6Edmund Burke and the Writings of Benjamin Constant
1
In January 1814 Benjamin Constant published De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation (The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation), which was an immediate success; the original edition, published in Hanover, was reprinted three times in the same year, once in England and twice, with revisions, in France. It was also translated into German and, in the following year, into Swedish.1 It remains probably the best-known and most accessible of his political writings.
This is a work which can be read at various levels. At the most obvious, it is a denunciation of the autocratic system of government of Napoleon, which was now coming to an end. It is also a pamphlet written in support of the candidature to the French throne of Bernadotte and, in the final edition, after Bernadotte had withdrawn, in support of the Bourbon candidate, who became Louis XVIII.2 At yet another level it is a statement of the central principles of Constant’s political philosophy: here we find a memorable expression of his views on the importance of imposing limits on the power of the State, his distinction between ancient and modern liberty, and his attack on the implications of Rousseau’s theory of the general will which, he argues, had led in practice to a centralized despotism incompatible with the liberty of the individual.
The work is also remarkable for certain passages which show a strong affinity with the ideas and language of Burke, especially when Constant insists on the importance of respecting traditions and attacks reforms undertaken in the name of abstract theories. This affinity is most striking in Chapter 13 of Part I, entitled ‘De l’uniformité’ (‘On uniformity’), particularly in the following passages:3
I have for the past, I confess, a great veneration and each day as I learn from experience or am enlightened by reflection, this veneration increases. I will say, to the great scandal of our modern reformers, whether they call themselves Lycurguses or Charlemagnes, that if I found a people who had been offered the most perfect institutions, metaphysically speaking, and who refused them in order to remain faithful to those of their ancestors, I would admire this people, and would consider them happier in their feelings and in their heart under their imperfect institutions than with all the proposed improvements.4
In the same vein, he continues:
Quite apart from these considerations, and separating happiness from morality, you will notice that man adapts himself to established institutions, as he does to the rules of physical nature. He adjusts, even to the imperfections of these institutions, his interests, his ideas, his whole way of life. These imperfections become softened because whenever an institution lasts for a long time, there is an exchange between it and human interests. Human relations, and aspirations, cluster around that which already exists. To change this, even for the better, is harmful.5
A further point is developed in the following passage, where he condemns legislators who aim at uniformity:
It is obvious that peoples placed in different situations, brought up with different customs, living in different places, cannot be subjected to institutions, practices and laws which are absolutely identical, without a constraint that costs them much more than it is worth. The series of ideas of which their moral being has been gradually formed since their birth, cannot be changed by an arrangement which is purely nominal, purely exterior and independent of their will.6
The obvious affinity with Burke in these passages is by no means lessened by the fact that elsewhere in De l’esprit de conquête Constant expresses admiration for the British form of government, including the principle of hereditary nobility. Again, he offers a ‘whig’ interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and sees a parallel between the role of William III and that of the possible successors to Napoleon.7
While all this appears unmistakably Burkean, there is no mention of Burke. The nearest we get to what might seem such a reference is in the following, slightly earlier passage:
But each generation, says one of the foreigners who has been the most prescient in observing our mistakes from the beginning, each generation inherits from its ancestors a treasure of moral riches, a treasure which is invisible and precious, which it passes on to its descendants.8
The first reaction of the reader will be that the foreigner in question must be Burke, but there is a footnote giving a precise reference to Rehberg’s Über den Code Napoléon und desses Einführung in Deutschland (On the Code Napoleon and its development in Germany), which had been published in 1813 in Hanover by Hahn, the publishers of the first edition of Constant’s treatise.9 However, the quotation from Rehberg does not diminish the Burkean affinity; August Wilhelm Rehberg (1757–1836), like his fellow-Hanoverian Ernst Brandes (1758–1810) and the Prussian Friedrich von Gentz (1764–1832), was an admirer of The Reflections on the Revolution in France.10
Why did Constant not quote Burke himself rather than Rehberg? The answer may be that in France Burke was seen as a spokesman for the counter-revolution in the same tradition as Maistre and Bonald; Constant did not want to be assimilated to this tradition and, indeed, the quotation from Rehberg (who was unknown in France) may have been a strategy to deflect attention from the obvious Burkean affinities. However this may be, some of Constant’s contemporaries found that the stress placed on respect for the past and traditional institutions seemed to indicate that the author, who in all his previous publications had presented himself as a convinced republican, was now inexplicably speaking the language, if not of Burke, at least of the counter-revolutionaries.11
This has remained an issue in Constant criticism. At least one modern commentator describes these passages not merely as an inconsistency, but as an ‘aberration’, incompatible not only with his earlier republicanism but also with his later career as an admirer of the idealism of the Revolution, opponent of attempts to return to the values of the ancien régime and outspoken champion of reform on liberal principles (Holmes 1984, 207–11).
2
At this point it will be useful to turn to Constant’s earlier writings, beginning with his unfinished autobiography, Ma Vie (My Life),12 which covers the period from his birth in Lausanne in 1767 up to 1788. There is here no precise reference to Burke, but in the account of his education at the University of Edinburgh (1782–83),13 Constant informs us that his best friend was a certain John Wilde, who later became professor of civil law and who, we know from other sources, was an admirer of Burke.14 Wilde is the author of a character-sketch which portrays Constant, when a student at Edinburgh, as ‘constant in versatility, in inconsistency consistent’:
An atheist professed, he maintains at the same time the cause of paganism, and, while he spurns Jehovah cringes before Jupiter, while he execrates the bigotry and laughs at the follies of superstitious Christians, yet makes the vices of adulterous deities the subject of his panegyric, and prostitutes his genius to support the ridiculous mummeries of its priests.
As for his political ideas,
In politics warm, zealous, keen, invariable, he resembles an Englishman of the purest times; and here indeed, alone, we find an exception to his general character. He seems indeed, to have drawn freedom with his first breath, and sucked the principles of liberty with the milk of his childhood. But it is impossible, in any respect but this to pursue him through the endless mazes of his character. He outdoes even Proteus himself.15
From this, one can infer that the young Constant, at least in certain moods, shared the irreligious ideas of the radical Enlightenment. In Ma Vie, he refers to his atheism and how, after leaving Edinburgh, he began writing a history of polytheism inspired mainly by his reading of Helvétius and a desire to refute the ‘prejudices’ of the Christian religion (Œuvres 3.1:314). With regard to his political ideas, he informs us that on another visit to England, in 1787, he was taken to meet Lady Charlotte Wentworth (1732–1810), whom he ‘beheld with a very special veneration because she was the sister of the Marquis of Rockingham and because my Scottish political ideas had filled me with a great enthusiasm for the Whig administration of which he had been the head’.16 It is reasonable to assume that this veneration included Burke, though we are speaking, of course, of Burke before 1789, and what the young Constant admired was probably the Rockinghams whose image was that of a reform party who had opposed the government of the day on the American question, supported economical reform and made a point of attacking the alleged excessive influence of the Crown.
It would seem, however, that those ‘principles of liberty’ which Constant, according to John Wilde, ‘had sucked with the milk of his childhood’,17 were somewhat more radical than anything associated with the Rockinghams. In another passage of Ma Vie, referring to his Vaudois roots and the traditional resentment of the inhabitants of the Pays de Vaud against their subordination to the government of Berne, Constant writes, ‘My father loathed this government and had brought me up in these principles’.18 He describes a journey of about 1786 from Holland to Switzerland in the company of a young Bernese officer:
Filled with my father’s hatred of the Berne government, I was no sooner in a chaise de poste with a Bernois than I began to repeat all the known arguments against political privilege, the rights taken away from a people, hereditary authority, etc., etc., not forgetting to promise my travelling companion that, if ever the occasion should arise, I would deliver the Pays de Vaud from the oppression under which it was held by his compatriots.19
It is hardly surprising that, with this background, Constant should have welcomed the French Revolution with its ideals of liberty and equality. Naturally, he found himself in disagreement with Burke, to whom he refers for the first time in a letter to Isabelle de Charrière of 10 December 1790, where he expresses his reactions to the Reflections:20
I am at present busy reading and refuting Burke’s book written against the French Levellers. There are as many absurdities as lines in this celebrated book, and for that reason it is successful everywhere in English and German society. It defends the nobility and the exclusion of dissenters and the establishment of a dominant religion, and other things of the same nature. I have written at length on this apology of abuses and if my leisure is not interrupted by the wretched law suits in which my father is involved at present, I shall be able, for the first time in my life, actually to have brought a work to completion.21
This was written from Germany where, since 1788, Constant was a Chamberlain at the Court of the Duke of Brunswick. Unfortunately, there is no trace among his surviving manuscripts of the refutation of Burke; however, from his correspondence of this period, we can follow his reactions to the Revolution which were consistently favourable and even included acceptance of the Terror as a necessary stage in the process of reform.22 It is hardly surprising that, at the Court of Brunswick, his views were the subject of strong disapproval.23
Up to this point Constant was an observer of French politics, with no direct involvement. This was to change when he met Mme de Staël in September 1794 and, in the following year, accompanied her to Paris, where he began his political career, first as a journalist and pamphleteer and then in a minor provincial administrative post in the canton of Luzarches, to the north-west of Paris. His publications during the period from 1796 to 1799 are written in defence of the Directory, the policy of which he describes as an attempt to form a stable republican government by avoiding the extremes of anarchy and tyranny. In these works, he is consistent in his admiration of the ideals of 1789 which, he argues, were not to be confused with those of the Terror. As for Burke, it may be with him in mind that in his first political pamphlet De la Force du gouvernement actuel de la France et de la nécessité de s’y rallier (1796),24 Constant delivers a scathing attack on those who defend prejudice, which he equates with intellectual error (Œuvres, 1:372–74). This is followed in his second pamphlet, published in 1797, Des Réactions politiques (Political reactions), where Burke is named and taken to task, not only for his defence of prejudice, but also for his hostility to abstract principles:
They are supporters of arbitrary power, those who with Burke assert that axioms which are metaphysically true, can be politically false and who prefer to these axioms, considerations, prejudices, memories, weaknesses, all of which are vague, indefinable, unstable and consequently belong to the domain of the arbitrary.25
Constant insists, however, that his principles are not, like those to which Burke refers, a priori, but empirical generalizations based on experience and observation. Nevertheless, his views are not so different from Burke’s when he adds a rather complicated argument to demonstrate that the application of ‘first principles’ requires the elaboration of ‘intermediary principles’ before they can be applied to concrete circumstances.26
Burke is not mentioned in the other writings of these years, where Constant reaffirms his commitment to the policy of the Directory, especially in a pamphlet where he defends the coup d’état of Fructidor,27 and in Des suites de la contre-révolution de 1660 en Angleterre (1799) (The Consequences of the Counter-revolution of 1660 in England), in which he warns the reader that any attempt to reinstate the Bourbons would inevitably mean a return to the absolutism of the ancien régime. In all this, Constant could feel that he had begun a successful career, which culminated in December 1799 with his appointment, on the recommendation of Sieyès, to the newly formed Tribunate, where he would attract attention by delivering speeches severely critical of the government. This fearless opposition was not appreciated by those in power and in January 1802 his membership of the Tribunate was terminated by Bonaparte.
There followed a period from 1803 to 1813 when excluded from politics, Constant spent much time in Switzerland and Germany, publishing little of significance. It was not until 1814 that he resumed his career as a pamphleteer, breaking his silence with De l’esprit de conquête and, if we pass directly to this work from his early political writings, we shall indeed be struck by the fact that the former young republican has shifted his ground. This is not, however, some kind of ‘aberration’, but simply the outcome of the fact that Constant, having re-examined his earlier views on politics and religion, has arrived at what he considers more mature conclusions. In fact, it can be argued that the true ‘aberration’ of the young idealist was his active support of the Directory; in his later years Constant preferred to forget his hobnobbing with the likes of Barras and his support of a régime which imposed laws from above and could survive only by flouting the constitution.
During the apparently fallow period of 1803 to 1813 Constant produced a number of works which he kept as manuscripts and on which he would draw for much of what he was to publish between 1814 and his death in 1830. Some of these have now been published in their entirety, including two important political works, Principes de politique applicables à tous les gouvernements représentatifs (Principles of politics applicable to all representative governments) and Fragments d’un ouvrage abandonné sur la possibilité d’une constitution républicaine dans un grand pays (Fragments of an abandoned work on the possibility of a republican constitution in a large country). Also preserved are numerous drafts of his work on religion,28 which passed through many stages and of which the first three volumes would not be published until 1824, 1825 and 1827 respectively as De la religion, considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements (Religion, considered in its source, its forms and its developments) followed by the last two volumes, published posthumously in 1831. In addition, there is his novel, Adolphe, completed before 1810, but not published until 1816, and a number of introspective writings which would not be published until long after Constant’s death, including the Journaux intimes and Ma Vie.
What is most striking is how Constant has changed his ideas on politics and religion. However, before turning to the writings of this period, it will be useful to quote once again from Ma Vie, where he summarizes his new outlook. First, as for politics, after referring to his father’s hatred of the despotic government of Berne, in the passage quoted above, he writes:
Neither he nor I knew at that time that nearly all old governments are gentle (doux) because they are old and all new governments are harsh (durs) because they are new. I make exception however, for absolute despotism.29
As for his remark about delivering the Pays de Vaud from the Bernese domination, he adds:
The occasion arose, eleven years later, but I had before my eyes the experience of France where I had been a witness of a revolution and an actor powerless in the sense of liberty founded on justice and I was careful not to get involved in revolutionizing Switzerland.30
This was written probably in 1811 and, by this date, Constant had also changed his mind on religion, recording in Ma Vie his relief that he had never completed the refutation of Christianity rashly undertaken in his youth. Already, in 1805 he had written in his Journal, ‘In irreligion there is something coarse and trite which I find repugnant’,31 and on 11 October 1811, in a letter to his friend Claude Hochet, he quotes Bacon’s dictum: ‘It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion’.32
4
There is no reason to doubt the veracity of the account given by Constant of his rejection of some of his early radical ideas and in fact it is possible, from a study of his manuscripts, Journal and correspondence, not only to confirm what he says in Ma Vie, but to attempt to arrive at some understanding of the various stages of his intellectual development.
In the Principes de politique (1806) Constant begins with the problem of the uses and abuses of power.33 He accepts Rousseau’s theory that sovereignty must emanate from the general will, but rejects the assumption that representatives of the people automatically embody this general will and therefore have absolute power. This analysis of the abuse of power in the context of the practice of the various revolutionary governments is something new in Constant and in reformulating the problem of legitimate power he seems to have been influenced by Sieyès;34 whether Burke had any influence cannot be established, but Constant cannot have been unaware of the latter’s views, which are expressed throughout the Reflections and summarized neatly as follows in the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs:
The new Whigs hold, that the sovereignty, whether exercised by one or many, did not only originate from the people (a position not denied nor worth denying or assenting to), but that in the people the same sovereignty constantly and inalienably resides.
This is followed by a presentation of the logical consequences of the theory
that the people may lawfully depose kings, not only for misconduct, but without any misconduct at all; that they may set up any new fashion of government for themselves, or continue without any government at their pleasure; that the people are essentially their own rule, and their will the measure of their conduct. (Works, 3:44–45)35
The only direct reference to Burke in the Principes is when Constant writes: ‘Burke says that liberty is power; likewise one can say that power is liberty.’36 What he objects to here is Burke’s choice of words, but in fact he agrees with the substance of the argument concerning the illegitimate seizure of power by those who claim to represent the people.
In the light of this changed perspective Constant is obliged to re-examine almost every aspect of his political philosophy. Particularly relevant to his affinities with Burke are the three sections of Book XV of the Principes, devoted to uniformity, stability and premature improvements. The most obvious source for his ideas in the first section is not Burke, however, but Montesquieu, not only in Chapter 18 of the Esprit des lois, the title of which (‘Des idées d’uniformité’) is appropriated by Constant for Chapter 3 of the Principes but, more generally, in Montesquieu’s theory of the ‘esprit général’ (‘general spirit’). According to this, laws and institutions should be in harmony with morals, manners, customs and religion and, while legislators should not lose sight of the principles of natural justice or the possibility of gradual improvement, they should not aim at perfection. Constant, ringing the changes on this theme and quoting Montesquieu, stresses that to impose uniformity is ‘contrary to the nature of men and the nature of things’37 because it involves ‘the sacrifice of sentiments, memories, local traditions which make up individual happiness, that is to say the only true happiness’38 and at the same time is destructive of the ‘series of ideas of which their moral being has been gradually formed since their birth’.39
In the second section of Book XV, on stability, we find an outline of a theory of progress, which Constant had been developing for some time and which owes much to Turgot, Condorcet and others, including possibly Lessing and Herder.40 This is essentially an attempt to make sense of history: according to Constant, history demonstrates mankind’s gradual progress through various stages from the earliest times, a progress which is to be explained, not by Divine providence or external factors, but by a natural urge which leads human beings to strive for freedom from arbitrary power, and finally, for equality. History furnishes the spectacle of the human spirit creating political institutions or ‘forms’ which, as it progresses, it must discard and replace with more enlightened ones, which in turn will be discarded. Constant had come to similar conclusions regarding the history of religion: religious institutions are not simply imposed from above but thrown up from below by religious sentiment, which is mankind’s natural aspiration towards transcendence and perfection. Constant accepts that, in the real world, progress is not a smooth and simple process, for the institutions created in response to human needs and aspirations tend to become stationnaires (‘fixed’) and arrested by vested interests (particularly governments or priests) or they suffer from the interference of over-hasty reformers.
It is in the light of this theory of perfectibility that Constant interprets recent French history: the ancien régime, as an absolute monarchy, represents a period when laws and institutions based on the assumptions of privilege, were out of step with the national spirit; the Revolution was the result of this spirit throwing off dead forms and reasserting itself, but neither the revolutionaries nor their successor, Napoleon, understood that the spirit of the age (characterized by commercial expansion) demanded a new kind of liberty based on individualism, not the anachronistic ‘liberty of the ancients’, which was the ideal of some of the revolutionaries, or the equally anachronistic authoritarian militarism of the Empire.
In the section of Book XV on premature improvements, Constant offers as examples the reforms introduced by Pombal and Joseph II, whose policy he contrasts with that of Tsar Alexander I, whom he holds up as an enlightened ruler who understands the principles of progress: ‘For a people to achieve progress it is sufficient that the government should not thwart it. Progress is in the nature of man. A government which leaves man free, favours his progress sufficiently.’41
That Constant’s ideas on uniformity and premature reforms, along with his general historical and sociological approach to politics, are similar to those of Montesquieu and Burke will be obvious, though whereas he is happy to quote Montesquieu, there is no reference to Burke. As for his theory of progress, it is not to be found in that precise form in either Montesquieu or Burke, though both had a general belief in progress and gradual improvement.42
In the other most important work of this period, the Fragments d’un ouvrage abandonné sur la possibilité d’une constitution républicaine dans un grand pays, we can see how, in the course of composition, Constant changes his mind about monarchy. The early chapters are quite simply hostile to any form of hereditary privilege; however, as he surveys the history of monarchies past and present, Constant finds himself attracted by certain features of the English variant which, he discovers, offers a solution to a problem which had not been solved by French republican constitution-makers: how to establish a working relationship between the executive and legislative bodies and to prevent either of them from seizing absolute power.
The standard solution to this problem was the theory of the balance and separation of powers as recommended by Montesquieu. However, recent experience had demonstrated that this theory was ineffective; an additional power, according to Constant, was required, a pouvoir neutre (neutral power) composed of a body of citizens elected for life who would not engage directly in politics, but be guardians of the constitution, with the authority, in moments of crisis, to dissolve the legislative body and dismiss ministers. In addition, a system of ministerial responsibility would clarify the relations between the executive and legislative and provide a procedure for changes in the composition of the government without automatically causing a constitutional crisis.43 Constant was convinced that the English were already in possession of a system approximating to this plan, that in England the King was de facto, if not de jure a neutral power and that the ministers were responsible to the legislative body. While his ideas on this subject probably owe much to Sieyès, Necker and Mme de Staël,44 they were also shaped by his extensive study of British history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which may have included the parliamentary debates of November 1779, when the Rockinghams were pressing for something which comes very close to his theory that ministers should be responsible to the legislature. The main speaker on this occasion was Charles James Fox, with whom Burke let it be known he was in agreement, though he was himself prevented from speaking by hoarseness. However, the proposal was rejected as unconstitutional and the future of the theory belongs to the history of the nineteenth century.45 Constant’s understanding of the English system was, in fact, inaccurate and his highly important and original theory anticipated the constitutional practice of a later period.
The Principes de politique (1806) and the Fragments bear witness to that extraordinary change in Constant’s ideas to which he refers in Ma Vie and which reflects his disappointment with the failure of politicians to produce institutions embodying the ideals of the Revolution. Numerous passages from these works are reproduced, often word for word, in De l’esprit de conquête, including the ‘Burkean’ passages on uniformity. Whether Constant was influenced by a fresh reading of Burke it is not possible to say, but that there are obvious affinities it is difficult to deny, especially in the distrust of power and general conception of politics founded on traditional values.46
5
In the months following the publication of De l’esprit de conquête events moved swiftly. On 6 April 1814 Napoleon abdicated and the Senate offered the throne to Louis XVIII, who on 2 May announced the new constitution, or Charter, which would be promulgated on 4 June. By this time Constant, given his conviction that monarchy was not incompatible with freedom, felt that he could now, without inconsistency, support Louis XVIII and on 26 May he published Réflexions sur les constitutions, la distribution des pouvoirs et les garanties (Reflections on constitutions, the distribution of powers and guarantees) a work which is essentially a recycling of material from the Fragments. He also published the fourth edition of De l’esprit de conquête with two additional chapters designed to answer his critics.
In the first additional chapter Constant states that his admiration for the past is not blind acceptance of obvious abuses and that reforms are salutary only when they follow public opinion. To those who assert it is difficult to assess public opinion he replies with what amounts to a defence of freedom of expression:
If you allow opinion to express itself freely, you will easily come to know it … If authority remains silent, individuals will speak; from the clash of ideas enlightenment will be born and it will be impossible not to know the general feeling.47
At the same time he expands the passage on Tsar Alexander’s method of governing:
The improvements are slow and gradual; the people become enlightened without being forced; the laws are perfected in detail without anyone thinking of overturning the whole system … Honour to the prince who, in his prudent and generous course [marche], favours natural progress, respects all necessary adjournments, and who knows also how to protect himself from the mistrust which desires to interrupt and the impatience which wants to rush ahead.48
In all this Constant becomes, if anything, even more like Burke than in the text of the first edition of the work, especially when he adds that ‘moral beings cannot be subjected to the rules of arithmetic or mechanism. The past puts down deep roots in them, which cannot be destroyed without pain.’49
In the second additional chapter Constant returns to the example of the Glorious Revolution and, like Burke, stresses the element of continuity in the transition from James II to William III. However, by insisting that William III was ‘élu librement par la nation’ (freely elected by the nation) he was going beyond anything said by Burke (Œuvres, 8.2:817).
A further defence of Constant’s views is found in the preface to the Réflexions sur les constitutions. While refusing to disavow the principle that ‘the memories, habits and traditions of the people should form the basis of their institutions’,50 he offers, by way of clarification, a distinction between, on the one hand, an old constitution which has been gradually perfected in the course of time and has survived in people’s memories and, on the other, a dead constitution which has left nothing for the citizens to remember or cherish and is only of antiquarian interest (Œuvres, 8.2:957). He also reiterates his hostility to rash innovators. Unfortunately, this defence is hastily written and readers must have asked whether the author was consistent in attacking innovators when he was himself outlining a new form of constitution, with unheard-of restraints on the king, and whether he could claim to oppose those who resuscitated dead traditions while he was welcoming the principle of legitimacy and the restoration of the Bourbons, who had been in exile for some twenty years. Again, while he argues at one moment that the French have no fond memories of any ancient institution, at the next he states, after declaring that providence is about to offer the French the glorious gift of liberty:
May it [this glory] fall to the monarch who reunites in the eyes of the French everything that can found the hopes and speak to the intimate emotions of the heart. I mean precious memories, the habit of enlightenment, goodness, the reverence due to a long period of unhappiness and the present legitimacy, the surest guarantee of a peaceful stability, that legitimacy of which peoples are sometimes obliged to do without, but of which the deprivation makes them feel a pain which resembles remorse.51
It is doubtful whether this somewhat fulsome tribute to Louis XVIII,52 here idealized as a monarch who embodies the principle of legitimacy and inspires memories dear to the hearts of the French, would convince readers that Constant was not continuing to speak the language of the counter-revolution. Indeed, it reads like a clumsy distillation of much that was ‘Burkean’ in De l’esprit de conquête.
6
By 1815 Constant was still a marginal figure in French politics. But once again events moved swiftly and he would find himself propelled briefly to the centre of affairs. On 5 June the news arrived in Paris that Napoleon had left Elba and was marching on the capital. Constant’s immediate reaction was to publish a thundering denunciation of the former Emperor (whom he compared to Attila and Genghis Khan) in the Journal des débats of 19 March and to defend the restored Bourbons. However, a month later, Louis XVIII having taken refuge in Belgium, Constant allowed himself to be convinced that Napoleon was prepared to introduce liberal reforms and accepted the post of Conseiller d’Etat, with special responsibility for the drafting of a new constitution, which was promulgated on 24 April as the Acte additionnel aux Constitutions de l’Empire. A fortnight later he published Principes de politique applicables à tous les gouvernements (1815), which contained much material recycled from the Réflexions sur les constitutions and other works. Shortly after this, following Waterloo and the return of the Bourbons, he found himself included on the list of those condemned to exile; he was pardoned by Louis XVIII but, judging it expedient to disappear from France for some time, went first to Belgium and then, in January 1816, to England, where he published Adolphe and began preparing a defence of his role during the Hundred Days.
He returned to France at the end of 1816 and his career from this date until his death in 1830 was one of intense activity, which included journalism and, after 1819, the busy life of a député, first for the Sarthe department (1819–22), then for Paris (1824–27) and finally for the Bas-Rhin department (1827–30). His numerous publications from this period include, apart from occasional pamphlets, an edition of his collected works (1818–20), Mémoires sur les Cent-Jours (1820–22), Commentaire sur l’ouvrage de Filangieri (1822–24), De la religion (1824–30), Discours à la Chambre des Députés (1827) and Mélanges de littérature et de politique (1829).
During this final, and most productive, part of his career, Constant makes no reference to Burke. However, he retains his affinity with Burke regarding the importance of imposing limitations on power, on respecting manners and morals and on retaining the principle of the hereditary monarchy and nobility. The difference between these works of his maturity, and the Réflexions sur les constitutions, in which the ‘Burkean’ or traditional elements seemed to pull in one way and the desire for a new model monarchy in another, is that Constant has now found a formula which indicates that his aim is to reconcile past and present or, more precisely, the idealism of the Revolution and the principles of the Charter. Thus he makes his position clear, writing in December 1816 in De la doctrine politique qui peut réunir les partis en France:53
The moral interests of the Revolution … are what the nation wanted at the time of the Revolution, what it still wants, what it can never cease to want, equality of the citizen before the law, freedom of conscience, personal security, responsible independence of the press. The moral interests of the Revolution are principles.54
His position is expressed even more clearly in Des élections prochaines (August 1817):
The Revolution was made for liberty. The Charter has consecrated the good achieved by the Revolution and discarded what was deplorable. Let us consolidate the Charter and end the Revolution by giving the nation what it wanted and causing the constitution to be cherished by granting the people the advantages it offers.55
Constant now has defined his programme: support for the new constitutional monarchy, which will consolidate the gains of the Revolution and at the same time create conditions favouring progress towards the ideals of liberty, equality and security. Having accepted the Revolution and its break with the ancien régime, Constant cannot, like Burke, appeal to continuity in terms of an old established constitution; he therefore makes a different appeal: to the continuity of a moral tradition represented by those who, like Socrates and Cicero, have never lost their faith in the future of mankind. Thus he had already written in De l’esprit de conquête, referring to these ‘friends of humanity’ who represent an almost Burkean ‘correspondence’ between past and present:
Yet it is in them that hope for the human race lies. We owe to them that great correspondence between the centuries which bears witness in ineffaceable letters against all the sophisms which are repeated anew by every tyrant.56
As for Constant’s respect for habits and traditions, he is now more careful with his wording than in De l’esprit de conquête. Thus we read in a speech of 27 March 1824, referring to the importance of the harmonious relation between political institutions and enlightened public opinion, ‘what is best for the people, when this happy agreement is found, is long-established habit supporting the throne and fresh enlightened ideas presiding over institutions’.57 This combination of enlightened ideas (clearly those associated with the Revolution) and the Charter includes the retention of the hereditary nobility: ‘Modern governments, to be moderate and stable, should combine heredity with election … Alongside royalty there can exist a hereditary power deriving its strength from its age, a bulwark protecting the royal authority if the elected powers became threatening.’58 Rather curiously, earlier in the same speech he says: ‘Two great systems have at all times divided the world; one is heredity, the other election … the less a people is enlightened, the more heredity should have authority; the more a people is enlightened, the more election gains ground.’59 This passage can be interpreted to suggest that the natural progress of mankind and increase in enlightenment will lead in the future to a pure republican form of government.60 However this may be, Constant had no doubt that a hereditary monarchy was right for the period after 1814. His greatest disappointment was that little interest was shown in his constitutional ideas and that as time passed the French government moved further and further away from the ideals not only of the Revolution, but also of the Charter.61
7
While there are numerous affinities between Burke and Constant, there will always remain the fact that they are divided by their assessment of the Revolution. Constant, given his interpretation of history as progress, could argue that the Revolution was a stage in this process, an example of how the human spirit, having cast off dead laws and institutions, had attempted to replace them with new ones. The attempt was not immediately successful, for the reforms had overshot the mark and, while it was easy to destroy the old system of government, there were problems in devising a new one which would be appropriate to the state of mind of the nation. Unfortunately, the failure to solve this problem had culminated in the centralized and autocratic government of the Empire. In this state of affairs, where the State is all and the individual nothing, those shared values which are essential to any community collapse and individuals, finding themselves in ‘an unnatural isolation’ (‘un isolement contre nature’) are reduced to living for the moment and pursuing their selfish interests (Œuvres, 8.1:590). Burke’s analysis of this failure is in many ways similar to Constant’s: there is the same description of the abuse of power which has led governments to regard the citizens not as free agents, but as mere instruments, the same portrayal of the corruption of moral values and of the alienation from the community of individuals who, ‘like the flies of a summer’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:145), have no past and no future.
Burke and Constant are speaking here as moralists who condemn the undermining of those shared moral values, including ‘untaught feelings’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:138), and religious beliefs, which they believe are the foundations of social and political life. However, whereas Constant believes that the new regime, which will combine the gains of the Revolution with the promises of the Charter, will usher in a new age in which the human spirit will recover its natural élan, Burke can see no such future. Constant’s optimism is expressed as follows:
Tyranny, immorality, injustice are so unnatural that a single effort, a single courageous voice suffices to rescue man from this abyss. He returns to morality through the misfortune of having forgotten it. He returns to liberty through the unhappiness of having forgotten it. The cause of no nation is without hope.62
Burke, on the other hand, believes that the Revolution is a monstrosity ‘out of nature’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:60)63 which has corrupted morals and religion beyond repair. Comparing the Revolution to an earlier episode in the history of France, he notes that, following the wars of religion, the moral life of the nation had recovered, since the French ‘had not slain the mind of their country’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:100). But the Revolution, he believes, had, indeed, slain the mind of France; there was no way forward, no possibility of recovery.
Constant, at times, seems to share this view. For example, in a draft preface to Adolphe, the work which is his acknowledged masterpiece, he describes, like Burke, how there are certain moments when the death of the human spirit can occur. Thus, referring to the period in which he lives, he regrets the degradation which has affected those natural feelings which form the basis of genuine commitment to love, liberty and religious belief:
Inconstancy or fatigue in love, incredulity in religion in many dull or frightening forms and servility in politics are contemporary symptoms. It is a sad period when the decrepitude of civilization has killed what is natural and where there remains to man neither hope in heaven, dignity on earth or refuge in his own heart.64
This is not his last word, however, which is one of resignation and acceptance of the course which will be taken by events. Thus referring to the period from 1789 to 1829, he writes in the preface to the Mélanges:
The crisis which is taking place before our eyes … is not the last one which will change the face of the earth. After the things which are disappearing today, many more will disappear. But these disappearances or rather these later deliverances are reserved for another period. Let us not anticipate the future: let us absorb doctrines brought and consolidated by time.65
And similarly, he writes: ‘If humanity follows an invariable course [marche], we must accept it. Only resignation will save us from senseless struggles and frightful unhappiness.’66
Would Burke have agreed? There is a curious passage at the end of his Thoughts on French Affairs (December 1791):
I have done with this subject, I believe for ever. It has given me many anxious moments for the two last years. If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it, the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decree of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm but perverse and obstinate. (Writings and Speeches, 8:386)
This suggestion that one should resign oneself to accepting ‘the mighty current in human affairs’ is very similar to what we have found in Constant. However, in the final analysis, neither Burke nor Constant accepted passivity or resignation in the face of events; Burke continued in his opposition to the Revolution even to the point of campaigning for a war against France and Constant gave his full support to the July Revolution, hoping that in its outcome it would be more successful than the governments of the Restoration in combining the ideals of the Revolution with constitutional monarchy.
There are many approaches to the extremely diverse works of Constant. To approach them by examining possible affinities with Burke offers a perspective which takes into account that interest in history, manners, morals and religion sometimes lacking in studies which concentrate narrowly on Constant’s constitutionalism or his theory of negative and positive liberty. At the same time, it is a perspective which, without claiming that there are demonstrable influences (as distinct from affinities), invites the reader to reflect on how a ‘Burkean’ analysis of the French Revolution, in terms of the abuse of power and the practice of imposing laws from above, continues a certain tradition of ‘moderation’67 in political thought which could be found relevant, even by those who initially opposed Burke, to the political and constitutional problems of the following century.
Notes
1For a description of these editions and translations see Courtney (1981, items 10a–10d).
2For the political background to the work, see the introductions in Constant, Œuvres complètes 1993–, vols 8.1 and 8.2 (hereafter Œuvres).
3Translations from Constant are my own.
4‘J’ai pour le passé, je l’avoue, beaucoup de vénération; et chaque jour, à mesure que l’expérience m’instruit ou que la réflexion m’éclaire, cette vénération augmente. Je le dirai, au grand scandale de nos modernes réformateurs, qu’ils s’intitulent Lycurgues ou Charlemagnes: si je voyais un peuple auquel on aurait offert les institutions les plus parfaites, métaphysiquement parlant, et qui les refuserait pour rester fidèle à celles de ses pères, j’estimerais ce peuple, et je le croirais plus heureux par son sentiment et par son âme sous ses institutions défectueuses, qu’il ne pourrait l’être par tous les perfectionnements proposés’ (Œuvres, 8.1:588).
5‘Indépendamment de ces considérations, et en séparant le bonheur d’avec la morale, remarquez que l’homme se plie aux institutions qu’il trouve établies, comme à des règles de la nature physique. Il arrange, d’après les défauts mêmes de ces institutions, ses intérêts, ses spéculations, tout son plan de vie. Leurs défauts s’adoucissent parce que toutes les fois qu’une institution dure longtemps, il y a transaction entre elle et les intérêts de l’homme. Ses relations, ses espérances se groupent autour de ce qui existe. Changer tout cela, même pour le mieux, c’est lui faire mal’ (Œuvres, 8.1:589).
6‘Il est évident que des peuples placés dans des situations, élevés dans des coutumes, habitant des lieux dissemblables, ne peuvent être ramenés à des formes, à des usages, à des pratiques, à des lois absolument pareilles, sans une contrainte qui leur coûte beaucoup plus qu’elle ne leur vaut. La série d’idées dont leur être moral s’est formé graduellement, et dès leur naissance, ne peut être modifiée par un arrangement purement nominal, purement extérieur, indépendant de leur volonté’ (Œuvres, 8.1:588–89).
7In Chapter 5 of the first editions of the work the proposed successor (who is not mentioned by name) is obviously Bernadotte; in the last edition (July or August 1814) it is Louis XVIII.
8‘Mais chaque génération, dit l’un des étrangers qui a le mieux prévu nos erreurs dès l’origine, chaque génération hérite de ses aïeux un trésor de richesses morales, trésor invisible et précieux qu’elle lègue à ses descendants’ (Œuvres, 8.1:587).
9The passage quoted is from pp. 8–9 of Rehberg’s text.
10For Rehberg and the German context see Chapter 16 of the present volume. That Constant was acquainted with Rehberg is confirmed by references in his Journal and correspondence of 1813–14.
11See, for example, the comments of the duc de Broglie (1886, 1:282).
12Also known as Le Cahier rouge (The Red Notebook).
13For Constant’s education at Edinburgh, see Courtney (1992, 303–24) and Wood (1993, 43–62).
14According to Sir James Mackintosh, a contemporary of Constant’s at Edinburgh, ‘Wilde, as an orator, copied too much the faults of Mr. Burke’s manner’ (Mackintosh 1835, 1:27).
15Constant, Correspondance générale, 1:372–73 (hereafter CG).
16‘que je contemplais avec une vénération toute particulière, parce qu’elle était sœur du marquis de Rockingham, et que ma politique écossaise m’avait inspiré un grand enthousiasme pour l’administration des Whigs dont il avait été le chef’ (Œuvres, 3.1:347–48). The allusion to Scottish political ideas is possibly a reference to some of the Scottish professors (William Robertson, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and others) with whose historical and sociological approach to various aspects of civilization Constant may already have been familiar.
17See note 15.
18‘Mon père avait ce gouvernement en horreur et m’avait élevé dans ces principes’ (Œuvres, 3.1:353–54).
19‘Rempli de toute sa haine contre le gouvernement de Berne, je me trouvai à peine dans une chaise de poste avec un Bernois que je commençai à répéter tous les arguments connus contre les privilèges en politique, contre les droits enlevés au peuple, contre l’autorité héréditaire, etc., etc., ne manquant pas de promettre à mon compagnon de voyage que, si jamais l’occasion s’offrait, je délivrerais le pays de Vaud de l’oppression où le tenaient ses compatriotes’ (Œuvres, 3.1:355).
20The first edition was published in London on 1 November 1790 (Todd 1964, item 53a).
21‘Je m’occupe à présent à lire et à réfuter le livre de Burke contre les Levellers français. Il y a autant d’absurdités que de lignes dans ce fameux livre, aussi a-t-il un plein succès dans toutes les sociétés anglaises et allemandes. Il défend la noblesse, et l’exclusion des sectaires et l’établissement d’une religion dominante, et autres choses de cette nature. J’ai déjà beaucoup écrit sur cette apologie des abus, et si le maudit procès de mon père ne vient pas m’arracher à mon loisir, je pourrai bien pour la première fois de ma vie avoir fait un ouvrage’ (CG, 1:271).
22As late as 7 June 1794 he was still uncompromising in his defence of the Revolution: ‘Les partis mitoyens ne valent rien, dans le moment actuel, ils valent moins que jamais. Voilà ma profession de foi’ (‘The parties which occupy the middle ground are worthless, at this juncture they are more worthless than ever. That is my profession of faith’ [CG, 2:381]), letter to Isabelle de Charrière.
23This unfavourable impression was not lessened by the fact that his closest friend in Brunswick was Jacob Mauvillon (1743–1794), who was a freemason, collaborator of Mirabeau and a translator of Raynal’s Histoire philosophique des deux Indes.
24Translated into English by James Losh (Constant, 1797).
25‘Ceux-là sont partisans de l’arbitraire, qui prétendent avec Burke que des axiomes, métaphysiquement vrais, peuvent être politiquement faux, préfèrent à ces axiomes des considérations, des préjugés, des souvenirs, des faiblesses, toutes choses vagues, indéfinissables, ondoyantes, rentrant par conséquent dans le domaine de l’arbitraire’ (Œuvres, 1:496). The reference is to the following passage in Reflections: ‘The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:112). Constant is, of course offering something of a caricature of Burke, who writes, ‘I do not put abstract ideas wholly out of any question, because I well know that under that name I should dismiss principles’ (Works, 6: 113–14), speech of 11 May 1792.
26Œuvres, 1:489–95 (Chapter 8, ‘Des principes’).
27Discours prononcé au Cercle constitutionnel, pour la plantation de l’arbre de la liberté, 16 September 1798, Paris, Lemaire (Œuvres, 1:545–62).
28Fonds Constant II, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire, Lausanne.
29‘Ni lui ni moi ne savions alors que presque tous les vieux gouvernements sont doux parce qu’ils sont vieux et tous les nouveaux gouvernements durs, parce qu’ils sont nouveaux. J’excepte pourtant le despotisme absolu’ (Œuvres, 3.1:354–55). Cf. De l’esprit de conquête: ‘Monarchy, as it exists in most European states, is an institution modified by time, softened by habit’ (‘La monarchie, telle qu’elle existe dans la plupart des Etats européens, est une institution modifiée par le temps, adoucie par l’habitude’ (Œuvres 8.1:605)).
30‘L’occasion s’est offerte, onze ans après: mais j’avais devant les yeux l’expérience de la France où j’avais été témoin de ce qu’est une révolution, et acteur assez impuissant, dans le sens d’une liberté fondée sur la justice, et je me suis bien gardé de me mêler de révolutionner la Suisse’ (Œuvres, 3.1:355). The reference is to the Vaudois revolution of 1798.
31‘Il y a dans l’irréligion quelque chose de grossier et d’usé qui me répugne’ (Journal, 19 February 1805, Œuvres, 6:330).
32From ‘Of Atheism’. Constant abridges the quotation and writes, ‘un peu de science mène à l’athéisme et plus de science à la religion’ (CG, 8:371).
33The date 1806 is usually inserted after this title in order to distinguish it from the later Principes de politique published in 1815.
34See the important quotation from Sieyès in the Principes: ‘Les pouvoirs illimités sont un monstre politique, et une grande erreur du peuple français. … il n’a pas lui-même ces pouvoirs, ces droits illimités que les flatteurs lui ont attribués’ (‘Unlimited powers are a political monster, and a grave error on the part of the French people … they do not themselves have this power, these unlimited rights attributed to them by flatterers’ (Œuvres, 5:109).
35Here Burke is responding to the statement of the sovereign rights of the people in Richard Price’s Discourse on the Love of our Country; see Chapter 3 of the present volume (editor’s note).
36‘Burke dit que la liberté est une puissance: on peut dire de même que la puissance est une liberté’ (Œuvres, 5:557, 646). Burke had written in Reflections, ‘liberty, when men act in bodies, is power’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:59).
37‘contraire à la nature des hommes et des choses’ (Œuvres, 5:559).
38‘le sacrifice d’une foule de sentiments, de souvenirs, de convenances locales, dont se compose le bonheur individuel, c’est-à-dire le seul bonheur véritable’ (Œuvres, 5:560).
39‘la série d’idées dont leur être moral s’est formé graduellement et dès leur naissance’ (Œuvres, 8.1:589); see above, note 5.
40For a detailed account of Constant’s theory of progress, see Hofmann (2009).
41‘Pour qu’un peuple fasse des progrès il suffit que le pouvoir ne les entrave pas. L’avancement est dans la nature de l’homme. Le gouvernement qui le laisse libre, le favorise assez’ (Œuvres, 5:588).
42Montesquieu’s theory of the ‘esprit général’ implies the possibility of progress, but neither he nor Burke believes in the inevitability of progress. Burke’s views on progress and the possibility of perfecting human nature have a religious basis; see Reflections: ‘He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its perfection ‒ He willed therefore the state ‒ He willed its connexion with the source and original archetype of all perfection’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:148).
43For a detailed analysis of Constant’s theory, see Jaume (1997, 185–92).
44See Constant (1991, 41–56).
45For the debate, see Cobbett (1813, 20:1116–41); see also Courtney (1963, 109–10). In the Letter to a Member of the National Assembly Burke expresses the orthodox eighteenth-century view that the King of Great Britain ‘is a real King and not an executive officer’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:331).
46Marcel Gauchet points out that Burke had anticipated Constant in his analysis of the dangers of unlimited power and that part of Constant’s originality is to have appropriated certain aspects of the ‘conservative‘ criticism (by Burke and others) of the Revolution (Constant 1980, 27–30).
47‘Si vous laissez à l’opinion la faculté de s’exprimer librement, vous la connaîtrez sans peine … Que l’autorité reste muette, les individus parleront; du choc des idées naîtra la lumière, et le sentiment général sera bientôt impossible à méconnaître’ (Œuvres, 8.2:806).
48‘les améliorations sont lentes et graduelles: le peuple s’éclaire sans qu’on l’y contraigne; les lois se perfectionnent dans les détails, sans qu’on imagine d’en bouleverser l’ensemble … Honneur au prince qui, dans sa marche, à la fois prudente et généreuse, favorise tous les progrès naturels, respecte tous les ajournements nécessaires, et sait également se garantir de la défiance qui veut interrompre, et de l’impatience de tout devancer’ (Œuvres, 8.2:808).
49‘Les êtres moraux ne peuvent être soumis aux règles de l’arithmétique ou du mécanisme. Le passé jette en eux de profondes racines, qui ne se brisent pas sans douleur’ (Œuvres, 8.2:812). For Burke’s hostility to reforms based on ‘arithmetic’ see especially Reflections (Writings and Speeches, 8:61, 103, 221, 229).
50‘les souvenirs, les habitudes, les traditions des peuples doivent servir de base à leurs institutions’ (Œuvres, 8.2:957).
51‘Qu’elle soit le partage du monarque qui réunit aux yeux des Français tout ce qui peut fonder les espérances et parler aux émotions intimes de l’âme, je veux dire, de grands souvenirs, l’habitude des lumières, la bonté, la sainteté d’un long malheur: et cette légitimité, garantie la plus sûre d’une stabilité paisible, cette légitimité, dont les peuples sont contraints de se passer quelquefois, mais dont la privation leur fait éprouver une douleur qui ressemble au remords’ (Œuvres, 8.2:959).
52It is worth noting that this passage was deleted in the edition of Constant’s collected works published in 1818–20 (Œuvres, 8.2:1065–283).
53For the translation by Thomas Elde Derby, see Constant (1817).
54‘Les intérêts moraux de la révolution … sont ce qu’à l’époque de la révolution la nation a voulu, ce qu’elle veut encore, ce qu’elle ne peut cesser de vouloir, l’égalité des citoyens devant la loi, la liberté des consciences, la sûreté des personnes, l’indépendance responsable de la presse. Les intérêts moraux de la révolution, ce sont les principes’ (Œuvres, 10.1:321).
55‘La Révolution a été faite pour la liberté. La Charte a consacré ce que la Révolution avait conquis de bon, en écartant ce qu’elle avait de déplorable. Affermissons la Charte, terminons la Révolution, en donnant à la nation ce qu’elle a voulu, et faisons-lui chérir sa constitution, en lui en accordant les avantages’ (Œuvres, 10.2:765).
56‘En eux repose toutefois l’espoir de la race humaine. Nous leur devons cette grande correspondance des siècles qui dépose en lettres ineffaçables contre tous les sophismes que renouvellent tous les tyrans’ (Œuvres, 8.2:798). Constant also speaks of ‘[le] lien des générations entre elles et de l’homme avec l’univers (‘the link between generations and between man and the universe’ (Œuvres, 8.2:778). Cf. the celebrated passage in Reflections where Burke refers to ‘a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world’ (Writings and Speeches, 8:84).
57‘ce qu’il y a de mieux pour le peuple, quand cet heureux accord se rencontre, c’est l’habitude antique appuyant le trône, et les lumières présidant aux institutions’ (Bastid 1966, 1:390).
58‘Les gouvernements modernes, pour être modérés comme pour être stables doivent combiner l‘hérédité avec l‘élection … A côté de la royauté peut exister aussi un pouvoir héréditaire, tirant sa force de sa durée, et rempart de l’autorité royale, si les pouvoirs électifs devenaient envahissants’, speech of 6 April 1829 (Constant 1964, 2:136).
59‘Deux grands systèmes se sont de tout temps partagé le monde; l’un est l’hérédité, l’autre l’élection … Moins un peuple est éclairé, plus l’hérédité doit avoir de force, plus un peuple est éclairé, plus l’élection gagne de terrain’ (Constant 1964, 2:134).
60See Grange (2004, 355–57).
61For Constant’s opposition to the drift of the government to the right, especially after 1820, see Alexander (2009).
62‘La tyrannie, l’immoralité, l’injustice sont tellement contre nature qu’il ne faut qu’un effort, une voix courageuse pour retirer l’homme de cet abîme. Il revient à la morale par le malheur qui résulte de l‘oubli de la morale. Il revient à la liberté par le malheur qui résulte de l’oubli de la liberté. La cause d’aucune nation n’est désespérée’ (Œuvres, 8.2:799).
63For this aspect of the Revolution see Courtney (1973).
64‘L’inconstance ou la fatigue en amour, l’incrédulité en religion sous mille formes, ternes ou effrayantes, la servilité en politique, sont des symptômes contemporains. Triste époque où la décrépitude de la civilisation a tué la nature et où il ne reste à l’homme ni espoir dans le ciel, ni dignité sur terre, ni refuge dans son propre cœur’ (Draft preface for the second edition of Adolphe, 1816 [Œuvres, 3.1:198]).
65‘La crise qui s’opère sous nos yeux … n’est pas la dernière qui changera la face du monde. Après les choses qui tombent aujourd’hui, beaucoup tomberont encore. Mais ces destructions, ou pour mieux dire ces délivrances ultérieures, sont réservées à une autre époque. N’anticipons point sur le temps: pénétrons-nous des doctrines que les temps ont amenées et qu’ils consolident’ (Œuvres, 33:147).
66‘Si l‘espèce humaine suit une marche invariable, il faut s‘y soumettre. La résignation seule épargnera aux hommes des luttes insensées et d’affreux malheurs’ (Œuvres, 33:470).
67For an analysis of this tradition, from Montesquieu to Constant, see Craiutu (2012).