Liberty Fund Books

Description

Principles of Politics, first published in 1815, is a “microcosm of [Constant’s] whole political philosophy and an expression of his political experience,” says Nicholas Capaldi in his Introduction. In Principles, Constant “explores many subjects: law, sovereignty, and representation; power and accountability; government, property and taxation; wealth and poverty; war, peace, and the maintenance of public order; and above all freedom, of the individual, of the press, and of religion. . . . Constant saw freedom as an organic phenomenon: to attack it in any particular way was to attack it generally.”

Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) was born in Switzerland and became one of France’s leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician. His colorful life included a formative stay at the University of Edinburgh; service at the court of Brunswick, Germany; election to the French Tribunate; and initial opposition and subsequent support for Napoleon, even the drafting of a constitution for the Hundred Days.

Constant wrote many books, essays, and pamphlets. His deepest conviction was that reform is hugely superior to revolution, both morally and politically. While Constant’s fluid, dynamic style and lofty eloquence do not always make for easy reading, his text forms a coherent whole, and in his translation Dennis O’Keeffe has focused on retaining the “general elegance and subtle rhetoric” of the original.

Sir Isaiah Berlin called Constant “the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy” and believed to him we owe the notion of “negative liberty,” that is, what Biancamaria Fontana describes as “the protection of individual experience and choices from external interferences and constraints.” To Constant it was relatively unimportant whether liberty was ultimately grounded in religion or metaphysics—what mattered were the practical guarantees of practical freedom—“autonomy in all those aspects of life that could cause no harm to others or to society as a whole.”

This translation is based on Etienne Hofmann’s critical edition of Principes de politique (1980), complete with Constant’s additions to the original work.

Dennis O’Keeffe is Professor of Social Science at the University of Buckingham and Senior Research Fellow in Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs. He has published widely in the area of education and the social sciences. His books include The Wayward Elite (1990) and Political Correctness and Public Finance (1999). His previous translations include Alain Finkielkraut’s The Undoing of Thought (La Défaite de la Pensée) (1988).

Etienne Hofmann is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social and Political Science at the University of Lausanne and also teaches in the Faculty of Arts where he directs L’Institut Benjamin Constant. He specializes in critical editions of texts and correspondence and is working on the edition of Constant’s complete works.

Nicholas Capaldi is the Legendre-Soule Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics at Loyola University, New Orleans, and was Professor at the University of Tulsa and Queens College, City University of New York. Among his books are Out of Order: Affirmative Action and the Crisis of Doctrinaire Liberalism; Affirmative Action: Social Justice or Unfair Preference?; and Immigration: Debating the Issues.

Reviews

Apart from a few essays little was known in English of Constant, but now, thanks to the magnificent translation of his major work by Dennis O’Keeffe (Principles of Politics, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 2003) we have a clear idea of what Constant stood for and its value for the contemporary world. Constant produced, in over 550 densely argued pages, the most coherent normative theory of liberalism (in its traditional sense) in the nineteenth century. It is intellectually complex but Constant’s own lyrical style is rendered into elegant English in O’Keeffe’s fine translation. . . .There is an informative introduction by Nicholas Capaldi, and our understanding is made easier by Dennis O’Keeffe’s thorough and lucid translation. He even politely corrects the odd mistake Constant made. It is a monument to scholarship and unlikely to be matched.

The Salisbury Review
Autumn 2004


Liberty Fund has published an elegant, faithfully translated edition of the first (1810) and longest version of Constant’s Principles of Politics Applicable to All Modern Governments. . .Constant is a necessary companion for every thoughtful person who tries to steer a principled middle path between reactionary nostalgia and progressive illusions. His measured, humane liberalism is superior to nearly everything that goes by that name in the contemporary academic and political worlds.

The New Criterion
June 2004


By 1810 Constant had completed his Principles of Politics, which Dennis O’Keeffe has now translated into an elegant English that matches Constant’s French. O’Keefe is the editor of the Salisbury Review in London, and his is the first full translation of this French classic. It also has an authoritative Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi, who sees Constant as a crucial link in the French liberal tradition between Montesquieu and Tocqueville. The book itself is a handsome product.

Quadrant
May 2004

Table of Contents

Translator’s Note xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii

Principles of Politics Applicable
to All Governments

Book I. On Received Ideas About the Scope of Political Authority 1

1. The purpose of this work. 3
2. Rousseau’s first principle on the origin of political authority. 6
3. Rousseau’s second principle on the scope of political authority. 8
4. Rousseau’s arguments for boundless political authority. 15
5. That Rousseau’s error comes from his wanting to distinguish the
prerogatives of society from those of the government. 17
6. The consequences of Rousseau’s theory. 19
7. On Hobbes. 21
8. Hobbes’s opinion reproduced. 23
9. On the inconsistency with which Rousseau has been reproached. 24

Book II. On the Principles to Replace Received Ideas
on the Extent of Political Authority 29

1. On the limitation of political authority. 31
2. On the rights of the majority. 32
3. On the organization of government when political power
is not limited. 35
4. Objection to the possibility of limiting political authority. 36
5. On the limits of political authority restricted to a minimum. 38
6. On individual rights when political authority is thus restricted. 39
7. On the principle of utility substituted for the idea of individual rights. 39

Book III. On Arguments and Hypotheses in Favor of the
Extension of Political Authority 45

1. On the extension of political authority beyond its necessary minimum,
on the grounds of utility. 47
2. On the hypotheses without which extension of political authority is
illegitimate. 49
3. Are governors necessarily less liable to error than the governed? 50
4. Are governmental mistakes less dangerous than those
of individuals? 55
5. On the nature of the means political authority can use on the grounds
of utility. 57

Book IV. On the Proliferation of the Laws 61

1. Natural causes of the proliferation of the laws. 63
2. The idea which usually develops about the effects
which the proliferation of the laws has and the falsity
of that idea. 63
3. That the principal benefit which supporters of democratic
government are looking for in the proliferation of the laws
does not exist. 65
4. On the corruption which the proliferation of the laws causes
among the agents of the government. 66
5. Another drawback of the proliferation of the laws. 67

Book V. On Arbitrary Measures 71

1. On arbitrary measures and why people have always
protested less about them than about attacks
on property. 73
2. On the grounds for arbitrary measures and the prerogative
of preventing crimes. 74
3. Specious argument in support of arbitrary government. 77
4. On the effect of arbitrary measures in terms of moral life, industry,
and the duration of governments. 78
5. On the influence of arbitrary rule on the governors themselves. 80

Book VI. On Coups d’Etat 83

1. On the admiration for coups d’Etat. 85
2. On coups d’Etat in countries with written constitutions. 89
3. The condition necessary to stop constitutional violations. 93

Book VII. On Freedom of Thought 101

1. The object of the following three books. 103
2. On freedom of thought. 103
3. On the expression of thought. 105
4. Continuation of the same subject. 112
5. Continuation of the same subject. 117
6. Some necessary explication. 123
7. Final observations. 124

Book VIII. On Religious Freedom 129

1. Why religion was so often attacked by the men of the
Enlightenment. 131
2. On civil intolerance. 135
3. On the proliferation of sects. 137
4. On the maintenance of religion by government against the spirit of
inquiry. 139
5. On the reestablishment of religion by government. 140
6. On the axiom that the people must have a religion. 141
7. On the utilitarian case for religion. 142
8. Another effect of the axiom that the people must have a religion. 143
9. On tolerance when government gets involved. 144
10. On the persecution of a religious belief. 144

Book IX. On Legal Safeguards 149

1. On the independence of the courts. 151
2. On the abridgment of due process. 153
3. On punishments. 157
4. On the prerogative of exercising mercy. 160

Book X. On the Action of Government with Regard to Property 163

1. The purpose of this book. 165
2. The natural division of the inhabitants of the same territory into
two classes. 165
3. On property. 167
4. On the status property should occupy in political institutions 168
5. On examples drawn from antiquity. 171
6. On the proprietorial spirit. 173
7. That territorial property alone brings together all the advantages
of property. 174
8. On property in public funds. 179
9. On the amount of landed property which society has the right to insist
upon for the exercise of political rights. 182
10. That owners have no interest in abusing power vis-à-vis
nonowners. 183
11. On hereditary privileges compared to property. 185
12. Necessary comment. 186
13. On the best way of giving proprietors a large
political influence. 190
14. On the action of government on property. 192
15. On laws which favor the accumulation of property in the
same hands. 193
16. On laws which enforce the wider spreading of property. 196

Book XI. On Taxation 203

1. The object of this book. 205
2. The first right of the governed with regard to taxation. 205
3. The second right of the governed with regard to taxation. 207
4. On various types of taxes. 207
5. How taxation becomes contrary to individual rights. 212
6. That taxes bearing on capital are contrary to individual
rights. 214
7. That the interest of the state in matters of taxation is consistent with
individual rights. 215
8. An incontestable axiom. 219
9. The drawback of excessive taxation. 220
10. A further drawback of excessive taxation. 221

Book XII. On government jurisdiction over economic
activity and population 225

1. Preliminary observation. 227
2. On legitimate political jurisdiction vis-à-vis economic activity. 228
3. That there are two branches of government intervention with regard
to economic activity. 228
4. On privileges and prohibitions. 229
5. On the general effect of prohibitions. 247
6. On things which push governments in this mistaken
direction. 248
7. On the supports offered by government. 251
8. On the equilibrium of production. 255
9. A final example of the adverse effects of government
intervention. 258
10. Conclusions from the above reflections. 259
11. On government measures in relation to population. 260

Book XIII. On War 275

1. From what point of view war can be considered as having
advantages. 277
2. On the pretexts for war. 279
3. The effect of the politics of war on the domestic condition
of nations. 282
4. On safeguards against the war mania of governments. 286
5. On the mode of forming and maintaining armies. 289

Book XIV. On Government Action on Enlightenment 295

1. Questions to be dealt with in this book. 297
2. On the value attributed to errors. 298
3. On government in support of truth. 301
4. On government protection of enlightenment. 304
5. On the upholding of morality. 307
6. On the contribution of government to education. 308
7. On government duties vis-à-vis enlightenment. 315

Book XV. The Outcome of Preceding Discussion Relative to the
Action of Government 319

1. The outcome of the preceding discussion. 321
2. On three pernicious ideas. 322
3. On ideas of uniformity. 322
4. Application of this principle to the composition of representative
assemblies. 326
5. Further thoughts on the preceding chapter. 328
6. On ideas of stability. 338
7. On premature ameliorations. 340
8. On a false way of reasoning. 345

Book XVI. On Political Authority in the Ancient World 349

1. Why among the ancients political authority could be more extensive
than in modern times. 351
2. The first difference between the social State of the ancients and that
of modern times. 352
3. The second difference. 353
4. The third difference. 355
5. The fourth difference. 358
6. The fifth difference. 359
7. The result of these differences between the ancients and the
moderns. 361
8. Modern imitators of the republics of antiquity. 365

Book XVII. On the True Principles of Freedom 381

1. On the inviolability of the true principles of freedom. 383
2. That the circumscription of political authority, within its precise
limits, does not tend at all to weaken the necessary action of the
government. 385
3. Final thoughts on civil freedom and political freedom. 386
4. Apologia for despotism by Louis XIV. 392

Book XVIII. On the Duties of Individuals to Political Authority 395

1. Difficulties with regard to the question of resistance. 397
2. On obedience to the law. 398
3. On revolutions. 405
4. On the duties of enlightened men during revolutions. 407
5. Continuation of the same subject. 413
6. On the duties of enlightened men after violent revolutions. 419

Additions to the Work Entitled Principles of Politics Applicable
to All Governments 425

Index 535