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chapter two: On Freedom of Thought - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

Edition used:

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

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


chapter 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.

[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.

[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

[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

[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.”