The exceptionalism of French liberalism is one of the themes of this volume. When compared with the Anglo-American variety,
French liberalism is generally regarded as a weak and inconsistent, if not contradictory, phenomenon. Some time ago, Guido
de Ruggiero described it as a ‘chaotic mixture’.
1 More recently, it has become customary to speak of the ‘illiberalism’ of at least one of its main strands.
2 It is said that French liberals were too often suspicious of individualism and diversity, and tempted, rather, by uniformity
and authoritarianism. As Lucien Jaume has argued, they tended to subscribe to a liberalism
by the state and not
against the state.
3 Pierre Rosanvallon has spoken of a French ‘cult of unity’ that could engender something as paradoxical as ‘liberal Jacobinism’.
4These singularities of French liberalism are normally blamed on the legacy of monarchical absolutism. France, it is often
noted, evolved in a very different way from England.
5 In France, the monarchy allied itself with the bourgeoisie against the nobility, causing the state to be perceived as the
liberator and protector of the people. The state was seen as the organ through which their liberties could be obtained. As
Alexis de Tocqueville explained, the French Revolution only reinforced and accentuated the statist and centralizing trends
that existed in France well before that. A history of political absolutism is responsible for what Rosanvallon calls ‘the
power of illiberal political culture’
6 in France.
I do not wish to refute this argument, which is compelling in many ways. Rather, I would like to add to it by calling attention
to a topic relatively neglected in recent scholarship, but regarded as crucial at the time of the emergence of liberalism,
and that is the legacy of France’s illiberal religious culture. I will focus on a small but vocal group of French liberals who were convinced that a healthy liberal polity required
the support of a liberal religion. They believed that France’s political development had been derailed by the failure of Protestantism
to take hold in their country. In order to put France back on the right political track, it needed to undergo a Protestant
Reformation. They enthusiastically advocated Unitarianism as the form of Christianity most suitable to a modern and liberal
political regime.
That French liberals advocated any kind of religion at all might come as a surprise. An influential vein of present scholarship
holds that liberalism is a fundamentally irreligious and even anti-religious doctrine. In his
An Intellectual History of Liberalism, the French scholar Pierre Manent argues that liberalism was forged ‘in a bitter fight against Christianity’.
7 Liberalism, he contends, derives from the decision taken by early modern Europeans to free themselves from the intellectual
and spiritual influence of Christianity. A defining feature of liberalism is that it tried to ‘protect the polity’ from the
Christian religion.
8 However, as this chapter will show, Manent’s argument cannot account for the interconnected spiritual and political aspirations
found in so many liberal thinkers.
The perspective of Marcel Gauchet, another French theorist influential in the recent revival of interest in liberalism, is
equally misleading. Gauchet sees the history of the West as one of progressive ‘disenchantment’ – or what he refers to as
the ‘exiting’ from religion. To be modern, Gauchet writes, is to live in a ‘postreligious society’.
9 This argument is unhelpful when it comes to understanding the French liberals discussed in this chapter, all of whom felt
themselves to be modern, liberal and religious.
Nineteenth-century French liberals certainly did not feel that they were living in a disenchanted world, or in a post-religious
society. There is a reason for this: a strong religious revival – or, rather, a series of religious revivals – took place
during their lifetimes. The testimony of the liberal
economist J.-C.-L. Sismondi (1773–1842) is telling. To Sismondi, the nineteenth century was an ‘eminently religious’ age;
indeed, it was even ‘more profoundly religious’ than any preceding period in French history. Sismondi was keenly interested
in the fact that a huge number of religious writings were appearing on the market, religious sentiments were spreading and,
‘in every class of society’, religion was being ‘treated with more respect than formerly’.
10 But such observations were often made in the nineteenth century. People felt that there was something religious ‘in the air’.
Benjamin Constant wrote to his friend Prosper Barante: ‘Aren’t you struck as I am, my dear Prosper, by the great religious
impulse that seems imprinted on everyone’s minds … doesn’t our epoch itself have something of the miraculous about it?’
11 ‘Everywhere’, Constant thought, there was a ‘mysterious agitation, a desire to believe’.
12 The Abbé de Pradt proffered that ‘never before has France been more religious than at present’.
13 If religion was ‘exiting’ the world, these people did not know about it.
It is true, of course, that the Revolution had wreaked havoc on the French Catholic Church, which found itself in a profound
state of disarray. The expropriation of church lands, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the civil war and the dechristianization
campaign, followed by the policies of the Directory, had left its coffers empty, its priesthood old and depleted, and its
buildings damaged or destroyed. Across the country, religious instruction and practice had been disrupted and even terminated.
In many places, there had been no Mass celebrated or catechism taught for years. In the words of Edward Berenson, one of the
more concrete effects of the French Revolution was ‘the disappearance of the official Church from the lives of French men
and women throughout the country’.
14 Another expert on French Catholicism describes the state of religious affairs during this post-revolutionary period as one
of ‘semi-anarchy’.
15But historians know that the disappearance of the ‘official church’ is not the same thing as the disappearance of ‘religion’
or even ‘Christianity’.
Indeed, the evidence shows that the lack of clerical power triggered a revival in popular religion. Deprived of their traditional
clergy, and forced underground, French Catholics did not so much abandon religion, but find new and creative ways of worshipping.
16 Often they turned to a simple, non-dogmatic religion focused on the person of Jesus Christ.
Leaders of the Catholic Church saw this state of affairs as a cause for alarm. From their perspective, there was a desperate
need to re- Catholicize the population and put an end to the religious ‘anarchy’. Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald railed
against superstition, paganism and the decline of ‘true religion’. This was the thinking behind the so-called Mission movement
that was launched in the early Restoration with the full support of Louis XVIII. Between 1815 and 1830, more than 1,500 government-financed
Catholic missions crisscrossed France with the aim of re-Catholicizing the population.
17 But there were also those who saw the religious ‘anarchy’ as a cause for optimism. They looked favourably on the decline
of the official church in the midst of a religious revival. To such people, it seemed that France was on the verge of a long-awaited
religious reformation.
Given the state of religious ferment, it is no wonder that French liberals were positively
obsessed with religion during this period. They engaged in a vigorous debate about what the government’s policy should be towards
the revival. Most of them agreed that Catholicism was an inherently backward-looking force, which had proved itself obstructionist
and generally harmful. They were therefore opposed to the government’s policy of re-Catholicization. But only a minority of
reform-minded intellectuals believed that the French population should be weaned off religion altogether. Among these, some
devised secular catechisms for this very purpose. But the trend among intellectuals during the period of the founding of liberalism
seems to have been in the opposite direction – in other words, towards
the embrace of religion for liberal purposes. Given France’s experience during the Revolution and the very palpable religious revival, many were won over to the idea
that ‘religious sentiments’ were inherent
to man: in other words that that they were a natural and inextricable part of human nature. Religious sentiments could therefore
never be
eliminated, but they could be
directed in enlightened ways. To that effect, some intellectuals argued that a new religion should be designed and disseminated. An
example of such a new religion was ‘Theophilanthropy’, which received government support during the Directory, but which failed
to attract enough adherents to create a viable movement.
18Another idea that had greater longevity among intellectual elites was that France should be encouraged to undergo a Protestant
Reformation. A little-known and little-discussed fact is that Napoleon himself was approached several times on this issue.
Delegates tried to convince him that France should be ‘Protestantized’ rather than ‘re-Catholicized’. The memoirs of Antoine-Clair
Thibaudeau testify to this effort. They recount a conversation between the then First Consul and one of his counsellors of
state on the topic of religion. Both men agreed, in principle, that religion was useful to society; but they also agreed that
Catholic priests were
not – and the Pope even less. ‘Never before’, insisted the counsellor, had the situation in France been more favourable to a
‘great religious revolution’. Bonaparte had ‘a unique opportunity’: ‘You only have to say the word and papism is ruined, and
France becomes Protestant.’
19 Napoleon’s memoirs confirm that he was pressured by various people and groups to effect a Protestant Reformation. In the
end he elected not to pursue this option, apparently because he thought it would aggravate the religious divisions in the
country.
20Elsewhere I have argued that Mme de Staël’s
Des circonstances actuelles (1798) should be read in this religio-political context.
21 In it, Mme de Staël recommended that the government should use ‘all the encouragements at its disposal’
22 to effect a religious reformation and make Protestantism France’s state religion. Mme de Staël’s
De la littérature (1800) and her father’s
Cours de morale religieuse (1800) delivered similar messages. Again, Mme de Staël professed her preference for Protestantism as the
purest, most moral and most suitable religion for France, while her father advocated a ‘simple, reasonable, and pure religion’
(which, at the time, were codewords for Protestantism).
23 Father and daughter believed that a religious reformation would effect the kind of intellectual and moral reform France needed
if a liberal political system was to survive.
But we know, of course, what happened – Napoleon did not in the end opt for Protestantism. Instead he negotiated the Concordat
and, in so doing, helped to encourage a Catholic revival. Catholics, conservatives and counter-revolutionaries celebrated while liberals mourned. To them, the Concordat was
a missed opportunity and a terrible mistake. In returning to Catholicism, France seemed to be heading backwards.
Once again, however, few among them thought that attacking religion was a viable strategy, and few if any believed that France
was poised to ‘exit’ from religion. True, there were a few diehard ideologues, like Destutt de Tracy, who called Christianity
a ‘bad moral system based on defective reasoning’
24 that should be eradicated. But the general trend during the early nineteenth century was away from
idéologie and towards a positive embrace of religion. As George Armstrong Kelly noticed some time ago, what was most characteristic
of early French liberalism was its ‘respiritualisation of its philosophical base’.
25
In a recently completed book on Benjamin Constant, I have tried to show that Kelly’s intuition was correct: there is indeed
a strong
spiritual dimension to Constant’s liberalism, and this spiritual dimension helps us to understand his reception and influence (or lack
of it) in France. Today, few people are even aware of Constant’s lifelong interest in religion. He began conducting research
for a major book on the topic at the age of eighteen and pursued it throughout his life, until he finally published the five-volume
De la religion considérée dans sa source,
ses formes et ses développements (1824–31) during the very last years of his life. At various points in his career, Constant called this book ‘the only interest,
the
only consolation of my life’
26 and ‘the book that I was destined by nature to produce’.
27 But Constant wrote more on religion than that: he wrote newspaper articles and essays on religion; he wrote chapters on religion
for his other books; he made speeches about it and gave lectures on it – and it is within these (relatively ignored) texts
that the spiritual dimension of his liberalism is most clearly expressed. Constant also joined the Society for Christian Morals
in 1825, becoming its president in 1830. The object of this society was ‘the application of Christian precepts to social relations’.
Its prospectus proclaimed that its goal was ‘to recall men to the only real source of happiness – the precepts of Christianity’.
28Constant’s mature liberal writings certainly did not attack religion. On the contrary, he consistently defended religion and
celebrated its virtues. Constant was certain that a liberal constitutional framework alone could not sustain a liberal society;
a society motivated by self-interested, ‘pleasure-seeking’
29 human beings would not remain free for long. Liberal societies needed a robust religious life in order to survive and prosper.
Religion is necessary, Constant argued, because it combats egoism and destructive individualism. It helps men to ‘break out
of the narrow circle of [their] interests’. It draws otherwise self-interested and apathetic men out of themselves, teaching
them the all-important ‘power of sacrifice’.
30 Liberty, Constant wrote, ‘is nourished by sacrifices … it cannot be established, and cannot be preserved, without disinterestedness’.
31Nor did Constant think that French religion was in a state of decline. And this was a good thing, he wrote, because nineteenth-century
France needed religion more than ever. ‘Egoism’ and ‘luxury’ were pressing problems, as was a general sense of ‘fatigue’ in
the population. France was suffering from an ‘excess of civilization’. ‘The
threat in modern civilization’, Constant explained, was that human beings could become so saturated in material pleasures that they
become ‘slaves of [these] pleasures’.
32 Indeed, he worried that the French had become ‘softened’, ‘degraded’,
and incapable of sacrifice.
33 Religion raised man above the pedestrian ‘habits of common life’ and the ‘petty material interests that [went] with it’.
34 ‘The more one cherishes moral ideas’, ‘the more high-mindedness, courage and independence are needed’, wrote Constant, the
more religion was needed.
35But what exactly did Constant mean by ‘religion’? Here is the crux of the matter. The religion Constant defended and celebrated
was not a prescribed set of beliefs or dogmas, or the practices of any particular church. Rather, it was an indestructible
‘emotion’, or what he also described as ‘a
sentiment inherent to man’.
36 When protected from priestly interference, it was the ‘most natural’ and ‘purest’ of all man’s instincts. Throughout history,
Constant explained, this religious ‘sentiment’ or ‘emotion’ had always taken on concrete ‘forms’. In other words, it had acquired
the dogmas, ceremonies and practices imposed upon it by priests and churches. To Constant, these ‘forms’ were less important
than the ‘sentiments’ that inhabited them. Forms were destined to come and go, but sentiments remained.
Of all the forms of religion in existence in nineteenth-century Europe, Constant preferred liberal Protestantism. Like Mme
de Staël and Jacques Necker, he believed that liberal Protestantism was the most enlightened, most moral and most progressive
form of religion that existed, and hence the best for France. A recognized member of the Protestant community in France, Constant
fought for its causes on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies and in his many newspaper articles: the separation of church
and state, the toleration of a diversity of religious denominations, and the cessation of the political influence of Catholic
priests. In essence, what Constant fought for was a free spiritual marketplace, which he believed was the only way of ensuring
that religious sentiments remained a force for good. He advocated the ‘complete and utter freedom of all forms of worship’,
insisting that a ‘multitude of sects’ was actually ‘healthy for religion’.
37 Repeatedly, he urged people not to worry about the so-called
religious ‘anarchy’ they saw around them. The religious ferment was a sign of intellectual and moral health; governments and
intellectuals should resist the temptation to intervene. They should stop trying to control religion, re-Christianize the
population, invent new religions, or attempt to use religion to bind people together. They should simply
let religion be. The various sects should be allowed to compete among themselves for the adherence of individuals.
But let there be no doubt: Constant firmly believed that such a free spiritual marketplace would ensure the eventual victory
of liberal Protestantism. In his mind, as in the minds of other liberal Protestants of his day, a free and open competition
between religious sects would naturally and gradually effect a religious reformation, as the French people would come to choose
the most enlightened form of religion available, which also happened to be the religion most favourable to liberal, constitutional
regimes. When, in 1824, Constant’s
De la religion began appearing, it was immediately recognized as Protestant in inspiration, and it was appreciated mainly in liberal Protestant
circles.
38 Rosalie, Constant’s pious cousin, with whom he carried on a lengthy correspondence, expressed the enthusiasm of his closest
supporters. She wrote to Constant that reading his religious publications consoled her and gave her hope about the religious
future of France. His
De la religion convinced her that a Protestant Reformation was on its way. ‘Sooner or later’, she wrote, a reformation ‘must follow … I
see in the near future the Reformation gradually establish itself … your work is contributing to it.’
39It is sometimes stated that Constant’s religious writings had little resonance in his day – in other words, that they were
largely ignored.
40 This is not true.
De la religion was widely reviewed when it came out, and provoked strong reactions. What
is true is that only a very few readers approved of what they recognized as Constant’s liberal Protestant perspective. Catholics
read his book as an attack on Catholicism; secular advocates of the morality of self-interest read it as an attack on them.
Liberal Protestants rejoiced; but they were only a small minority in France.
41 From both left and right, Constant’s views on religion were criticized as
being too vague and sentimental. His critics wondered how his religious philosophy could help bind the country and end the
‘anarchy’ that worried them so. Constant’s liberalism was branded as too individualistic and ‘selfish’ – an accusation frequently
levied at Protestantism. In stark contrast, however, the American leader of Unitarianism, William Ellery Channing, admired
Constant’s religious ideas.
42 But what Constant’s cousin liked so much, and Channing liked too, was exactly what did not resonate in the anti-Protestant
atmosphere of nineteenth-century France.
Constant’s friend and fellow-liberal, J.-C.-L. de Sismondi, also admired his ideas on religion. Born and raised in Geneva,
Sismondi is best known for his histories and his writings on economics. In a chapter of his multi-volume
Histoire des républiques italiennes, entitled ‘Which were the Causes that Changed the Character of the Italians after the Subjugation of their Republics?’, he
made his anti-Catholicism clear. The Catholic religion, Sismondi reasoned, had caused Italy irreparable harm. It had ‘numbed’
the minds of Italians and fostered their ‘mental inertia’. It had turned Italians into ‘obedient [unthinking] subjects’ ‘accustomed
to the yoke’.
43 Soon after completing this book on Italian history, Sismondi turned to the history of France, producing thirty volumes that
appeared between 1821 and 1844. Once again, he delivered an unmistakable message. Describing the Protestant Reformation in
positive terms, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes as a tragedy for France, Sismondi addressed his reader directly.
‘Every man of principle must choose between two systems’;
44 either he must choose the Catholic Church, which preaches intellectual subordination and intolerance, or a ‘system of liberty’
based on the Protestant principle of free inquiry.
That by a ‘system of liberty’ Sismondi meant liberal Protestantism is made clear by other writings as well. In 1826, Sismondi
published an article in three instalments entitled ‘Revue des progrès des opinions religieuses’ in the
Revue encyclopédique. The first part included a highly positive and enthusiastic review of Constant’s
De la religion. Calling Constant ‘one of the most brilliant writers of our century’, Sismondi agreed with his friend on all essential points.
He concurred, first of all, that religion
should properly be described as a ‘natural sentiment’ and not a collection of dogmas and ceremonies; second, he agreed that
religion should be ‘progressive’: that is, it should be allowed to ‘perfect’ or ‘purify’ itself over time. Third, Sismondi
agreed that the religious condition of France – what the ultra-royalists called religious ‘anarchy’ – was, in reality, a very
healthy state of affairs. France was poised to experience a Reformation. The only problem, according to Sismondi, was that
the Catholic clergy were determined to ruin everything. What the French population really needed and wanted was not a return
to Catholicism, but ‘a purified, charitable and tolerant religion’
45 such as the liberal Protestantism of Geneva or American Unitarianism.
That Genevan Calvinism could be likened to American Unitarianism might be surprising, but even just a quick look at available
sources shows that, by the early nineteenth century, a majority strand of Genevan Calvinism had indeed evolved into something
approaching Unitarianism.
46 And that Sismondi knew something about Unitarianism is shown by a series of letters he exchanged with William Ellery Channing.
Written in the 1830s, these letters bear witness to Sismondi’s admiration for Channing’s ‘rational and liberal religion’.
47 It is likely that Sismondi knew of Channing’s admiration for Constant’s
De la religion, of which favourable reviews were beginning to appear in American Unitarian journals around this very time.
48 Indeed, this shared appreciation for Constant’s book may have been what drew the two men together in the first place. In
one letter, Sismondi thanks the American preacher for sending him his books and professes to agree with him on essential points:
‘You and I are in perfect agreement that it is necessary to rid Christianity of its ancient forms … to allow it to be, in
the future, the religion of progress, the religion of liberty in governments as well as in consciences.’
49 Interestingly, on only one matter do the two men seem to disagree: Sismondi is more critical of Catholicism than Channing.
Sismondi recounts that he may
never have developed his intense hostility towards Catholicism had he not spent part of his life in Italy. He arrived there
with a respect for the religion, but soon changed his mind, deciding that the ‘absolute destruction’
50 of Catholicism was necessary if Italy were to be regenerated.
These letters further inform us that William Channing’s nephew, also called William Channing, and, like his uncle, a Unitarian
preacher, came to Geneva in 1835, and was then a guest in Sismondi’s home. Channing came as the official representative of
the American Unitarian Church to attend the three-hundredth anniversary of the Genevan Reformation. Delegates from all over
Europe, England and Russia took part in this celebration. Sismondi sent Channing the elder an enthusiastic letter about the
event. They all hoped that Unitarian religious principles – that is, the principles of a rational, tolerant and non-dogmatic
Christianity – would spread throughout the world.
The religious views of Constant, Mme de Staël and Sismondi point to a basic problem of their variety of liberalism, which
helps to explain why it failed to take hold in France – its
Protestantism. Catholic reactionaries, like Joseph de Maistre, had long lambasted liberalism as nothing but ‘political protestantism carried
to the most absolute individualism’.
51 But counter-revolutionaries were not alone in deploring the atomization, privatization and selfishness supposedly caused
by Protestantism. During the 1820s, the Saint-Simonians were particularly virulent. Prosper Enfantin denounced Protestants
for preaching ‘only diversity or division, that is, individualism – or, to be frank,
egoism’.
52 At the end of his life, Saint-Simon himself spoke of the need for a ‘new Christianity’ that would supersede Protestantism
and bind and moralize the public, while Auguste Comte advocated a new ‘spiritual authority’ for essentially the same reason.
The July Monarchy (1830–48) did nothing to assuage the anti- Protestant atmosphere. Ironically, Guizot, although an active
member of the Protestant community,
53 never actually pursued a pro-Protestant
government policy. In fact, he disappointed and even angered many French Protestants by what they interpreted as a bias towards
Catholicism.
54 But his unpopular regime fuelled anti-Protestantism nevertheless, mainly because of its reputation for materialism and avarice.
55 In the end, the Revolution of 1848 was not only a rejection of liberalism, it was also a repudiation of the Protestant individualism
that most people believed undergirded it.
A growing number of people in France now believed that their country was trapped in a social and spiritual crisis. The fear
of social decomposition became something like a national obsession. Many looked to religion to provide the cure. Right-wing
thinkers were not alone in advocating a return to Catholicism in order to restore social cohesion and foster a sense of community.
Early socialists, like Buchez, Cabet, Leroux and Blanc believed that their society was sick and in need of spiritual healing;
they espoused a socialism strongly impregnated with Catholicism.
56 In this atmosphere it is no wonder that Constant’s variety of Protestant liberalism, with its strong endorsement of individual
rights, religious freedom and the competition between sects, found few supporters.
The case of Guizot is illustrative here. In the recent revival of interest in his thought, his religious writings have generally
been neglected as peripheral and relatively unimportant. But they shed considerable light on the elitist and conservative
brand of liberalism he espoused. And they point to a rift within French liberalism – a tendency, in the case of Guizot, his
disciples and sympathizers, towards only a lukewarm commitment to liberal principles such as the right of free inquiry
57 and the separation of church and state. Guizot’s pronouncements on the topic of religion earned him the derisive epithet
‘Pope of the Protestants’ and much animosity from the liberal Protestant community. In an article entitled ‘Du
catholicisme, du protestantisme et de la philosophie’, published in the
Revue française (June 1838), he outraged many of his co-religionists by suggesting that they should give up the dream of one day converting
France to Protestantism. France would forever remain Catholic. Guizot went on to denounce Christian rationalism (and thereby
liberal Protestantism and Unitarianism). Modernity had taken the wrong turn when it attacked religious dogma in the name of
Christian rationalism. If France remained Catholic that was as it should be.
The article provoked protest from the liberal Protestant community. Athanase Coquerel (1795–1868), the pastor of the Reformed
Church of Paris, who had presided over Benjamin Constant’s funeral and who had praised his work on religion, answered Guizot
in a forty-page open
Lettre à M. Guizot. To Coquerel it was clear that Catholicism, based as it was on the ‘principle of authority’, would never, and could never,
be reconciled with liberal principles of government. Protestantism, on the other hand, was based on the ‘principle of free
inquiry’ and therefore encouraged a healthy individualism supportive of both modern society and liberal institutions. This
being the case, it was necessary for France ‘to advance slowly towards Protestantism’. While the ‘age of [violent] religious
revolutions’ was over, ‘the age of religious progress’ had begun.
58But Guizot continued to be convinced that France would and should remain Catholic; and over time, his aversion to liberal
Protestantism seems only to have grown. The Revolution of 1848 reinforced his disapproval of any form of Christian rationalism.
In speeches and publications of the 1850s and 60s, Guizot repeatedly expressed sympathy and support for Catholicism and the
Pope. He seems to have preferred liberal Catholics to liberal Protestants. In a speech given on the occasion of Lacordaire’s
election to the Académie française (1861), Guizot denounced the way the ‘august head of the church’ was being treated and
the threat the unification of Italy posed to his temporal power. That a prominent member of the Reformed Church should lament
the decline in power of the Pope once again provoked angry reactions, but Guizot remained unmoved.
These views on religion are a clear indication of the deep divisions that existed within the liberal community. Sounding more
like a Catholic than a Protestant, Guizot repeatedly claimed that modernity was suffering
from an intellectual and moral crisis. The crisis was caused by the ongoing ‘attack’ on Christianity. Society was suffering
from ‘confusion, incoherence’ and ‘incertitude’. He believed it imperative to fight the ‘anarchy’. For this reason, the Pope
should be defended and Catholicism supported. For Guizot, Christianity was a bulwark against revolution. In his view, liberalism
needed Catholicism to survive precisely because it ‘inspire[d] respect for authority’.
59 Dogmatic fortification was necessary to combat the reigning ‘licence’; belief in the supernatural should be encouraged, and
church and state should lend each other a hand. These ideas were miles away from those of Constant and Sismondi.
Liberal Protestants were not the only ones to be confused, and even angered, by Guizot’s views. Let us recall the context.
In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI had denounced both liberalism and ‘religious indifferentism’ in his encyclical
Mirari vos.
60 The encyclical explicitly condemned religious ‘schism’, religious ‘novelties’, freedom of conscience, and the separation
of church and state. Freedom of conscience was called an ‘absurd and erroneous proposition’, which spread ‘ruin in sacred
and civil affairs’. In 1864, Pope Pius IX issued his Syllabus of Errors containing even more sweeping denunciations. Eighty
propositions were condemned, among which the idea that ‘The Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile and harmonize himself with
progress, with liberalism and with recent civilisation’. That a liberal leader, and a Protestant, should nevertheless insist
that France remain Catholic was baffling and disturbing to many people.
Edgar Quinet’s writings are a case in point. An admirer of Constant, who had read and appreciated
De la religion, Quinet blamed Catholicism for the failures of the French Revolution and for France’s recurring political troubles. Catholicism
had inculcated a submissive mentality in the French – an
unhealthy respect for hierarchy and authority and a relative disregard for individual responsibility. Like many progressive intellectuals,
Quinet regretted that France had not undergone a Protestant Reformation, which would have prepared its population to accept
and embrace the principle of individual liberty. What France now desperately needed was a religion in harmony with modern
times. In his
Lettre sur la situation religieuse et morale de l’Europe (1856) Quinet advocated an enlightened form of Protestantism: that is, the Unitarianism of William
Ellery Channing.
61 To Quinet political freedom should be founded on the rock of religious freedom.
It was around the same time, that is during the 1860s and early 70s, that Édouard Laboulaye attempted to revive the liberalism
of Benjamin Constant. Laboulaye was an expert on the history and institutions of the United States, a member of the Institut
de France, and a professor of comparative law at the Collège de France. He was a leader of the Liberal Opposition during the
Second Empire, and a founding father of the Third Republic. In 1861, and again in 1872, Laboulaye reissued Constant’s
Cours de politique constitutionnelle, which contained his principal political works. In a long introduction to the
Cours, and in a biographical sketch published in the
Revue national, Laboulaye hailed Constant as ‘
the master of political science for all friends of liberty’.
62But what exactly was Laboulaye trying to revive? What did liberalism mean to
him and what did he find so appealing about Constant? Once again, anyone looking for an attack on religion – or an attempt to
‘protect the polity’ from religion – will be disappointed. Laboulaye consistently wrote
in defence of religion and
in praise of religion. One could even say that a positive view of religion was a unifying thread running through his thought and is inseparable
from his politics. As Laboulaye explained: ‘religion is one of the strongest political forces, if it is not the very foundation
of states’.
63 His personal motto was ‘Scripture and Freedom’.
64 His lifework, Laboulaye declared, was to prove that liberalism and Christianity were closely conjoined, since ‘one flows
from the other’.
65The few scholarly works devoted to Laboulaye contain what can only be described as odd characterizations of the many religious
references in his writings. Some have described him as a devout
Catholic, clearly without much investigation. Walter Gray, author of a book-length study of Laboulaye, suggests that he wrote on religion
only as a pretence
and a ruse, in order to avoid censorship.
66 These assessments are quite bizarre, since Laboulaye’s works so obviously display a preference for liberal Protestantism,
and in particular for the Unitarianism of William Ellery Channing. Laboulaye translated many of Channing’s works into French,
wrote several enthusiastic commentaries on his thought, and in at least one instance celebrated Unitarianism as the religion
of the future.
67 Laboulaye also repeatedly praised the Protestant Reformation in his writings. He credited it with having inaugurated a ‘new
era of the world’,
68 by freeing individuals from intellectual subjugation, and by fostering, instead, the development of the ‘individual judgement’
so necessary in a liberal polity. In contrast, Laboulaye criticized Catholicism for encouraging ‘the sacrifice of individual
reason’
69 and for being ‘better designed to furnish subjects of a monarchy’
70 than citizens of a republic.
Laboulaye’s assessment of Constant is also telling from the religious perspective. First and foremost, Laboulaye read Constant
as a critic of state power. In his introduction to Constant’s
Cours de politique constitutionnelle, Laboulaye regretted that Frenchmen had not heeded Constant’s warnings about government long ago. Sixty years of history
had proved that his advice and admonitions had been right; an ‘enormous machine of administration’ had grown up in France,
claiming for itself the right to regulate citizens’ lives.
71 Over the years, the French had allowed themselves to be seduced by nefarious systems of thought such as Saint-Simonianism,
socialism and communism, and they had allowed the government to balloon. To all of this, Constant’s ideas were the perfect
antidote, a much-needed ‘vaccine’.
72 In some ways, France’s situation was even worse than it had been under the Restoration, since the French seemed to have forgotten
their former love of liberty. Laboulaye hoped that a new edition of Constant’s writings would help rekindle that love and
thus help his countrymen rid themselves of their infatuation with state power.
But key to Laboulaye’s admiration for Constant’s political theories was an understanding of, and deep appreciation for, its
religious underpinnings. In stark contrast to Constant’s critics, Laboulaye saw nothing ‘selfish’ about Constant’s liberalism.
On the contrary, it was its high-minded and spiritual side that appealed to him. More in tune with Constant’s American admirers
73 than his French critics, Laboulaye perceived that ‘a religious faith animates and inspires all of [Constant’s] politics’.
74 For the two men, freedom was nothing but ‘the complete development of the human soul’.
75Laboulaye was well acquainted with Constant’s religious writings. Upon reading them, Laboulaye proferred that ‘what moves
us about Benjamin Constant is not his erudition but his religious philosophy’.
76 Constant had a ‘Protestant mind’,
77 which was also why he understood liberty so well. Constant appreciated the fact that ‘religion is the friend and necessary
companion of liberty’.
78 He understood that the true ‘political spirit of Christianity’ was ‘respect for the individual’ and that religious liberty
was ‘the mother of all others’.
79 Each person’s salvation was his own business; each person ‘[was] born to search for the truth’ on his own. Similarly, liberty
was ‘an individual matter; it [was] the right which belong[ed] to each person, in his quality as a man’. Although private
and individual, this right had nothing to do with egoism, or the pursuit of material pleasures, for which Laboulaye showed
only contempt. Rather, the true source of man’s ‘right’ to liberty was his
duty ‘to exercise and develop his mind’ and thus to improve himself. Laboulaye admired the fact that, like other liberal Protestants
of his day, Constant viewed liberty as necessarily connected to the idea of human ‘perfectibility’.
80 Constant thus understood what so many Frenchmen had difficulty comprehending: that liberty is ‘our soul in action’.
81 ‘The supreme goal’, wrote Laboulaye, ‘the most elevated goal a man can propose here below, is to develop the whole of his
faculties; to improve himself, even at the cost of suffering; here then, is the task of a man, a Christian, a citizen’. Where
did these beautiful ideas of individual freedom and perfectibility come from? Laboulaye thought they came from Protestant
Germany and Switzerland, Constant’s
homeland.
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