The Online Library of Liberty

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• Introduction to the Liberty Fund Edition
• Editor’s Note
• Preface
• Part 1: Representative Institutions In England, France, and Spain, From the Fifth to the Eleventh Century
• Lecture I
• Lecture 2
• Lecture 3
• Lecture 4
• Lecture 5
• Lecture 6
• Lecture 7
• Lecture 8
• Lecture 9
• Lecture 10
• Lecture 11
• Lecture 12
• Lecture 13
• Lecture 14
• Lecture 15
• Lecture 16
• Lecture 17
• Lecture 18
• Lecture 19
• Lecture 20
• Lecture 21
• Lecture 22
• Lecture 23
• Lecture 24
• Lecture 25
• Lecture 26
• Part 2: Essays of Representative Government In England, From the Conquest Till the Reign of the Tudors
• Lecture 1
• Lecture 2
• Lecture 3
• Lecture 4
• Lecture 5
• Lecture 6
• Lecture 7
• Lecture 8
• Lecture 9
• Lecture 10
• Lecture 11
• Lecture 12
• Lecture 13
• Lecture 14
• Lecture 15
• Lecture 16
• Lecture 17
• Lecture 18
• Lecture 19
• Lecture 20
• Lecture 21
• Lecture 22
• Lecture 23
• Lecture 24
• Lecture 25

EDITOR’S NOTE

This edition reproduces the original English translation of François Guizot’s History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe by Andrew R. Scoble (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1861). Guizot gave these lectures on the history of representative government in Paris in 1820–1822. They were published in French three decades later as Histoire des origines du gouvernement représentatif en Europe (Paris, Didier, 1851, 2 vols.). Andrew Scoble’s translation is reprinted here without any substantive changes. The only important change is the one operated in the title that was incorrectly printed in the original edition (“History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe” instead of “History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe”). In addition to being accurate, Scoble’s translation has the unique advantage of being an elegant nineteenth-century English version of a well-written nineteenth-century French text.

As editor, I was responsible for writing the introduction and preparing a set of explanatory notes that shed light on Guizot’s theoretical and historical background. The footnotes that appeared in the original English translation are marked with symbols and are reprinted here unchanged. The editor’s footnotes (marked with numbers) are the explanatory notes mentioned above, plus translations of the Latin phrases used by Guizot in his text. The translations were made by Christine Clarkson, to whom I would like to extend special thanks. Finally, we have created a new index for this Liberty Fund edition.

Liberty Fund welcomed with enthusiasm my proposal and was extremely supportive of the entire project. Special thanks to the Liberty Fund staff for their dedicated work and genuine commitment to retrieving from oblivion this classic work of Guizot. Liberty Fund also sponsored a colloquium on Guizot’s political thought in which we used excerpts of this important book.

We hope that this new edition of Guizot’s History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe, that has been out of print for more than a century, will be an opportunity for many readers to rediscover a major thinker and historian whose writings are essential to understanding the evolution of liberal democracy.