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BOOK XVII: On the True Principles of Freedom - 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.


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].