”15 [143]

  chapter five

  Continuation of the Same Subject

  If you apply this experience of the last three centuries of history to the present state of human intellection, you will readily be convinced that the annihilation of press freedom, that is to say, of intellectual progress, would have results today even more fatal than those we have recounted. The monarchies whose progressive withering and retrograde movement we have described, deprived of the free use of printing from its inception, felt this deprivation only in a dull, slow, imperceptible way. A people deprived of freedom of the press after having enjoyed it, would experience the initial pain of this loss more sharply, followed by a more rapid degradation. The thing which debases men is not lacking a right but having to give it up. Condillac says there are two sorts of barbarism, the one which goes before enlightened centuries and the one which succeeds them.16 In the same way one can say there are two kinds of servitude, the one preceding liberty and the one replacing it. The first is a desirable state of affairs compared to the second. But the choice of these is not left to governments, because they cannot annihilate the past.

  Imagine an enlightened nation, enriched by the works of a number of studious generations, possessing masterpieces of all types, having made immense scientific and artistic progress, and having got to this point by the only way that can lead there, the enjoyment, assured or precarious, of freedom of publication. If the government of that nation put such constraints on that freedom that it became every day harder to elude them, if it did not allow the exercise of thought except in a predetermined direction, the nation could survive for a while on [144] its former capital, so to speak, on its acquired intelligence, on habits of thinking and doing picked up earlier; but nothing in the world of thought would renew itself. The reproductive principle would have dried up. For some years vanity might stand in for the love of learning. Sophists, remembering what glamour and esteem literary works used once to bestow, would give themselves over to works of ostensibly the same genre. Their writings would combat any good effects which other writings might have had, and as long as there remained any trace of liberal principles, there would be in such a people’s literature some kind of movement, a sort of struggle against these ideas and principles. This very movement, however, this struggle, would be an inheritance of a now-destroyed liberty. To the extent that the last vestiges, the last traditions, could be dispelled, there would be less acclaim and less advantage in continuing these more and more superfluous attacks. When all had been dispelled, the battle would finish, because the combatants would no longer perceive even the shadow of their foes. Conquerors and conquered would alike keep silence. Who knows if the government might not reckon it worth imposing this? It would not want anyone to reawaken extinguished memories, or stir up abandoned ideas. It would come down hard on overzealous acolytes as it used to on its enemies. It would forbid even writings taking its own line, on the interests of humanity, as some pious government once forbade talk of God, for good or ill. Thus a career in real thinking would be definitively closed to the human spirit. The educated generation would gradually disappear. The next generation, seeing no advantage in intellectual occupations, or indeed dangers therein, would break off from them for good. You will say, in vain, that the human spirit could still occupy itself with lighter literature, that it could enter the service of the exact or natural sciences, or devote itself to the arts. When nature created man, she did not consult government. Her design was that all our faculties should be in intimate liaison and that none should be subject to limitation without the others feeling the effect. Independent thinking is as vital, even to lighter literature, science, and the arts, as air is to physical life. One could as well make men work under a pneumatic pump, saying that they do not have to breathe, but must move their arms and legs, as hold intellectual activity to a given object, preventing it from preoccupying itself with important subjects which give it its energy because they remind it of its dignity. Writers strangled in this way start off with panegyrics; but they become bit by bit incapable even of praise and literature finishes [145] up losing itself in anagrams and acrostics. Scholars are no more than the trustees of ancient discoveries which deteriorate and degrade in manacled hands. The source of talent dries up among artists along with the hope of glory which is sustained only by freedom. By a mysterious but incontestable relationship between things from which one thought oneself capable of isolating oneself,17 they no longer have the ability to represent the human figure nobly when the human spirit is degraded.18

  Nor would this be the end of the story. Soon commerce, the professions, and the most vital crafts would feel the effects of the death of thought. It should not be thought that commerce on its own is a sufficient motive for activity. People often exaggerate the influence of personal interest. Personal interest itself needs the existence of public opinion in order to act. The man whose opinion languishes, stifled, is not for long excited even by his interests. A sort of stupor seizes him; and just as paralysis extends itself from one part of the body to another, so it extends itself from one faculty to another.

  Interest cut off from reflection is limited in its needs and easy to content in its pleasures, working just as much as is needed for the moment, preparing nothing for the future. Look at Spain, whose example we cited above. Thus it is that governments which wish to kill men’s opinions and believe they are encouraging interests find to their great regret that this clumsy twin policy has killed them both. No doubt there is an interest which is not snuffed out under despotism; but it is not one which leads man to work. It is the one leading him to beg and plunder, to enrich himself by the favors of power and the spoils drawn from weakness. This interest has nothing in common with the motive necessary for the working classes. It makes the whereabouts of despots a very busy place; but it cannot serve as a spur either to the efforts of industry nor the speculations of commerce. We have shown by the example of Frederick II how intellectual independence influenced even military success. One does not notice at first glance the link between a nation’s public spirit and the discipline or valor of an army which fights away from home and often comprises foreign elements. This link, however, is constant and necessary. [146] People like to think of soldiers today as docile instruments, whom it suffices to know how to handle skillfully. This is all too true in certain respects. It is also necessary, however, that soldiers are aware of a certain public opinion behind them. It moves them almost without their knowing. It is like that music to whose sound these same soldiers advance on the enemy. None pays it a consistent attention, and yet all are moved, encouraged, and carried along by it. If it stopped making itself heard, they would all slacken off imperceptibly. Only barbarian hordes can march ardently into battle unsustained by the public opinion of a nation of their compatriots, whose cause they defend and who share in their success. But this is because the barbarian hordes are driven by the hope of plunder and the desire to make new settlements in the country they are seizing. This hope and desire take the place for them of public opinion, or rather they constitute a real opinion.

  “The conquest of the Gauls,” remarks Filangieri, “cost Caesar ten years of exhaustion, victories, and negotiations, and Clovis, so to speak, only a day.”19 Yet the Gauls who resisted Caesar were surely less disciplined than those who fought against Clovis and had been trained in Roman military tactics. Clovis, at fifteen or sixteen, was certainly not a greater general than Caesar. But Caesar had to subdue a people who took a great part in the administration of their domestic affairs, Clovis one which had been enslaved for five centuries. We have already said, at the start of this chapter, that among modern nations, freedom of the press takes the place in some respects of direct participation in the administration of affairs.

  There are two circumstances, I agree, which can briefly stand in for public opinion among civilized nations in the matter of military success. The [147] first is when a great general inspires his soldiers with a personal enthusiasm. The second is when public opinion having been strong for a long time, the army has retained the momentum that opinion once gave it. In this case it is public opinion which has fled the nation and found refuge in the army. It is very easy to grasp that this spirit, which lives only in action and the attachment of interests, should grow dim first in the peaceful and inactive part of the nation, when the government takes away all its nourishment, and that it should flourish longer in the active and warlike part. Of these two circumstances, however, one is accidental and the other ephemeral, and both are artificial substitutes for the only real and durable cause. All man’s faculties go together. Industry and the military arts are perfected by scientific discovery. The sciences gain in their turn from the perfectioning of the military arts and industry. Learning has applications to everything. It spurs on progress in industry, all the arts and sciences, and then, in analyzing all this progress, it extends its own horizon. Finally, morality is purified and corrected by such learning. If the government undermines free expression of thought, morality will be the less sound for it,20 factual knowledge less accurate, the sciences less active in their development, the art of war less advanced, and industry less enriched by discoveries.

  Human existence, attacked in its noblest parts, soon feels the poison extending to its most distant ones. You think you have limited it only in respect of some superfluous liberty or denied it only some worthless ceremony. In fact your poisoned weapon has struck it to the heart.

  The process we are recounting here is not theory: it is history. It is the history of the Greek empire, that empire which was the heir to that of Rome, invested with much of its strength and all its intellectual achievement, that empire where despotism took root, with all the advantages most favorable to its power and perpetuation, and which perished and fell solely for the reason that all despotic empires must perish and fall.

  People often tell us, I know, of an alleged circle which the human spirit describes and which, they say, brings back—by an inevitable [148] determinism—ignorance after enlightenment, barbarism after civilization.21 Unfortunately for this thesis, however, despotism has always slipped in between these stages in a way making it difficult not to define it as itself counting for something in the cycle. The real cause of these alternations in the history of nations is that man’s intelligence cannot stand still. If you do not stop it, it advances. If you stop it, it retreats, because it cannot stay at the same point. Thought is the basis of everything. If you discourage it from self-examination, it will not exercise itself on any other object, except apathetically. One could say that, indignant at seeing itself driven from its proper sphere, it wants to take vengeance, in the form of a noble suicide, for the humiliation which has been inflicted on it. All the efforts of government will not restore it to life. The false, intermittent movement it receives resembles only the convulsions which an art—more frightening than effective—stimulates in corpses, without reanimating them. And if the government wished to make up for the natural activity of muzzled public opinion with its own actions, just as in besieged places they make the horses they keep locked up there paw the ground between the columns, it would be taking on a difficult task. To begin with, a wholly artificial bustle is costly to maintain, indeed can be maintained only by extraordinary things. When each person is free, he interests or amuses himself with what he is doing, saying, or writing. But when most of the nation is reduced to the role of forcibly silenced spectators, to make these dumb spectators applaud, or even just watch, the managers of the show have constantly to reawaken their curiosity with theatrical spectacles or changes of scene. Now, it is probably an advantage for a government to be adept at laying on grand events when the general good demands it. But it is an incalculable nuisance to the governed that the government simply has to put on so-called grand events when the general good does not demand this. Moreover, this artificial activity does not fulfill its [149] purpose for very long. The governed soon stop listening to a long monologue they are never allowed to interrupt. The nation gets tired of a pointless display whose costs and risks are all it supports, but whose purposes and management are alien to it. The interest in public affairs is concentrated on the government and its creatures. A moral barrier stands between the bustling of government and the lasting inaction of the people. The former tries in vain to communicate to the latter its concern, and the most dazzling undertakings and the most solemn celebrations of these are only so many funeral ceremonies, with dances on the tombs. All positions are occupied by ciphers, and consent is deprived of all spontaneity. Things keep going, but by command and threat. Everything is more expensive because men insist on payment for being reduced to the level of mere machines. Money has to take over the functions of opinion, imitation, and honor. Everything is harder, because nothing is voluntary. The government is obeyed rather than supported. At the least interruption all the cogs stop operating. It is like a game of chess. The hand of power controls it. No pieces resist. But if the hand were to stop for an instant, all the pieces would remain immobile. Finally, movement weakens in government itself. A nation’s lethargy, where there is no public opinion, communicates itself to its government, whatever the latter does. Having been unable to keep the nation awake, the government finishes by falling asleep with it. Thus everything falls silent, subsides, degenerates, and is degraded in a nation which no longer has the right to make public its thoughts, and sooner or later, such a realm presents the spectacle of those plains of Egypt, where we see an immense pyramid pressing down on the arid dust, reigning over the silent wastes. It was a beautiful conceit of nature to place man’s recompense outside himself, to have lighted in his heart this indefinable flame of glory, which, nourishing itself on noble hopes, the source of all great actions, [150] our protection against all the vices, the link between all the generations and between man and the universe, repulses gross pleasures and disdains sordid desires. Bad luck to him who extinguishes that sacred flame. He plays the part in this world of the principle of evil, his iron hand bends our brow to the earth, when heaven made us to walk head held high and to contemplate the stars.

  chapter six

  Some Necessary Explication

  In saying that freedom of the press in some degree replaces political rights, I did not mean it replaces them perfectly. As it is never other than precarious, where these rights do not exist, it does not do all the good it could do, and the good it does do is mingled with many ills. This is what happened in France at the end of the eighteenth century. But in this as in all such cases, it is not liberty we should blame but the absence of judicial guarantee. It is not necessary to remove the former but to ensure the latter. Freedom of the press can be appropriately restricted only where political freedom exists. Elsewhere, men of enlightenment have to pit themselves against all limits, because despotism cannot put limits on anything appropriately.

  chapter seven

  Final Observations

  To stop people declaring their thoughts is to close to talent its finest career. But nature will not be stopped from giving birth to men of talent and their active side will, indeed, have to be exercised. What will happen? They will split into two classes. Some, true to the purpose they were born for, will attack your government. Others will run headlong into egotism and devote their superior talents to accumulating all the means of pleasure, the sole compensation left to them. Thus [151] the government, in its marvelous goings-on, will have divided men of talent into two parts, one seditious and the other rascally. It will probably punish them, but for its own crime. If their legitimate ambition had found the field free for their hopes and honorable efforts, the former would still be peaceful and the latter still virtuous. They did not seek out a reprehensible route until they had been driven back from the natural ones, which they had a right to follow. I say they had a right to do this because celebrity, renown, and glory are the human race’s patrimony. It does not belong to a few men to rob their equals of them. It is not permitted to them to make life wither by depriving it of what gives it its brilliance.

  CONSTANT’S NOTES

  [1. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book VII.

  [2. ][The persecution of the Protestants by the dragoons. Translator’s note]

  [3. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book VII.

  [4. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book VII.

  [5. ]See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book VII.

  [6. ]See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book VII.

  [7. ]See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book VII.

  [8. ]“The Letters of Junius” appeared anonymously on 21 January 1769 in Woodfall’s newspaper, Public Advertiser. He published them in complete form in 1772, but other incomplete editions had already come out. The purpose of these letters was to discredit the policies of the duke of Grafton and Lord North. The anonymity of their author has never been definitively unmasked. The names of Gibbon, Burke, and Paine have been mentioned, but various clues permit us to believe it more likely that Sir Philip Francis was the author. These letters are still famous for their style, which constitutes them as a masterpiece of the pamphlet form. See the entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 13 (1973), s.v. Junius.

  [9. ]Constant was probably familiar with the work of Louis-Philippe Ségur, Histoire des principaux événements du règne de F. Guillaume II, roi de Prusse, Paris, F. Buisson, an IX (1800), which gives the text of this Edict of Censorship (t. I, pp. 400–405) and gives a commentary (ibid., pp. 62–64). Frederick William II declares indeed at the beginning of this text: “Although we are perfectly convinced of the great and diverse advantages of a moderate and well-regulated freedom of the press in terms of expanding the sciences and all useful knowledge [. . .] experience has shown us, however, the troublesome consequences of complete freedom in this regard.”

  [10. ]Without being able to be categorical on this point, since he has not found the text to which reference is made here, Hofmann thinks, nevertheless, that Constant is referring to the editors of the Journal de l’Empire or of the Mercure de France, men completely devoted to Napoleon. See the study by André Cabanis, “Le courant contre-révolutionnaire sous le Consulat et l’Empire” (in the Journal des Débats and the Mercure de France), Revue des sciences politiques, No. 24, 1971, pp. 33–40. Among these editors, there were Fiévée and Geoffroy, whose target was often the ideology of the Enlightenment and 1789 and who advocated all-powerful monarchy. One finds, in particular, in an article in the Mercure de France (No. 257, 21 June 1806, pp. 533–554) signed by De Bonald, this reflection which must have struck Constant: “Freedom of thought was only therefore freedom to act; and how could one demand from government an absolute freedom of action, without rendering pointless all the pains taken by the administration to maintain peace and good order, or rather, without turning society upside down?” (ibid., p. 551). And the same author a little further on identifies “diversity of religious and political opinion” as “the main cause of the French Revolution” (ibid., p. 552).

  [11. ][Lettres de cachet. Letters bearing the king’s seal, containing orders for imprisonment of individuals or their banishment without trial. Translator’s note]

  [12. ]Titus Livy, Histoire romaine, I, 59, 3, éd. cit., t. I, p. 95.

  [13. ]This reference has not been pinned down by Hofmann.

  [14. ]See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book VII.

  [15. ]Constant cut the citation in two; after pusillanime [cowardly], Bentham had written: “A nation kept in a constant inferiority by institutions who oppose any kind of progress became [sic] the prey of the people who had acquired a relative superiority.” Constant modified the original text at the end of the citation as well. Bentham said: “These nations . . . always offered an easy conquest and once captivated [or enthralled] they managed only to change the color of their chains.” Ed. cit., t. III, p. 21. [Constant was working—excessively freely—from a French translation. His referencing cannot be deemed reliable on this occasion. Translator’s note]

  [16. ]Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Cours d’étude . . . , op. cit., t. IV, p. 2: “There are therefore two sorts of barbarism, the one which follows enlightened centuries and the one which precedes them; and they are not like each other.”

  [17. ][Hofmann has had difficulty deciphering the folio French here, so the English is uncertain too by definition. Translator’s note]

  [18. ]In writing these pages, Constant is indicating without naming the leading French newspapers, led by the Mercure de France, whose content was more and more limited to panegyrics, anagrams, and acrostics.

  [19. ]Gaëtano Filangieri, La science de la législation, Paris, Cuchet, 1786, t. II, p. 105, n. 1. Here is the complete quotation from which Constant also borrows other expressions. “The conquest of the Gauls cost Caesar ten years of exhaustion, victories, and negotiations. It cost Clovis at the head of a handful of Franks, so to speak, a day. Was the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old Clovis a better general than Caesar? Were the Franks more valiant than the Romans? No. Caesar had to fight a people who had always been free or happy. Clovis found the Gauls oppressed and enslaved for more than five centuries. This is the difference in a nutshell.”

  [20. ]See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book VII.

  [21. ]Constant indicates here all the opponents of the doctrine of human perfectibility, such as Fontanes, Fiévée, de Feletz.

  [A. [Refers to page 103.]]
  
  Esprit des lois, XII, 11.

  [B. [Refers to page 104.]]Under Charles II perpetual banishment was pronounced on all the ministers who would not swear the oath of supremacy. Burnet, Mémoires de son temps, I, 209.22

  [C. [Refers to page 104.]]In 1688, three years after the Protestants were forced to abjure their faith by means of a persecution which brought ten thousand men death on the wheel or by burning, all the newly converted were disarmed and their exclusion from all municipal offices was announced. Eclaircissements sur la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes, I, 379.23

  [D. [Refers to page 104.]]Charles II’s Parliament declared that the king could demand from the Scottish nation as a whole a bond in earnest of its future submission and act against it, as refractory, if the bond were inadequate. Hume, XI, 286, 287.24

  [[152] E. [Refers to page 104.]]Under Charles II, suspects in Scotland were asked three questions. Silence or hesitation were punished by death. On this pretext some women were hanged and others drowned. Among the latter were a girl of eighteen and one of thirteen. Hume, XII, 15, 17, 18.25

  [F. [Refers to page 104.]]The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was followed by a law laying down that people who were ill and refused the sacraments would after their deaths be dragged through the mire and their goods confiscated. Enraged priests were often to be seen, viaticum in hand, escorted by a judge and his bailiffs and assistants, going to the homes of the dying, urging elderly people at death’s door to sacrilege. They exposed them to the crowds drawn to the spectacle by curiosity, who shook with joy at the sight of the heretic humiliated. When the unfortunate person died, this fanatical populace made a sport out of insulting his remains and of executing the law in all its horror. Eclaircissements, Vol. I, 351–355, II, 177.26

  [[153] G. [Refers to page 115.]]It would be curious to calculate what the House of Austria has lost as a result of its management of its subject peoples, from the Peace of Cateau Cambresis to that of Pressburg (Bratislava). Vervins began the restitutions. Westphalia cost her Holland and Alsace. The Treaty of the Pyrenees entailed other sacrifices. Before the end of the same century she gave up Franche-Comté and in the following century in less than fifty years she lost Spain, the New World, Parma, Sicily, Naples, and Silesia. Next add what she has lost from then till the present.27

  [[154] H. [Refers to page 121.]]John Barrow’s voyage to China can serve to show what a nation whose government has coerced it into immobility becomes like, morally and in every way.28

  [B. [Refers to page 104.]]Under Charles II perpetual banishment was pronounced on all the ministers who would not swear the oath of supremacy. Burnet, Mémoires de son temps, I, 209.22

  [C. [Refers to page 104.]]In 1688, three years after the Protestants were forced to abjure their faith by means of a persecution which brought ten thousand men death on the wheel or by burning, all the newly converted were disarmed and their exclusion from all municipal offices was announced. Eclaircissements sur la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes, I, 379.23

  [D. [Refers to page 104.]]Charles II’s Parliament declared that the king could demand from the Scottish nation as a whole a bond in earnest of its future submission and act against it, as refractory, if the bond were inadequate. Hume, XI, 286, 287.24

  [[152] E. [Refers to page 104.]]Under Charles II, suspects in Scotland were asked three questions. Silence or hesitation were punished by death. On this pretext some women were hanged and others drowned. Among the latter were a girl of eighteen and one of thirteen. Hume, XII, 15, 17, 18.25

  [F. [Refers to page 104.]]The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was followed by a law laying down that people who were ill and refused the sacraments would after their deaths be dragged through the mire and their goods confiscated. Enraged priests were often to be seen, viaticum in hand, escorted by a judge and his bailiffs and assistants, going to the homes of the dying, urging elderly people at death’s door to sacrilege. They exposed them to the crowds drawn to the spectacle by curiosity, who shook with joy at the sight of the heretic humiliated. When the unfortunate person died, this fanatical populace made a sport out of insulting his remains and of executing the law in all its horror. Eclaircissements, Vol. I, 351–355, II, 177.26

  [[153] G. [Refers to page 115.]]It would be curious to calculate what the House of Austria has lost as a result of its management of its subject peoples, from the Peace of Cateau Cambresis to that of Pressburg (Bratislava). Vervins began the restitutions. Westphalia cost her Holland and Alsace. The Treaty of the Pyrenees entailed other sacrifices. Before the end of the same century she gave up Franche-Comté and in the following century in less than fifty years she lost Spain, the New World, Parma, Sicily, Naples, and Silesia. Next add what she has lost from then till the present.27

  [[154] H. [Refers to page 121.]]John Barrow’s voyage to China can serve to show what a nation whose government has coerced it into immobility becomes like, morally and in every way.28

  [22]Gilbert Burnet, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la Grande-Bretagne sous les règnes de Charles II et de Jacques II . . . , translated from Gilbert Burnet’s English, London, Th. Ward, 1725, 3 vol.

  [23]Claude Carloman de Rulhière, op. cit., t. I, pp. 378–379: “It was thought necessary to exclude from even the lowest municipal offices, after their abjuration, those who in the same century had given Sully to the Kingdom.” There is no question in this passage of torture on the rack!

  [24]David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, Basil, J.-J. Tourneisen, 1789, t. XI, pp. 272–289, in an article entitled [The] State of Affairs in Scotland and describing the effects of the despotism of Charles II on the Scots. The pages given by Constant do not correspond precisely to the text of his note.

  [25]Ibid., t. XII, p. 17: “And when the poor deluded creatures refused to answer, capital punishments were inflicted on them. Even women were brought to the gibbet for the pretended crime.” And p. 18: “They all refused and were condemned to a capital punishment by drowning. One of them was an elderly women; the other two were young; one eighteen years of age, the other only thirteen.”

  [26]Constant’s references to Rulhière are accurate. It is interesting, however, to compare his note with the original texts in order to appreciate the art with which he mingled with his own prose the language of the author he was quoting. Thus in t. I, p. 351: “This was the occasion of a terrible law: Those who, when they are ill, refuse the sacraments, will, after their deaths, be dragged through the mire, and their goods confiscated. If they recover, they will be condemned to make amends, the men by going to the galleys forever, the women by imprisonment, both having their possessions confiscated.” T. I, p. 355: “But in most of our towns we had only too often this dreadful spectacle, corpses dragged through the mire, and too often also we saw enraged priests, viaticum in hand, escorted by a judge and his bailiffs, going to the houses of the dying, and soon afterward the fanatical populace, making cruel sport of carrying out the law themselves in all its horror.” T. II, pp. 177–178: “. . . I would say here that one saw at the bedside of the sick, a priest, surrounded by bailiffs and their assistants, carrying in the most solemn pomp the blessed sacrament, the most awesome of mysteries, urging a dying man to commit sacrilege, and making a mock of him to the crowd drawn there by curiosity, some of them trembling at the profanity, some shaking with joy at the sight of the humiliated heretic, reduced to a scandalous hypocrisy in order to keep his substance intact for his family and some worthless adornments for his grave.”

  [27]Constant, in this compressed survey of international politics from the sixteenth century to 1805, naturally understands by the House of Austria the Hapsburg dynasty, whose possessions, from Charles V to the War of the Spanish Succession, extended among others to Spain. A series of treaties to which Constant makes reference were signed between France and Spain, the latter understood as an Austrian dominion. Thus, after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) France takes from the Holy Roman Empire the three bishoprics, Mets, Toul, and Verdun. At the Treaty of Vervins (1598) Spain loses Vermand, Picardy, Calais, etc. In 1648 following the Treaty of Westphalia, Spain loses sovereignty over the United Provinces, and France gains Alsace from the Empire. Eleven years later, following the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), France occupies ten Imperial towns in Alsace. By the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678, France obtains the Franche-Comté. In 1714, by the Treaty of Rastatt, which brings an end to the wars of the Spanish succession, the kingdom of Spain no longer belongs to the Hapsburgs, and as Constant calculates it in the forty-nine years leading up to the Treaty of Hubertsburg (1763), Austria loses in succession Naples and Sicily (1738), Parma (1748), and Silesia (1763). Finally, Austria abandons also some territories after the Treaties of Campoformio (1797), Lunéville (1801), and Bratislava (1805), this last constraining the Austro-Hapsburg Empire to abandon Venice, Dalmatia, the Tyrol, and Vorarlberg. Constant’s view is very French. One could object that though Austria lost many possessions to the benefit of France, she obtained significant territorial compensations in the East at the expense of Poland and Turkey (in the eighteenth century). Moreover, Constant’s argument is not very convincing. He starts from the principle that the dwindling of the Hapsburg realms stems from the lack of liberty extended to enlightened thought. In fact, what Austria lost was to the advantage of equally despotic princes, such as Louis XIV.

  [28]John Barrow, Voyage en Chine, formant le complément du voyage de Lord Macartney, translated from the English, with notes, by J. Castéra, Paris, F. Buisson, an XIII (1805), 3 vol. Constant must have read at least the two accounts in the Mercure de France, 2 frimaire an XIV (23 November 1805), pp. 393–402, and 22 March 1806, pp. 537–542.

• Back to Top

  5: Session II: Freedom of Thought and Religion and Legal Safeguards Thereof. Reading 2

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK VIII: On Religious Freedom

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/108949 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK VIII

  On Religious Freedom

  • Ch. 1. Why religion was so often attacked by the men of the Enlightenment. 131
  • Ch. 2. On civil intolerance. 135
  • Ch. 3. On the proliferation of sects. 137
  • Ch. 4. On the maintenance of religion by government against the spirit of inquiry. 139
  • Ch. 5. On the reestablishment of religion by government. 140
  • Ch. 6. On the axiom that the people must have a religion. 141
  • Ch. 7. On the utilitarian case for religion. 142
  • Ch. 8. Another effect of the axiom that the people must have a religion. 143
  • Ch. 9. On tolerance when government gets involved. 144
  • Ch. 10. On the persecution of a religious belief. 144

  chapter one

  Why Religion Was So Often Attacked by the Men of the Enlightenment

  In examining the proper role of the government with regard to religion, we are not at all questioning the benefits deriving from religious ideas. The more one loves freedom, the more one cherishes moral ideas, the more high-mindedness, courage, and independence are needed, the more it is necessary to have some respite from men, to take refuge in belief in a God.

  If religion had always been perfectly free, it would never, in my view, have been other than an object of respect and love. One could hardly conceive the bizarre fanaticism rendering religion in itself an object of hatred or animosity. This recourse of an unhappy being to a just one, of a weak to a good one, should excite, it seems to me, even among those who consider it chimerical, only interest and sympathy. He who regards all religious hopes as erroneous ought to be more profoundly moved than anyone else by this universal chorus of suffering humanity, these requests of the grieving, cast from all corners of the earth at a stony heaven, to wait unanswered, or by the soothing illusion which takes for an answer the confused sound of so many repeated prayers far away on the wind.

  The causes of our pains are numerous. Government can [158] banish us and lies calumniate us. We can be wounded by the bonds of a totally false society. A merciless nature punishes us in what we most cherish. The somber and solemn period of old age moves toward us, when things grow dark and seem to retreat, and a kind of coldness and lifelessness spreads on everything around us.

  Faced with so much sorrow, we search everywhere for consolations and all our lasting ones are religious. When the world abandons us, we form some kind of alliance beyond it. When men persecute us, we create for ourselves some refuge beyond them. When we see our most cherished chimeras—justice, freedom, and native land—vanish, we flatter ourselves that there exists somewhere a being who will be grateful that we were true, despite our times, to justice, freedom, and fatherland. When we grieve something we love, we throw a bridge across the abyss, and in our thoughts we cross it. Finally, when life escapes us, we wing our way toward another one. Thus, it is the very essence of religion to be a faithful companion, the ingenious and tireless friend of unhappy souls.

  Nor is this all. The consoler of those in misfortune, religion is at the same time the most natural of all our emotions. All our physical sensations, all our moral feelings, make it live again in our hearts, without our knowing. Everything which seems boundless to us, which produces in us the idea of immensity, the sight of the sky, the silence of the night, the vast stretches of ocean, everything which leads us to pity or enthusiasm, awareness of a virtuous action, a generous sacrifice, a danger bravely faced, the grief of another given succor and relief, everything which raises in the depths of our souls the primal elements of our nature, the contempt for vice, the hatred of tyranny, nourishes our religious sentiment.

  This feeling relates closely to all noble, delicate, and profound passions. Like all of them it has something mysterious about it. For common reasoning cannot explain any of these passions in a satisfactory manner. Love, that exclusive preference for an object we had been able to manage without for a long time and which so many others resemble, the need for glory, that thirst for a fame which must outlast us, the enjoyment [159] we find in devotion, an enjoyment contrary to the habitual instinct of our egotism, melancholy, that sadness without cause, in the depths of which there is a pleasure we could not begin to analyze, a thousand other sensations we cannot describe, which fill us with vague impressions and confused emotions: these are inexplicable in terms of rigorous reasoning. They all have some affinity with religious feeling. All these things aid the development of morality. They make man break out of the narrow circle of his interests, they give the soul that flexibility, that delicacy, that exaltation smothered by habituation to life in the community and the calculations it necessitates.

  Love is the most mixed of these intense emotions, because its purpose is a specific pleasure, this purpose being close to us, and ending up in egoism. Religious feeling, for the opposite reason, is the purest of all emotions. It does not flee with youth. It strengthens sometimes in old age, as if heaven had given it to us to console us in the most deprived period of our lives.

  A man of genius said that the sight of the Apollo Belvedere or a picture by Raphael uplifted him.1 Indeed, there is in the contemplation of beauty of all kinds something which detaches us from ourselves by making us feel that perfection is of greater worth than we, and which by means of this belief, inspiring in us a brief selflessness, awakens within us the power of sacrifice, which power is the mother of all virtue. Whatever the cause of the emotion, it bears within it something which quickens the blood, arouses a kind of well-being, and heightens in us the sense of our existence and strengths. We become open to a generosity, a courage, and a sympathy above our everyday disposition. Even the corrupted man is better, when he is moved and as long as he stays moved.

  I do not at all wish to say that absence of religious feeling proves that any individual lacks morals. There are men [160] in whom the mind is the dominant thing and can give way only to something absolutely clear. These men are routinely given to deep meditation and preserved from most corrupting temptations by the enjoyment of study and the habit of thought. As a result they are capable of scrupulous moral behavior. In the mass of common folk, however, the absence of religious feeling, not deriving from such causes, most commonly indicates, I believe, aridity and frivolity of outlook, a mind absorbed in petty and ignoble interests, a marked sterility in imagination. I make an exception of the case in which these men have been plagued by persecution, which has the effect of causing revolt against its commands. Then it can happen that sensitive but proud men, indignant against a religion imposed on them, blindly reject everything connected to religion. This circumstantial objection, however, in no way affects the general thesis.

  I would not have a poor opinion of an educated man, if he were presented to me as a stranger to religious feeling, but a whole people incapable of this feeling would seem to me deprived of a precious faculty and disinherited by nature.

  If I were accused here of not defining religious sentiment in a sufficiently precise way, I would ask how one defines with precision that vague and profound part of our moral sensations which by its very nature defies all the efforts of language. How will you define the impression of a deep night, of an ancient forest, of the wind which moans across ruins or above tombs, of the sea which stretches away out of sight? How will you define the emotion caused in you by the songs of Ossian, the church of Saint Peter, the meditation of death, the harmony of sounds or forms? How will you define dreaming, that inner quivering of the soul, where all the powers of the senses and of thought come to gather as though to lose themselves in a mysterious confusion? There is religion at the bottom of all these things. Everything fine, intimate, and profound is religious.

  Idea of God, the common center where, above the action of time and the reach of wickedness, there come together all the ideas of justice, love, freedom, and pity which in this brief world [161] constitute the dignity of the human race, permanent seat of everything beautiful, great, and good across the degradation and iniquity of the ages, eternal voice which replies to virtue in its own tongue, when the language of everything around it is low and criminal, call from the present to the future, from earth to heaven, solemn recourse of all the oppressed in all situations, last hope of weakness trampled underfoot, of innocence slain, thought both consoling and noble, no, whatever is done, the human race can never manage without you.

  But how does it happen, therefore, that religion, this constant ally, this necessary support, this unique glimmer amid the shadows which surround us, has in all ages been exposed to frequent and bitter attacks? How comes it that the class which has declared itself its enemy has almost always been the most enlightened, the most independent, and the most educated? It is because religion has been distorted. Man has been pursued into this last refuge, this intimate sanctuary of his existence. In the hands of government, religion has been transformed into a menacing institution. Having created most—and the most harrowing—of our sorrows, government has laid claim to the control of man even in his means of consolation. Dogmatic religion, an aggressive and persecuting force, has wished to submit to its yoke both the imagination in its conjecturing and the heart in its needs. It has become a scourge more terrible than those it was intended to enable us to forget.

  Hence, in all those eras when men have demanded their moral independence, there is this resistance to religion, seemingly directed against the sweetest of the feelings, and really against only the most oppressive of tyrannies. Intolerance, in putting force on the side of faith, put courage alongside doubt. The fury of the believers has heightened the vanity of the skeptics, and man has in this way managed to turn for himself into a merit what, left to himself, he would have regarded as a misfortune. Persecution provokes resistance. The government, menacing a point of view, whatever it may be, excites all minds of any worth to declare for it. There is in man that which revolts on principle against all intellectual constraint. This spirit [162] is even capable at times of being infuriated. It can cause many crimes. But it springs from everything noble deep in our being.

  I have often felt myself struck with sadness and astonishment when reading the famous System of Nature.2 This long-lasting, desperate eagerness by an old man to close off any future lying before him, this inexplicable thirst for destruction, this blind, almost ferocious hatred of an idea so gentle and consoling, seemed to me a strange delirium. I understood it nevertheless when I remembered the perils with which the government surrounded that writer. In all ages atheists have been harassed in their thinking. They have never had the time or freedom to consider their own opinions at their leisure. For them freedom has always been a property that people wanted to rob them of. They have dreamed less about deepening it than justifying or protecting it. But just leave them in peace. They will soon cast a sad glance on the world they have stripped of its gods. They will themselves be astonished at their victory. The heat of the struggle, the thirst to regain the right to free enquiry, all these reasons for exaltation will no longer sustain them. Their imagination, so recently preoccupied with success, now having nothing to do, as it were deserted, will come back on itself. They will see man alone on an earth which must engulf him. The world is lifeless. Ephemeral generations appear there, to suffer and die, isolated creatures of chance. Certain ambitious men quarrel and fight over them, hurt and destroy them. They do not even have the consolation of hoping that one day these monsters will be judged, that they will finally see the day of reparation and vengeance shine. No tie exists between these generations whose portion here is servitude, with nothingness beyond. All communication is broken between the past, [163] the present, and the future. No voice from the races which are gone lives on among the living ones, and their voice too must one day fall away into the depths of the same eternal silence. All this simply makes one feel that if atheism had not been met with intolerance, the aspects of the belief which put people off would have constrained the outlook of its disciples in such a way as to keep them in apathy and silence, in a state of indifference to everything.

  I repeat. As long as government leaves religion perfectly independent, no one will have an interest in attacking it. The very idea will not arise. But if government affects to defend it, if it wishes above all to make it an ally, free thinking will not hesitate to attack it.

  chapter two

  On Civil Intolerance

  Today, when intellectual progress is opposed to religious intolerance properly so called, that is to say, to that kind whose purpose is to enforce opinions, a number of governments take refuge behind the need for a certain civil intolerance. Rousseau, who cherished all the ideas of liberty and furnished pretexts for all the claims of tyranny, is still cited in favor of this way of thinking.

  “There is,” he says, “a purely civil profession of faith, whose articles it belongs to the sovereign power to fix, not precisely, like religious dogma, but in terms of the feeling of sociability. Without being able to enforce any belief in these dogmas, it can banish from the state anyone who does not believe them, not for being impious but for being unsociable.”3 What is this business of the state deciding which feelings one should adopt? What does it matter to me that the sovereign power does not force me to believe such and such, if it punishes me for what I do not believe? What does it matter that it does not attack me for impiety, if it attacks me as unsociable? What do I care that government eschews theological niceties if it loses its way [164] in a hypothetical morality, no less nice and no less foreign to natural justice?

  I know of no system of servitude which has sanctified more fatal errors than the eternal metaphysics of the Social Contract.

  Civil intolerance is just as dangerous, more absurd, and above all more unjust than religious intolerance. It is just as dangerous, since it has the same results under a different pretext. It is more absurd, since it is not motivated by conviction. It is more unjust, since the evil it causes is not from duty but a mere calculation.

  Civil intolerance borrows a thousand forms and takes refuge behind one administrative pretext after another as it hides away from reason. Defeated on the principle, it disputes the application. We have seen men persecuted for close to thirty centuries, telling the government which released them from their long proscription that if it were necessary for there to be several religions accepted in a State, it was no less necessary for the tolerated sects to be prevented from producing new ones, by way of subdivision.4 But is not each tolerated sect itself a subdivision of some former one? On what grounds can it refuse future generations the same rights claimed by itself from past generations?

  It has been proposed, in a country which prides itself on freedom of religion, that none of the recognized churches be able to change its dogmas without government permission. If by chance, however, these dogmas came to be rejected by most of the religious community, could government enforce that majority to profess them? Now, in matters of opinion, the rights of the majority and minority are the same.

  One understands intolerance when it imposes on everybody one and the same profession of faith. It is at least consistent. Maybe it thinks it holds men in the sanctuary of truth. But when just two opinions are allowed, since one of the two must necessarily be false, to authorize government to force individuals in one or the other to stay attached to the opinions of their sect, or the sects never to change their opinions, is to authorize government, formally, to lend assistance to error. [165]

  chapter three

  On the Proliferation of Sects5

  This proliferation of sects, which causes such panic, is the most salutary thing for religion. It ensures that religion does not lose its sensibility, to become a mere form, an almost mechanical habit, which combines with all the vices and sometimes with all the crimes.

  When religion degenerates thus, it loses all its influence on morality. It makes its abode, so to speak, in a recess of the human mind, where it remains isolated from the rest of existence. In Italy we see mass happen before murder, confession follow it, penance absolve it, and the man, thus freed from guilt, meditating on new murders.

  Nothing is simpler. To stop sects subdividing, man must be prevented from reflecting on religion. It is necessary then to prevent his taking any interest in it. It must be reduced to repeated symbols and practices observed. Everything becomes outer show, done unreflectingly, and soon, as a result, without interest or care. In all moral things reflection is the source of life; and freedom is the first and indispensable condition of all reflection.

  Some Mongol peoples, whose religion enjoins frequent prayers, persuaded themselves that what pleased the gods in these prayers was that the air struck by the movement of the lips proved to them continuously that man was concerned with them. Consequently these people have invented little prayer wheels which, moving the air in a certain way, endlessly maintain the desired movement, and, while these wheels turn, each person, convinced the gods are satisfied, attends to his business or his pleasures without concern.6 Religion, in more than one European country, has often reminded me of the little wheels of the Mongol peoples.

  [166] The proliferation of sects is advantageous to morality in a way which seems not to have been noted yet. All new sects tend to mark themselves off from those they are breaking with by a more scrupulous morality. Often, too, the sect which sees a new breakaway developing within itself, moved to praiseworthy imitation, does not wish to be stuck in this way behind the innovators. The advent of Protestantism undeniably reformed the morals of the Catholic clergy. If the government did not meddle with religion, the sects would proliferate forever. Each new congregation would seek to prove the goodness of its doctrines by the purity of its morals. Each abandoned one would want to defend itself with the same weapons. A blessed struggle would result in which success would be judged by a more austere morality. Morals would improve effortlessly out of a natural impulsion and honorable rivalry. This can be seen in America or even in Scotland, where tolerance is far from complete but where, nevertheless, Presbyterianism has split into numerous branches. Up until now, no doubt, the springing up of sects, far from being accompanied by these salutary effects, has mostly been marked by strife and misfortune. This is because government has got involved. Nature, like Ormuzd, had infused all things with the principle of good. Government, like Ahriman, came to place the principle of evil alongside.7

  [167] In opposing the proliferation of sects, governments fail to recognize their own interests. When sects are very numerous in a country, they put mutual checks upon one another and free the government from having to bargain with any one of them in order to contain them. When there is a single dominant sect, the government needs to take countless steps in order to have nothing to fear from it. When there are only two or three, each large enough to threaten the others, there has to be surveillance, nonstop repression. A singular policy indeed! You say you want to keep the peace! So to that effect you prevent opinions from dividing in such a way as to split these fellows up into weak little groups, hardly noticeable, and you set up three or four large, hostile bodies face to face which, thanks to the care you take to keep them large and powerful, are ready to go on the attack at the first signal.

  chapter four

  On the Maintenance of Religion by Government against the Spirit of Inquiry

  However government intervenes in matters pertaining to religion, it does harm.

  It does harm when it wants to shore up religion against the spirit of inquiry. For government cannot act on conviction; it does so only on the basis of interest. In granting its favors only to men with the approved opinions, what does it gain? It alienates those who own up to what they think, and are therefore at least frank. The others know how to use facile lies to elude its restrictions, which strike at the scrupulous and are powerless against those who are or become corrupt.

  In any case, let me ask the people in government, [168] since this is always the problem requiring resolution when all is said and done: what are your ways of favoring an opinion? Do you entrust the important functions of the State solely to those holding it? If you do, those rebuffed will be angry about the favoritism. Will you have people write and speak for the opinion you are protecting? Others will write or speak in an opposite vein. Will you restrain freedom of writing, speech, eloquence, reason, even irony, or ranting? That will see you involved in new activities, no longer a matter of favoring or convincing, but of stifling and punishing. Do you think your laws can grasp all the nuances and adjust themselves proportionately? Will your repressive measures be light? People will defy them. They will merely embitter without intimidating people. Will they be severe? You will be seen as persecutors. Once you are on that fast and slippery slope, you will seek to stop in vain.

  But what successes do you hope for from your persecutions themselves? No king, I think, was surrounded with more prestige than Louis XIV. Honor, vanity, fashion, that all-powerful thing, had assumed positions of obedience under his reign. He lent religion the support of his throne as well as of his example. He had dignity of manner and propriety of speech. His will, constant rather than brusque, steady rather than violent, and never appearing capricious, seemed to honor whatever was in his protection. He believed his soul’s salvation required the maintenance of religion in its most rigid practices, and he had persuaded his courtiers that the salvation of the king’s soul was of especial importance. Despite ever growing solicitude, however, plus the austerity of a long-established court and the recollection of fifty years of glory, even before his death, doubt slipped into people’s minds. We see among the records of the period intercepted letters, written by assiduous flatterers of Louis XIV, which according to Mme. de Maintenon were offensive both to God and the King. The King died. The philosophic current then swept away all the dikes. Intellectual activity made up for the constraint it had impatiently borne, and the result of long suppression was lack of belief pushed to excess. [169]

  chapter five

  On the Reestablishment of Religion by Government

  Government does no less harm and is no less impotent when, in the context of a skeptical age, it wants to reestablish religion. Religion must be restored on its own according to man’s need for it. When you disturb him with alien considerations, you prevent him from feeling the full force of this need. You may say, and rightly, that religion is part of nature: so do not cover up its voice with your own.

  Government intervention in defense of religion, when public opinion is unfavorable, has this particular drawback: that religion is then defended by those who do not believe in it. Those who govern, like the governed themselves, are subject to the march of human ideas. When skepticism has penetrated the educated part of a nation, it will come out in the government too. Now, in all eras opinion or vanity is stronger than interests. Those in government can tell themselves in vain that it is to their advantage to favor religion. They can deploy their power on behalf of religion; but they can never bring themselves to show a regard for it. It pleases them to take the public into their confidence as to their mental reservations. They would be scared to seem convinced, lest they be taken for fools. If their first words sanctify the order for belief, their next ones are aimed at winning back for themselves the honors of skepticism. Bad missionaries these, who want to put themselves above their own profession of faith.

  chapter six

  On the Axiom That the People Must Have a Religion

  Thus is established this axiom that the people must have a religion, an axiom which flatters the vanity of those who repeat it, because in repeating it, they separate themselves from this people for whom a religion is necessary.

  [170] This axiom is false in itself, insofar as it implies that religion is more necessary for the working-class part of society than for the leisured and opulent classes. If religion is necessary, it is equally so for all men and for all levels of education. The crimes of the poor and uneducated are of a more violent and terrible character, but at the same time they are easier to detect and curb. The law encompasses them, recognizes them, and represses them, easily, because these crimes offend it in a direct way. The corruption of the upper classes is more nuanced and diversified. It slips away from positive laws, mocking their spirit as it eludes their letter, opposing them moreover with wealth, influence, and power. What bizarre reasoning! The poor man can do nothing. He is surrounded by obstacles, tied down by all manner of bonds. He has neither protectors nor supports. He can commit an isolated crime, but everything takes up arms against him as soon as he is in the wrong. He does not find in his judges, drawn always from a hostile class, any consideration for him, nor any chance of impunity in his connections, which are as powerless as he. His conduct never influences the general lot of the society he belongs to. And you want the mysterious protection of religion against him alone. The rich man, on the contrary, is judged by his peers and allies. The punishments they inflict on him always more or less rebound on them. Society lavishes support on him. All material and moral opportunities are his solely as a result of wealth. He can influence things far off. He can overthrow or corrupt. And this is the powerful and fortunate being you want to set free from the yoke which it seems to you indispensable to bring to bear heavily on a weak and helpless one.

  I say all this within the standard hypothesis that religion is valuable above all in its reinforcing the penal laws. This is not my opinion, however. I place religion higher. I do not see it at all as a supplement to the gallows or the wheel. There is a common morality, based on calculation, interest, and security, which can, I think, at a pinch do without religion. It can do without it in the case of the rich man because he thinks, and in the case of the poor man because the law terrifies him, and besides, all his activities being laid out in advance, the habit of constant work produces the same result as reflection in his life. But woe betide the people who have only this common morality! It is for the creation of a more elevated [171] morality that religion seems desirable to me. I do not invoke it to repress gross crimes but to ennoble all the virtues.

  chapter seven

  On the Utilitarian Case for Religion

  The defenders of religion often believe they can work wonders representing it as above all useful. What would they say if it were demonstrated to them that they are rendering religion the worst service?

  Just as in seeking in all nature’s beauties a positive purpose, an immediate use and application to everyday life, one causes all the charm of this magnificent whole to fade, so in constantly endowing religion with a vulgar utility, one makes it dependent on that utility. It now has only a secondary status, now seeming only a means, and it is consequently degraded.

  The word “utilize” [utiliser] has rightly been banned from the French language.8 I do not know if I am wrong, but it seems to me that in everything relating to the soul’s affections and to noble ideas, one should reject the thing, just as in language the word has been rejected.

  Moreover, this need for utility both close to hand and, so to speak, material is perhaps the inherent vice of the French character. We could apply to the moral character of our nation what is recounted about the physical laziness of the Turks. It is said that the secretary of a French ambassador to Constantinople took a stroll for a while every evening in a garden. The Turkish neighbors of the ambassador begged him to pardon his secretary and no longer impose on him such a severe punishment. They [172] could not conceive that one could walk for nothing. We apparently cannot conceive that one might believe for nothing. So we are of all the nations the one whose writers have almost always envisaged religion in the most imperfect and narrowest way.9

  chapter eight

  Another Effect of the Axiom That the People Must Have a Religion

  The axiom that the people must have a religion is furthermore of all things the one most calculated to destroy all religion. The people are alerted by a rather sure instinct as to what is going on over their heads. The cause of this instinct is the same one which gives children, servants, and all the dependent classes their insight. Their interest enlightens them as to the secret thoughts of those in charge of their destiny. It is counting too much on the people’s good will to hope they will believe for long what their leaders refuse to believe. I know that atheistic governors with superstitious subjects seem to some statesmen the ideal model today. This sweet chimera cannot be realized, however. The sole result of their endeavor is that the people, seeing them to be unbelievers, break off from their religion without knowing why. What these men gain by prohibiting discussion is to stop people from being enlightened, but not from being impious. This they become by imitation. They treat religion as a foolish thing, as trickery, and each person hands it down to his social inferiors, who in their turn hasten to push it down even further. Thus it declines, more degraded, every day. It was less threatened, and above all less debased, when it was attacked from all sides. It could take refuge in the depths of sensitive souls. Vanity did not fear to seem foolish nor to be demeaning itself by respecting religion.

  [173] This is still not all. When a government lends its lofty assistance to a fallen religion in this way, the recognition it demands completes the abasement. Religion is no longer that divine power, coming down from heaven to amaze and reform the world. It is a timid slave and humble dependent which prostrates itself before government, watches its gestures, asks for its orders, flatters the thing which despises it, and teaches the peoples eternal truths only at the government’s pleasure. Its priests, trembling at the foot of their servile altars, stammer in censored words. They do not dare to make the old truths ring out in the accents of courage and conscience. And far from speaking, like Bossuet, to the great of this world, in the name of a God who judges kings, in their terror, under the eye of a disdainful master, they try to work out how they should speak of their God.

  chapter nine

  On Tolerance When Government Gets Involved

  Who would believe it? Government acts adversely, even when it wants to submit the principle of tolerance to its jurisdiction. It imposes on tolerance positive and fixed forms, which are contrary to its nature. Tolerance is nothing else than the freedom of all present and future religions. The Emperor Joseph II wished to establish tolerance. Liberal in his views, he began by ordering a vast inventory of all the religious opinions held by his subjects. Some number or other were registered for admission to the benefit of his protection. What happened? A religion which had been forgotten suddenly came to declare itself, and Joseph II, that tolerant prince, told it that it had come too late. The deists of Bohemia were persecuted in view of their lateness, and the philosopher monarch put himself at the same time at loggerheads with Brabant, which demanded the exclusive domination of Catholicism, and with the unfortunate Bohemians who were asking for freedom of opinion. This limited tolerance [174] embodies a singular error. Only the imagination can satisfy the needs of the imagination. When, in a given polity, you had aimed at tolerating twenty religions, you would still have done nothing for the believers of the twenty-first. Governments which think they are leaving a proper latitude to the governed by allowing them to choose between a fixed number of religious beliefs, are like that Frenchman who, arriving in a village in Germany whose inhabitants wanted to learn Italian, taught them Basque and low Breton.

  chapter ten

  On the Persecution of a Religious Belief

  Finally, the government acts harmfully when it proscribes a religion because it thinks it dangerous, and the harm will not be any the less when the government’s judgment is right. When it punishes the culpable acts a religion causes to be committed, not as religious acts but as culpable ones, it will easily succeed in repressing them. If it attacked them as religious, it would turn them into duties for the fanatical, and if it wanted to reach right back to the thinking which is their source, it would become involved in a labyrinth of endless persecutions, harassments, and iniquities. The only way to weaken an opinion is to establish free discussion. Now, anyone who speaks of free enquiry speaks of distance from government of any type, the absence of any collective intervention. Such enquiry is essentially individual.

  In order for persecution, which naturally revolts sensibilities and binds them to the persecuted belief, on the contrary to succeed in destroying this belief, minds must be debased, and not only must the religion one wishes to destroy be subjected to attack, but so must all moral and virtuous sentiments. To persuade a man to despise or abandon one of his fellow creatures whose misfortune is due to an opinion, that is to say, unjustly, to set him today to abandon the doctrine he professed yesterday, because it is suddenly threatened, you have to stifle all the justice and [175] pride in him. To restrict the harsh measures taken against a religion to its ministers, as has been done among us, is to trace an illusory limit. These measures soon attack all those who share the same doctrine, and next they attack all those who pity the misfortune of the oppressed. “Let no one tell me,” said M. de Clermont-Tonnerre in 1791, and events have doubly justified his prediction, “let no one tell me that in pursuing to the bitter end priests said to be refractory, we will extinguish all opposition. I hope the opposite precisely because of my regard for the French nation. For any nation which gives way to force in questions of conscience is a nation so vile, so corrupted, that nothing can be hoped from it, either by way of reason or freedom.”10

  Superstition is deadly only when it is protected or threatened. Do not provoke it with injustices; simply take away from it any means of doing harm by its actions. First it will become an innocent obsession, and soon it will extinguish itself, for lack of the ability to appeal by way of its sufferings or command by virtue of its alliance with government. To refuse its mercy and support to persecuted men because they are persecuted thus for what seems to us an error, is to give oneself over to sentiments of inexcusable presumption and fanaticism. These men are defending their rights. Error or truth, the thought of man is his most sacred property. Error or truth, the tyrants are equally guilty when they attack it. He who proscribes superstitious speculation in the name of philosophy and he who proscribes independent thought in the name of God, are equally deserving of the execration of men of good will. [176] Allow me to finish with another quotation from M. de Clermont-Tonnerre. He will not be accused of exaggerated principles. Although he was a friend of freedom, or perhaps because he was a friend of freedom, he was almost always rebuffed by both parties in the Constituent Assembly. He died a victim of his moderation. His opinion, I think, will carry some weight. “Religion and the state,” he said, “are two quite distinct and separate things, whose bringing together can only distort both one and the other.11 Man has a relationship with his creator. He constructs for himself or is given various ideas about this relationship. This system of ideas is called religion. Each person’s religion is therefore his opinion of his relationship to God. Each man’s opinion being free, he may take up or not take up such religion.12 The opinion of the minority cannot be subordinated to that of the majority. No opinion can therefore be commanded by social consensus. What is true of religion is also true of cults. The cult is what each person professes in conjunction with those of like religious opinion. The forms of the cult are the agreed rite among those who profess the same religion. The acts of the cult are the stern duty of the man holding the religious opinions which prescribe them. Thus the cult and its acts share in the nature and the freedom of opinion of which they are the necessary consequence. Thus what is true of opinion is also true of the cult and its acts.13 Religion touches all times, all places, all governments. Its sanctuary is the consciousness of man, and consciousness is the sole faculty which man can never sacrifice to a social convention.14 Religion will not lend itself to any association, any relation of supremacy or submission with political [177] government. . . .15 The political body must not have dominion over any religion. It must not reject any of them unless the cult in question is a threat to social order.”16

  CONSTANT’S NOTES

  [1. ]Hofmann has not identified this man of genius. The passage is repeated in Constant’s account of Mme. de Staël’s Corinne in the Publiciste of 12 May 1807. Ephraïm Harpaz in his edition of Constant suggests Fauriel or Charles de Villers. Benjamin Constant, Recueils d’articles, 1795–1871, with introduction, notes, and commentaries by Ephraïm Harpaz, Geneva, Droz, 1978, p. 88, n. 6 bis.

  [2. ]Paul Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach, Système de la nature ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral, M. Mirabaud, London, 1770.

  [3. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book VIII.

  [4. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book VIII.

  [5. ]Some of the advantages Constant observes in relation to the proliferation of sects had already been spotted by Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, new translation with notes and observations by Germain Garnier, Paris, H. Agasse, 1802, t. IV, pp. 203–212.

  [6. ]Hofmann was not able to find out where Constant got his information on the prayer wheels, but his explanation is certainly wrong. M. Jean Eracle, curator of the Geneva Museum of Ethnography, has kindly furnished some information on the subject: “What is known in the West as a ‘prayer wheel’ and takes different forms and sizes belongs to Tantrist Buddhism, both in its Tibeto-Mongol and Sino-Japanese forms. The proper name of this object is ‘Wheel of the Law.’ Whoever makes it turn participates in the teaching of the Buddha who, according to the venerated expression, ‘set in motion the wheel of the law.’ The prayer wheel then has symbolic significance and is not a way of ‘praying without effort.’ Moreover, whoever works it generally recites sacred invocations at the same time. Thus one often sees pilgrims telling beads with one hand and making the wheel turn with the other. The wheel is thus like a thought condenser. Moreover, it links the body to the words of the invocations and to the devout thoughts of the person praying.” Extract from a letter from M. Jean Eracle to the editor.

  [7. ][For a compendious discussion of these Persian (specifically Zoroastrian) deities, see David J. Levy, “‘The Good Religion’: Reflections on the History and Fate of Zoroastrianism,” in his The Measure of Man, Claridge, 1993, pp. 170–190. Translator’s note]

  [8. ]Jacques Necker, Du pouvoir executif dans les grands Etats, s.l., 1792, t. II, p. 205. Here the economist makes himself a grammarian and criticizes the use of certain neologisms.

  [9. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book VIII.

  [10. ]Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Réflexions sur le fanatisme, in Recueil des opinions de Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Paris, Migneret, 1791, t. IV, pp. 98–99.

  [11. ]Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Opinion sur la propriété des biens du clergé, novembre 1789, in Recueil des opinions . . . , op. cit., t. II, p. 71.

  [12. ]Ibid., pp. 74–75. Constant has not given us the following passage: “he can keep it or leave it. If opinions are free, no one can bind the opinions of others. No one can bind even his own, for being free, he reserves the right to abandon it if he judges it wrong.”

  [13. ]Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Opinion sur la propriété . . . , op. cit, pp. 75–76.

  [14. ]Ibid., p. 73.

  [15. ]Ibid., pp. 73–74. The actual text has: “If religion precludes any association, any relationship of supremacy or subjection with political government, the social pact admits for its part no religious clause.”

  [16. ]Ibid., p. 72. The original text is: “I maintain that the social body is by its nature a stranger to religion, such that it cannot profess any religion, and that it cannot reject any unless this religion is a menace to public order. . . .”

  [A. [Refers to page 136.]]Rousseau. Contrat Social. Livre IV. Ch. 8.17 He adds: “Only if someone, after having recognized publicly these same dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death. He has committed the worst of crimes: he has lied before the law.”18 But he who has the misfortune of not believing these dogmas, cannot admit his doubts without giving himself up to banishment. And if his affections hold him back, if he has a family, a wife, children, friends he hesitates about leaving to throw himself into exile, is it not you, you alone, who are forcing him to what you call the worst of crimes, lying before the law? I will say, moreover, that in these circumstances, this lie seems to me far from being a crime. When so-called laws demand the truth from us only to banish us, we do not owe them the truth.19

  [B. [Refers to page 136.]]Address by the Jews to the French government in 1808.20

  [C. [Refers to page 142.]]Justice demands that I except Bossuet, Fénelon, M. Necker,21 and M. de Chateaubriand. Even so, the latter thought it necessary in order to uphold Christianity to paint it as particularly useful to poetry.22 This urge to see religion as useful has led its defenders among us to endless childish arguments. Lent has been justified as good for the navy. What a wretched point of view! Moreover, how could this justification apply to landlocked countries which cannot have a navy?

  [A. [Refers to page 136.]]Rousseau. Contrat Social. Livre IV. Ch. 8.17 He adds: “Only if someone, after having recognized publicly these same dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death. He has committed the worst of crimes: he has lied before the law.”18 But he who has the misfortune of not believing these dogmas, cannot admit his doubts without giving himself up to banishment. And if his affections hold him back, if he has a family, a wife, children, friends he hesitates about leaving to throw himself into exile, is it not you, you alone, who are forcing him to what you call the worst of crimes, lying before the law? I will say, moreover, that in these circumstances, this lie seems to me far from being a crime. When so-called laws demand the truth from us only to banish us, we do not owe them the truth.19

  [B. [Refers to page 136.]]Address by the Jews to the French government in 1808.20

  [C. [Refers to page 142.]]Justice demands that I except Bossuet, Fénelon, M. Necker,21 and M. de Chateaubriand. Even so, the latter thought it necessary in order to uphold Christianity to paint it as particularly useful to poetry.22 This urge to see religion as useful has led its defenders among us to endless childish arguments. Lent has been justified as good for the navy. What a wretched point of view! Moreover, how could this justification apply to landlocked countries which cannot have a navy?

  [17]The reference is correct.

  [18]Ibid.

  [19]This obviously recalls the controversy Constant raised against Kant in Des réactions politiques. See Hofmann’s thesis, Première Partie, Ch. 2, p. 143.

  [20]The date is wrong. Constant is referring to the Réponse d’Abraham Furtado, Président de l’Assemblée des Juifs, au discours des commissaires de S.M.I. et R. le 18 septembre 1806, published in the Moniteur of 22 September 1806, pp. 1171–1172, and published as a pamphlet (BN, 4o Ld 184 225).

  [21]For example, in De l’importance des opinions religieuses, London, 1788, and in the Cours de morale religieuse, Geneva, 1800.

  [22]François-René de Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme. Deuxième Partie: Poétique du christianisme. The first edition of this work appeared in 1802.

• Back to Top

  6: Session II: Freedom of Thought and Religion and Legal Safeguards Thereof. Reading 3

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK IX: On Legal Safeguards

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/108971 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK IX

  On Legal Safeguards

  • Ch. 1. On the independence of the courts. 151
  • Ch. 2. On the abridgment of due process. 153
  • Ch. 3. On punishments. 157
  • Ch. 4. On the prerogative of exercising mercy. 160

  chapter one

  On the Independence of the Courts

  We have placed among individual rights the certainty that one will not be treated arbitrarily, as though one had exceeded the limits of these rights, that is to say, the guarantee that one will not be arrested, nor detained, nor tried, except according to law and following due process. We are obliged consequently to speak here of judicial power. So far from such discussion going beyond the limits of this work, we believe, on the contrary, that the indispensable conditions for making judicial power the safeguard of citizens are the same under all forms of government.

  The first condition is that the judiciary must be independent. This assertion does not need proof. A people whose government can affect the judgments and direct or force the opinion of judges; employ against those it wishes to destroy the appearances of justice; hide behind the veil of the laws to strike its victims with their own sword: such a country is in a situation more unhappy, more contrary to the purpose and principles of the social State, than the savage horde on the banks of the Ohio or the Arab of the desert. There is only one way to make the judiciary independent: its members must be irremovable. Periodic election by the people, appointment for a time by the executive power, the possibility of removal without process, equally undermine the independence of the judiciary.

  People protested strongly against the sale of offices. This was an abuse; but this abuse had an advantage which the legal dispensation which existed during the Revolution has often made us regret: the independence and irremovability of the judges.

  [182] For sixteen years nothing was free, not the courts, nor the judges, nor the judgments. The various groups seized in their turn the instruments and the processes of law. The courage of the most intrepid warriors would scarcely have sufficed for our magistrates to pronounce their judgments according to their consciences, and such is the frightful weight of civil harassment that the courage which faces death in battle is easier than the public profession of a free opinion, in the midst of menacing factionists. A removable or revocable judge is much more dangerous than one who has bought his job. To have bought one’s place is a much less corrupting thing than having always to be scared of losing it.

  It is a mistake to be scared of esprit de corps in the judiciary. It is to be dreaded only when the jury system does not exist and when laws which have proliferated, and some by that very fact have necessarily fallen into disuse, supply the judges with means for circumscribing and proscribing all the citizens.

  In all other cases, esprit de corps is one of the best safeguards against judges allowing themselves to be dominated by the other powers of the State.

  The old Parlements of France have bequeathed us, I agree, some unfortunate memories. The fault lay much less in their organization, however, than in a host of causes which no longer exist. The Parlements deserved far less public hatred for prevaricating in their functions than as the organs of execrable laws.

  The eternally infamous sentences on the Calas, Sirven, and La Barre families were a product of the spirit of intolerance with which our laws and our whole political organization were impregnated. If there had been no dominant religion at all, cruel judges would not have sacrificed Calas, nor banished Sirven; and the unfortunate La Barre would not have perished [183] on the wheel, aged seventeen, for insulting the symbols of the privileged religion.1

  The Parlements [high judicial courts] persecuted courageous writers because oppressive laws hugely increased the number of death sentences on the exercise of our most legitimate rights. Until the end of the eighteenth century, there were edicts (passed in 1767) which condemned to death authors of writings calculated to stir up people’s minds2 [Constant’s emphasis]. If there had been no vague law violating press freedom, our Parlements would not have been able to pursue men who could not have been open to accusation.

  With all their vices, by the single fact of their irremovability, the Parlements were constantly led to struggle against the government, to protest against the increase in taxation and against illegal arrests and lettres de cachet.

  I presuppose, moreover, the existence of severe procedures against judges who exceed their powers or deviate from the laws. I presuppose that no judgment is without appeal, because man must always have assured recourse against injustice and error.

  Once these precautions have wisely been taken, though, then let judicial independence be complete. The executive power should exert no influence on it, even indirectly. It should never in its acts nor its public proclamations allow itself a [184] murmur against the very basis of political society, the citizens’ safeguard, the freedom of the courts. Nothing is more calculated to deprave public opinion than these perpetual declamations, repeated among us on all sides and in all periods, against men who deserved respect if they judged according to their consciences, and punishment if they prevaricated in their judgments.

  I have assumed, moreover, the ongoing presence of the institution of the jury system. I know no judicial safeguard without this. Woe to the nation which lets itself be deceived by cunning objections. Juries, people say, enjoy absolving the guilty. But they have an interest as citizens and owners in punishing criminals. They are scared of becoming victims of their severity. The fault then lies with the government, with the lack of order, with the agents charged with pursuing the enemies of public security. If you once agree that despotism is a convenient tool for arresting the rise in heinous crimes, you give the government an interest in heinous crimes increasing. It will be careless in its surveillance in order to force you to give it unlimited powers.

  chapter two

  On the Abridgment of Due Process

  This leads me to examine a line of argument used as a pretext for most of the undermining of due process, argument all the more dangerous in that in the eyes of superficial men it clothes this undermining with a semblance of proper order and the appearances of legitimacy.

  When crimes multiply or perils menace the State, people tell us we should abridge due process, the slowness of whose details compromises public security. Procedures are abolished and judgments accelerated, special courts are established, and judicial safeguards are totally or partly cut back.3

  [185] This way of proceeding has always struck me as resting on a singular petitio principii. It is to declare men convicted in advance when so far they are only accused. Due process is a safeguard. Its abridgment is the diminution or loss of that safeguard. It is therefore a penalty. To submit an accused person to that penalty is to punish him before his trial. And if you punish him, it follows that his crime is proved in advance. If his crime is proved, what good is a court, of whatever kind, to decide his fate? If his crime is not proved, by what right do you place this accused in a special proscribed class and deprive him, on mere suspicion, of the benefit common to all members of civil society? This absurdity is not the only one. Due process is either necessary or useless in regard to conviction, conviction being, as I see it, the sole purpose of legal proceedings. If due process is useless, why do we retain it for ordinary trials? If it is necessary, why do we cut it out in the most important ones? What, when it comes to a slight offense, when neither the accused’s life nor his honor is in danger, the case is investigated with the greatest solemnity! All due process shall be observed. Safeguards are built up to make sure of the facts and to prevent innocence being punished! But when the question concerns some frightful crime and consequently total disgrace and death, in a single move, all the tutelary safeguards are to be suppressed, the legal code is closed, and formalities are cut short! It is as if one thought that the more serious the charge, the more superfluous its examination.

  You will say that it is only from brigands, murderers, and conspirators that you are taking away the benefit of due process. But before we identify them as such, the facts must be determined. Now, what [186] is due process but the best means of determining the facts? If better, swifter means exist, let them be used, but for all cases. For why should there be one class of them in regard to which the unnecessary delays are observed and, on the other hand, another dealt with in dangerous haste? The dilemma is clear: if haste is not dangerous, delays are superfluous; if delays are not superfluous, haste is dangerous. Some would say, would they not, that we can distinguish by means of external and infallible signs, before the judgment or the inquiry, the innocent from the guilty, those who must enjoy the prerogative of due process and those who must be deprived of it? But in this case judicial authority, whatever type it might be, would be pointless. It is because there are no such signs that due process is necessary;4 it is because due process has seemed the sole means of distinguishing the innocent from the guilty that all the free and humane peoples have demanded its institutionalization. However imperfect due process, it has a protective faculty which cannot be removed without destroying it. It is the natural enemy and the unyielding foe of tyranny, whether popular or otherwise. As long as due process subsists, courts will put in despotism’s path a resistance, more or less generous, but which always serves to contain it. Under Charles I, the English courts acquitted several friends of liberty, despite threats from the Court. Under Cromwell, although dominated by the Protector, they often set free citizens accused of royalism. Under James II, Jefferies was obliged to trample on due process and to violate the independence even of judges he had himself appointed, to be sure of obtaining the numerous executions of victims of his fury.5 In Prussia we saw the courts defending the tradition of intellectual and religious freedom against the suspicions of Frederick II’s successor.6 There is in due process something lofty and unambiguous which forces judges to act respectably [187] and follow a just and orderly course. The dreadful law which under Robespierre declared proofs redundant and abolished defense counsels is an homage made to due process.7 It shows that a modified due process, mutilated and perverted in every way by the spirit of faction, still put a brake on men carefully chosen from the whole of France as those most devoid of scruples of conscience or any respect for public opinion.

  These last observations apply with double force to those jurisdictions whose very names have become odious and terrible, to those Councils or Military Commissions which—a strange thing—during the whole course of a revolution undertaken for freedom, made all the citizens tremble.8 But the storms of this revolution had thrown all ideas upside down. A long and bitter war had driven the military outlook deep into our political institutions and our legal sanctuaries alike. Our leaders were rather inclined to believe that for freedom just as for victory, nothing was more appropriate than passive obedience and swiftly taken decisions. They looked on opinions as so many army corps to be enrolled or battled against, on representative assemblies as agencies of government and their opposition as acts of indiscipline, on courts as camps and judges as warriors, on accused persons as enemies and on trials as battles.

  Hence this substitution of military force for the peaceful and tutelary safeguards of justice. Our descendants, if they have any sense of freedom, will not believe there was a time in which men reared under canvas and ignorant of civil life interrogated accused persons they were incapable of understanding and condemned [188] without appeal citizens they had no right to judge. Our descendants will not believe, if they are not the most degraded of peoples, that legislators, writers, and those accused of political crimes could be made to appear before military courts. Thus—in ferocious derision—opinion and thought were given as their judge unenlightened courage and uncritical obedience. They will not believe that warriors, returning from victory, covered with laurels that nothing had been able to wilt, should have had imposed on them the horrible duty of turning themselves into myrmidons9 to pursue, seize, and shoot fellow citizens, people who were perhaps guilty, but whose names, like their crimes, were as yet unknown to them. No, it was never thus, they will exclaim, the reward for valor, the triumphal ceremony. No, this is not how the liberators of France made their reappearance in their fatherland and saluted their native soil.

  The pretext for this subversion of justice is that the nature of the court is determined by the nature of the crime. Thus crimping, spying, provocation to indiscipline, shelter or help given to desertion, and by a natural extension the conspiracies one presumes to have some collusion with or support in the army, are often regarded as coming under military jurisdiction. This pretext is absurd, however, as we have said, because, once again, it misrepresents accusation as crime, treats the accused as condemned, assumes conviction before the hearing, and imposes a punishment before the sentence.

  chapter three

  On Punishments

  The guilty do not lose all their rights. Society is not invested with unlimited authority even over them. Its obligation to them involves inflicting punishments on them only proportionately to their misdeeds. It must not make them undergo sufferings other than those [189] which have been laid down by prior laws. It has yet a further duty, namely to institute against the guilty only such chastisement as cannot stir up or corrupt the innocents who witness it.

  This last duty rules out all experimentation with torture. Toward the end of the last century people seemed to have sensed this truth. Human skill no longer sought how to extend as far as possible, in the presence of several thousands of witnesses, the convulsive agony of one of their fellow creatures. We no longer savored premeditated cruelty. It had been discovered that this barbarity, ineffectual as regards the victim, perverted the witnesses of his torment and that to punish a single criminal a whole nation was being depraved.

  A few years ago it was suddenly proposed by men of no authority that we revert to these frightful usages. All the sound section of the public shuddered with horror. The government balked at this ferocious blandishment; and if no one deigned to reply to these men, they owed it just to the contempt they inspired that they were repulsed only by silence.

  The death penalty, even reduced to the simple deprivation of life, has been the target of objections by several estimable philosophers.10 Their reasonings have not at all convinced me that this punishment is never just, and I did not need their reasonings to be convinced that it should be extended only to a very small number of crimes.

  The death penalty has the great advantage that few men devote themselves to odious and degrading functions. It is better that these deplorable agents of harsh necessity, rejected with horror by society, should devote themselves to the horrible work of executing [190] some criminals, than that a mob should condemn itself to looking after the culprits and to turning itself into the perpetual instrument of their prolonged misfortune. Cold-bloodedly to cause the suffering of one’s fellows is always a corrupting action, however rightly that punishment may be imposed by the laws.

  This consideration leads me to reject life sentences. These corrupt jailers as much as prisoners. They get the former used to a capricious savagery. They are inseparable from a great deal of arbitrariness. They can veil a host of cruelties.

  Condemnation to public works, so promoted by most of our modern politicians, has always seemed to me to entail drawbacks of all kinds.

  In the first place, it is by no means proven to me that society has any other right over those who trouble public order than that of removing them from any possibility of doing harm. Death is part of this right, but work not at all. A man may merit losing the use or possession of his faculties, but he can alienate them only voluntarily. If you allow that he can be forced to alienate them, you fall again wholly into the system of slavery.

  Moreover, to impose work as a punishment is a form of dangerous example. In modern societies the great majority of the human race is obliged to do excessive work. What could be more imprudent, impolitic, and insulting than to present work to it as the punishment for crime?

  If convicts’ work is indeed a punishment, if it is different from that to which the innocent laboring classes of society are subjected, if, in a word, it is above ordinary human exertions, it becomes a death penalty more extended and painful than any other. Between the Austrian prisoner who, half-naked and his body half in the water, drags ships on the Danube, and the wretch who perishes on the scaffold, I see only a difference of time which favors the latter. Joseph II and Catherine II11 spoke always of the abolition of the death penalty in the name of humanity, while they inflicted punishments no less fatal and rather longer and harsher.

  [191] If, on the contrary, condemnation to public works is not a refined form of death, it is the cause of revolting and contagious depravity. In some countries of Germany, people condemned to this punishment, treated gently, get used to their fate, take pleasure in their opprobrium and, not working in their servitude any more than they would in freedom, they offer the onlooker a picture of gaiety in degradation, happiness in debasement, security in shame. This must produce in the mind of the poor man, whose innocence serves only to impose on him an existence no less laborious and more precarious, notions which by way of comparison make him despondent or lead him astray.

  In sum, the sound of chains, these galley slave clothes, all these insignia of crime and chastisement constantly and publicly exposed to our sight, are, for men bearing within them any feeling for human dignity, a punishment longer lasting and more painful than for the guilty. Society does not have the right to surround us with an eternal commemoration of perversity and ignominy.

  The setting up of colonies, where criminals are transported, is perhaps of all harsh measures the closest to justice as well as to the interests of society and those of individuals society finds itself obliged to place at a distance.

  Most of our faults are occasioned by a kind of clash between us and social institutions. We reach youth often before knowing and almost always before understanding these complicated institutions. They surround us with barriers we sometimes cross without our noticing them. Then there is established between us and our surroundings an opposition which grows larger because of the very impression it produces. This opposition makes itself felt among almost all social classes. In the upper classes from the self-isolating misanthropist to the man of ambition and the conqueror, in the lower classes from the man who addles himself with drink to the one who commits outrages: all these are men in opposition to social institutions. This opposition develops with most violence where the least enlightenment is found. It weakens proportionately with old age, as the force of the passions collapses, [192] as one reckons life only for what it is worth, and as the need for independence becomes less commanding than the need for peace of mind. But when, before reaching this period of resignation, one has committed some irreparable fault, the memory of this fault, the regret and remorse, the sense that one has been judged too harshly, and that this judgment is nevertheless final—all these impressions keep whomever they are pursuing in anxious irritation, a source of new and even more irreparable mistakes.

  If the men in this fatal situation, under pressure from transgressed institutions, and slighted by social relationships they have forever vitiated, were now suddenly snatched out of it, if nothing remained with them from their earlier life other than the memory of what they suffered and the experience they acquired, how many would not follow an opposite road? How readily, being returned suddenly, as by a miracle, to safety, harmony, and to the possession of order and morality, they would prefer these joys to the fleeting temptations which had led them astray! Experience has proved what I say. Men deported to Botany Bay for criminal actions have started their social life again, and, believing themselves no longer at war with society, have become peaceful and estimable members of it.12

  If it is just and useful, however, to separate culprits thus from environments which can only hurt and corrupt them, we render the establishment of colonies of this nature absurd and barbarous when we pursue men who ought no longer to exist for us, with implacable hate, in another hemisphere, prolonging their punishments and shame, keeping them still in a regime of ill will and ignominy, seeming to demand a metropolitan right to surround them in their far-off refuge with things which will cause them suffering, degradation, and corruption.

  Is it necessary to add that nothing that the reader has just read applies to deportation to the colonies except as a punishment? Any arbitrary deportation is the overturning of all principles and a violation of all rights.

  [193] The question of extradition is much of a piece with the question of punishment. This question would be easy to resolve if there were no unjust governments. Only culpable actions would be forbidden. Punishments would be pronounced only against real offenses. Nothing then would be more natural than a coalition between all men against that which threatened them all. But as long as there exist artificial offenses, above all as long as opinions are regarded as crimes, extradition will be the weapon of tyrants along with proscription of anyone who dares to resist them. Such are the shortcomings of vicious institutions, then, that they force us to give refuge to crime in order to take away from it the power to pursue virtue. It is a misfortune that we offer the guilty the chance of impunity, but it is not nearly as bad as delivering the good man to the vengeance of the oppressor.

  chapter four

  On the Prerogative of Exercising Mercy

  All legislation which does not admit the right to show mercy or to commute sentences deprives the accused and even the guilty of a right which legitimately belongs to them.

  An inseparable drawback of general laws is that these laws cannot apply with equal justice to several actions of diverse type.

  The more general a law, the further it is from the particular actions on which it is nevertheless intended to pronounce. A law can be perfectly just only for one circumstance. As soon as it is applied to two circumstances only minutely different, it is more or less unjust in one of the two.

  Facts are infinitely nuanced. The laws cannot follow them in their modifications. The right to exercise mercy or to soften [194] a punishment is necessary to make up for the inflexibility of the law. This right is in reality nothing other than the right to take into consideration an action’s circumstances in order to decide if the law is applicable to it.

  The prerogative of mercy has been opposed by one of these decisive dilemmas which seem to simplify questions by misrepresenting them. If the law is just, it is said, nothing should have the power to prevent its execution. If it is unjust, it should be changed.13 Only one condition would be necessary for this reasoning not to be absurd. This would be that there was one law for each fact.

  The question of intention replaces in part the prerogative of mercy. But it makes up for it only imperfectly. Moreover, when you call on a jury to pronounce on anything save the facts, you are distorting its function. When you ask judges to do anything other than read the written text of the law, you are distorting their function.

  The Court of Cassation14 in our country indirectly exercises the prerogative of mercy. When a law chances to be literally but too harshly applied to a guilty party, this court searches the procedures for some formal error which allows it to overthrow the judgment. But a good born of a wrong is always bad in other respects. Moreover, if the procedures are perfectly [195] regular, the court finds itself forced to deliver the condemned man over to a punishment he does not deserve morally, one it would have been just to mitigate. In truth this case is rare, given the complications of the prescribed formalities; but this too is one more shortcoming.

  A single difficulty stands out in relation to the prerogative of mercy. If you entrust this right to the holders of executive power, they will consider this attribution accidental and secondary. They will discharge it negligently. They will not have time to devote themselves to an examination of all the circumstances which ought to motivate their decision. Punishments then not being inflicted according to any precise rule, the principal advantage of positive laws disappears. All the guilty will live in the hope of being favored by luck or caprice. The system will become a lottery of death, in which a thousand unforeseeable incidents will arbitrarily confound all chances of salvation or destruction.

  We can prevent this difficulty by attaching this law to a specific authority. The men in whom it is invested would then exercise it with the thoughtfulness and gravity it demands.

  But another difficulty would arise. A specific authority or any section whatever of judicial power, invested with the prerogative of mercy, would naturally make rules for itself in order to exercise it. The exercise of the prerogative would therefore become by this very consideration a judgment. We would no longer find in it the kind of vagueness and moral latitude which essentially constitute its justice and usefulness.

  It is not part of our researches to decide to which one of these drawbacks to resign ourselves. It is a question which must perhaps be resolved differently according to the circumstances of each country. What is certain is that neither one nor the other of these difficulties is great enough to prevail over the necessity of entrusting to some authority or other the prerogative of mercy.

  [1. ]A reference to the causes célèbres of religious intolerance against which Voltaire protested in publishing notably his Treaty on Tolerance and in interceding each time with the Parlements to have the victims and their families rehabilitated. Jean Calas was broken alive on the wheel in 1762. Jean-François Lefebvre, knight of La Barre, was decapitated (and not executed on the wheel) in 1766 at nineteen (not seventeen). He is the only one of the three whose rehabilitation Voltaire was not able to obtain. Finally, Pierre-Paul Sirven managed to escape death by fleeing to Switzerland. Calas and Sirven were accused of murder, the first of his son and the second of his daughter, La Barre of having committed sacrilegious acts in relation to religion and its symbols.

  [2. ]Constant is referring to the “Declaration of 16 April 1757 [not 1767], punishing with death all those convicted of having composed, printed, sold or smuggled writings tending to attack religion, to stir up emotions, to attack royal authority, to upset public order and public peace.” Quoted from Marcel Marion, Dictionnaire des institutions de la France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris, A. Picard, 1923, s.v. Censure.

  [3. ]Constant in his notes indicated the following reference: “Montesquieu. VI. 2.” The second chapter of Livre VI of De l’esprit des lois is entitled indeed De la simplicité des lois criminelles dans divers gouvernements (On the simplicity of the criminal laws in divers governments). Among other things, Montesquieu says here: “One hears it said constantly that justice should be rendered everywhere as it is in Turkey. Will it therefore be only the most ignorant of all the nations which will have seen clearly into the thing in the world it matters most that men should know? [. . .] you will see that the penalties, the expenses, the delays, the very dangers of justice are the price each citizen pays for his freedom.” Ed. cit., p. 557.

  [4. ]Constant had addressed Parliament a few years before on this subject. The law he had opposed in Parliament wanted to abbreviate due process in order to be able to struggle more effectively against banditry raging at the start of the Consulate, which made the roads unsafe. This explains the reference to brigands and murderers. See his oration to the Tribunat of 5 pluviôse an IX (25 January 1801).

  [5. ]Hofmann was not able to pin down Constant’s references nor to find the sources he used.

  [6. ]Hofmann has not uncovered the facts to which Constant is referring here.

  [7. ]This is about the law of 22 prairial an II (10 June 1794). On this subject see Jacques Godechot, Les institutions . . . , op. cit., p. 323.

  [8. ]These military commissions, established by the decree of 9 October 1792 to judge emigrés found with arms, comprised only three or five military judges and a public prosecutor. They pronounced one sentence only: death, which was effected immediately. These commissions were an even more terrible instrument than the revolutionary courts. See Godechot, op. cit., pp. 324–325.

  [9. ][Hirelings. Translator’s note]

  [10. ]In the proceedings of the National Assembly between 30 May and 1 June 1791, the deputies decided to keep the death penalty. Their speeches made reference to Montesquieu and Beccaria, among other philosophers. Among the speakers, Robespierre was against the death penalty, Brillat-Savarin in favor.

  [11. ][Also called Catherine the Great in the Anglophone world. Translator’s Note]

  [12. ]By the name Botany Bay, Constant means the colonial penitentiary at Sydney, in Australia.

  [13. ]Constant summarizes here the critique made particularly by William Godwin. He had translated some of Godwin’s work. See Benjamin Constant, De la justice politique (unpublished translation of a work by William Godwin), edited by Burton R. Polin, Quebec, les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1972 (Droit, science politique 5), Livre VI, Ch. 7, pp. 307–309. One also finds the same critique of the prerogative of mercy in Jeremy Bentham, in his Principes du code pénal, Troisième Partie, Ch. 9, op. cit., t. II, pp. 432–434.

  [14. ]The Court of Cassation, according to the terms of the laws of 27 November and 2 December 1790, had the attributions of: “annulling all procedures in which due process had been violated and invalidating any judgment which expressly contravenes the text of the law.” Cf. Edmond Seligman, La justice en France pendant la Révolution (1789–1792), Paris, Plon-Nourrit, pp. 321 and following.

• Back to Top

  7: Session II: Freedom of Thought and Religion and Legal Safeguards Thereof. Reading 4

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK XVII: On the True Principles of Freedom

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/109125 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  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

  chapter one

  On the Inviolability of the True Principles of Freedom

  This work has sought to determine the extent and jurisdiction of political authority on the various things which include all the interests of men. Let us now see what principles of freedom result from our analysis and whether these can be overdone or misused.

  Individuals must enjoy complete freedom of action for all innocent or unimportant actions. When, in a given situation, an action unimportant in itself can threaten public safety, such as a certain way of dressing which can serve as a password, a society has a right to forbid it. When an action of the same kind is part of a guilty action, such as brigands agreeing to a rendezvous before effecting an assassination, society has the right to deal harshly with this unimportant action, in order to interrupt a crime already begun. In the two cases society’s intervention is legitimate because its need is proven. But equally in the two cases it is legitimate only on this condition.1

  Individuals must enjoy complete freedom of opinion either private or public, as long as that freedom does not produce harmful actions. When it does produce such, it becomes identified with them, and under this heading it must be repressed and punished. Opinion separated from action, however, must remain free. The only function [460] of the government is to confine it to its proper domain, speculation and theory.

  Individuals must enjoy a boundless freedom in the use of their property and the exercise of their labor, as long as in disposing of their property or exercising their labor they do not harm others who have the same rights. If they do so harm them, society intervenes, not to invade anyone’s rights but to guarantee the rights of all.

  Now, what abuses can result from these principles which are the only true principles of freedom, and to what exaggeration are they susceptible?

  A singular error which I indicated at the start of this book and of which one must accuse Rousseau and Mably above all, but from which almost no political writer has been exempt, has confused all ideas on this question.

  The principles of political authority have not been distinguished from those of freedom.

  Since in the theorizing of philosophers friendly to humanity, the principles of government tended to take away from oppressors of human societies the powers they had usurped and to return those powers to the whole society, it was not grasped that this last was only a preliminary operation which had merely destroyed that which should not exist, but by means of which one was deciding nothing as to what should be put in its place.

  Thus the dogma of national sovereignty having been first proclaimed and then abused, it was thought that a principle of freedom was being abused, when it was only an abuse of a principle of government.

  Because where citizens are nothing, usurpers are everything, it was believed that for the people to be everything it was necessary that individuals be nothing. This maxim is palpably false. It implies that freedom is nothing other than a new formula for despotism. Where the individual is nothing, the people are nothing. Can it be thought that the people get rich from the losses of each of their members, as a tyrant enriches himself from what he steals from each one of his subjects? Nothing is more absurd. The people are rich by way of what their members possess, free because they are free. The people gain nothing from members’ sacrifices. Individual sacrifices are sometimes necessary, but they are never a positive gain, either for individuals or the nation.

  Those who hold or usurp power may, to legitimate their encroachments, borrow the name of freedom, [461] because, unfortunately, the word is boundlessly obliging; but they can never borrow its principles or even any of its maxims.

  When, for example, a mistaken majority oppresses the minority or, which happens far more often, when a ferocious and noisy minority seizes the name of the majority to tyrannize society, to what does it lay claim in justification of its outrages? The sovereignty of the people, the power of society over its members, the abnegation of individual rights in favor of the society, that is to say, always principles of government, never principles of freedom.

  How indeed could the latter be invoked in favor of the opposition? What do they establish? That society has no right to be unjust toward a single one of its members, that the whole society minus one is not authorized to obstruct the latter in his opinions, nor in those actions which are not harmful, in the use of his property or the exercise of his labor, save in those cases where that use or that exercise would obstruct another individual possessing the same rights.

  Now, what do oppressive majorities or minorities do? Precisely the opposite of what these principles establish. It is not therefore these principles they exaggerate or abuse. They act from directly opposite assertions.

  When can opinions put out by the press become a means of tyranny? It is when a single man or group of men seize exclusive control of the press and make it the organ of their opinion, represent this opinion as national, and wish on this authority to make their view prevail over all others. But in that case, what principles can this man or men proclaim in support of their behavior? Not the principles of freedom, which forbid making any opinion dominate, even that of everyone against that of a single other soul, but the principles of political government, which, exaggerated and submitting individuals with all their rights and without reserve to the sovereign community, permit the restraining, obstructing, and proscribing of the opinions of individuals.

  These examples could be multiplied infinitely. The result would always be the same. It was by derivation from this error that Burke said freedom is a power.2 Freedom is a power only in the sense that a shield is a weapon. So when one speaks of possible abuses of the principles of freedom, [462] such an expression is inaccurate. The principles of freedom would have prevented anything under the heading of abuses of freedom. These abuses, whoever their author, taking place always at the expense of another’s freedom, have never been the consequence of these principles, but rather their reversal.

  chapter two

  That the Circumscription of Political Authority, within Its Precise Limits, Does Not Tend to Weaken the Necessary Action of the Government

  The circumscription of political authority, within its precise limits, does not tend to weaken that necessary authority. On the contrary, it gives it the only real strength it can have. The jurisdiction of authority must be scrupulously limited; but once that jurisdiction is fixed, it must be so organized as always to be capable of attaining swiftly and completely all the purposes within its remit. Freedom gains everything from the government’s being severely confined within the bounds of its legitimacy; but it gains nothing from government’s being feeble within those bounds.

  The weakness of any part of government whatsoever is always an evil. That weakness in no way diminishes the drawbacks to be feared, and it destroys the advantages to be hoped for. In loosening public safeguards it places absolutely no obstacles to usurpation, since usurpation results from powers the government encroaches upon and public safeguards from powers which belong to it legitimately. Now, in weakening government, you force it to encroach. Unable to attain its necessary purposes with the means which belong to it, in order to attain them it has recourse to means it usurps, and from that usurpation, so to speak forced, to spontaneous usurpation, boundless usurpation, there is but a single step. If you extend government to everything, however, lovers of freedom and all independent men, that is to say everything on earth which has some value, will not be able to submit to such an idea. They would readily have accepted that the government be all-powerful within [463] its jurisdiction; but constantly finding it transgressing that jurisdiction, they will want to diminish a power which they will not be able to limit. In that way, they will organize, as we have seen in a number of examples, governments which are too weak, and accordingly become usurpatory. It is quite unnecessary to sacrifice the least part of the principles of freedom for the organization of legitimate and sufficient government authority. The principles coexist with this authority, both protecting it and protected by it; for they stand against the possibility that factions may overthrow it, by laying claim to these rights of society, opposed to those of individuals, these axioms of unlimited sovereignty, this despotism of the so-called general will, in a word, this popular power without limits, dogmas which are the pretext for all our upheavals and which have been represented as principles of freedom, while they are precisely the opposite.

  The principles of freedom, such as we have defined them, are useful and necessary to everybody, for they preserve the rights of all people as individuals, those of society and those of government. These principles are the sole lasting means of real happiness, of assured peace, of ordered activity, of improvement, of tranquillity and durability.

  chapter three

  Final Thoughts on Civil Freedom and Political Freedom3

  That this book has dealt exclusively with issues connected to civil freedom does not mean to insinuate that political freedom is something superfluous. Those who would sacrifice political freedom in order to enjoy civil freedom the more peacefully are no less absurd than those who would sacrifice civil freedom in the hope of further extending political freedom. The latter sacrifice the end to the means. The former renounce the means under the pretext of achieving the end. One could apply to taxation all the arguments used against political liberty. One might say that in order to conserve what one has it is ridiculous [464] to begin by sacrificing a part of it. Provided that the people are happy, it is sometimes said, it matters little if they are free politically. But what is political freedom? It is the ability to be happy without any human power being able arbitrarily to trouble that happiness. If political freedom is not one of the individual possessions nature has given man, it is what guarantees them.4 To declare it worthless is to declare the foundations of the building one lives in superfluous. Those in government, the argument continues, have nothing to gain from the unhappiness of the governed. Consequently, political freedom, that is, the safeguards of the governed against the government, is scarcely necessary. This assertion is not correct, however.

  First, it is not at all true that the interests of the governors and the governed are the same. The governors, whatever the political organization, being always limited in number, are threatened with loss of power if others attain it. They therefore have an interest in the governed not getting into government, that is to say, they clearly have an interest distinct from that of the governed. I have said elsewhere5 that property tended to circulate and spread, because owners remain owners when others become such. For the opposite reason power tends to concentrate. As a result, as soon as a man passes, by whatever means, from the class of the governed to the class of the governors, he adopts the interests of the latter. This is the spectacle offered in Rome for the most part by the defenders of the popular cause when success crowned that ambition; and we see the same thing among the ministers in England.

  Representative government does not lift this difficulty. You choose a man to represent you because he has the same interests as you. By the very fact of your choosing him, however, your [465] choice placing him in a different situation from yours gives him a different interest from the one he is charged with representing.

  This drawback can be prevented by the creation of various sorts of positions in government invested with different kinds of powers. Then the holders of these powers, mutually contained in such a way as to be unable to make their own interests prevail, draw close to those of the governed whose interests are the average ones of everybody. Such is the advantage of the division of powers. One should not delude oneself, however, as to the efficacy of these devices or flatter oneself that these two sets of interests ever get to be amalgamated completely.

  An incontestable maxim is that it is always in the interests of the greater number that things go well, rather than badly. It is sometimes in the interests of the smaller number that things go badly rather than well.

  In the second place, if we examine the different ways in which the governors can abuse their power, we will find that their interest is not at all not to abuse it, but to do so only to a certain point. For example, they have an interest in not dissipating the state’s revenues, in such a way as to impoverish it and remove all its resources. But they like to appropriate the largest possible portion of these revenues, to give them to their creatures and to use them in pointless pomp and display. Between what is right and necessary and what would be obviously dangerous, the gap is vast, and assuming prudence and an ordinary degree of patriotism in the governors, we may properly suppose that if they are not contained they will get as close as possible to this latter line without passing it. It is the same with military ventures. They will not expose themselves to being overwhelmed by the numbers of their enemies. They will not draw neighboring nations on to the home ground by attacking them gratuitously. They can indulge at will, however, in warlike enterprises. They will take advantage of this ability by provoking or continuing wars which, without entailing the loss of the State, will add to their power, which always increases in times of danger. To this end they will sacrifice public peace and the well-being of many citizens. It is the same furthermore with despotic actions. The governors will avoid causing popular revolt by multiplying vexations beyond all measure. They will allow themselves smaller oppressions, though: these are in the nature of things. They are in the personal interest [466] of the individual governors. When they are not in their lasting or well-understood interest they are likely to be in their passing interest, their passions and their whims, which suffices for us to anticipate and fear them. The very supposition that they will bring to these abuses a certain restraint rests on the prudence and enlightenment we attribute to them. But they can be misled by false initiatives, carried away by hateful passions. Then all moderation will disappear and excesses will reach a peak.6 To say that the interests of governments are always consistent with those of the governed is to understand the interests of governments abstractly. This commits with respect to government the same error Rousseau commits with regard to society. There is a note to add. Let us for a moment accept this principle. Let us agree that a monarch, separated by an immense distance from his subjects, has nothing to gain in happiness or even by way of caprice, from offending individuals. The government is not made up solely of the man who is at the head of the State. Power subdivides; it is shared among thousands of subalterns. So it is not true that the numerous members of the government have nothing to gain from the unhappiness of the governed. Every one of them has, on the contrary, very close to him, someone of equal or lower rank, whose losses would enrich him, whose fields would improve his fortune, whose humiliation would flatter his vanity, whose banishment would rid him of an enemy, a rival, an inconvenient monitor. If it is true in some respects that the interests of the government, considered at the top of the social edifice, always coincide with those of the people, it is no less incontestable that the interests of the lower ranks of government can often be opposed to them. A coming together impossible to hope for would be necessary were we to suppose despotism to be compatible with the happiness of the governed. At the summit of the political hierarchy a man without personal passions, closed to love, hatred, favoritism, anger, jealousy, a man active, vigilant, [467] tolerant of all opinions, attaching no amour propre to persistence in errors committed, consumed with the desire for good, and knowing, nevertheless, how to resist impatience and to respect the rights of the time. Further down the scale of powers, ministers endowed with the same virtues, in a position of dependence without being servile, in the midst of despotism without being tempted to fall in with it out of fear or to abuse it from self-interest, lastly, everywhere in the lowest positions, the same combination of rare qualities, the same security, the same love of justice, the same selflessness. If a single link of this chain of preternatural virtues happens to be broken, everything is in peril. The two halves thus separated would both remain beyond reproach, but the good would not be assured. The truth would no longer make its way accurately to the summit of power; justice would no longer descend, pure and whole, into the obscure ranks of the governed. A single wrong transmission is enough to mislead the government, to set it in arms against innocence. When it is claimed that political freedom is not necessary, it is always believed that relations are only with the head of the government, but in reality one has them with all the agents of lower rank, and the question is no longer one of attributing to a single man distinguished qualities and never-failing impartiality. One has to suppose the existence of a hundred or two hundred thousand angelic creatures above all the weaknesses and vices of humanity.7 If we put the happiness of the governed in purely physical pleasures, it is possible to say with some reason that the interest of the governors, above all in the large modern societies, is almost never to trouble the governed in these pleasures. If we place the happiness of the governed higher, however, in the development of their intellectual faculties, the interest of most governments will be to stop this development. Now, since it is in the nature of the human race to resist when there is a wish to arrest the [468] development of its faculties, the government will have recourse to constraint to achieve this. The result is that by a detour it will press on the physical pleasures of the governed in order to dominate them in areas of their existence which seem to have only a very distant connection with these pleasures.

  Lastly, it is said every day that the clear interest of each man is not to infringe the rules of justice, and yet laws are made and punishments set up for criminals. So often is it noted that men endlessly deviate from their clear interest! One could surely expect much the same of governments!

  Political freedom is accused of throwing people into continual agitation. One could easily show that while the conquest of that freedom can inebriate slaves, the enjoyment of it forms men worthy of its possession. But were this assertion against freedom proven, nothing would result from it in favor of despotism. To hear the supporters of this shameful politics you would believe it a sure guarantee of peace. If we look at history, though, we will see that absolute power almost always crumbles at the moment when long efforts having delivered it from every obstacle seem to promise it the longest duration.

  The kingdom of France, says M. Ferrand, III, 448, “brought together under the unique authority of Louis XIV all the means of force and prosperity. . . . Her greatness had long been retarded by all the vices with which a moment of barbarism had overburdened her and whose rusty deposit it had needed almost seven centuries to remove entirely. But that rust had gone. All the springs had just received a last tempering. Their action had been made freer, their play swifter and more certain. They were no longer checked by a multitude of alien movements. Now only one movement gave motion to all the others.8 Well, what is the result of all this, of this unique and powerful energy, of this precious unity? A brilliant reign, then a shameful one, then a weak one, and then a revolution. In the recently published Memoirs of Louis XIV, [469] one finds this prince complacently recounting the details of all the operations for the destruction of the power of the body of judges (Parlement), of the clergy, of all intermediary powers. He keeps congratulating himself on the reestablishment or growth of royal authority. He holds it as merit on his part in his successors’ eyes. He was writing about 1666. A hundred twenty-three years later the French monarchy was overthrown.

  In England absolute power was established under Henry VIII. Elizabeth consolidated it. People rave about the boundless power of this queen. But her successor was endlessly engaged in struggle against the nation people thought subjugated, and the son of this successor lost his head on the scaffold. The fourteen centuries of the French monarchy are constantly advanced as proof of the stability of absolute monarchy; but of these fourteen centuries, twelve were consumed by the struggle against feudalism, an oppressive system but as opposite as one could conceive to the despotism of a single man. There is no government, none, less monarchical than the government of the third race, especially in the last three centuries, says a writer who is moreover the most extreme supporter of absolute monarchy.9 Apologists of despotism, the system you favor has three chances. Either it rouses the people to overthrow it; or it weakens the people, and then if foreigners attack they overthrow it; or if foreigners do not attack it, it wastes away more slowly, only in a way more shameful and just as certain. It has often been said that the prosperity of republics is fleeting. That of absolute power is much more so. No despotic state has lasted in full vigor as long as English freedom. The reason for this is simple. This political freedom, which serves as a barrier to government, is also a support for it, guiding it on its way, sustaining it in its efforts, moderating it in its onsets of madness, and encouraging it in its moments of apathy. Political freedom draws together around government the interests of all the various groups. Even when it struggles against government, [470] it imposes on it certain controls which render its deviations less ridiculous and its excesses less odious. When political freedom is totally destroyed, government, finding nothing which regulates it, nothing which directs or contains it, tends to go out of control. Its steps become uneven and erratic. Sometimes it rages and nothing calms it. At others it is dejected and nothing can rally it. Thinking it was shaking off its opponents, it has got rid of its allies. Everything confirms this maxim of Montesquieu, in proportion as a monarch’s power becomes immense, his security diminishes.10

  chapter four

  Apologia for Despotism by Louis XIV

  It is rather curious to hear Louis XIV on despotism. He makes an apologia for it and not without skill.

  “We must remain in agreement,” he says, “that nothing so securely establishes the happiness and peace of provinces, as the perfect coming together of all authority in the person of the sovereign. The least division made in it always produces very great misfortunes and, whether the parts detached from it end up in the hands of individuals or certain companies, they can never be other than in a violent condition. The prince who must keep them united in his person could not possibly permit their dismemberment without making himself responsible for all the misfortunes which flow from this. . . . Not counting the revolts and internal wars which the ambition of the powerful inevitably produces when it is not checked, a thousand other ills are born again from the sovereign’s slackness. Those closest to him, the first to see his weakness, are also the first who want to gain advantage from it. Each one of them necessarily having people who act as ministers to their greed, they give these at the same time license to imitate them. Thus by degrees corruption spreads everywhere and becomes the same in all occupations. . . . of all these various crimes, the people alone are the victims. It is only at the expense of the weak and the poor that so many people [471] mean to accumulate their monstrous fortunes; instead of a single king whom the people ought to have, they have a thousand tyrants at once.”11

  All this reasoning is founded on the error this book seeks to refute. It is thought that despotism must be somewhere, either in the hands of one man or of several. Rather than despotism, however, we can establish in its place something called freedom. Then it does not at all follow from the fact that the head of the supreme power has only limited authority, that subaltern agents possess what would make his authority absolute. They too have only limited authority. Far from oppression spreading and descending from rung to rung, all are contained and checked. Louis XIV paints us a picture of a free government as if despotism were everywhere in it and freedom nowhere. The complete opposite is the case. Despotism is nowhere in it because freedom is everywhere. The weakness of an absolute government is the misfortune of peoples, because power drifts randomly and the strong seize hold of it. Wisely established limits are the good fortune of nations because they circumscribe power, in such a way that no one can abuse it.

  CONSTANT’S NOTES

  [1. ]Constant had already spoken of the jurisdiction of the government on the actions of individuals in Book V, Ch. 2.

  [2. ]See Book XV, Ch. 1, n. 2.

  [3. ][This heading is inconsistent with the title page on p. 458 of the French text. Translator’s note]

  [4. ]Constant has earlier said, in Book I, Ch. 3, “Individual rights are freedom; social rights are the guarantee.”

  [5. ]See notably Book X, Ch. 10 and Book XI, Ch. 4.

  [6. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book XVII.

  [7. ]One finds something of an echo, still very clear, of this theme of subaltern power in La France nouvelle of Prévost-Paradol. Indeed he says in his preface: “Who can tell me, however, that in producing this book I have not labored above all for the advance of some subaltern agent, capable of thinking he has an interest in laying hands on this innocent treatise on politics and history, perhaps to prove his zeal, perhaps, even more innocently, because discovering nothing reprehensible in this writing, he is afraid just because of this of having understood it imperfectly, and is afraid of not seeming at all sufficiently scandalized,” pp. ii–iv in the edition by M. Lévy, 1868. Later on he says again: “We are therefore reduced, when we pick up our pen, to reckoning with not only the calculated resolution of those who really have power, but with the foolish eagerness of those who have been the smallest fragment of it.” Ibid., p. v.

  [8. ]The quotation from Ferrand is from p. 449, above all, and in the second edition of 1803.

  [9. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book XVII.

  [10. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book XVII.

  [11. ]Mémoires de Louis XIV, éd. cit., pp. 17–19.

  [A. [Refers to page 388.]]It is insane to believe, says Spinoza, that only that person will not be carried away by his passions, whose situation is such that he is surrounded by the strongest temptations and who most easily and at least risk yields to them.12 “The sovereign justice of God,” says Ferrand, “derives from sovereign power.” From which he concludes that sovereign power in the hands of a man must be sovereign justice; but he should have proven that this man would be a God. Esprit de l’histoire, I, 445.13

  [[472] B. [Refers to page 391.]]M. Ferrand, Esprit de l’histoire, III, 38.14

  [C. [Refers to page 392.]]Esprit des lois, Livre VIII, Ch. 7.

  [A. [Refers to page 388.]]It is insane to believe, says Spinoza, that only that person will not be carried away by his passions, whose situation is such that he is surrounded by the strongest temptations and who most easily and at least risk yields to them.12 “The sovereign justice of God,” says Ferrand, “derives from sovereign power.” From which he concludes that sovereign power in the hands of a man must be sovereign justice; but he should have proven that this man would be a God. Esprit de l’histoire, I, 445.13

  [[472] B. [Refers to page 391.]]M. Ferrand, Esprit de l’histoire, III, 38.14

  [12]Hofmann failed to locate this passage in Spinoza. The idea, however, is found in Ch. 6 and 7 of the Traité de l’autorité politique, in the discussion on monarchy. Spinoza, Oeuvres complètes, text translated, revised, and presented by Roland Caillois, Madeleine Francès, and Robert Misrahi, Paris, Gallimard, 1954, pp. 1008–1046.

  [13]The reference is to the second edition of 1803. The exact sense of Ferrand’s sentence is comprehensible only if we lay out the whole paragraph from which it is drawn. “In a word, the interest of the legitimate sovereign is to maintain [472] everything in order. Therefore the more legal force it has, the more order will be maintained. The sovereign justice of God comes from this sovereign power.”

  [14]Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., 2e éd, 1803, t. III, p. 38, n. 1: “Consequently there is no government less monarchical than that of the second race, during the last hundred years.” Elsewhere (p. 148) in the same tome, Ferrand says: “to examine the character of all the kings of the third race is to be convinced that only one, Louis XI, was able to form and execute this venture” [“to take royal authority a greater step forward than all it had taken till then,” ibid., p. 147].

• Back to Top

  8: Session II: Freedom of Thought and Religion and Legal Safeguards Thereof. Reading 5

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: chapter five: Continuation of the Same Subject

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/109145 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  chapter five

  Continuation of the Same Subject

  The second duty of enlightened men is more important still, since it is a function not only of prudence but of morality.

  When an improper constitution or long-established custom confers on those in the governing group or on some class or other vexatious privileges or despotic usages, the fault lies not with the governing group nor with this class but with the nation which has tolerated what should not exist. No one is guilty if he profits from a faculty he found ready-established and which society had peacefully granted him. The people can reclaim their rights because these are imprescriptible. They can take away from government an unjust prerogative. They can deprive a class of an oppressive privilege. They cannot, however, punish either one of them. They have lost all right to demand compensation or to exercise vengeance for damage to which they had seemed to resign themselves.

  In the absence of this principle, revolutions no longer have any term. An abominable, retroactive course is entered, where each step, on the pretext of a past injustice, leads to a present one. People fall into the same absurdity with which they reproach the supporters of the most defective institutions. Men are punished for what they were and could not not be. A revolution gets turned into an era of new inequality whose newness renders it only the more revolting. There are sown for the future the seeds of iniquity, regret, suffering, and resentment. The generations allegedly to be freed are bequeathed the seeds of discord, hatred, and misfortune.

  The groups you proscribe, those grown rich on abuses, are at the same time the most cultivated. If you go so far as destroying even [496] the individuals who compose them, you diminish proportionately the body of national enlightenment. The education of a nation is not the work of a day. It is not enough to strive to instruct that lively majority formerly kept in ignorance by an imperfect social order. The task is long. Pressing events will perhaps not wait until this task is achieved. Enlightened men have to be spread out between all the parties to preserve them from despotism. The Greeks pardoned captives who recited the verses of Euripides.16 The least bit of enlightenment, the least germ of thought, the least refined sentiment, the least mark of elegance must be carefully protected. These are so many elements indispensable to social happiness. They must be saved from the storm. This is necessary both for the sake of justice and for the sake of freedom itself. For all these things, by more or less direct pathways, end in freedom.

  Doubtless this duty is hard to fulfill. Revolutions scarcely begin before the friends of freedom find themselves split into two sections. On one side are ranged the moderate men, on the other the violent. Only these latter, however, remain united a long time, because the spur they have been given prevents their separating, and they are exclusively absorbed in an idea common to them. Moderate men, not being drawn by a dominant preoccupation, lend their ears readily to individual considerations. Pride awakens in them, courage is shaken, their steadfastness wearies, personal calculation, repulsed for a moment, takes up the charge again. Cowardice takes a thousand forms and disguises itself in a thousand ways to hide itself from its own gaze. It does not call itself only prudence, reason, wisdom, and knowing what is valuable; it sometimes assumes the title of independence. How many men have I seen leaving the most just and the weakest party, because they were, so they said, too independent to be associated with any party. This language heralded the fact that they were going to move to the stronger side, and their proclamation of independence was only a prouder wording of cowardice.

  [497] A terrible ally, fanaticism, very active in political questions, as in religious ones, is committed to the violent side. Fanaticism is nothing save the rule of a single idea which wishes to triumph at any price. It is probably more absurd still when the question is freedom than it is when the question is religion. Fanaticism and freedom are incompatible. One is based on examination; the other forbids research and punishes doubt. The one thinks through and evaluates all views; the other sees the most timid objection as an assault. The one seeks to persuade, the other issues orders. The one, in a word, considers the need for victory a misfortune and treats the vanquished as equals whose rights it is keen to recognize, the other hurls itself on all questions as if on enemy redoubts and sees in its adversaries only still-dangerous captives it must immolate, so as no longer to have to fear them.

  Whatever the natural incompatibility between love of freedom and fanaticism may be, however, these two things combine easily in the minds of men who, not having contracted the habit of reflection, can receive ideas only on the word of others, more in the form of a mysterious revelation than as a sequence of principles and consequences. It is in the shape of a dogma that the notion of freedom dawns in unenlightened minds, and its effect then is as with any other dogma, a kind of exaltation, of fury, impatience with contradiction, the inability to tolerate the slightest reservation, the slightest change in the creed. This rule of faith, brought thus to bear on questions which touch all interests, on opinions which, subject to the law of circumstances, become criminal today when yesterday they were a duty, is much more to be feared than when it is enclosed in an abstract circle of theological subtleties. These subtleties leave in peace, in the bosom of their families, many men indifferent to shadowy discussions. What obscure life, however, what immobile existence, what unknown name could succeed in disarming fanaticism in the political field? This obscure life, this unknown name, this immobile existence, are in its eyes treasons. Inactivity seems punishable to it, domestic affections a forgetting of patriotism, happiness a suspect purpose. Those who desire or regret it, it will call conspirators. Armed for freedom, it bows joyfully before the harshest slavery, provided that it is exercised in the name of its cherished doctrine. It battles for the cause and renounces its effect. Severity, injustice, and slights of all kinds on the part of its leaders seem to it meritorious acts, as it were gauges of sincerity. It finds the educated bothersome because they find it hard [498] to embrace an opinion without certain restrictions and nuances. It is suspicious of the person of proud spirit, because proud spirits experience some kind of antipathy to the strongest people and serve the powerful only with distaste. The only qualities it demands are belief and will. It sees in morality obstacles, weakness, and chicanery. All is well if the end is good. It violates laws because they are made only for the friends, not the enemies of the fatherland. It betrays friendship because there cannot be friendship between the people’s defenders and oppressors. It neglects its most solemn commitments because fulfilling them might supply dangerous men with means they could direct against public safety. It effaces even the very last vestiges of pity. It is moved not at all by the sight of grief, nor does it fade at all with age. We have seen old men, overcome with sufferings which told them that the end was near, strike their victims with a failing hand, showing themselves unyielding at the edge of the tomb and remaining pitiless in the presence of eternity.

  Fanaticism has the fatal property that its very sincerity freezes the courage of those who wish to fight it. It is easy to stand up to the injustice of the wicked, because it is known that in the bottom of their hearts they render homage to those they persecute. It is nothing to attack frontally enemies recognized as such. We resign ourselves willingly to the hatred of these adversaries. We are separated from them by fixed barriers. We fight them in the name of everything which raises the spirit, everything dear to the heart. But to bring down on one’s head the distrust of men one wishes to serve, to lose that popularity which is so vast a recompense for danger, such a means of consoling and saving innocence, to repel the repeated applause of an excited crowd listening to you, responding to you, saluting you, and following you like some tutelary God, to give up the support of one’s party without gaining the good will of the opposing party, to be disowned by those very people who share your opinions most keenly and who are devoted enthusiastically to the cause you cherish, that is real discouragement, the deepest misery. When disinterested men, brave, ardent for freedom, free from all egoism or low passion, in their suspicions come to pursue the friends of humanity and morality, they are animated, in the midst of their mistakes, by a conviction so firm that it takes away from those they suspect part of the sense and the strength of innocence.

  [499] This is still not the whole story. Fanaticism, contained initially in a few energetic minds, seems to communicate itself by rapid contagion to timid and weak characters. They learn its language out of self-interest. They speak its language in order to please it. Soon, however, its ascendancy subjugates them. They become intoxicated by what they say. Each word they utter is a commitment into which they enter. They are driven forward in this course by the very feelings which might induce them to flee. Sometimes they dread their victims, more often their own side. If mutual recognition were possible, their terror would be less; but they all react on each other. Thus in our country men made ferocious by fear got drunk on their own terror. Thus there spread over France this inexplicable vertigo which people called the Reign of Terror.

  Fanaticism then loses even the qualities which ennoble it. It furnishes pretexts for all forms of vice. The ungrateful friend, the faithless debtor, the obscure informer, the prevaricating judge, find their apologia written in advance in the agreed language; and this banal justification, prepared for all crimes, succeeds in corrupting that host of equivocal souls, who have neither the audacity of crime nor the courage of virtue.

  Once they reach this stage, revolutions destroy all morality. They break the regular sequence of causes and effects. They separate actions from their natural consequences. They break all equilibrium between obligations and sacrifices. There are no longer easy duties nor safe virtues. Everything becomes devotion or heroism; and charisma takes over all the vulgar souls incapable of these great efforts.

  Each person in the sinking vessel seizes a plank and repels the companion in misfortune who would like to attach himself to him.17 Each man abjures the links of his past life, isolating himself in order to defend himself and seeing in the friendship or misfortune which implore him only an obstacle to his safety.

  [500] One thing only keeps its price. It is not public opinion. There no longer exists any glory for the powerful nor respect for victims. It is not justice. Its laws are unrecognized and its forms profaned. It is wealth. Wealth can disarm tyranny and seduce some of its agents. It can appease proscription, making flight from it easier. In sum, it can spread a few material joys across a life which is always under threat. Thus shameful leanings form an alliance with the most unbridled manias. People amass wealth to enjoy possessions. They possess to forget inevitable dangers. The response to others’ misfortune is hardness, to one’s own, insouciance. There is blood-letting alongside festivities. In their fierce stoicism people reject sympathy; they throw themselves into pleasure in sybaritic voluptuousness.

  Lost in this chaos, enlightened men no longer find any voice to respond to them. All reasoning seems perverted, and no one feels above reproach. Rectitude is a prosecuting voice to be got rid of, to be distorted for the sake of a peaceful life. Each man is haunted by the memory of some troubling fact, on which all his logic focuses. You may believe he is expounding a whole theory to you; he is really trying to justify an hour of his life.

  One reflects, sorrowfully, on oneself, on morality, on the principles one has adopted from childhood. To remember some ideas of moderation or prudence is to be regarded as a traitor. One is regarded as culpable when one takes up with any zeal the cause of some unfortunate soul. Faced with all the evidence of disapproval one meets, one is tempted to reproach oneself with a crime, whereas in fact one is fulfilling a duty. Shame upon him, however, who, charged with preserving his country from the perils which the blind furies are preparing for it, him whose duty is to protect weak, oppressed, and defenseless beings, shame I say, if he loses heart. Woe to freedom’s friends if they compromise with that spirit of persecution whose nature is to scorn all compromise. Their cause is henceforth dishonored. Sooner or later, this spirit, not finding them zealous enough, will turn its weapons against them, snatch their banners from them, thrust them into the ranks of the enemy, and proscribe them as turncoats. Then they will have the courage to die, a sterile courage, for which the future will pay them little regard. For want of courage earlier, for not having struggled against injustice from its very first moves, they will die without glory, at once the victims and the authors of the crimes they have suffered. [501]

  [16. ]This phrase picks up one by Mme., de Staël, from Des circonstances actuelles, Livre II, Ch. 4 (ed. cit., p. 298): “Jadis, des Grecs prisonniers en Sicile obtinrent leur liberté de leurs ennemis en leur récitant quelques vers d’Euripide.” [In times past, Greek prisoners in Sicily obtained their freedom from their enemies by reciting to them some verses of Euripides.] It seems, however, that Mme. de Staël found it in Plutarch, Vies parallèles, Vie de Nicias, paragraph 29.

  [17. ]An almost identical image occurs in Mme. de Staël’s Des circonstances actuelles, op. cit., Livre II, Ch. 2, p. 236.

• Back to Top

  9: BOOK XVI: On Political Authority in the Ancient World - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK XVI: On Political Authority in the Ancient World

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/109107 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK XVI

  On Political Authority in the Ancient World

  • Ch. 1. Why among the ancients political authority could be more extensive than in modern times. 351
  • Ch. 2. The first difference between the social State of the ancients and that of modern times. 352
  • Ch. 3. The second difference. 353
  • Ch. 4. The third difference. 355
  • Ch. 5. The fourth difference. 358
  • Ch. 6. The fifth difference. 359
  • Ch. 7. The result of these differences between the ancients and the moderns. 361
  • Ch. 8. Modern imitators of the republics of antiquity. 365

  chapter one

  Why among the Ancients Political Authority Could Be More Extensive Than in Modern Times

  Before finishing this work I believe I must resolve a difficulty which perhaps has already struck more than one of my readers. The principles I represent as the basis of all possible freedom today are directly opposed to the principles formerly adopted for political organization by most of the free nations of antiquity. If we except Athens, all the Greek republics submitted individuals to an almost boundless political jurisdiction. It was the same in the great centuries of the Roman Republic. The individual was entirely sacrificed to the collectivity. The ancients, as Condorcet remarks,1 had no notion of individual rights. Men were so to speak just machines, their springs regulated and all their movements directed by the law. Yet it is the ancients who offer us the noblest examples of political freedom history brings down to us. We find among them the model of all the virtues which the enjoyment of that freedom produces and which it needs for its persistence.

  One cannot reread, even today, the beautiful annals of antiquity, one cannot retrace the actions of its great men, without feeling some emotion or other of a profound and special type, which nothing modern makes one experience. The old elements of a nature so to speak earlier than ours seem to reawaken in us at these memories. It is hard not to regret these times, when human faculties were developing in a premapped direction, but on a vast scale, so strong in their own powers, and with such a sense of energy and dignity. When we give in to these regrets, it is impossible [420] not to tend to imitate what we regret. As a result, those who since the Renaissance have striven to draw the human race out of the degradation into which those two linked scourges of superstition and conquest had plunged it, have for the most part believed they had to draw from the ancients the maxims, the institutions, and the practices favorable to freedom. But they failed to recognize many of the differences which, in distinguishing us in essence from the ancients, make almost all their institutions inapplicable to our times. Since this misjudgment contributed more than people think to the misfortunes of the Revolution which signaled the end of the last century, I think I must devote several chapters to bringing out these differences.

  chapter two

  The First Difference between the Social State of the Ancients and That of Modern Times

  It has often been observed that the ancient republics were confined within narrow limits. From this truth has been drawn a consequence which it is not within our brief to examine here, namely that a republic is impossible in a large State.2 But another consequence which has not been drawn seems to me to flow much more naturally from it. This is that States much larger than the ancient republics had to modify in quite different ways the duties of citizens, and that the degree of individual freedom could not be the same in both cases.

  Each citizen in the ancient republics, circumscribed by the smallness of their territory, had great personal importance politically. The exercise of political rights there was everybody’s constant enjoyment and occupation. For example, in Athens the whole people took part in trials. Their share of sovereignty was not as in our time an abstract supposition. Their will was a real influence and [421] not susceptible to mendacious falsification and corrupted representation. If political power was oppressive, each citizen consoled himself with the hope of exercising it. Today the mass of citizens is called to exercise sovereignty only in illusory fashion. The people can only be slaves or free; but they are never in charge.

  The happiness of the majority no longer rests in the enjoyment of power but in individual freedom. Among the ancients the extension of political power constituted the prerogative of each citizen. In modern times it consists in the sacrifices individuals make.

  In the ancient republics, while the exercise of political authority was a right for all, at the same time submission to that fearsome power was also a necessity for all. The people engaged in sovereign debate in the public place. Every citizen was visible and de facto subject to that sovereignty. Today the great States have created a new guarantee, obscurity. This guarantee reduces the dependence of individuals on the nation. Now it is clear, absolutely clear, that a dependence which on the one hand gives less enjoyment and on the other can be avoided more easily is one which cannot last.

  chapter three

  The Second Difference

  A second difference between the ancients and the moderns stems from the very different condition of the human race in these two periods. Formerly small peoples, almost without reciprocal relations, joined battle over a limited territory. These peoples pushed by necessity one against another, fought or threatened each other endlessly. Those who did not want to be conquerors could not put down the sword for fear of being conquered. They bought their security, independence, their lives at the price of war. Though history presents us alongside these small nations with some large trading or peaceful nations, such nations are much less well known than the warlike ones. We see Egypt only through the mendacious accounts of its priests, distorted further by the exaggerations of [422] Greek credulity. On the Phoenicians we possess only a few geographical data. We follow their sea journeys on the map. We speculate which shores they touched upon. We know almost nothing, however, about their institutions, mores, or internal life. The Athenians are the only people of antiquity who are not exclusively warlike and about whom history nevertheless bequeaths us some precise details. Moreover, Athens differed much less from today’s societies than did other small peoples of the same period. By a remarkable singularity, however, those who offer us antiquity as a model choose by preference exclusively bellicose peoples like the Spartans and the Romans. This is because only these nations lend support to their theoretical view-point, only they brought together great political freedom and an almost total absence of individual freedom.3

  Our world is precisely the opposite of the ancient one. Everything in antiquity related to war. Today everything is reckoned in terms of peace. In former times each people was an isolated family, born hostile to other families. Now a mass of people lives under different names and divers modes of social organization, but homogenous by nature. It is civilized enough to find war burdensome; it is strong enough not to need to fear invasion by still barbarian hordes, relegated to the very ends of its territory. Its tendency is uniformly toward peace. The warlike tradition, a legacy of remote times, plus crimes and mistakes by governments, born of violence, retarded the effects of this tendency. It makes more progress every day, however. People still fight today. Powerful men usually learn social enlightenment more slowly than those they govern. They twist their governance to favor their prejudices. Governments sometimes have a passion for war; the governed no longer do. Even governments seek justification for it. They no longer profess love of conquest, nor hope of personal glory by feats of arms. We made this point before.4 No Alexander would dare to propose to his subjects, straightforwardly, the invasion of the world, and Pyrrhus’s speech to Cyneas5 [423] would seem to us the height of insolence and folly. Today a government which spoke of military glory as an end would be failing to recognize and scorning the spirit both of nations and our era. It would be wrong by a thousand years, and even if it were successful at first, it would be curious to see which would win this strange wager between our century and this government. War no longer exists as a purpose but only as a means. Peace and with peace affluence and to gain affluence production: such are the sole purposes to which the human race now aspires. Civilized peoples battle only because wrong views and false reckoning make them see rivals where they should see only emulators and also persuade them that to weaken their competitors is to strengthen themselves while to ruin them is to enrich themselves. This mistake changes nothing, however, deep down in their character. To the degree the character of the ancients was warlike, ours is pacific. For them a successful war was an infallible source of wealth for individuals. For us a successful war always costs more than it is worth. The outcomes of wars are no longer the same. There is no longer any question of invading entire countries in order to reduce their inhabitants to slavery and to divide up their lands.

  In ordinary wars, the frontiers of large States or their distant colonies can fall to the power of the enemy. The center stays intact and apart from some pecuniary sacrifices it continues to enjoy the advantages of peace. Even when extraordinary circumstances and motives which stir up all the abysses of the human heart make hatred more inveterate and hostility more violent, as for example during the French Revolution, the fate of conquered countries is still in no way comparable [424] to what it was in antiquity. Now the restrictions on political power are necessarily different in a habitual state of war.

  War demands more extensive public force than peace does and force of a different order. The public force necessary for peace is entirely negative, namely public safeguards. War needs active force. The discipline it brings in informs all other institutions. To succeed war needs common action. In peace each man needs only his work, efforts, and individual resources. It is as a collective being that a people profits from the fruits of war. Each man enjoys separately those of peace and enjoys them in a way all the more complete in its being more independent. The purpose of war is fixed: victory, conquest. This purpose is always manifest to interested parties. It joins them, enchains them, makes of their efforts, plans, and wills an indivisible whole. Peace presents no precise purpose. It is a condition in which each person freely forms projects, meditates on his means, gives play to his personal plans. Warrior peoples must consequently bear the pressure of political power more readily than pacific peoples. The purpose of the free institutions of the former is to prevent usurpers from seizing political power, the property of the whole mass. The latter wish in addition to limit power in itself, so that it does not bother either their economic reckonings or their rights. The former say to governments, lead us to victory, and to assure it to us, subject us to severe disciplinary laws. The latter tell them, guarantee us against violence and do not interfere with us.

  chapter four

  The Third Difference

  In the third place, none of the republics people have wanted us to imitate was commercial. The limits of this work prevent us from citing all the causes which constituted obstacles to the progress of commerce among the ancients. Ignorance of the compass forced them not to lose sight of the coast during their navigations more than was [425] absolutely necessary. To go beyond the columns of Hercules, that is, pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, was considered the most audacious venture. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the most skillful navigators among the ancients, did not dare to till very late and for long had no imitators. In Athens, which as we will say below was the most commercial republic of antiquity, the maritime rate of interest was about 60 percent, while the ordinary rate was only 12 percent, so much did the idea of long-distance navigation imply danger.

  Religious prejudices were opposed to maritime trade among several peoples of antiquity. For example, there was the horror of the sea among the Egyptians, as still today among the Indians, whereby sacred rites forbade the lighting of fire on the ocean, thus preventing all long-range navigation, because food cannot be cooked. Independently of these factual proofs, simple reasoning suffices to show that war must have come before trade. The one and the other are only different means of reaching the same end, which must forever be man’s end, that is, to assure oneself the possession of what seems desirable. Trade is only homage made to the power of him who has what we would like to seize. It is the desire to get by mutual agreement what we no longer hope to take away forcibly. A man who was always the strongest would never have the idea of trade. It is experience, which, proving to man that war, that is, the use of force against the force of other people, is exposed to divers opposing checks and failures, brings him to resort to trade, that is, to a gentler and surer way of engaging the interest of others so that they consent to what suits one’s interest. War is therefore older than trade. The one is an impulsion, the other a calculation. The spirit of modern peoples is essentially commercial. Trade makes a large extension of political power at once more harassing and easier to evade: more harassing, since trade casts greater variety into men’s economic dealings, and government has to multiply its activities to get at these dealings in all their manifestations; easier to elude because trade, [426] changing the nature of property, makes this part of human existence, a part which soon becomes its most important one, almost untouchable by government. Trade gives to property the new quality of mobility. Without mobility property is only a usufruct. Government can always exert an influence on a usufruct, since it can take away one’s right of possession. Mobility, however, puts an invisible and invincible block on this boundless power of government. The effects of trade extend further still. Not only does it free individuals from the tyranny of communal government, but by creating credit it subjects communal government in some respects to individuals. It has very often been remarked that money is despotism’s main weapon but also its most powerful brake. Credit subjected to public opinion makes those who govern dependent on the governed. Force is pointless. Money hides or flees. All the State’s operations are suspended. In antiquity credit did not have the same influence.6 A deficit of sixty million made the French Revolution. A deficit of six hundred million under Vespasian did not shake the empire in the least.7

  Thus governments in antiquity were necessarily stronger than individuals. Individuals are today stronger than their governments.8

  Trade has another effect. In antiquity each citizen saw not only his affections but his interests and his fate bound up in his country’s lot. His patrimony was ravaged if the enemy won a battle. A public reversal removed him from the rank of free man, condemning him to slavery. No one had the means of moving his wealth. In [427] modern nations, thanks to trade, individuals shape their own futures, despite events. They move their assets far away; governments cannot penetrate their transactions; they take along with them all the comforts of private life. Moreover, in antiquity war isolated nations. Their mores were different, their dispositions savage, and expatriation almost impossible.9 Trade has brought nations together, giving them almost the same mores and habits. Their leaders may be enemies, but the peoples are compatriots. Trade has modified even the nature of war. Trading nations were in the past always subjugated by warrior peoples. Now they resist the latter successfully.10 Carthage struggling against Rome in antiquity was bound to fail; the weight of things was against her. If the struggle between Rome and Carthage happened today, however, Carthage would enjoy the best wishes of all the peoples. She would have for allies the outlook and the mores of the century. Just as war, as we have already shown, favors a vast extension of political power, so trade is favorable to individual freedom.11

  This observation is borne out, even when applied to contemporary nations. People in Athens enjoyed an individual freedom much greater than in Sparta, because Athens was at once warlike and commercial12 and Sparta was exclusively warlike. This difference makes itself felt under all forms of political organization. Under despotism, as under freedom, war gathers men around government, trade isolates them from it.

  [428] If we could enter here into historical details, we would show how among the Athenians trade had made the most essential differences between the ancient and modern peoples disappear. The outlook of the Athenian traders was like the outlook of ours. During the Peloponnesian War they withdrew their holdings from the Athenian mainland and sent them to the islands of the archipelago.13 Trade had created circulation between them. They understood the use of bills of exchange.14 From this, because it is all connected, flowed a vast softening in manners, more indulgence toward women,15 more hospitality to strangers,16 and an exceeding love of individual freedom. In Sparta, says Xenophon,17 citizens run when the magistrate calls them. In Athens a rich man would be in despair if anyone thought he was subservient to the magistrate. If the completely modern character of the Athenians has not been remarked on enough, this is because the general spirit of the age influenced philosophers, and they always wrote in an inverse direction from the national mores.

  chapter five

  The Fourth Difference

  Fourthly, the universal practice of slavery among the ancients lent their mores something severe and cruel which made it easy for them to sacrifice the gentle affections to political interests. The existence of the slaves, that is, of a class of men who enjoy none of the rights of humanity, changes absolutely the character of the peoples among whom that class exists. The inevitable consequence of slavery is the weakening of pity, of sympathy for pain. The slave’s pain is a resource for the owner. At equal levels of civilization, a nation which has slaves must be much less compassionate than one which does not. Antiquity, even among the most orderly peoples, and the individuals most distinguished by their [429] rank, elevation, and enlightenment, supplies us with numerous and almost incredible examples of inhumanity inspired in the master by his untrammeled power over the enslaved.18 Reading the address by Lysias,19 we can scarcely conceive a social condition so ferocious that such an address could actually be articulated. Two men have bought a slave girl destined for their common pleasure, an initial outrage against decency and nature. She becomes fond of one to the other’s disadvantage. The latter comes before the judges, demanding publicly from the court his share of the slave whom he has legitimately bought. To establish the facts he alleges, he demands that she be subjected to torture, waxing indignant that his opponent objects to this, and seeing nothing in his objections save the illegal refusal of a litigant of bad faith perfidiously repudiating the best way of bringing out the truth. The torments of the slave, the profanation of everything holy in humanity and love, the horrible mix of torture and pleasures, which would revolt any modern mind, count for nothing, either with him who makes this shameful demand, or the judges to whom he appeals, or the spectators who listen to him, or Lysias, who cold-bloodedly composes a harangue in support of this claim.

  The absence of slavery joined to the progress of civilization has given us more human mores. Cruelty, even to further our interest, has become generally alien. Abstract reasoning and the public good have made it impossible for us.

  chapter six

  The Fifth Difference

  Lastly, mankind has not aged by more than twenty centuries without changes in character. The ancients were right in the youth [430] of moral life. The moderns are in its maturity or perhaps its old age. This observation can be proved, if need be, by simple examination of ancient writings. Their poetry is all of a kind and direct. Their poets’ enthusiasm is true, natural, complete. Modern poets are always trailing some ulterior motive or other drawing on experience and destroying enthusiasm. We might say they fear to seem dupes and rather than lending themselves to an irresistible impulse, these are men who pore over the poetry with their readers. The first condition of enthusiasm is not to observe oneself too knowingly, but the moderns never stop observing themselves, even in the midst of their most sensitive or violent impulses.

  The word “illusion” has no equivalent in any ancient language because the word comes into being only when the thing no longer exists. The philosophy of the ancients is exalted even when it claims to be abstract. Modern philosophy is always dry, even when it strives to be exalted. There is poetry in the philosophy of the ancients and philosophy in the poetry of the moderns. Ancient historians believe and affirm; modern historians analyze and doubt. The ancients had complete conviction about everything. We have almost none save about the hypocrisy of conviction. Now, nothing is isolated in nature. Literature always bears the impress of the general character. Less worn out by civilization, the ancients had more vivacious impressions of things. Their warlike habits inspired in them great activity, profound confidence in their strength, scorn for death, a standard indifference to pain, and therefore greater devotion, energy, and nobility. The moderns, wearied by experience, have a sadder and thereby more delicate sensibility, a more habitual openness to emotion. Egoism itself, which mingles in with this faculty of emotion, can corrupt but not destroy it. To resist the power which suffering has over us, we are forced to avoid the sight of it. The ancients faced it without fear and tolerated it without pity. A woman of very superior intelligence has very wisely remarked how much less refinement there was in the sensibility of the ancients than in ours, by comparing [431] Racine’s Andromache with Virgil’s, though the latter is incontestably the most sensitive of the ancient poets.20 Writers who have come after her and copied her without acknowledgment,21 have attributed the difference to religious causes. This is an inversion of the ideas. This difference makes itself felt in religion as elsewhere. Religion is not its cause, however. Its cause lies in the progress of civilization, which gentles the character by weakening it, and which, making domestic relations safer, less menaced, less interrupted, thereby makes of them a more constant and intimate part of human life. The ancients, like children, believed docilely, and listened with respect. They could accept without repugnance a whole ensemble of institutions made up of traditions, precepts, usages, and mysterious practices as much as from positive laws. The moderns have lost the ability to believe for a long time and without analysis. Doubt is endlessly at their shoulder. It weakens the force even of what they do take on. The lawmaker cannot speak to them as a prophet. He makes positive laws for them to give their existence security. They cannot be dominated, however, except by habit. Every advance in life gives preeminence to a different faculty, among nations as among individuals. Imagination was dominant among the ancients as reason is with us. Now imagination runs to meet what one wishes to persuade it of. Reason waits and rejects, and even when it yields does so only reluctantly. From this results a truth whose consequences are as important as they are extensive. Nothing was easier than recasting ancient peoples by their institutions. Nothing would be more impossible than treating modern peoples this way. Among the ancients an institution was effective the moment it was set up. An institution among the moderns is effective only when it has become a habit. In the remote times of antiquity peoples had so few habits that they changed names almost as often as rulers. Dionysius of Halicarnassus22 informs us that Italy was designated in succession [432] by six different appellations according to the names of those who seized that country one after another. Leaders of nations and earth’s conquerors, try to designate a street by your name today. All your might will not make people forget their habit and substitute this new name for it.

  chapter seven

  The Result of These Differences between the Ancients and the Moderns

  Because of all these differences, freedom cannot be the same among the moderns as it was among the ancients. The freedom of ancient times was everything which assured the citizens the biggest share in the exercise of political power. The freedom of modern times is everything which guarantees the citizens independence from the government. The character of the ancients gave them above all the need for action, and this need sits very well with a great extension of political power. Moderns need calm and various satisfactions.23 Calm is found only in a small number of laws preventing its being disturbed, satisfactions in an expansive individual freedom. Any legislation demanding the sacrifice of these satisfactions is incompatible with the present state of the human race. In this respect nothing is more curious to observe than the speeches of French demagogues. The wittiest of them, Saint-Just, delivered all his speeches in short sentences, proper to arouse tired souls. And while he seemed to suppose the nation capable of the most painful sacrifices, in his very style he recognized it as incapable even of attention. One must not demand of modern peoples the love and devotion the ancients had for political freedom; it is civil freedom which men in our era cherish above all. This is because not only has civil freedom gained in advantages, owing to the multiplication of private decision making, but political freedom has lost them, owing to the size of societies. The only group among the ancients to demand a sort of individual independence were the philosophers. Their independence, however, was in no sense like personal freedom, which [433] seems desirable to us. Their independence consisted in renouncing all the joys and affections of life. Ours on the contrary is precious to us only in guaranteeing us these joys and permitting us these affections. The progress of mankind resembles the individual’s. The young man believes he loves his country more than his family and sometimes the world more than his country. But as he gets older, the scope of his feelings narrows, and as if warned by instinct of the weakening of his powers, he no longer tires himself loving faraway things. He keeps close to him what remains of his power to feel. Similarly, as the human race ages, home-based affections replace grand political interests. What needs to be done, therefore, is to purchase political freedom as cheaply as possible, that is, to leave as much personal freedom as possible,24 in all its forms, and in every respect. The tolerance of the ancients would not suffice for us, being purely national. Each nation’s religion was respected, but each member of a given State was forced to abide by his country’s religion.25 The religious freedom civilization demands today is of a different kind. It is an individual freedom each man wants to be able to practice privately. Laws on morals, celibacy, or idleness are intolerable. These laws assume a subjugation of the individual to the body politic of a kind we could no longer tolerate.26 Even the laws against begging, however necessary they might be, are difficult and odious to operate, involving something against the grain of our practices.

  For the same reason life must not be subject to many shocks. The social ramifications are much greater than before. Even groups which seem to be enemies are joined by imperceptible but indissoluble links. Banishments, confiscations, spoliation by the state, unjust in all eras, have today become absurd and pointless as well. Property, having assumed a much more stable nature and having identified itself more intimately with human existence, demands [434] much more respect and much more freedom. Man having lost in imagination what he has gained in positive knowledge and for this very reason being less given to enthusiasm, legislators no longer have the same power over him. They must renounce any disruption of settled habits, any attempts to affect opinion powerfully. No more Lycurgus, no more Numa, no more Mahomet.27 M. de Pauw’s observations on music apply to legislation. “The most inferior of music,” he says, “produces among barbarian peoples sensations incomparably stronger than the sweetest melody can excite among civilized peoples.” He continues, “The more the Greeks wished to perfect music, the more they saw its marvels weakening.”28 This was precisely because they wished to perfect music, that is to say, were judging it. All their savage ancestors had done was listen to it.29 I would not want to affirm that modern man is not given to enthusiasm for certain viewpoints, but he certainly no longer is for men. The French Revolution is very remarkable in this regard. Whatever one may have been able to say about the inconstancy of the peoples of the ancient republics, nothing compares with the volatility we have witnessed. Study carefully, even in the violence of the best-prepared unrest, the obscure ranks of the blind, submissive populace, and you will see them, just as they are following their leaders, fix their gaze in advance on the moment when the latter must fall. You will spot in their meretricious exaltation a bizarre mix of analysis and mockery. Though they strive to numb themselves by their acclamations, and recoup themselves by their raillery, at the same time they will seem to you to distrust their own conviction, to have a personal presentiment, so to speak, of the time when the prestige will be dissipated. People are astonished that the most marvelous enterprises, the most unexpected successes, prodigious actions of courage and skill, today cause almost no sensation. This is because the good sense of the human race warns it that all this is not done on its behalf. This is governmental display. Since governments alone find [435] pleasure in it, they alone can bear the costs. The activity of those in power has become much less necessary since contentment, for most men, is now based on private relationships. When conditions were essentially warlike, people admired courage particularly, because courage was the most indispensable quality in the leaders of the peoples. Today, conditions being essentially pacific, what those in government are asked for is moderation and justice. When they lavish countless great spectacles of heroism and creation and destruction on us, we are tempted to reply to them: the least grain of benevolence would be far more to our liking. All the moral institutions of the ancients have become inapplicable to us. The institutions I call moral, as opposed to purely political ones, are those which like censorship or ostracism attributed to society, or some number of men or other, a discretionary jurisdiction operating not according to legal and judicial principles but on the vaguely conceived idea of the moral character of certain individuals, of their intentions and of the danger they could pose to the State. I call the practice which made all the citizens of the ancient republics prosecutors a moral institution. This was an honorable function. People sought to distinguish themselves in the pursuit and denunciation of the guilty. In our times the function of the prosecutor is odious. A man would be dishonored if he exercised it without legal remit. All this results from the same cause. Formerly public interest went before safety and individual freedom. Today safety and individual freedom come before the public interest.

  Peace, calm, and domestic contentment being the natural and invincible tendency of modern peoples, more sacrifices have to be made for that calm than the ancients made. Disorder is not always incompatible with political freedom, but it always is with civil and individual freedom.

  Political freedom offering less satisfaction than formerly and the disorders it can entail being more unbearable, we must conserve only what is absolutely necessary in it. To claim today to console men with political freedom for the loss of their civil freedom is to go in the opposite direction from the present-day spirit of the human race. Far from opposing one of these freedoms to another, [436] we should present the former only as the guarantee of the latter. I would be misunderstood, nevertheless, if it were claimed that arguments against political freedom could be drawn from this conclusion. Many men today would like to draw this inference from it. Because the ancients were free, their inference is that we are destined to be slaves. They would like to constitute the new social State with a small number of elements they claim to be uniquely adapted to the situation of the modern world. These elements are: prejudices to frighten men, greed to corrupt them, frivolity to stupefy them, coarse pleasures to degrade them, despotism to rule them, and, of course, positive knowledge and exact science to serve the despotism more adroitly. It would be bizarre were such to be the end point of forty centuries during which the human race has mastered more moral and physical means. I cannot believe it. The inference I draw from the differences which mark us off from antiquity is absolutely not that we should abolish public safeguards but that we should extend satisfactions. It is not political freedom that I want to renounce, but civil freedom that I am demanding along with other forms of political freedom.

  Governments have no more right than before to arrogate to themselves illegitimate power; but legitimate governments have less right than in former times to fetter individual freedom.30 We still possess today the rights we owned at all times, the eternal rights to justice, equality, and safeguards, because these rights are the purpose of human societies. But governments, which are only the means of attaining this purpose, have new duties. The progress of civilization, the changes effected by the centuries in the predisposition of the human race, require of them more respect for the habits and affections, in a word for the independence of individuals. They must handle these sacred things more prudently and more gently every day. [437]

  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

  [1. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book XVI.

  [2. ]This was on the other hand the subject of a “grand treatise” on politics, from a work abandoned in 1806, entitled “On the Possibility of a Republican Constitution in a Large Country,” of which only the Fragments remain.

  [3. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book XVI.

  [4. ]In Book XIII, Ch.1.

  [5. ]A reference to the dialogue between King Pyrrhus and his minister Cyneas, related in Plutarch, Vies, t. VI, Pyrrhos-Marius—Lysandre-Sylla. Text edited and translated by Roger Flacelière and Emile Chambry, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1971, pp. 43–44. Cyneas asked the king what the latter would do after conquering the Romans. Pyrrhus replied that he envisaged new conquests forever until there were no more peoples to submit. The purpose of the apologue is to show the absurdity of the spirit of conquest.

  [6. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book XVI.

  [7. ]Charles Ganilh, Essai politique sur le revenu public des peuples de l’antiquité, du moyen-age, des siècles modernes et spécialement de la France et de l’Angleterre, depuis le milieu du XVe siècle jusqu’au XIXe, Paris, Giguet et Michaud, 1806, t. I, pp. 64–65. “When Vespasian mounted the throne, he declared that the state was unsustainable unless a way were found of raising 6,900,000,000.” Hofmann points out that Constant omitted a zero.

  [8. ]See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book XVI.

  [9. ]See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book XVI.

  [10. ]See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book XVI.

  [11. ]See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book XVI.

  [12. ]See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book XVI.

  [13. ]See Constant’s Note I at the end of Book XVI.

  [14. ]See Constant’s Note J at the end of Book XVI.

  [15. ]See Constant’s Note K at the end of Book XVI.

  [16. ]See Constant’s Note L at the end of Book XVI.

  [17. ]See Constant’s Note M at the end of Book XVI.

  [18. ]See Constant’s Note N at the end of Book XVI.

  [19. ]Le quatrième discours Au sujet d’une accusation pour blessures avec préméditation de meurtre. Lysias, Discours, text edited and translated by Louis Gernet and Marcel Bizos, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1924, t. I, pp. 80–84.

  [20. ]Madame de Staël, De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, revised, corrected, and enlarged second edition, Paris, Maradan, an IX. Préface de la seconde édition, t. I, pp. 13–14.

  [21. ]A reference to François René de Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme ou beautés de la religion chrétienne, Deuxième partie, Livre II, Ch. 10. In the Paris edition, by Migneret, 1802, t. II, pp. 96–98, Chateaubriand takes up the idea of a comparison, but does not, strictly speaking, plagiarize Mme de Staël.

  [22. ]See Constant’s Note O at the end of Book XVI.

  [23. ][The French word “jouissances,” which Constant uses, can mean both private pleasures and the enjoyment of property tenures and so on. Translator’s note]

  [24. ]See Constant’s Note P at the end of Book XVI.

  [25. ]See Constant’s Note Q at the end of Book XVI.

  [26. ]See Constant’s Note R at the end of Book XVI.

  [27. ]See Constant’s Note S at the end of Book XVI.

  [28. ]See Constant’s Note T at the end of Book XVI.

  [29. ]See Constant’s Note U at the end of Book XVI.

  [30. ]See Constant’s Note V at the end of Book XVI.

  [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.

  [A. [Refers to page 351.]]Mémoires sur l’instruction publique.

  [B. [Refers to page 353.]]“In Rome, as in all the Republics of Antiquity, the force of the constitution, that is to say, political freedom, was perpetually altered by individual freedom.” Antoine Ferrand, Esprit de l’histoire, I, 242.44 Gross ignorance; it is precisely the opposite.

  [C. [Refers to page 356.]]The public revenue of the ancients, says Ganilh,45 was made up from the work of slaves, the plundering of the conquered, and tribute from subjugated peoples. There was nothing there which could give birth to credit such as we conceive it today, because there was nothing there which depended on the views and the individual confidence of members of the society. This claim is perhaps a bit too general, since the citizens of Athens and Rome, from the time of Servius Tullius, paid taxes on their wealth to the State. But these taxes were nothing compared to what was drawn from allied peoples and the provinces. And the author’s basic outlook is no less true because of that.

  [[445] D. [Refers to page 357.]]See on this subject an excellent work which has just appeared. [See Constant’s previous note and also footnote 45.] The differences between our era and antiquity in this regard are perfectly expounded, along with the results of these differences.

  [E. [Refers to page 357.]]In Latin the word hostis meant, equally, a stranger or an enemy. Cicero, De Officiis, Liber I.46

  [F. [Refers to page 357.]]“In modern wars,” observes Smith, “ the huge expense of firearms gives a great advantage to the nation most in a position to meet this expense and therefore to a civilized and wealthy rather than a poor and barbarous one. In ancient times rich and civilized nations found it difficult to defend themselves against poor and barbarous ones. In modern times poor and barbarous nations find it difficult to defend themselves against civilized and opulent ones.” Richesse des nations, Livre V, Ch. 1.47

  [G. [Refers to page 357.]]There are some ingenious ideas on the links between commerce and individual and political freedom, in Walckenaer’s Essai sur l’histoire de l’espèce humaine, pp. 250 onward.48

  [H. [Refers to page 357.]]All commodities, says Isocrates, Panégyrique, p. 114, which [446] are dispersed only in small portions in the other markets of Greece, are found together in abundance in the Piraeus.49

  [I. [Refers to page 358.]]Xenophon, De la république des Athéniens.50

  [J. [Refers to page 358.]]Isocrates recounts in his Trapezeticus that a stranger who had brought corn to Athens presented a bill of exchange drawn on a town in the Euxine from a merchant named Stratocles.51

  [K. [Refers to page 358.]]“Provided that peace and friendship continue to reign in the life of the household, there is great respect for the mothers of the family. There is even indulgence of the sins which nature makes them endure, and when they succumb to the irresistible tyranny of the passions, the first weakness is forgiven and the second forgotten.” Xenophon, Dialogue between Hieron and Simonides.52

  [L. [Refers to page 358.]]Proofs of this hospitality to be found. Art, industry. The law of Solon. The émigrés who come to Athens with their whole family to establish a trade or a factory, can from that moment be raised to the dignity of citizens. Samuel Petit, [447] Compilation of the Laws of Athens, Livre II, titre III.53 Plutarch, Solon.54

  [M. [Refers to page 358.]]Xenophon, Respublica Lacedaemoniorum.55

  [N. [Refers to page 358.]]“Cum omnibus horis aliquid atrociter fieri videmus aut audimus, etiam qui natura mitissimi sumus, assiduitate molestiarum sensum omnem humanitatis ex animis amittimus.” Cicero, Pro Roscio.56 Cicero speaks in this passage about the mores of Romans in general. One could apply it, however, to the slave in particular. Everyone knows how little men who have lived for a long time in the colonies are susceptible to pity. Xenophon, his treatise on the Republic of Athens, goes as far as maintaining that people treated the slaves with too much consideration.57

  [[448] O. [Refers to page 361.]]Livre I, Ch. 1.58

  [P. [Refers to page 362.]]Speaking of republics before and after their corruption, M. de Montesquieu says: “One was free with the laws, and wishes to be so against them.” This could be said in another sense of the ancients and the moderns.

  [Q. [Refers to page 362.]]Plato in his tenth book of The Republic upheld as legitimate the accusations of impiety.59 The first philosophers who adopted true principles of tolerance were the neo-Platonists.

  [R. [Refers to page 362.]]In Athens the law of Solon against idleness fell rapidly into disuse, as violating the rights of a free people. Freedom consists, Socrates said, in working or not as one wishes.60

  [S. [Refers to page 363.]]“Ancient legislators excelled in the formation of public spirit. But their political miracles must be attributed less to the wisdom of some people than to the weakness of others. They were speaking to humanity in its infancy. The modern legislator, [449] relying solely on the authority of reason, may well demand belief, but he cannot enforce it.” Toulongeon, De l’esprit public.61

  [T. [Refers to page 363.]]Recherches sur les Grecs. Partie III, 6.62

  [U. [Refers to page 363.]]The Athenians, who may be regarded in many respects as moderns in the bosom of antiquity, were of all the Greeks the ones who attached least importance to music. Xenophon tells us in his République d’Athènes63 that they did not set great store by men committed solely to harmony. The fact is that the taste for music is a passion only among simple peoples, not far advanced in civilization. The Athenians, more advanced than any other ancient people, had this taste less than any other; but their philosophers, who, as we have said, wrote endlessly and in the opposite direction from the national mores and inclinations, did not on this account recommend or praise music any the less.64

  [V. [Refers to page 365.]]“In the present state of civilization and in the commercial system under which we live, all public power must be limited and an absolute power cannot subsist.” Ganilh, Histoire du revenu public, I, 419.

  [[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

  [B. [Refers to page 353.]]“In Rome, as in all the Republics of Antiquity, the force of the constitution, that is to say, political freedom, was perpetually altered by individual freedom.” Antoine Ferrand, Esprit de l’histoire, I, 242.44 Gross ignorance; it is precisely the opposite.

  [C. [Refers to page 356.]]The public revenue of the ancients, says Ganilh,45 was made up from the work of slaves, the plundering of the conquered, and tribute from subjugated peoples. There was nothing there which could give birth to credit such as we conceive it today, because there was nothing there which depended on the views and the individual confidence of members of the society. This claim is perhaps a bit too general, since the citizens of Athens and Rome, from the time of Servius Tullius, paid taxes on their wealth to the State. But these taxes were nothing compared to what was drawn from allied peoples and the provinces. And the author’s basic outlook is no less true because of that.

  [E. [Refers to page 357.]]In Latin the word hostis meant, equally, a stranger or an enemy. Cicero, De Officiis, Liber I.46

  [F. [Refers to page 357.]]“In modern wars,” observes Smith, “ the huge expense of firearms gives a great advantage to the nation most in a position to meet this expense and therefore to a civilized and wealthy rather than a poor and barbarous one. In ancient times rich and civilized nations found it difficult to defend themselves against poor and barbarous ones. In modern times poor and barbarous nations find it difficult to defend themselves against civilized and opulent ones.” Richesse des nations, Livre V, Ch. 1.47

  [G. [Refers to page 357.]]There are some ingenious ideas on the links between commerce and individual and political freedom, in Walckenaer’s Essai sur l’histoire de l’espèce humaine, pp. 250 onward.48

  [H. [Refers to page 357.]]All commodities, says Isocrates, Panégyrique, p. 114, which [446] are dispersed only in small portions in the other markets of Greece, are found together in abundance in the Piraeus.49

  [I. [Refers to page 358.]]Xenophon, De la république des Athéniens.50

  [J. [Refers to page 358.]]Isocrates recounts in his Trapezeticus that a stranger who had brought corn to Athens presented a bill of exchange drawn on a town in the Euxine from a merchant named Stratocles.51

  [K. [Refers to page 358.]]“Provided that peace and friendship continue to reign in the life of the household, there is great respect for the mothers of the family. There is even indulgence of the sins which nature makes them endure, and when they succumb to the irresistible tyranny of the passions, the first weakness is forgiven and the second forgotten.” Xenophon, Dialogue between Hieron and Simonides.52

  [L. [Refers to page 358.]]Proofs of this hospitality to be found. Art, industry. The law of Solon. The émigrés who come to Athens with their whole family to establish a trade or a factory, can from that moment be raised to the dignity of citizens. Samuel Petit, [447] Compilation of the Laws of Athens, Livre II, titre III.53 Plutarch, Solon.54

  [M. [Refers to page 358.]]Xenophon, Respublica Lacedaemoniorum.55

  [N. [Refers to page 358.]]“Cum omnibus horis aliquid atrociter fieri videmus aut audimus, etiam qui natura mitissimi sumus, assiduitate molestiarum sensum omnem humanitatis ex animis amittimus.” Cicero, Pro Roscio.56 Cicero speaks in this passage about the mores of Romans in general. One could apply it, however, to the slave in particular. Everyone knows how little men who have lived for a long time in the colonies are susceptible to pity. Xenophon, his treatise on the Republic of Athens, goes as far as maintaining that people treated the slaves with too much consideration.57

  [[448] O. [Refers to page 361.]]Livre I, Ch. 1.58

  [Q. [Refers to page 362.]]Plato in his tenth book of The Republic upheld as legitimate the accusations of impiety.59 The first philosophers who adopted true principles of tolerance were the neo-Platonists.

  [R. [Refers to page 362.]]In Athens the law of Solon against idleness fell rapidly into disuse, as violating the rights of a free people. Freedom consists, Socrates said, in working or not as one wishes.60

  [S. [Refers to page 363.]]“Ancient legislators excelled in the formation of public spirit. But their political miracles must be attributed less to the wisdom of some people than to the weakness of others. They were speaking to humanity in its infancy. The modern legislator, [449] relying solely on the authority of reason, may well demand belief, but he cannot enforce it.” Toulongeon, De l’esprit public.61

  [T. [Refers to page 363.]]Recherches sur les Grecs. Partie III, 6.62

  [U. [Refers to page 363.]]The Athenians, who may be regarded in many respects as moderns in the bosom of antiquity, were of all the Greeks the ones who attached least importance to music. Xenophon tells us in his République d’Athènes63 that they did not set great store by men committed solely to harmony. The fact is that the taste for music is a passion only among simple peoples, not far advanced in civilization. The Athenians, more advanced than any other ancient people, had this taste less than any other; but their philosophers, who, as we have said, wrote endlessly and in the opposite direction from the national mores and inclinations, did not on this account recommend or praise music any the less.64

  [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

  [44]Antoine Ferrand, L’Esprit de l’histoire ou lettres politiques et morales . . . , Paris, Vve Nyon, 1802.

  [45]Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. I, pp. 66–67.

  [46]See Ganilh, op. cit., t. I, p. 221, n. 1. Ganilh’s note supported the following text: “The ancients were in a permanent state of hostility between themselves. Without mutual communication, they saw and treated each other as enemies.” Cicero in Les devoirs, I, 37, says, “Among our ancestors in fact we called hostis him whom now we call peregrinus, foreigner.” Text edited and translated by Maurice Testard, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1965, t. I, pp. 121–123.

  [47]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 122–123.

  [48]C.-A. Walckenaer, Essai sur l’histoire de l’espèce humaine, Paris, Du Pont, 1798, Livre VI, pp. 251–368, Des peuples cultivateurs, après l’introduction des manufactures et du commerce et la séparation des professions.

  [49]This note is taken from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, pp. 70–71. Hofmann does not know to which edition Constant’s page reference (114) relates. The reference is to the Panegyric of Isocrates in his Discours, text edited and translated by Georges Mathieu and Emile Brémond, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1938, t. II, p. 24.

  [50]Xenophon, La république des Athéniens, II, 16: “But as they did not have the chance to build their city on an island, here is what they do. Confident in their maritime superiority, they deposit their wealth in the islands, leaving Attica to be ravaged, because they understand that if they have mercy on it they will lose other more important goods.” Xenophon, Anabase . . . , éd. cit., p. 518.

  [51]Isocrates, Trapésitique, 35–37. See the edition of the Discours, éd. cit., t. I, pp. 81–82. Constant has taken the example and the reference from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 335.

  [52]All this note and the reference are from Cornelius de Pauw, ibid., p. 191.

  [53]It is again from Cornelius de Pauw (op. cit., t. I, p. 69) that Constant has drawn this illustration with the references to Samuel Petit and Plutarch.

  [54]Plutarch, Solon, 24, 4: “He permitted citizenship to be granted only to people banished in perpetuity from their country or who come to set up in Athens with all their family with a view to establishing a trade.” Plutarch, Vies, t. II, Solon, Publicola, Themistocle, Camille, text edited and translated by Robert Flacelière, Emile Chambry, and Marcel Juneaux, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1961, p. 39.

  [55]Xenophon, La république des Lacédémoniens, VIII, 2: “in the other States, the most powerful do not even want to have the appearance of fearing the magistrates and regard such fear as a mark of baseness. In Sparta, on the contrary, the most notable men are the most submissive to the authorities; they glory in their humility and pride themselves when they are called on, obeying not by walking but at the double.” Xenophon, Anabase . . . , éd. cit., p. 489.

  [56]“When all the time we see or notice some atrocity or other, for all our very sweet disposition, the repetition of these painful events drives any feeling of humanity away from our hearts.” Cicero, Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino, in Discours, t. I, text edited and translated by H. de la Ville de Mirmont, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1921, p. 126.

  [57]This example and the reference come from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 168.

  [58]Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Les antiquités romaines, Paris, Ph.-N. Lottin, 1723, pp. 16–23.

  [59]Plato, La république, X, XIII, 615c, in Oeuvres complètes, t. VII, 2e partie, text edited and translated by Emile Chambry, Les Belles Lettres, 1934, p. 115. See also Plato’s other great work on politics, Les lois, Livre X, in ibid., t. XII/1, text edited and translated by A. Dies, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1956, pp. 141–148. The same example is found in Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. II, p. 46.

  [60]Ibid., p. 62: “Solon had the advance and prosperity of Athenian manufactories so much at heart that he took it upon himself to make a law against idlers, one which soon fell into disuse . . . The true freedom, said Socrates, consists in working when one wishes and not working when one does not.” There is another note by Constant on this law of Solon in Annexe I, Principes de politique (Hofmann’s edition), p. 654.

  [61]François-Emmanuel d’Emskerque, vicomte de Toulongeon, De l’esprit public. Mémoire désigné pour être lu à la dernière séance de l’Institut national, Paris, Impr. de Du Pont, 1797, pp. 9–10: “We are astonished by the ease of domination the ancient legislators had: it is because they were talking to the human mind still in its infancy. People believed in apparitions, political miracles, and auguries. The strong, simple man listened and believed. The mature human mind no longer believes on trust. To give it laws you have to persuade it, which is more difficult than giving it to believe something.”

  [62]Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. II, pp. 121–122.

  [63]Xenophon, La république des Athéniens, I, 13, in Xenophon, Anabase . . . , éd. cit., p. 512.

  [64]This remark on music among the Athenians, and the reference to Xenophon, come from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 225.

  [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.

• Back to Top

  10: BOOK X: On the Action of Government with Regard to Property - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK X: On the Action of Government with Regard to Property

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/108981 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK X

  On the Action of Government with Regard to Property

  • Ch. 1. The purpose of this book. 165
  • Ch. 2. The natural division of the inhabitants of the same territory into two classes. 165
  • Ch. 3. On property. 167
  • Ch. 4. On the status property should occupy in political institutions. 168
  • Ch. 5. On examples drawn from antiquity. 171
  • Ch. 6. On the proprietorial spirit. 173
  • Ch. 7. That territorial property alone brings together all the advantages of property. 174
  • Ch. 8. On property in public funds. 179
  • Ch. 9. On the amount of landed property which society has the right to insist upon for the exercise of political rights. 182
  • Ch. 10. That owners have no interest in abusing power vis-à-vis nonowners. 183
  • Ch. 11. On hereditary privileges compared to property. 185
  • Ch. 12. Necessary comment. 186
  • Ch. 13. On the best way of giving proprietors a large political influence. 190
  • Ch. 14. On the action of government on property. 192
  • Ch. 15. On laws which favor the accumulation of property in the same hands. 193
  • Ch. 16. On laws which enforce the wider spreading of property. 196

  chapter one

  The Purpose of This Book

  We have ruled out in this work any research into the constitution of States and the organization of their political powers. Nevertheless, we cannot absolve ourselves from dealing with the place that property should have in government concerns since we have to determine what the relations between government and property ought to be. We are therefore obliged to put forward some ideas which derive from the first principles of human association. Since these ideas relate equally, however, to all forms of institution, they will not draw us at all into the discussions we want to avoid.

  People may be astonished that we should refute in some detail opinions which today seem generally abandoned. Our purpose, however, is not to write simply on opinions which may enjoy favor today, but rather to attack false opinions to the extent that we find them on our way.

  Moreover, we know how quickly men go from one view to another, especially in France. Such error as one [200] does not deign to reply to at such a time, because one thinks it without supporters, can at the first emergency show up, resting on arguments one had regarded as forever rebuffed.

  In addition, there are among us a rather large number of writers always at the service of the dominant system. We have already seen them go from unbridled demagogy to the opposite exaggeration. Nothing would be less astonishing on their part than a new apostasy. These are real lansquenets,1 but without the courage. Disavowals cost them nothing. Absurdities do not check them, because for them opinions are only calculation. They search everywhere for a power whose wishes they can reduce to principles. Their zeal is all the more active and tireless in that it dispenses with their conviction.

  chapter two

  The Natural Division of the Inhabitants of the Same Territory into Two Classes

  No nation has regarded all the individuals living in its territory, in whatever way this might be, as members of the political association. This is not a question of arbitrary distinctions, such as among the ancients separated free men from slaves, or in modern times nobles from the lowborn. The most full democracy still establishes two categories: to the one are relegated foreigners and those below the age decreed by the law for the exercise of citizenship rights. The other consists of men having reached that age and born in the country. Only the latter are members of the political association. There is therefore a principle following which, of those individuals brought together in a given territory, some are citizens and some not.

  Obviously, this principle is that to be a member of the political association requires a certain degree of informed outlook and common interests with the other members. Men below the legal age lack this degree of informed outlook. Foreigners are not capable of being guided by that common interest. The proof of this is that the former, on reaching the age [201] the law requires, become members of the political association, while the latter do this by way of residence, ownership, or their social relationships. We take it that these things give enlightenment to the former and the required interest to the latter.

  This principle, however, needs further extension. In our present societies, birth in the country and the age of majority are not enough to confer on men the qualities proper to the exercise of citizenship rights. Those whom poverty holds in endless dependence and condemns from childhood to laboring work, are neither more informed than children as to public affairs, nor have a greater stake than foreigners in a national prosperity, with whose elements they are not familiar and whose benefits they share only indirectly.

  I do not wish to wrong the working class. It is no less patriotic than other classes. It is often ready for the most heroic sacrifices, and its devotion is all the more admirable in that it is neither rewarded financially nor with honor. As I see it, however, the patriotism which gives one the courage to die for one’s country is one thing, while that which makes one capable of understanding one’s interests is another. Therefore a condition beyond having been born in the country and the prescribed age is required, namely the leisure needed for developing an informed outlook and soundness of judgment. Only property secures this leisure. Only property can render men capable of exercising political rights. Only owners can be citizens. To counter this with natural equality is to be reasoning within a hypothesis inapplicable to the present state of societies. If from this idea of men’s having equal rights we go on to claim that owners must not have more extensive ones than nonowners, we will have to conclude either that all must be owners or none. For most assuredly the right to property establishes between those who have it and those bereft of it a far greater inequality than all political rights. Now, if we come to terms with so decisive an inequality, we must also accept all the further agreements indispensable to the consolidation of this first one. Only the principle is subject to doubt. Once it is admitted, its consequences are entailed. Is property necessary to the well-being and improvement of the social condition? If we adopt the affirmative, people cannot be astonished at seeing us admitting its obvious results. [202]

  chapter three

  On Property

  A number of those who have defended property by way of abstract reason seem to me to have fallen into grave error. They have represented property as something mysterious, anterior to society and independent of it.2 Property is served by the rejection of these hypotheses. Mystery is harmful in everything which does not spring from superstition. Property is not anterior to society. Without political association, which gives it its guarantee, it would be only the right of the first possessor, the right of force, that is to say, a right which is no such thing. It is absolutely not independent of society, since some kind of social condition, admittedly a very wretched one, could be conceived without it, while property without society is unimaginable. Property exists by virtue of society. Society found that the best way to get its members to enjoy goods common to all or disputed by all before its institution, was to concede some of them to each person or to maintain each person in that part of them he happened to possess, guaranteeing to him enjoyment of this, plus such changes as this enjoyment might undergo either by the countless changes of chance or by inequality in the degrees of effort. Property is only a social convention. Our recognizing it as such, however, does not mean we envisage it as less sacred, less inviolable, less necessary than do writers using a different philosophical approach. Some philosophers have considered its establishment an evil and its abolition possible.3 They have had recourse, however, to found their [203] theories, to a host of suppositions of which some are quite unrealizable and of which the least chimerical are relegated to a future it is not even permissible for us to predict. Not only is their fundamental assumption a growth in enlightenment at which man may perhaps one day arrive but on which it would be absurd to found our present institutions, but they have assumed as proven a diminution in the work required today for the subsistence of the human race of an order which surpasses all invention even suspected. Certainly each one of our discoveries in mechanical science which replaces human force by instruments and machines is a victory for thought; and by the laws of nature, these victories becoming easier as they multiply, they must follow one another at an increasing rate. But what we have done under this heading, and even what we can imagine, fall far short of our total exemption from manual labor. Nevertheless, this exemption would be indispensable for the abolition of property, short of our wishing, as some writers propose, to divide this work equally among all members of the society. Such a division, however, even if it were not an absurd dream, would work against its own purpose, would take away from thought the leisure necessary to make it strong and profound, from ingenuity the perseverance which brings it to perfection, from all classes the advantages of habit, continuity, unity of purpose, and centralization of productive forces. Without property the human race would be in stasis, in the most brutish and savage state of its existence. Each person, responsible for providing on his own for all his needs, would split his energies to meet them and, bent beneath the weight of these multiplied cares, would never advance an inch. The abolition of property would destroy the division of labor, the basis of the perfecting of all the arts and sciences. The progressive faculty, the favorite hope of the writers I am opposing, would die for lack of time and independence. The crass and forced equality they recommend to us would be an invincible obstacle to the gradual setting up of true equality, that of happiness and enlightenment. [204]

  chapter four

  On the Status Property Should Occupy in Political Institutions

  The question being thus resolved, property being necessary, then, to the perfecting and prosperity of the social condition, it follows that it must be surrounded by all the safeguards; and power is the only sufficient safeguard. Property must not be made into an eternal cause of struggles and crimes. Better destroy it, as certain extravagant thinkers want, than tolerate it as an abuse by treating it with disfavor. These thinkers at least present a theoretical system which they believe compatible with the social State, such as they conceive it. What shall we say, however, of these hidden enemies of property who, allowing it without giving it influence, seem to set it up only to deliver it over, helpless, to the vehement hostility it provokes? What shall we think of Mably, who depicts it as a scourge and then urges us to respect it?4 This is to bequeath to society indestructible seeds of discord. Property must be in charge or annihilated. If you put power on one side and property on the other, the latter will soon be at odds with legislation. Careful reflection and government become separate. Opinion wages war with the latter.

  One might say that the present state of society, mixing and mingling owners and nonowners in a thousand ways, gives to some of the latter the same interests and means as the former, that the man who works, no less than the man who owns, needs peace and security; that owners are in law and fact only distributors of the common wealth between all individuals and that it is to the advantage of all that order and peace should favor the development of all abilities and all individual resources.

  The fault in these arguments is their proving too much. If they were conclusive, there would be no reason for denying foreigners political rights. Europe’s commercial relations are such that it is in the interests of the great majority of Europeans that peace [205] and contentment prevail in all countries. The overthrow of a country of any sort is as fatal for foreigners whose financial speculations have linked their fortune to that country as this overthrow could be to its own inhabitants, with the exception of its propertied class. The facts prove it. During the most savage wars, a country’s businessmen make endless appeals and sometimes efforts for the hostile country not to be destroyed. Nevertheless, a consideration so vague will not seem sufficient, in my view, to justify political rights for foreigners.

  Doubtless, if you suppose that nonproprietors will always calmly examine all sides of the question, their considered interest will be to respect property and become proprietors; but if you admit the more likely hypothesis that they will often be led by their most obvious and immediate interest, this latter interest will lead them, if not to destroy property, at least to diminish its influence.

  Furthermore, admitting the most favorable hypothesis, that the first concern of nonproprietors is to become proprietors, if the organization of property puts some obstacle in the way of their succeeding, or they merely imagine this to be so, their natural inclination will be to change that organization. Now, the organization of property is something you cannot disturb without harming its nature and upsetting society as a whole. We will see later how many vexatious effects the idea of a forced dissemination of property can give rise to. In short, these arguments bear only on a very small group of nonproprietors. The vast majority will always be deprived of leisure, the indispensable condition of enlightenment. Civil safeguards, individual freedom, free opinion, in a word, social protection, are owed to nonproprietors, because any political association owes them even to the foreigner it receives into its bosom; but political rights are not a protection; they bestow power. The political association must give this only to its members. To grant it to nonproprietors is not to give them a shield, but an offensive weapon.

  The necessary purpose of the propertyless is to manage to become propertied. All the resources you give them they will use for this purpose. If you add to the freedom for their talents and efforts, which you [206] do owe them, political rights, which you do not, these rights, in the hands of the vast majority of them, will infallibly be used to encroach on property. They will march on it by that irregular and meretricious route, rather than following the natural route, work. This will be a source of corruption for them, and for the State, of disorder. It has been very properly observed that when the propertyless have political rights one of three things happens. Either their only motivation springs from themselves and then they destroy the society; or they are motivated by the man or men in power and they become the instruments of tyranny, which is what happens in unexceptional times; or they are motivated by those aspiring to power and become the instruments of factions. This is what happens during great political crises.

  There are always two classes in a country, those who want to conserve and those who want to make gains.5 The first need only security; the second, before they need security, need force. Freedom and justice are the sole means of well-being for the former. By means of justice they conserve what they possess; and by way of freedom they enjoy it. For the latter, however, injustice and tyranny may often be the means to success. Their encroachments are by way of injustice and defended by tyranny. Machiavelli establishes that it is better to entrust the defense of freedom to those who want to make gains than to those who wish to conserve.6 But he is not talking about property. He is talking about power, and oppressive power to boot, like that of the Roman patricians or the Venetian nobles. This is no more than saying that the defense of freedom should be entrusted to those who suffer from tyranny rather than those who enjoy it.

  [207] In the countries with representative or republican arrangements, it is important above all that their assemblies should comprise proprietors, whatever their further organization may be in other respects. An individual may capture the crowd through outstanding merit. The ruling body, however, to win public confidence, need material interests manifestly appropriate to their duties. A nation will always presume that people who are united are led by common interest. It will take it for granted that love of order, justice, and conservation will be the prevailing concern among proprietors. The latter are thus useful not only in terms of their inherent qualities but also of those attributed to them, as well as of the interests they are assumed to have, and of the salutary prejudices they inspire. Put the unpropertied class in charge of the State, however well intentioned they may be, and the anxiety of the propertied will hem in all their measures. The wisest laws will be suspected and hence disobeyed. The opposite sort of organization, by contrast, will reconcile popular assent, even to a government which is defective in some regards.

  During the French Revolution, owners competed with nonowners in the making of absurd and spoliatory laws. This is because they feared the latter now that they had power. The owners wanted to be forgiven for being owners. The fear of losing what one has renders one every bit as cowardly or enraged as the hope of acquiring that which one has not. These faults and crimes on the part of property holders, however, were a consequence of the influence of the propertyless class.

  chapter five

  On Examples Drawn from Antiquity

  We should separate from this subject all the examples drawn from antiquity. We will devote another book in this work to developing the numberless differences which mark us off from the ancients.7 Let us merely say here that in the small States of antiquity property was far from being the same thing it is with us. [208] The sharing out of conquered territories made or could make proprietors of all individuals. In our times conquests aggrandize States but do not give new lands at all to the citizens. All the laboring work, which takes away all leisure from those committed to it, was done by slaves. Slavery is abolished. The rich appeased the poor in feeding them out of largesse. Our financial system no longer permits handouts of money and corn. The public square contained the whole nation, which was governed by eloquence, a power which in our huge societies no longer exists. The discussions gave the whole nation general ideas on politics, even when they directed it badly on such and such particular occasions. Thus, freed from manual work by the slaves, often fed for nothing by the rich, or by the State, which came to the same thing, given understanding of government by orators, nonowners were able to give almost all their time to public affairs. They acquired the habit of so preoccupying themselves, and this habit made them less unfit for it.

  Today private matters, the cares imposed on each person for his subsistance, take at least most of the poor man’s time, if not all of it. Public matters are only an accessory. Printing has replaced popular discussion. The lower classes, however, have little time to read. What they read without choice, they take up without examining. No opinion gets debated in their presence. Theirs therefore forms by chance.

  Nonowners could consequently exercise political rights in the republics of antiquity with less inconvenience than they could in our modern States; and yet, if we examine the thing closely, we will become convinced that their influence was fatal to these same republics. Athens suffered greatly from not having based its government on property. Its lawmakers had always to battle with the ascendancy of the propertyless. Most of its writers, its philosophers, even its poets have a marked preference [209] for oligarchy.8 This is because they were seeking in the power of the few the security that they should have reposed in property alone. The Lacedaemonian [Spartan] institutions were not based on property; but these bizarre institutions had distorted property as they had annihilated personal freedom and imposed silence on all the affections. They rested moreover on the most horrible servitude. The helots and the Messenians were the true propertyless class of Laconia, and for them the loss of political rights was subsumed in that of natural rights.9 The opponents of property stress the poverty of some of the illustrious citizens of ancient Rome. These illustrious citizens were, however, despite their poverty, propertied. Cincinnatus owned the land he ploughed. If the propertyless in Rome had what looked like political rights, they paid for that sterile honor, dying of poverty, thrown into prisons, their creditors the patricians legally entitled to defame them.

  Such will always be the fate of this class while it has rights it cannot exercise without putting the public good at risk. In their alarm owners will have recourse to the most violent means in order to break the threatening weapon now in the hands of their enemies, entrusted to them by an imprudent constitution. Of all the political passions, fear is the most aggressive. Proprietors will always be oppressive to avoid being oppressed. Property will never be powerless. If it is refused legal influence, it will soon seize upon the arbitrary and corrupting kind.

  chapter six

  On the Proprietorial Spirit

  One observation is crucial to prevent a confusion of ideas. To put power into property is not the same as to put property in power. Wealth has influence and commands consideration only insofar as it is not suddenly acquired. More than once, during the Revolution, our governors, constantly hearing government of the propertied nostalgically praised, were tempted to become proprietors to make themselves more worthy of being governors. But even when they had bestowed on themselves, from one day to another, considerable properties [210] by calling their wishes the law, the people were liable to think that what the law had conferred, the law could retract; and so property, instead of protecting the institution, needed continually to be protected by it. New owners, squatting on their spoils, remain conquerors at heart. You do not learn the proprietary spirit as readily as you grab property. During the war of the peasants of Swabia against their lords,10 the former sometimes donned the armor of their defeated masters. What did this lead to? That one could see under this knightly armor no less insolence and more vulgarity.

  If the wealthy class inspires more confidence, it is because its members’ point of departure is more advantageous, their outlook freer, their intelligence more schooled to enlightenment, their education more cultivated. But enriching men suddenly in midcareer, you do not give them any of these advantages. Their sudden wealth does not work retrospectively.

  It is the same with the sizeable salaries attached to particular jobs. These just do not replace property. When they are disproportionate to the previous wealth of those who receive them, they do not serve to form a new rich class. They give individuals new needs and habits which corrupt them. Far from making them independent and assured, they make them dependent and agitated. In wealth as in other things, nothing can stand in for experience.

  chapter seven

  That Territorial Property Alone Brings Together All the Advantages of Property

  Several writers who recognize the need to entrust political rights exclusively to proprietors do not consider [211] landed property the only true property. The economists, as is known, M. Turgot included, had a quite opposite theoretical view. According to them the main element constituting a society is the territory under its jurisdiction. The only positive and legal distinction between men emanates from ownership or nonownership of the national territory. The nonowners of territory, not being able to reside in a country without the consent of the owners, who grant them, in exchange for their work or capital, a refuge which they could deny them, are not members of a political association in which their residence is not by right. This reasoning, however rigorous it may appear, seems to me too slight a foundation for a practical institution. I dislike reasoning from a hypothesis which rejects reality, and nothing seems to me less capable of reconciling those without land to the necessary sacrifice of citizen rights, than their being represented as homeless vagabonds, who can be expelled on the whim of a man who has no preeminence over them save having seized the land first. Besides, I think it worthless to have recourse to such forced suppositions. Arguments of another kind, more applicable and less abstract, will lead us to the same end.

  Two types of property different from territorial property have been distinguished. The first is business property. The other has been called intellectual and moral property.

  Let us speak first of all of business property.

  This lacks several of the advantages of landed property, and these advantages are precisely those in which the safeguarding spirit necessary for political association consists.

  Landed property has an influence on the character and lot of man by the very nature of the cares it demands. The cultivator gives himself over to constant and ongoing occupations. Thus he contracts regularity of habit. Chance, which is a great source of immorality because it overturns all calculations and therefore those of morality, has absolutely no part in the life of the cultivator. All interruption harms him. Any imprudence means certain loss to him. His successes come slowly. He can achieve them only by work. He cannot speed them up nor make them grow by lighthearted daring. He depends upon nature and is independent of men. All these things give him a calm disposition, a sense of security, and a feeling for order which [212] attach him to the vocation to which he owes his peace of mind as much as his living.

  Business property influences man only by the positive gain it procures him or promises him. It puts in his life less order, more artificiality, and less fixity than landed property. The operations of the businessman are often made up of fortuitous transactions. His successes are more rapid, but chance plays a greater part therein. Business property does not have that necessary element of slow and sure progression which gives man the habit and soon the need for uniformity. Business property does not make him independent of other men. On the contrary, it makes him dependent on them. Vanity, that fertile seed of political agitation, is constantly wounded in him. It almost never is in agriculture.11 The latter case calculates in peace the order of the seasons, the nature of the soil, the character of the climate. The elements of the calculations of the businessman are whims, passions, pride, the luxury of his fellows. A farm is a native land in miniature. One is born there, raised there, grows up with the trees which surround it. Business property excludes these sources of sweet sensation. The objects of speculation pile up on one another; but everything within them is static. Nothing carries the impress of natural development. Nothing speaks to the imagination nor to memory, nothing to the moral part of man. People say my ancestors’ fields, my parents’ cabin. People never say my parents’ workshop or shop counter. The improvements of landed property cannot be separated from the soil which receives them and of which they become part. Business property is not susceptible to improvement but to growth, and that growth can be moved around freely. The landowner rarely gains, except in an indirect way, from what his competitors lose. It is never in his power to contribute to their loss. The tillage farmer cannot by his speculations threaten his neighbor’s harvest. The businessman gains directly from what others lose. Often it lies with him to add to their losses, and in many circumstances this is his most adroit speculation, his most assured advantage. In terms of intellectual faculties, the cultivator is greatly superior to the artisan. Agriculture demands a sequence of observations, of experiences which form and develop judgment.12 From this peasants [213] derive that just and accurate sense which astonishes us. Industrial jobs are, for the most part, limited by the division of labor to mechanical operations. Landed property binds man to the country he lives in, puts obstacles in the way of displacement of people, creates patriotism through interests. Business makes all countries much the same, facilitates displacements, separates interests from patriotism.13 This advantage of landed property, this drawback of business property, in political terms increases as the value of the property diminishes. An artisan loses almost nothing in being displaced. A small landowner is ruined when he has to move. Now it is above all by the class of smaller proprietors that one must judge the effects of different types of property, since these classes are the most numerous.

  Independently of this moral preeminence of landed property, it is favorable to public order by the very situation in which it puts those who possess it. Workmen concentrated in the towns are at the mercy of factions. Cultivators, spread around the country districts, are almost impossible to unite and therefore to be led to rebel. Business proprietors, it has been said, must be much more attached to order, stability, and public peace than landed proprietors, because they lose much more during upheavals. Burn the harvest of a cultivator and he still has the field. He loses only a year’s income. Pillage a merchant’s shop and his assets are destroyed. But the loss is not made up solely of the instantaneous damage the proprietor experiences. We have to consider the degradation which happens to the property. Now, a pillaged shop can be full again of the kind of wealth that was stolen within twenty-four hours. But a farm burnt down, a soil impoverished for lack of cultivation, can be reestablished only by a long sequence of work and care. This becomes more striking still, when it is a question of poor proprietors. Seditionaries could in a single day compensate all the workers in a town, even if this was only in leaving them to plunder the rich. But nature alone can compensate, with her accustomed slowness, the cultivators of a district. These truths were felt by Aristotle. He contrived to bring out, very forcefully, the distinctive characters of the agricultural and mercantile classes, and he decided without hesitation in favor of the former.14 Doubtless, business property has its advantages. [214] Industry and commerce have created a new means of defense for liberty, namely credit. Landed property guarantees the stability of institutions; business property assures the independence of individuals. Therefore the refusal of political rights to these capitalists and business people, whose activity and opulence double the prosperity of the countries they live in, this refusal, if it were absolute, in my view would be an injustice and moreover an imprudence. It would be to do that of which we have already shown the danger above. It would put wealth in opposition to power.

  If one reflects, however, one will easily perceive that the exclusion will not hit in any way those businessmen it would be a pity to exclude. What could be easier for them than to acquire a property in the country which would make them citizens? If they refused, I would not reckon much for their attachment to their country, or rather to their government. For it always is the fault of governments when men do not love their native soil. Such business proprietors as will not be able to buy landed property will be men whom a necessity which your institutions will never circumvent commits to mechanical work. These are therefore men lacking all means of educating themselves, likely with the purest intentions to make the State carry the cost of their inevitable errors. These men must be protected, respected, guaranteed against any harassment by the rich. We must brush aside any obstacles impeding their work and make their laborious lives as smooth as possible. They must not be transferred, however, to a new situation for which their calling does not equip them, where their participation would be pointless, or where their strong feelings would be threatening, or where their very presence would become fearfully disturbing for the other social groups, a cause for suspicion and for this very reason of hostile defensive measures and of flagrant injustices.

  The property which has been entitled intellectual has been defended [215] in a rather ingenious way. A distinguished professional man, it has been said, a legal expert, for example, is no less strongly attached to the country he lives in than the landed proprietor. It is easier for this latter to alienate his patrimony than it would for the former to move his reputation. His fortune is the confidence he inspires. This derives from a number of years of work, from intelligence, skill, the services he has rendered, the habit people have acquired of consulting him in difficult circumstances, and the local understanding his long experience has formed. Expatriation would deprive him of these advantages. He would be ruined by the single fact of having to present himself as an unknown in a foreign land.

  This property called intellectual, however, resides only in public opinion. If all are allowed to attribute it to themselves, doubtless all will demand it. For political rights will become not only a social advantage but a proof of talent, and to refuse them to oneself would be a rare act at once of disinterestedness and of modesty. If it is the opinion of others which has to confer this intellectual property, that opinion is made plain only by the success and wealth which are the necessary result. Thus there will be distinguished men in the professions, like opulent capitalists. Nothing will be easier for them than acquiring the landed property required.

  There are, however, considerations of higher significance to be weighed. The professions require more than any other job perhaps, if their influence in political discussion is not to be fatal, to be joined with landed property. The professions, so praiseworthy in so many ways, do not always number among their good qualities the putting into ideas of that practical accuracy necessary for pronouncing on men’s positive interests. We saw during our Revolution writers, mathematicians, and chemists lending themselves to the most exaggerated opinions, not because in other respects they were not enlightened and estimable, but because they had lived apart from men. Some had been accustomed to indulging their imagination, others to taking into account only rigorous evidence, a third lot [216] to seeing nature in its reproduction of human beings, paving the way to destruction. They had arrived by different routes at the same result, namely disdaining considerations drawn from facts, scorning the real sensible world, and reasoning like visionaries on the social condition, like geometers on our passions and like doctors on our human sorrows.

  If these mistakes have been the portion of superior men, what will the errors of inferior candidates and defective applicants be? How very necessary it is to put a brake on wounded amour propre, on sour vanity, on all the causes of bitterness, agitation, and dissatisfaction, against a society in which people find themselves displaced, of hatred against men who seem unjust in their evaluations! All intellectual works are no doubt honorable. All must be respected. Our first attribute, our distinctive faculty, is thought. Whoever makes use of it has the right to our esteem, even independently of success. Whoever outrages or rebuffs it abdicates the name human and puts himself outside the human race. Every science, however, gives to the mind of him who cultivates it an exclusive slant, which becomes dangerous in matters political, unless it is counterbalanced. Now, the counterweight can be found only in landed property. This alone establishes uniform ties between men. It puts them on guard against the imprudent sacrifice of the happiness and peace of others by enveloping within this sacrifice their own well-being, by obliging them to reckon on their own account. It makes them come down from lofty, chimerical theories and inapplicable exaggerations by establishing between them and other members of the society numerous complicated relations and common interests.

  Let it not be thought, though, that this safeguard is useful only for maintaining order. It is no less so for maintaining freedom. By a bizarre coming together, the sciences which, during political upheavals, sometimes incline men to impossible ideas of freedom, render them at other times indifferent and servile under despotism. Scholars proper are rarely bothered by power, even unjust power. It is only reflective thought such power hates. It likes the sciences well enough as tools for the governors and the fine arts as distractions for the governed. Thus the road followed by men whose studies have no connection with the active interests of human life protects them from the harassments of a government which never sees them as rivals. They often display too little anger at abuses of power which weigh only on other groups. [217]

  chapter eight

  On Property in Public Funds

  The present situation of the great states of Europe has created in our times a new kind of property, that of public funds. This property does not at all tie its possessor to the soil, as does landed property. It demands neither assiduous work nor difficult speculations, like business property. It does not suppose distinguished talents, like the property we have termed intellectual.

  The state’s creditor is interested in the wealth of his country only as any creditor is in the wealth of his debtor. Provided the latter pays him, he is satisfied, and the dealings whose purpose is to assure his payment always seem fair enough, however costly they may be. The right he has all the time to sell his holding makes him indifferent to the probable but distant chance of national ruin. There is not a corner of land, not a manufacture, not a source of production whose impoverishment he does not contemplate with insouciance, as long as there are other resources which defray the payment of his income and which sustain the market value of his capital in the public mind.15

  Some writers have considered the establishment of the public debt as a cause of prosperity. Among the sophisms with which they have propped up this bizarre opinion, they have got across a consideration well tuned to seduce governments, namely that a State’s creditors are the natural supports of government. Associated with its fortunes, they have to defend it with all their might, as the sole guarantee of the capital due to them. What seems true to me is that in all circumstances, a lasting force, equally favorable to the worst and best of institutions, has at the very least as many drawbacks as advantages. It has to be added, however, that a body of men which depends [218] on government only out of a desire to see its assets secured is always ready to break off the instant anxiety affects its hopes. Now, is it a good thing for a realm that there should be a group of individuals who consider government only in purely pecuniary terms, sustaining it despite its abuses when it pays them and declaring themselves its bitter enemies the second it stops paying them?

  Doubtless the bad faith of the administration and its slackness in the fulfillment of its promises imply a neglect of justice which must extend to many other things. Free governments have always been distinguished by their scrupulous reliability.16 England has never put the creditors of its immense debt through the least worry or delay. America, since the consolidation of its independence, has scrupulously observed the same principles of trustworthiness. Holland has deserved the same praise for as long as it has existed. It is not thus with states subject to despotic governments. The fact is, only free governments can in no circumstances separate their interests from their duties. In this respect, the creditors of national debts must desire like all other citizens that freedom be established and maintained.

  I confess to preferring that they be animated by nobler motives. It might happen that a despotic government, aware of the danger of annoying its creditors, came to put all its efforts into pleasing them, and succeeded for a more or less long period in weighing the nation down with excessive taxes. In this case the holders of the national debt, cut off from the rest of the nation, would remain faithful to a government treating only them justly. Property in public funds is of an essentially egotistical and solitary nature, one easily becoming aggressive, because it exists only at others’ expense. By a remarkable effect of the complex organization of modern societies, while the natural interest of any nation is that taxation be lowered to the least possible, the creation of a national debt gives one part of each nation an interest in increasing it.17

  We could muster many other arguments, furthermore, [219] against a theory which, in reality, like many other theories, is only an excuse, disguised as a precept. In thinking of the existence of a public debt as morally and politically unfortunate, however, I do envisage it at the same time, in the present situation of society, as an inevitable evil for the large States. Those which habitually make subventions to national expenditure out of taxation are almost always forced to anticipate, and their anticipations constitute debt. Moreover, at the first out-of-the-way happening they are all obliged to borrow. As for those which have adopted the loan system, in preference to the tax system, establishing taxes only to service their loans (today this is virtually the English system), a public debt is inseparable from their existence. Thus to recommend modern States to relinquish the resources that credit offers them would be a pointless exercise. But precisely because public debt creates a new kind of property, whose effects are very different from those of other kinds of property and above all from those of landed property, landed property must be given all the more importance to counterbalance the bad effects of this new kind.

  This is what the English constitution has done effortlessly. The owners of a debt of fifteen billion have less political influence than the proprietors of land whose total income would not pay the interest on that debt.18 This explains why it has not corrupted British public-spiritedness. National representation, founded in large part on landed property, has maintained the integrity of that public spirit—an admirable result of well-managed freedom! The outlooks brought about by state rentiers in France conspired to overthrow the French monarchy, because under that monarchy there was no other center of legal and lasting public opinion. The State’s creditors in England identify with national feeling, because political organization, there taking as its base landed property, as its means of action the people’s rights,19 and for its limits the most important individual rights,20 has been able thereby to render salutary [220] the very features of the case whose natural tendencies seem most dangerous.

  chapter nine

  On the Amount of Landed Property Which Society Has the Right to Insist upon for the Exercise of Political Rights

  Despite my wish to steer clear of details, I must add a few words on the amount of property which should be required.

  A property can be so confined that he who owns it is a proprietor only in appearance. According to the writer I have cited above,21 anyone whose income from land is not sufficient to see him through the year, without having to work for other people, is not fully a proprietor. In terms of the proportion of property he is lacking, he is back among the wage-earning class. Proprietors are masters of his life, for they can refuse him work. Therefore only he who has the necessary income to exist independently of any other party’s will, can exercise political rights. A lesser property condition is illusory, a higher one unjust. Given the necessary minimum, independence is entirely relative, a matter of character and impartiality. The advantages of landed property come more from its nature than its magnitude.

  The economists have had the idea of linking land to political rights in such a way that landowners would have more or fewer votes according to the extent of their holdings. This idea would distort property. It would soon turn it into an oligarchy, which would become narrower every day, because the tendency of large properties is to swallow small ones. Once the minimum land holding carrying citizenship rights is fixed, the big proprietors must not have any legal superiority over the others. The division of powers applies in a way to the government of property owners, as to all forms of government; and just as in all free constitutions an attempt is made to endow the subordinate powers [221] with the ability to resist the encroachments of the superior, and an interest in so doing, so small owners must be given an interest in opposing the aristocracy of the large and the ability so to do. This happens naturally if all proprietors enjoying true independence have equal rights.

  chapter ten

  That Owners Have No Interest in Abusing Power vis-à-vis Nonowners

  Is there a fear that proprietors, as sole holders of political powers, may make these weigh heavily on the deprived class? The nature of property is enough to dispel this fear. Since the birth of commerce,22 proprietors have no longer formed a distinct class, separated from the rest of men by lasting prerogatives. The membership of this class renews itself constantly. Some people leave, others enter it. If property were immobile and always stayed in the same hands, it would be a most improper institution. It would split the human race in two. One part would be everything, the other nothing. Such is not the essence of property, however. In defiance of those who possess it, it tends to a continual changing of hands. The eventuality to be studiously avoided, as I will say presently, is anything which could stop this salutary changing of hands.

  If the law favors the accumulation of property, rendering it inalienable in certain families or classes, the government of proprietors becomes tyrannical. It is the circulation of property which guarantees the justice of the institution. This circulation is in the nature of things. It suffices not to hinder it.

  Moreover, in the present state of civilization, the interest of proprietors is not separate from that of the industrial or wage-earning classes. A very great number of proprietors belong to one or the other of these classes. What hurts them falls on the proprietors themselves.

  For these two reasons proprietors always eschew vexatious laws. If these laws were directed solely at nonproprietors, they would doubly menace [222] their own authors.

  Among certain ancient peoples, in Rome for example, proprietorial government involved abuse of power. This was due to circumstances which have not been remarked upon. Among the ancients the poor were always indebted to the rich, because the latter used only their slaves for work. In modern times it is normally the rich who are indebted to the poor. In the former case the rich demanded from the poor what the latter lacked completely, that is to say, money. That demand, needing violence to be satisfied, and, despite the violence, being mostly unsatisfied, there was a source of hatred and continual opposition between these two classes. In modern societies the rich demand from the poor what the latter can always supply in plenty, their labor, and from this there results much better agreement.

  Even were someone to prove to me that today there are still abuses in proprietorial government, I should not abandon my view. I would undertake to show that these abuses, vestiges of less enlightened centuries, do more harm every day to the proprietors themselves. I include an example in a note.23 I would hope for the rectification of these abuses simply through progress by way of education and experience, and I would see far fewer drawbacks in putting up with them temporarily than in giving nonproprietors political rights, that is to say, power. Once one is convinced that property is indispensable to the prosperity of the social State, one must, as has already been said,24 guarantee it come what may, and its only sufficient means of guarantee is the power of the owners. [223] One has to will the institutions one establishes, and any institution which supports property is on a suicide course when it gives power to nonproprietors.

  It would be a mistake for merchants and manufacturers to fear the government of landowners. It is not the latter who have passed laws disastrous for commerce and industry. Such laws have been caused either by universal ignorance of the first principles of political economy, an ignorance common once to all classes, or by the ferocious violence of the propertyless, or by the private calculations and passing interests of traders. These last above all have been deadly. Monopolies, prohibitions, and privileges, by supplying some particular industry with disproportionate means and destroying the competition, are fatal to production in general. These contrivances are mercantile. Commerce is the child of freedom, yet the trader can enrich himself by the constraints with which he surrounds his competitors. Used as he is to speculating on everything, he is often given to speculating on the laws themselves. Unchecked, he will make laws to favor his business, instead of being content to make sure that his business enjoys the safeguard of the law.

  Adam Smith’s wise commentator has said: “as much as the influence of manufacturers, merchants, and capitalists on legislation expresses itself in narrow outlooks, complicated rules, and oppressive constraints, so the proprietorial dispensation is to be recognized in fair intentions, simple arrangements, and the free and easy flow of all types of circulation.”25

  Precisely in the interest of commerce, it is therefore useful that legislative power be entrusted to landowners, whose activity is less restless and whose calculations are less volatile.

  In all this our hypothesis assumes a society without privileged castes. Castes of this type, being means for conserving and moreover for acquiring property, corrupt it. If owners possess improper powers, they will be enemies of freedom and justice, not as owners, but as privileged persons. If they are not privileged, they will be their most faithful supports. [224]

  chapter eleven

  On Hereditary Privileges Compared to Property

  Hereditary privileges have been compared to property. Property’s enemies have adopted this comparison with alacrity. Privileges having become an odious thing, they have wanted this disfavor to fall on property. The friends of privilege have taken up this comparison for a contrary motive. Property being indispensable, they wanted to justify privileges as provenly necessary. This comparison would be right only if property did not change hands. Only then would it resemble privilege. Then it would also be, however, the most oppressive usurpation, as we said earlier. If property is the constant interest of the majority across the generations, this is because anyone can aspire to it and be assured of getting it through work. Hereditary privileges, however, are only, and can never be other than, the interest of the few. They exclude all who do not belong to the favored caste. They bear not only on the present but on the future and deprive generations unborn. Property stirs emulation; privilege rebuffs and discourages it. Property puts a value on all social relations, all social conditions. Privileges hold themselves aloof. Property communicates and thus improves itself. Privileges surround themselves with defenses and in communication lose their advantages. The more proprietors there are in a country, the more property is respected and the more people are affluent. The more privileged people there are, the more privileges are depreciated and the more people are for all that oppressed. For it is on them that the immunities of the privileged bear down. It is hard, even when we extend our conjectural sphere as far as possible, to imagine a tolerable social condition without property. America shows us a wise and peaceful government without privileged institutions.26 Privileges and society are always at war. The latter wants a rule; the former want exceptions. If property has its drawbacks sometimes, they come from privileges, which, as a result of their diverse combinations, make the acquisition of property often impossible and always difficult for the nonprivileged class. Entails, primogeniture, and all the regulations which make property immobile and troublesome are in the nature of privileges, in fact their emanations.

  [225] In our era a number of men, having abolished hereditary privileges, went on to undermine property. We should not conclude that these things are intimately linked. In all questions there is a point where the mad and the sane split. The latter stop after the overthrow of prejudices which it was important to destroy. The former want to extend the destruction to things worth keeping.27

  When it is suggested that property is a convention of the same kind as hereditary privileges, we need to separate these two ideas again, in the countries where these privileges have been discredited. Nothing harms useful things more than their resting on improper things. The two collapse together. The relationship between privileges and property is like that between superstition and morality. Superstition can give morality a meretricious succor. If superstition loses its force, however, morality itself is undermined.

  Privileges and proscriptions are social errors of the same kind. They likewise take citizens away from the law, either by abitrary punishments or arbitrary favor.

  Montesquieu is often quoted in favor of privileges. But he examines rather than judges the laws. He explains the reasons for them, assigning causes without justifying institutions. He wrote, moreover, under a government mild in practice, though arbitrary by nature. Now, under such a government, privileges can be useful.28 Where rights have disappeared, privileges can be a defense. For all their drawbacks, they are better than the absence of any intermediary power. To do without privileges, a constitution has to be excellent. Under despotism equality becomes a scourge. [226]

  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.

  chapter thirteen

  On the Best Way of Giving Proprietors a Large Political Influence

  The surest and easiest way of giving proprietors great political influence has already been indicated by Aristotle: “To combine your laws and institutions in such a way,” he says, “that the high positions cannot be the object of a calculated interest. Without that, the masses, which, it must be said, are affected little by exclusion from honors, [230] because they like to get on with their own business, will envy honors and profit. All the safeguards are fine, if the magistracy is not a temptation to greed. The poor will prefer lucrative occupations to difficult and unpaid ones. The rich will fill the magistracy, because they will not need payment.”32

  These principles are probably not applicable to all the jobs in the modern State apparatus, because there are some which require wealth beyond any individual holding. Nothing stops their being applied, however, to legislative positions, which increase only slightly the routine expenditures of those in whom they are invested.

  Thus it was in Carthage. All the magistratures appointed by the people discharged their functions without payment. Other jobs were salaried. It is the same in England. I think myself on strong ground when I take as my proof that home of liberty. In this country people often denounce the corruption of the House of Commons. Just compare what this corruption, even in difficult circumstances, has done for the crown with what elsewhere other assemblies, largely paid, have done for a thousand successive tyrants.

  In a free constitution, where nonproprietors have no political rights, it is outrageously contradictory to keep the people out of representation, as if only the rich ought to represent them, and then to make them pay their representatives, as if the latter were poor.

  I do not like strong property requirements. I have given my reason elsewhere.33 Independence is entirely relative. As soon as a man has the necessary minimum, he need only elevate his soul to do without superfluities. It is desirable, however, that legislative positions be in general filled by wealthy men. [231] Now, on declaring them unpaid, we place power in the hands of the leisured class, without refusing a fair chance to all the legitimate exceptions.

  When sizeable payments are attached to legislative positions, these payments become the main objective. Mediocrity, ineptitude, and baseness perceive in these august duties only a miserable speculation of chance, whose success is guaranteed them by silence and servility. The corruption which is the product of ambitious designs is far less deadly than that which results from ignoble calculations. Ambition is compatible with a thousand generous qualities: probity, courage, impartiality, and independence. Avarice is compatible with none of these. If we cannot keep ambitious men out of public positions, at least let us keep the greedy out. This way we will diminish the number of competitors considerably, and those we drive away will be precisely the least worthy.

  Paying the people’s representatives is not to give them an interest in fulfilling their functions well, but in exercising them a long time.

  Two conditions are necessary for representative duties to be unpaid. The first is that they be important. No one would want to take on, unpaid, jobs rendered puerile by their insignificance, or which would be shameful if they ceased being puerile. But, it must be added, under such a constitution, it would be better were there no legislative positions at all.

  The second condition is that reelection be possible indefinitely.34 The impossibility of reelection under a representative government is in all respects a great mistake. [232] Only the chance of uninterrupted reelection offers merit a fitting reward and lodges in the public mind a body of imposing and respected names. Far from any free people should be both those shameful prejudices which demand distinctions of birth giving access to positions and their exclusive exercise, and also those prohibitive laws which prevent the people reelecting those who have not lost its trust. The influence of individuals is not destroyed by jealous institutions. In every era such influence of this sort as exists freely is always indispensable. The influence of individuals diminishes of its own accord with the spread of enlightenment. Let us not meddle therein with envious laws. Individuals naturally lose their supremacy when a larger number are educated to the same level. Let us not dispossess talent by arbitrary exclusions. There are in the assemblies weak men, who cannot be reelected, men who want either the goodwill of government, in order to obtain some compensation, or to make as few enemies as possible, in order to live in peaceful retirement. If you put obstacles in the way of indefinite reelection, you deprive talent and courage of their due and prepare a comfortable and secure shelter for cowardice and ineptitude. You put on the same level the man who has faced every danger and him who has bent his degraded head under tyranny. Reelection favors righteous calculation. Such calculations alone have lasting success, but to obtain it, they need time. Upright and brave men versed in public affairs are not so numerous that one can reject those who have already merited public esteem. New talents will appear too. The people tend to welcome them. Do not impose any constraint on them in this matter. Do not force them at each reelection to choose newcomers, ones still with their fortunes to make in matters of self-esteem and hell-bent on fame. Nothing costs a nation more dearly than the creation of reputations. Look at America. The people’s votes have never stopped supporting the founders of liberty. Look at England. There famous names have become a sort of popular property, in an unbroken series of reelections. [233] Happy those nations which offer like examples and know how to trust durably!

  chapter fourteen

  On the Action of Government on Property

  The reader will have been able to spot that among the considerations we have advanced for upholding the high place property must have in our political life, none has been drawn from the metaphysical nature of property itself. We have treated it only as a social convention.

  We have seen, however, that this viewpoint does not stop us seeing property as a thing society must surround with every protection. Our axiom is always that it would be better not to set up property than to make it a subject of struggle and bitterness, and that this danger can be avoided only by giving it inviolability on the one hand and power on the other.

  Like considerations will guide us in our efforts to determine the limits of political jurisdiction over property.

  Property, to the extent it is a social convention, falls within the scope of political jurisdiction. Society has rights over property it definitely does not have over the freedom, lives, and opinions of its members.

  Property, however, has intimate links with other aspects of human existence, some of which are not subject at all to collective jurisdiction while the remaining ones are so only in a limited way. Society must therefore restrain its jurisdiction over property, because it could not be exercised to its full extent without menacing things which are not subject to it. Political authority must never, as part of its action over property, offend inviolable rights. Society must also restrict its jurisdiction over property so as not to give individuals an interest in eluding the law. Such an interest is morally adverse, firstly in that [234] it entails the habit of hypocrisy and fraud, and secondly in that it requires the encouragement of informing. We dealt with this earlier.35 Since this observation applies, however, to almost all the things government wants to take action on, necessarily it recurs often in our theorizing.

  chapter fifteen

  On Laws Which Favor the Accumulation of Property in the Same Hands

  The property laws can be of two kinds. They can be intended to favor its accumulation and perpetuate it in the same hands, the same families or individual classes. Such is the origin of lands declared inalienable, of the exempting of certain classes from taxation, of entailments, of primogeniture—in sum, of all the feudal or noble customs.

  This legal system, taken in all its extent and the severity it had in the past throughout Europe, takes away from property its true character and greatest advantage. It makes it a privilege. It disinherits the class finding itself without property. It transforms passing chance, which the next moment would have put right, into a permanent injustice. If the country is commercial and industrious, this system of property undermines it, because it forces individuals in commerce or industry to seek refuge or property in a more hospitable country. If the country is purely agricultural, this system brings in the most oppressive despotism. A terrible oligarchy forms. The peasants are reduced to the condition of serfs. The landowners themselves are corrupted by the improprieties which benefit them. They develop a ferocious, almost savage mentality. They need for their perpetuation to banish all enlightenment, to repel all improvement in the poor man’s lot, to oppose the formation of that intermediary class which, bringing together the advantages of education and the absence of prejudices which the privileged condition entails, is among all peoples [235] the depository of just ideas, of useful knowledge, of impartial opinion and the hopes of humanity.

  Today there are few countries where this system continues in its entirety; but almost everywhere we find vestiges of it, not without drawbacks. Such laws, when they are only partial, have, indeed, a new disadvantage. The group forbidden to acquire certain properties is angry at this exclusion, which is anyway always accompanied by other humiliating distinctions, since one abuse never stands alone. The excluded group takes advantage of what it possesses to demand the rights it is denied. It encourages discontent and exaggerated opinions in all nonproprietors. It prepares troubles, struggles, and revolutions to which everybody afterwards falls victim.

  In the countries where these oppressive laws continue in undiminished rigor, it has been claimed, as always in such cases, that the classes they oppress recognize the advantages therein. It has been said that serfdom, a natural consequence of this system of property, was felicitous for the peasants and examples were given. Nobles one could suspect of hypocrisy and who should at least be accused of lack of foresight, have offered their vassals freedom. This is to say that they proposed to men brutalized by ignorance, without energy or capability or ideas, that they leave their fields and cabins, to go freely with their infirm parents and children of tender years, in search of a subsistence they had no means of procuring. These vassals preferred their chains, from which it was concluded that serfdom was agreeable. What, however, does such experience show? What we knew, that for men to be given freedom, they must not have been degraded to a subhuman condition by slavery. Then, freedom is doubtless only an illusory and deadly gift, just as the daylight becomes sorrowful for him whose view is enfeebled by the shadows of a dungeon. This truth holds for all types of servitude. Men who have never known freedom’s advantages may well enthusiastically submit to the yoke: [236] reject their sheepish and deceptive witness. They have no right to make depositions in so holy a cause. As to freedom, listen to those ennobled by its blessings. Only they should be heard, only they consulted.36

  I would add that all governments today are working, commendably, to eliminate the last traces of this barbarous legislation. Alexander I is one prince in particular who seems to have brought to the throne the love of humanity and justice and who puts his renown not to driving his people back into barbarism but to preparing them by instruction for freedom, encouraging on his vast lands the freeing of the serfs and the dissemination of landownership.37

  The thing about the inalienability of goods is something common to everything human. Its intention was reasonable in the era which gave it birth; but the institution has outlived its usefulness. When there was no public justice and force was the sole guarantee against robbery, this force being found only in sizeable properties, which provided numerous vassals ready to defend their master, the inalienability of property was a means of security. Today, when social conditions are quite different, this inalienability is an evil for agriculture and pointless to boot. The owner of very large properties inevitably neglects a large proportion of his property. As Smith says in The Wealth of Nations, Book III, Ch. 2, to convince oneself of this, one need only compare big estates which have stayed in the same family continuously since the days of feudal anarchy, with the small holdings surrounding them. What is true of States is true of properties. Excessive smallness deprives them of the most efficient means of improvement. Excessive size [237] makes them liable to careless management, haste, and negligence.38

  He who wants to sell proves he lacks the means or motivation for improvement. He who wants to buy proves he has will and means. Entailments and all types of inalienability force the former to keep that which is a burden on him and prevent the latter acquiring what would be advantageous to him. To society this is a double loss, since amelioration of property constitutes national wealth.

  We must observe, in finishing this section, that the order of ideas has forced us to invert the facts. It was not at all by way of laws forbidding the wider distribution of property that the feudal oligarchy was established, but by conquest. It was then that this oligarchy, to perpetuate itself, had recourse to these prohibitive laws. Thus it would be wrong to fear a like result from proprietorial government. This government, when it rests on the principles established above,39 will stay true to them because proprietors have no interest in replacing the legitimate enjoyment they are assured of by property they know they can guard, if they so choose, by impediments which would add nothing to their enjoyment and offend their wishes. Proprietorial government has nowhere produced a feudal one; rather, feudal government has corrupted proprietorial government.

  chapter sixteen

  On Laws Which Enforce the Wider Spreading of Property

  The laws can have an opposite tendency. They can purpose the widest possible spread of ownership. Such is the avowed motive of the agrarian laws, of the dividing up of lands, of the ban on [238] wills, and of that host of regulations aimed at preventing people managing to make light of these laws.

  This activity of government, above all that which bears on the right to make wills—for the agrarian laws are sufficiently discredited—seems at first more legitimate and in keeping with egalitarian principles than the contrary action. In fact, it is superfluous. It wants to force what would happen naturally. Property tends to split up. If the government leaves it to itself, it will no sooner be acquired than you will see it dispersed. The proof of this is the proliferating laws necessary under all aristocratic governments to keep it in the same families. The accumulation of property is always a consequence of institutions.

  It follows that the simplest and surest means of encouraging the widening ownership of property would be to abolish all the laws which oppose it.

  Since governments, however, never content themselves with negative actions, they have usually gone further. They have not only abrogated vicious institutions, but combated the effects of the habits, recollections, and prejudices which might have survived these institutions with positive regulations.

  What has happened is what naturally must happen when government arbitrarily restrains men’s freedom. The laws on this matter have been evaded. Further laws were needed to curb these infractions. From this followed innumerable obstacles to the transfer, disposal, and transmission of property.

  These restrictions having entailed further inconveniences, people accused each other of having violated them. Greed armed itself with what was intended to check it.

  During our Revolution a host of circumstantial safeguards were built up into eternal principles. Legislators who imagined they had the deepest outlooks and widest perspectives have always fixed their gaze on the possibility of a small refractory minority. To get at this they have borne down on all the French. Blind legislators, to make laws not for their fellow citizens but against their enemies! Insane legislators, under whose rule the law was no longer the shelter of all but an offensive arm against the few!

  Freedom is constantly attacked by reasoning applicable only to constraint. Thus in our time the free transmission of property has been attacked with arguments which were valid only against the restrictions put on such transmission [239] by the laws of old. The right to make wills and primogeniture have been confused, when the latter is on the contrary an encroachment on and the destruction of the right to make wills.

  On this question, I will not stop to refute other sophisms drawn from an obscure and abstract metaphysics. People have argued that death entails annihilation, holding it absurd to let a man dispose of goods which were no longer his and to lend a fictitious existence to his will when he no longer existed. These arguments are fundamentally unsound. They could be applied to all men’s transactions; for if their intentions must cease to have effect once their lives are ended, long-term debts, leases, and all operations which have to be completed only by some fixed, far-off date would end by law with their deaths.

  The question of wills, it seems to me, furnishes a striking example of the good which the absence of government intervention in a matter could sometimes do, without pain or effort, whenever this good is obtained only in an imperfect and artificial way, one hampered by two contradictory laws.

  Legislators in several free societies, on the one hand seeing the dispersal of property as favorable to freedom and on the other paternal power as necessary to morality, have consequently made laws to impede the accumulation of property and have tried out a thousand institutions in support of paternal power. Now, these laws and institutions have been at loggerheads and their twin purposes have failed. Properties have not undergone the dispersal the law intended because fathers, jealous of their disputed rights, have used every deception which might promote either their own individual interests or that tendency, natural to man, to elude the regulations which hurt him. This has not in the least stopped paternal power weakening. The sons, jealously guarding the equal rights the law gave them, regarded the fathers’ attempts to strip them of part of the enjoyment of these as wicked contrivances.

  If the legislator had abstained from all such commands in this matter, paternal power would have found a solid basis in the right to make wills. Fatherly fair play, which, whatever is said about it, is overwhelmingly the norm, would have given the dispersal of property a far more secure guarantee than is to be found in all the precautionary measures of positive law. Governments, however, [240] when they think both that it is their duty and that it serves their renown to have a useful purpose in view for all things, make partial laws at cross-purposes, which cancel each other out and create only harassment.

  Restrictions on the free disposition of properties after their owners’ deaths have the drawback we have called attention to in so many other laws, that of inviting fraud, of existing only to be eluded, of entailing inquisition, suspicion, and informing. They have the further drawback, however, that the vices they lead to reach right into families. It is not solely the citizens but the parents who are at war with one another. Not just social relations but nature itself is poisoned. Parents are made no less unjust but are also in bad faith. Children whose ingratitude is authorized think themselves likewise authorized to a sort of inspection of their parents’ actions. The domestic sanctuary, which ought to be a refuge of calm and of peaceful affections, becomes the shameful site of domestic struggle between a legally supported filial independence and the resentment of fathers, who punish this surveillance as they strive to elude the laws.

  The legitimate jurisdiction of government over the transmission of property is extremely limited. It should guarantee the latter and leave it alone, establishing some procedures for determining owners’ real wishes, without placing restrictions or impediments on those wishes.

  Tolerate partial injustices, which are inevitable among men, but much less frequent than you like to believe in order to give yourself pretexts for perpetual interference. If you want to remedy them, you will be throwing yourself into an endless course of action, upsetting yourself pointlessly over it; and without managing to block individual injustices, you will succeed only in becoming an unjust creature yourself.

  Every time that an abuse exists, the rest of the social institutions encourage it. Unable to destroy it, they make room for it and set themselves up, so to speak, around it. Formerly, the right to make wills felt the effects of hereditary privileges, but only because it was sacrificed to these.

  When institutions have done harm, and this goes on after the institutions are destroyed, it is better to put up with the inconvenience caused by the traces of these defective institutions, than to hasten to remedy this with further institutions which might also have unforeseen drawbacks.

  The same considerations which inspired the restrictions on [241] the free transmission of property have led governments to progressive taxation, compulsory borrowings, and taxes directed solely against the wealthy. These measures have been so fully rebuked by experience, however, that it is almost superfluous to demonstrate their futility and danger. They are in direct opposition to the present trends in society. They condemn wealth to lying. They put it at loggerheads with our institutions. Now, what could be more pernicious and absurd than stirring up war between governmental power and wealth, the most instantly disposable power, the one most serving of every interest, and therefore much more real and genuinely obeyed! Government is a threat, wealth a reward. You get away from government by deceiving it. To gain wealth’s blessings, you have to serve it. The latter must prevail.

  Furthermore, it is a mistake to imagine that the poor gain what is taken thus from the rich. He who has not will always depend, whatever we do, on him who has. If you upset the rich man, he will concentrate more on his pleasures, his speculation, his fantasies. As far as possible he will withdraw his capital from circulation, and the poor man will feel the effects of this.

  CONSTANT’S NOTES

  [1. ][The lansquenets were German mercenary footsoldiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Constant explicitly says the writers in question are cowards and implicitly that they are low-born and mercenary. Translator’s note]

  [2. ]See on this subject the old but still useful article by Pierre Larousse in the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, s.v. Propriété, Section II: Légitimité du droit de propriété. This article has the merit of bringing out Constant’s originality and locating him both among those who, like him, see property as a social institution (Pascal, Domat, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Tronchet, Robespierre) and specifically against those who represent property as “anterior to society,” such as Mercier de la Rivière, Destutt de Tracy, and Cousin. Locke’s name should be added to the latter list.

  [3. ]Constant is thinking in the first place of Godwin, in the last book of whose Enquiry Concerning Political Justice defects in the system of property are analyzed. One can also number among philosophers hostile to property in the eighteenth century Morelly and his Code de la nature, then Linguet, and in some respects Mably.

  [4. ]Honoré-Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, De la législation ou principes des lois, Livre I, Ch. 3 De l’établissement de la propriété, where Mably preaches a certain egalitarianism, and Ch. 4 Des obstacles insurmontables qui s’opposent au rétablissement de l’égalité détruite, where he gives up the idea of imposing social equality. The references are to the Oeuvres complètes de l’Abbé de Mably, Lyon, J.-B. Delamollière, 1792, t. IX.

  [5. ]The same idea is seen in Madame de Staël, Des circonstances actuelles, éd. cit., p. 173: “Now, there are two elemental interests, so to speak, which split the world: the need to acquire and the need to conserve.”

  [6. ]Machiavelli, Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live, Ch. V, Oeuvres complètes, op. cit., pp. 392–394.

  [7. ]Book XVI, On Political Power in the Ancient World.

  [8. ]See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book X.

  [9. ][The helots were prisoners of war of Sparta, subsequently enslaved. The city of Mycenae, like Sparta situated in Laconia, was conquered by the Spartans and its inhabitants enslaved. Translator’s note]

  [10. ]A reference to the great peasant war which in 1524 and 1525 ravaged not only Swabia but the whole of what is now southern Germany, including even Alsace.

  [11. ]See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book X.

  [12. ]See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book X.

  [13. ]See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book X.

  [14. ]Aristotle, La politique, VI, 4, a new translation with an introduction, notes, and index by J. Tricot, Paris, J. Vrin, 1962, t. II, pp. 441–442.

  [15. ]See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book X.

  [16. ]See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book X.

  [17. ]See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book X.

  [18. ]See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book X.

  [19. ]See Constant’s Note I at the end of Book X.

  [20. ]See Constant’s Note J at the end of Book X.

  [21. ]Hofmann was able to find neither author nor definition.

  [22. ]See Constant’s Note K at the end of Book X.

  [23. ]See Constant’s Note L at the end of Book X.

  [24. ]In Ch. 3 and 4 of this same Book X.

  [25. ]See Constant’s Note M at the end of Book X.

  [26. ][It had one huge such institution: slavery. Translator’s note]

  [27. ]A very similar argument is found in Mme. de Staël (éd. cit., p. 46): “There is a point in all debate where the foolish and the wise separate. It is when destructive action is over and the matter in hand is to form a link which reunites what the emptiness of some prejudice or other has disunited.” Constant will return to this theme in Ch. 4 and 5 of Book XVIII, in relation to revolutions.

  [28. ]See Constant’s Note N at the end of Book X.

  [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.

  [32. ]Aristotle, La politique, V, 8, éd. cit., t. II, p. 382.

  [33. ]In Ch. 9 of this same Book X.

  [34. ]We can compare Constant’s arguments on the advantages of reelection with Madame de Staël’s in Des circonstances actuelles, éd. cit., pp. 187–190.

  [35. ]In Book IV, Ch. 2, The idea which usually develops about the effects which the proliferation of the laws has and the falsity of that idea.

  [36. ]For once, Constant agrees with Rousseau, who declared in his Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes: “It is not, therefore, by the degradation of enslaved peoples that the natural disposition of man for or against servitude should be judged, but by the huge efforts made by all free peoples to guarantee themselves against oppression . . . I feel that it is not for slaves to reason on freedom.” Oeuvres complètes, éd. cit., t. III, pp. 181–182.

  [37. ]On the reform projects of Alexander I, see the letter from F.-C. de La Harpe to the Emperor on 16 October 1801, in Correspondance de Frédéric-César de La Harpe et Alexandre Ier, published by Jean-Charles Biaudet and Françoise Nicod, t. I, 1785–1802, Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1978, pp. 316–330.

  [38. ]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, p. 421. “There are still today, in each of the United Kingdoms, these great estates which have remained, without interruption, in the same family, since the time of feudal anarchy. One only has to compare the present state of these domains with the possessions of neighboring small proprietors, to judge, without other argument, how little such extensive holdings are favorable to progressive cultivation.”

  [39. ]In Ch. 14 of this same Book X, On the Action of Government on Property.

  [A. [Refers to page 172.]]See above all Xenophon and Aristophanes’ comedies.

  [B. [Refers to page 175.]]Cato the Elder, on agriculture: “Pius questus stabilissimus, minimeque invidiosus, minimeque male cogitantes qui in eo studio occupanti sunt.”40

  [[242] C. [Refers to page 176.]]See Smith, Richesse des nations, Livre I, Ch. 10.41

  [D. [Refers to page 176.]]Montesquieu remarks in Esprit des lois, XX, 2, that “if commerce unites nations, it does not similarly unite individuals”; hence it happens that nations, being united, are confused, that is to say that there is no more patriotism, and that individuals, not being united, there is no longer anything but traders, that is to say, there are no longer any fellow citizens.

  [E. [Refers to page 180.]]Smith, Livre V, Ch. 3.42

  [F. [Refers to page 180.]]I am speaking here of modern states only. The Roman Republic more than once broke away from the rules of justice with respect to its creditors.43 The ancients, however, did not have the same ideas as we either on income or public credit.

  [G. [Refers to page 181.]]Administration des finances, Tome II, pp. 378–379.44

  [[243] H. [Refers to page 181.]]See A brief examination into the increase of the revenue, commerce and navigation of Great Britain by M. Beeke.45

  [I. [Refers to page 181.]]Popular election.

  [J. [Refers to page 181.]]Freedom of the press, habeas corpus, juries, freedom of conscience.

  [K. [Refers to page 183.]]Smith, Wealth of Nations, III.4.46

  [L. [Refers to page 184.]]The laws of England forbade any individual without property to move from one parish to another, without the latter’s consent, from fear that this individual, having no means of support, might become a charge on his new fellow citizens. These laws seem to the advantage of owners, against the nonowner seeking refuge. They are a clear attack, however, on individual freedom. He who cannot earn his living by the kind of work for which he is fitted, in the parish where he lives, is kept out of the one where his work could feed him easily. What is the result of this injustice? [244] Often a parish is oversupplied with labor while another is short of it. Then the daily rate in the latter goes up excessively. The owner who has driven away the hardworking man, whose upkeep he feared might one day be charged to him, therefore now pays in a dearer price for his iniquitous calculation. It is thus that all such abuses fall on those they seem to favor.

  [M. [Refers to page 184.]]Garnier. Notes on translating Smith.47

  [N. [Refers to page 186.]]This is truly the point of view from which Montesquieu considered privileges. “Since despotism,” he says, “causes frightful evils to the natural order, the very evil which limits it is a good.” Esprit des lois, Livre II, Ch. 4.

  [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

  [B. [Refers to page 175.]]Cato the Elder, on agriculture: “Pius questus stabilissimus, minimeque invidiosus, minimeque male cogitantes qui in eo studio occupanti sunt.”40

  [[242] C. [Refers to page 176.]]See Smith, Richesse des nations, Livre I, Ch. 10.41

  [E. [Refers to page 180.]]Smith, Livre V, Ch. 3.42

  [F. [Refers to page 180.]]I am speaking here of modern states only. The Roman Republic more than once broke away from the rules of justice with respect to its creditors.43 The ancients, however, did not have the same ideas as we either on income or public credit.

  [G. [Refers to page 181.]]Administration des finances, Tome II, pp. 378–379.44

  [[243] H. [Refers to page 181.]]See A brief examination into the increase of the revenue, commerce and navigation of Great Britain by M. Beeke.45

  [K. [Refers to page 183.]]Smith, Wealth of Nations, III.4.46

  [M. [Refers to page 184.]]Garnier. Notes on translating Smith.47

  [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

  [40]This quotation from Cato the Elder has clearly been borrowed from Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 73, and not from the original, which says: “Ut ex agricolis et viri fortissimi et milites strenuissimi gignuntur, maximeque pius questus stabilissimusque consequitur minimeque invidiosus, minimeque male coginantes sunt qui in eo studio occupati sunt.”—“But it is the peasants who produce the strongest men and the bravest soldiers. It is to them the most just gains accrue, as well as the most reliable and least subject to envy. Those absorbed by these concerns are the least evil minded.” Cato, De l’agriculture, edited, confirmed, and translated by Raoul Goujard, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1975, p. 9. [Constant here takes from Adam Smith, unacknowledged, a supposed quotation from Cato the Elder. Hofmann corrects the Latin quotation wrongly reproduced by Smith. Translator’s note]

  [41]Constant quotes from The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Ch. 10 (French translation from the English, op. cit., t. I, p. 262). Smith here opines that apart from fine arts and the high professions, no activities require such a range of knowledge and experience as agriculture.

  [42]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 509–510. It may be useful to relate the English author’s argument here: “A creditor of the state has unquestionably a general interest in the prosperity of a country’s agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce, and therefore in the various lands being well maintained and the capital advantageously managed. If one of these things were lacking or were to fail generally, the product of the various taxes would no longer be sufficient to pay him the annuity or the return which is owed him. But a state creditor, considered simply as such, has no interest in such and such a piece of land being in good shape or such and such a piece of capital being well run. As a state creditor he is not familiar with any piece of land or capital; he has none under inspection, none he can busy himself with. There is not one particular one that cannot be totally wiped out without for the most part his even suspecting or at least without his being directly affected.”

  [43]Constant had left a blank in which to indicate the precise place in De l’esprit des lois where Montesquieu explains how the Romans swindled the financiers by devaluing the currency during the Second Punic War. [Livre XXII, Ch. 11. Translator’s note]

  [44]Jacques Necker, De l’administration des finances de la France, s.l., 1784, t. II, pp. 378–379: “The growth of public debt in like manner has distorted the social outlook, by multiplying in some countries the number of people with an interest contrary to the general interest. Rentiers desire, above all else, the wealth of the royal treasury; and since the extension of taxation is the most fertile source of this, the contributors (and above all the people, who are the biggest element in this, and have no money to lend) find today within the very bosom of the State, an adversarial faction whose credit and influence grow from day to day.”

  [45]Constant is in error here. The book he means, A brief examination into the increase of the revenue, commerce, and navigation of Great Britain, from 1792–1799, Dublin, Graisberry and Campbell, 1799, is not by Beeke but by George Rose.

  [46]Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, pp. 439–489; Ch. 4 of Book III is called How the commerce of the towns contributed to the improvement of the country.

  [47]Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur, in Adam Smith, op. cit., t. V, p. 309. Note XXXII, called Des pouvoirs législatifs et judiciaires, et de leur rapport avec la propriété.

  [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.

• Back to Top

  11: BOOK XVIII: On the Duties of Individuals to Political Authority - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

  Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Chapter: BOOK XVIII: On the Duties of Individuals to Political Authority

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/861/109135 on 2007-12-05

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  BOOK XVIII

  On the Duties of Individuals to Political Authority

  • Ch. 1. Difficulties with regard to the question of resistance. 397
  • Ch. 2. On obedience to the law. 398
  • Ch. 3. On revolutions. 405
  • Ch. 4. On the duties of enlightened men during revolutions. 407
  • Ch. 5. Continuation of the same subject. 413
  • Ch. 6. On the duties of enlightened men after violent revolutions. 419

  chapter one

  Difficulties with Regard to the Question of Resistance

  Political authority not being limitless, it is clear that the duties of individuals toward it are not unlimited. These duties diminish in proportion to the government’s encroachments on aspects of individual life outside its jurisdiction. When these encroachments are taken to the limit, it is impossible for resistance not to result.

  Government is like taxation. Each person agrees to sacrifice a portion of his wealth in order to finance public expenditure, whose purpose is to assure him the peaceful enjoyment of what he retains; but if the state demanded from each person all his wealth, the guarantee it offered him would be illusory, since there would no longer be anything to which it could apply. Likewise each person agrees to sacrifice a part of his freedom in order to assure the remainder; but if the government invaded all his freedom, the sacrifice would be purposeless.

  We know all the dangers of the only too well-known question of resistance. We know to what abuses and crimes it opens the way. No one today can utter the word revolution without an unease bordering on remorse. Nevertheless, whatever line one takes on this question of resistance, it will always present a lot of difficulties.

  In countries where authority is divided, if the holders of that authority are in dispute, one has to choose between them, and resistance against one lot or the other is forced on us. The English constitution requires both chambers and the king to cooperate in the establishment of taxes and the making of laws. If the king wished [476] to raise taxes in opposition to one of the two chambers, to obey the king would be to resist the lawful authority of Parliament. If one or both chambers wanted to pass a law independently of the royal sanction, to obey them would be to resist the lawful authority of the crown.

  Even in those countries where power is concentrated in a single person, however, the question of resistance is less simple than it appears. It certainly rests with each citizen not to resist the government. It does not rest with him, however, to prevent others from resisting and overthrowing it. Now, if this government is overthrown, should one immediately rally around the new government? This principle would sanction every violent outrage. It would become a fertile source of the very ills one is seemingly striving to avoid, since it would give audacity the continual attraction of recompense, by legitimating initial success. Movements which overthrow usurping governments are acts of resistance, just as much as those which overthrow established ones. The overthrow of the Committee of Public Safety was quite simply an act of resistance. Should we have stayed submissive forever to the Committee of Public Safety? If we say all power comes from God, then Cartouche was one such power and Robespierre another. But the problem would still not be resolved. Former government can, after its fall, still have resources, supporters, and hopes. At what time, by what indication, according to what calculation, moral or numerical, does the duty of individuals, founded on divine right or on such other basis as one may choose to give it, get transferred from their former to their new masters? Finally, could one seriously make out the case that resistance is always illegitimate? Can one condemn it under Nero, Vitellius, or Caracalla? One may think one is getting out of the difficulty by way of abstract, general maxims, which seem to oust personal judgment. But the complexities and nuances of circumstance render these maxims useless and sterile in application.

  chapter two

  On Obedience to the Law

  Resistance can be of two kinds, negative disobedience or disobedience to the law, positive resistance or active opposition to government.

  Let us deal first with negative resistance, a less complicated question [477] and less dangerous to examine than that of positive resistance. It has nevertheless its own particular difficulty.

  The authority of government can be limited in a precise way, because law can limit it. The limitation is external. It is easy to see if it is transgressed. It is not the same with the jurisdiction of the law, however. The law being the only written rule which can exist, it is much less easy to say what constitutes a transgression in it.

  Pascal,1 Chancellor Bacon,2 and many others like them have cut short the discussion, by positing that in principle one must obey the law without questioning because it is the law. To refute this assertion, we need only identify its strict meaning.

  Is the claim that the name “law” always suffices to enforce obedience? If a number of men or even one man with no official function call the expression of their individual wills the law, are the other individuals in society obliged to conform to this? An affirmative answer is absurd, but a negative one implies that the title “law” does not impose a duty to obey and that this duty supposes an anterior identification of the source from which that law derives.

  Is the claim that questioning is permitted, when it is a matter of establishing that what is presented to us as law derives from a legitimate authority; [478] but that this last point being cleared up, examination has no further place regarding the actual content of the law?

  In the first place, if we wish always to allow for the inevitable abuse of all the faculties man has been granted, the examination of the legitimacy of legislative authority will open the way to disturbances just as great as examination of the law itself.

  Secondly, an authority is legitimate only in virtue of the function given to it. A municipality and a police court magistrate are legitimate authorities. They would cease to be such, nevertheless, if they assumed the right to make laws. In all systems, therefore, individuals must be granted the use of their intelligence, whatever the system, not only for the understanding of the characters of the authorities but for judging their actions. This means the content of law must be examined, along with its sources.

  We see therefore that Pascal’s proposition is illusory, once we do not want it to lead to absurdity.

  Man has the right to use his learning, for it is the only instrument of understanding he has, to evaluate the source of a law. If you refuse him this, you lay yourself open to his stabbing you at the will of the first brigand calling himself a lawmaker.

  Moreover, man possesses the right to examine the content of a law, since it is only in terms of the content that he can determine the legitimacy of its source. If you challenge his right here, you allow the most subaltern of authorities endless and disorderly encroachments on all existing authority.

  Note that the very people who declare implicit obedience to the laws to be strictly binding always make an exception to the rule of what touches them. Pascal excepted religion. He absolutely did not bow to civil authority in religious matters; and he braved persecution for his disobedience in this respect.

  [479] Driven by the determination not to recognize any natural law, Bentham necessarily had to maintain that law alone created offenses, that any action prohibited by law became a crime;3 and in this way pigheadedness kept this writer, who, it must be added, stands out on every page against the mistakes and encroachments of government, back in the ranks of the apologists of the most absolute and servile obedience.

  Fortunately, he refutes himself in his definition of offenses. “An offense,” he says, “is an act from which ill results.”4 But does the law which forbids an action from which no ill results create an offense? Yes, he replies, for in attaching a penalty to that action, it ensures that an ill results.5 On this reckoning, the law can attach a penalty to my saving my father’s life, to my not killing him. Would this suffice to make filial devotion a crime, and parricide an obligation? And this example, horrible though it be, is not an empty speculation. Have we not seen the condemnation, in the name of the law, in a thousand political revolutions, of fathers for having saved their children, of children for having succored their father?

  Bentham refutes himself much better, when he speaks of imaginary offenses.6 If the law created offenses, no offense created by the law would be imaginary. Anything the law had declared criminal would be such.

  The English author makes use of a comparison very apt for clarifying the question. Certain actions innocent in themselves, he says, are ranked among the offenses, just as among certain peoples healthy foods are treated as poisons or unclean things.7 Does it not follow that, just as the mistake of these peoples does not turn into poison the healthy food they envisage as such, the law’s mistake does not convert into offenses the innocent actions [480] it declares guilty? It endlessly happens that when we are talking abstractly about law, we assume it is what it ought to be. When we are practically concerned with what it is, we find it to be quite other. Hence the endless contradictions in theories and terms.

  The word “law” is as vague as the word “nature.” To abuse the latter is to overthrow society. To abuse the former is to tyrannize individuals. If we have to choose between the two, at least the word “nature” evokes an idea virtually the same for all men. The word “law” can be applied to entirely opposite ideas.

  When our orders have included murder, informing, and spying, these orders have not been in the name of nature. Everyone would feel that there was contradiction in the terms; these have been demanded of us in the name of the law, so there was no longer a contradiction.

  To wish to leave nature entirely out of account in a legislative system is to take away from the laws simultaneously their sanction, their basis, and their limit. Bentham even goes so far as to say that any action, however neutral, being liable to prohibition by law, then we must owe to the law the freedom to sit down or stand upright, to enter or leave, to eat or not eat, because the law could forbid us these.8 We owe this freedom to the law, just as the vizier who gave thanks every day to his highness that his head was still on his shoulders was indebted to the sultan for not having been beheaded.9 But any law which pronounced on these unimportant actions would have pronounced illegitimately; it would not have been a law.

  [481] Obedience to the law is without doubt a duty; but this duty is not absolute, but relative. It rests on the supposition that the law flows from its natural source and is confined within legitimate limits. This duty does not cease absolutely when the law deviates from this rule only in a few respects. Public peace is worthy of many sacrifices. We would be morally blameworthy if through too inflexible an attachment to our rights, we resisted all the laws which seemed to us to threaten them. No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being, to these laws which not only restrain our legitimate freedoms and stand in the way of actions they have no right to forbid, but require from us ones contrary to the eternal principles of justice and pity, ones man cannot adhere to without being false to his nature.

  The political theorist we have refuted above himself agrees with this truth.10 If the law, he says, is not what it ought to be, should it be obeyed or violated? Should we stay neutral between the law which requires evil and morality which forbids it? We have to see whether the probable ills of obedience are less than the probable ills of disobedience. He recognizes in this passage the rights of individual judgment he denies elsewhere.

  The doctrine of boundless obedience to the law has perhaps been the cause of more evil than all the other errors which have led men astray. The most execrable passions have dug in behind this convention, on the surface impassive and impartial, and indulged in every excess. Do you want to bring together under a single viewpoint the consequences of your doctrine of blind and implicit obedience to the law? Remember that the Roman emperors made laws, that Louis XI made laws, that Richard III made laws, that the Committee of Public Safety made laws! There exists no natural sentiment that a law has not forbidden, no duty whose fulfillment a law has not prohibited, no virtue a law has not proscribed, no affection a law has not punished, no treason a law has not remunerated, no heinous crime a law has not ordered. It is therefore necessary to put [482] limits on this alleged duty of obedience. It is necessary to identify those characteristics which mean that a law is not a law.

  Retrospective operation is the first of these. Men have consented to the fetters of law only in order to attach to their actions definite consequences, according to which they might direct and choose the line of behavior they wished to follow. Retroactivity robs them of this benefit. It violates the terms of social agreement. It conceals the price of the sacrifice it has impose