The bibliographical researches of André Monglond, La France révolutionnaire et impériale. Annales de bibliographies méthodiques et descriptions des livres illustrés, Grenoble, B. Arthaud; Paris, Impr. nat., 1930 (1789)–1963 (1812), 9 vol., let us confirm Constant’s claim. From the time of the Consulate and above all the Empire, constitutional writings do indeed become rarer. The disfavor indicated, however, is much more a question of censorship than of any natural cause. See Henri Welschinger, La censure sous le Premier Empire, Paris, Perrin, 1887. We find in the work of Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres, edited and with an introduction by Marco Minerbi, Geneva, Droz, 1965, p. 82, a similar reflection to Constant’s but much earlier. “The French, surrounded with revolutions which have taught them all too well to mistrust political theories, have grown weary with an important branch of inquiry to which their new duties really summon them. Maybe I will strive in vain to persuade them that the subject has not been exhausted by all the writings which have so wearied them, that we have made scarcely any advance on the maîtres who wrote before the Revolution, and that lots of important questions still demand debate, lots of findings need verification, and lots of new ideas need an airing. They will find a great number of these new ideas in the book with which I am presenting them, and if they do not accept them, at least they will find rejecting them stimulating. Perhaps, they might even during the course of their criticism, encounter the lessons they do not want to take from me.”

Since this text dates from 1806, we are citing in effect the constitutions of 1791, 1793, an III, an VIII, an X, and an XII.

Constant had already enunciated his conception of the power of words on men and ideas in De la force du gouvernement, pp. 84–85. See Etienne Hofmann, Les “Principes de politique” de Benjamin Constant, Droz, 1980, Tome I, Première Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 119–120. (Hereafter this work is referred to as Hofmann’s thesis.)

Hofmann failed to track down this quotation from Voltaire. Neither the analytic tables of the subject matter which accompany the Oeuvres complètes (the one by Chantreau, Paris, 1801, and the one by Miger, Paris, 1840), though detailed, nor the compilation by Adrien Lefort and Paul Buquet, Les mots de Voltaire, Paris, Librairie illustrée (1887), includes it. Hofmann says this witticism may have been handed down only by oral tradition. The saying turns up again in Constant’s De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements, Paris, Bossange, 1824, I, 6, p. 112.

Alfred de Musset was to say in 1832 in his dedication to A. Tattet of La coupe et les lèvres (the cup and the lips):

• • C’est un triste métier que de suivre la foule,
  • Et de vouloir crier plus fort que les meneurs,
  • Pendant qu’on se raccroche au manteau des traineurs.
• • (It’s a sad life following the crowd,
  • And wanting to shout louder than the ringleaders,
  • When you’re clinging on to the stragglers’ coattails.)

Alfred de Musset, Poésies complètes. Text edited and annotated by Maurice Allem, Paris, Gallimard, 1957, p. 135 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade).

This “man of horrible memory” is Georges Couthon, who, in his Discours prononcé à la séance des Jacobins du Ier pluviôse an II de la République (speech delivered at the session of the Jacobins on 20 January 1794) Paris, Impr. des 86 départements, s.d., declares in fact: “I see in this constitution a king. A king! I recoil in horror. A king! It is a monster which nature disclaims, a master she does not recognise, a tyrant she detests” (pp. 3–4; BN, Lb 40 777).

[Louis-Matthieu Molé], Essais de morale et de politique, Paris, H. Nicolle, 1806, VIII-254 p. This work had already appeared in December 1805; Constant speaks about it twice in his correspondence with Hochet. See Hofmann’s thesis, Première Partie, Ch. 3, p. 233 and n. 145. The whole second part of Molé’s collection of essays seeks to show that monarchical government is natural.

Du contrat social, Livre II, Ch. 1: “The first and most important consequence of the principles previously established is that only the general will can direct the power of the State according to the purpose for which it has been set up, which is the common good.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, published under the direction of Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Reymond, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, t. III, p. 368 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade).

Constant is perhaps thinking of Joseph de Maistre, whose Considérations sur la France, written in 1796, was a reply to De la force du gouvernement; and to Louis Amboise de Bonald, whose Théorie de pouvoir politique et religieux also came out in 1796. Let us note, however, that Constant never quotes them by name either in his formal corpus nor in his letters.

It is hard to know to whom Constant is referring. Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900, t. IX, La révolution et l’Empire, Partie 2e: Les événements, les institutions et la langue, Paris, A. Colon, 1937, p. 828, gives the example of the Ami des lois of 16 brumaire an V (6 November 1796), defining as anarchists those “who see the republic as booty devolving upon them alone, who demand institutions which perpetuate their tyranny and leave them total mastery of government decision making and the framing of the law.” F. Brunot shows very effectively how among the Thermidorians the term “anarchy” took on the meaning of “despotism” or “tyranny” in order to designate the Terror as just such a régime.

A reference to Sultan Selim III, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1798 to 1807. His reign was marked by disastrous wars against the European powers and internal revolts in the provinces under his jurisdiction.

Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 6, éd. cit., p. 360. Constant’s quotes are rarely a model of precision and accuracy, but Hofmann’s editing does not restore the original text unless the very meaning of a passage has been falsified by Constant or he has failed to indicate an important omission.

In the paragraphs which follow, Constant gives examples only of writers contemporary to Rousseau, or later than he: d’Holbach, Mably, Ferrand, and Molé. When he claims that these writers had the same view as Rousseau, he does not refer to the theory of the surrender of individual rights, which he has just quoted, but to the boundless authority of the general will over the individual.

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book I.

Paul Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach, La politique naturelle ou discours sur les vrais principes du gouvernement, London, 1773, t. I, p. 72. Constant is abridging radically and the last sentence is more a summary than a proper quote. Here is the beginning of the paragraph which Holbach entitled On Absolute Authority (French original De l’autorité absolue ): “In all government there must be an absolute authority. Wherever that authority resides it must employ as it chooses all the powers of society. To this end it must not only make laws, but also possess power extensive enough to make them effective, or to overcome the resistances which individual passions may put in their way. These aims would not be fulfilled if the public authorities did not also have enough power to make those who belong within the jurisdiction of the state contribute to its flourishing, its preservation and security. It also has to decide what policy directions are most appropriate to securing these. In sum, this central power is constituted to work out what the particular orientations are and be strong enough to force them to fall in with its overall view. If such power had limits, there could be no vitality or vigor in government. The vices of individual citizens would endlessly vitiate, as pointless or dangerous, any association with no object other than the general flourishing of all. This truth has been felt by societies which are most jealous of their liberties. Surrounded by the most cruel factions, they have often found themselves obliged to submit, at least for a limited period, to a boundless authority. Such was the case with the Roman dictatorship.”

Hofmann searched in vain for this quote from Mably in two of his works referred to elsewhere by Constant: De la législation ou principes des lois and the Entretiens de Phocion sur les rapports de la morale avec la politique.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book I.

Antoine Ferrand, L’esprit de l’histoire ou lettres politiques et morales d’un père à son fils, sur la manière d’étudier l’histoire en général et particulièrement l’histoire de France, Paris, Vve Nyon, 1802, pp. 134–135.

One would have expected Constant to cite Locke before Montesquieu. Perhaps he is assumed to number among this group. Constant’s silence on the English writer is at the very least strange. On this question, see Hofmann’s thesis, Seconde Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 329–332.

De l’esprit des lois, Livre I, Ch. 1: “Before there were laws, relations touching on justice were possible. To say nothing can be just or unjust unless it is required or forbidden by positive laws, is like saying that before we could draw circles their radii were not equal. We must therefore admit to relationships of justice prior to the positive laws which reestablish them.” Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, presentation and notes by Daniel Oster, Paris, E. du Seuil, 1964, p. 530 (L’Intégrale).

Ibid ., Livre XI, Ch. 3, éd. cit., p. 586.

Constant returns to this distinction when he opposes “civil freedom” to “political freedom” in Book XVI, Ch. 7 and in Book XVII, Ch. 3 of this treatise.

Cesare Beccaria’s little book, Dei delitti e delle pene (on offences and punishments), published in 1764, which swiftly became a great success, was in no sense a refutation of Rousseau. The latter had exerted on the contrary a “deep influence” on Beccaria, as Franco Venturi shows in the introduction to the French translation of the work— Des délits et des peines, trans. by Maurice Chevallier, Geneva, Droz, 1965, p. xiv. All the same, speaking of the pact at the origin of human society, Beccaria maintains, contrary to Rousseau: “Necessity constrained men to cede part of their freedom. Now, it is clear that each person wants to hand over to the community only the smallest portion possible consistent with the commitment of everybody to the collective defence.” Ed. cit., p. 10, Hofmann’s italics. This is in opposition to the handover of all individual rights as envisaged by the Contrat social, and Constant’s view, though insufficiently nuanced, is upheld.

The Mémoires sur l’instruction publique of the marquis de Condorcet had appeared in the Bibliothèque de l’homme public, 2e année, t. I, Paris, Buisson, 1791. Constant’s references (pp. 53, 316, 317, and 372 of this treatise) are to this edition and not to t. IX of the Oeuvres complètes, edited by Garat and Cabanis, Brunswick, Vieweg; Paris, Heinrichs, 1804.

Constant is probably referring to two articles which came out in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1 April and 8 April 1736, under the title On Government and for a long time attributed to Benjamin Franklin. These texts are reproduced in The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, compiled and edited by John Bigelow, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887, vol. 1, pp. 425–431. In fact, these articles are by John Webbe, as the latter admits in The Pennsylvania Gazette of 28 July 1737. See in this regard The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1960, vol. 2, pp. 145–146. Whoever was their author, these articles certainly condemned excessive government. Thus, right at the start: “Government is aptly compared to architecture; if the superstructure is too heavy for the foundation, the building totters, though assisted by outward props of art.”

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, first edition, Philadelphia, R. Bell, 1776. At the beginning of the first chapter, entitled On the origin and design of government in general, Paine declares in fact: “Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary; in its worst state an intolerable one.” The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. by Moncure Daniel Conway, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894, vol. 1, p. 69 (photomech. reprod. New York, AMS Press, 1967).

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book I.

In Ch. 2 of the Second Part of his Essais (op. cit., p. 134), Molé writes, for example: “It was necessary to give meaning to this moral being [society] whose existence had been recognized. It was urgent that it be given all-seeing eyes and a sword to make itself obeyed.” As to whether Constant was right to identify traces of Rousseau’s influence in Molé’s work, see Hofmann’s thesis, Seconde Partie, Ch. 2, Section 2.

Constant is quoting from memory. The exact text is: “the total surrender of each member with all his rights to the whole community.” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 6, éd. cit., p. 360.

Here is the complete passage to which the author is referring: “For first of all, each person giving himself entirely, the condition is the same for everyone, and this being so, no one has an interest in making it burdensome to others. Moreover, the alienation taking place unreservedly, the association is as perfect as could be and no member has any longer anything to demand: For, if certain individuals retained some rights, since there would be no superior common authority which could judge between them and the public, each person being in some respect his own judge, would soon claim to be so in everything, the state of nature would continue and the society would necessarily become tyrannical or futile. Thus, each person giving himself to everyone, in fact gives himself to no one, and since there is no fellow member over whom one does not gain only the same rights one also cedes to him over oneself, one acquires the equivalent of everything one has lost with additional force for preserving what one has.” Ibid., pp. 360–361.

This criticism could be leveled also at Thomas Paine, who, in Common Sense, says: “Some writers have so confounded society with government as to leave no distinction between them.” Ed. cit., p. 69.

It is hard to see to which passage Constant is referring, since in Du contrat social, Livre III, Ch. 1 ( éd. cit., p. 396), Rousseau defines government as: “an intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual dealings, charged with the execution of the laws, with the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political [. . .] I therefore call the legitimate exercise of executive power Government or supreme administration and the man or body charged with carrying out that administration the Prince or magistrate.” See Hoffman’s thesis, Seconde Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 322–323 and n. 53.

“. . . each individual, contracting, so to speak, with himself, finds himself involved in a double relationship; namely as a member of the sovereign in relation to private individuals, and as a member of the society in relation to the sovereign.” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 362.

It seems Constant has condensed two passages: first: “The constant will of all members of the State is the general will; it is through this that they are citizens and free,” Du contrat social, Livre IV, Ch. 2, éd. cit., p. 440, and second: “So long as the citizens are subjected only to such conventions, they obey no one else but only their own will,” ibid., Livre II, Ch. 4, éd. cit., p. 375.

See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book I.

Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Histoire ancienne, Livre VII, Ch. 7. In the edition published under the title: Cours d’étude pour l’instruction du prince de Parme, Geneva, Du Villard et Nouffer, 1780, t. V, pp. 473–474, we find: “They wanted to put a brake on one authority and doing this established another, which needed containing. They therefore left the abuses they thought they were remedying to continue.”

Constant is not quoting Hobbes, but summarizing his thought as one finds it in Leviathan, Ch. XVII and following.

Claude-Adrien Helvétius, De l’esprit, Paris, Durand, 1758, Premier Discours, Ch. 1, pp. 18–31. Helvétius is more precise in his definition. “To judge [not to think] is to feel.”

“As soon as the multitude is brought together thus in a single body, any offense to a member is an offense to the whole. Still less could one offend the whole body without its membership feeling the effects. Thus duty and interest alike compel the two contracting parties to support each other, and the same men must seek to bring together under this double relationship all the benefits which depend on it. Now, the sovereign power, being formed only by the individuals who compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs. It follows that the sovereign power has no need to issue guarantees to its subjects, because it is impossible that the body should wish to harm all its parts, and we will later see that it cannot harm any individual one of them.” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 363.

In Ch. 3 of his Essais ( op. cit., p. 140), Molé declares in effect: “The government could not be arbitrary; men were afraid to depend on the fancy or the whims of him who exercised it. So man was not told to do what he thought right for the well-being of society. Rather, given that he was endowed with the force of society itself, he was mandated to conserve the conditions which constituted his existence. He punished outrages, he proceeded with the reparation of civil wrongs, and in all these ways he consecrated this first moral fact, that we should do nothing to others we would not wish done to ourselves.”

“In order, therefore, that the social contract is no worthless formulary, it tacitly includes the only undertaking which can give force to other people, namely that whoever refuses to obey the general will, will be constrained thereto by the whole society. This means nothing else than that he will be forced to be free.” Du contrat social, Livre 1, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 364. Cf. also Livre II, Ch. 4, pp. 372–375.

Constant summarizes here the longer passages of the original, whose corresponding text is as follows: “The authority therefore had to be absolute. An individual in danger runs away without consultation or permission. Often he owes his safe delivery only to secrecy and promptness. The authority, moreover, could not be counterbalanced without someone resisting it, and such resistance was absurd. It could never be legitimate. How could some parts of the association have struggled against it? There could exist no responsibility on the part of the depository of power. Under what right could a member enter into dispute with the being of which he is a part? The latter could not respond to him save by making him return to the order he should never have left” ( op. cit., pp. 139–140). And later, Molé says again: “But understand his position and why his power is not arbitrary. This was no longer a man but a people” ( op. cit., p. 141).

Du contrat social, Livre II, Ch. 1, éd. cit., pp. 368–369.

It is hard to know to whom Constant is referring, given that Rousseau’s critics are so numerous (see, for example: Robert Dérathé, “Les réfutations du Contrat social au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, t. XXXII, 1950–1952, pp. 7–54). We do, however, find in Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, Berlin, G.-J. Decker, 1788, t. II, p. 167, this reflection: “Rousseau, the most inconsistent writer ever to appear.” Now, Constant had read this work and even borrowed some passages from it. He could also therefore have made a note of this criticism.

Constant is undoubtedly referring to the paradoxes of Rousseau Hofmann has cited already: the first: “whoever refuses to obey the general will will be made to by the whole social body: this means only that he will be forced to be free,” Du contrat social, Livre I, Ch. 7, éd. cit., p. 364; the second: “So when the view opposite to mine carries the day, this proves only that I was wrong, and that what I thought was the general will, was not. If my individual opinion had carried the day, I would have done something other than I had wished. This is when I would not have been free,” ibid., Livre IV, Ch. 2, éd. cit., p. 441.

Moniteur universel, 7–8 thermidor an III (25–26 July 1795), pp. 1236–1239, reproducing the speech Siéyès delivered on 2 thermidor an III (20 July 1795) in the Convention. The text is republished by Paul Bastid, Les discours de Siéyès dans les débats constitutionnels de l’an III (2 et 18 thermidor). This is a critical edition with an introduction and notes. Paris, Hachette, 1939, pp. 13–30. The passage quoted by Constant is on pp. 17–18.

A probable reference to the Essai sur l’application de l’analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix by the marquis de Condorcet (Paris, Impr. royale, 1785), in which pp. lix–lxx of the Discours préliminaire deal precisely with the choice between several candidates taken in an assembly.

The example of Poland comes, as is indicated in a note by Sismondi, in his Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres (éd. cit., p. 89), from Leszek Leczinski, La voix libre du citoyen, ou observations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, s.l., 1749. Constant had had this manuscript by Sismondi from October 1800 until the start of 1801.

Constant will return to this question of the separation of powers and the interests of the governing and the governed, in Book XVII, Ch. 3.

This last sentence is very close to a passage by Madame de Staël, Des circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la république en France, critical edition by Lucia Omacini, Paris-Geneva, Droz, 1979, p. 26: “In the struggle of the French Revolution, the most inveterate aristocrats did not dream of proposing the reestablishment of slavery, while Plato in his ideal Republic does not suppose we can do without it.”

Jeremy Bentham, Traités de législation civile et pénale, précédés de principes généraux de législation, published in French by Etienne Dumont, Paris, Bossange, Masson et Besson, an X, 1802, 3 vol. The criticisms which Constant leveled at Bentham were probably drafted in the summer of 1802, hence the use of the adverb “recently,” and this chapter was to form part of a grand political treatise written at that time.

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book II.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book II.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book II.

Jeremy Bentham, Traités de législation . . . , éd. cit., t. I, pp. 94–95: “As to the motive of cupidity, in comparing the pleasure of acquiring by usurpation with the pain of losing, the one would not be equivalent to the other.”

Ed. cit., t. I, p. 136. Here is the complete sentence: “One can no longer reason with fanatics armed with natural right, which everyone understands as he likes, applies as suits him, in which he does not have to concede a thing, or take anything back, which is at once inflexible and unintelligible, which is venerated in his eyes like a dogma and from which one cannot deviate without committing a crime.”

Ed. cit., t. I, p. 27: “One can do harm thinking one is following the principle of utility. A weak and limited mind makes mistakes, by not taking into consideration more than a small number of the goods and bads. A passionate man goes wrong by attaching too much importance to a good which blinds him to all the disadvantages. What typifies the bad man is indulging in pleasures hurtful to others. And that itself supposes the absence of some kinds of pleasures. But one does not shift onto the Principle the blame for faults which are contrary to it and which it alone can rectify.”

Hofmann failed to find this quotation in Dumont’s Discours préliminaire on Bentham’s Traités de législation (éd. cit., t. I, pp. v–xxxvi). Might not Constant have transcribed once more a remark Dumont might have made orally, in discussions he had with Mme. de Staël and her friends? Dumont stayed at Coppet in 1802, and Constant could have made a note of one of his reflections. On this subject see Norman King, “‘The airy form of things forgotten’: Madame de Staël, l’utilitarisme et l’impulsion libérale,” Cahier Staëliens, No. 11, Dec. 1970, pp. 5–26.

Fénelon, Essai sur le gouvernement civil. In Ch. 5, De la nécessité d’une authorité souveraine, Fénelon declares: “All government necessarily therefore has to be absolute” (p. 29 of the third edition, London, 1722); the author makes it equally clear, however, that he does not mean by this an arbitrary power.

Constant criticizes Mably at greater length in Book XVI, Ch. 8, pp.367–368.

Hofmann did not find the passage where Necker uses this expression, but the spirit of it figures in Necker’s book Sur la législation et le commerce des grains, Paris, Pissot, 1776, Partie I, Ch. 2–6. Elsewhere, in De l’administration des finances de la France , s.l., 1784, t. III, p. 162, he defines government as the “interpreter and trustee of social harmony.” Cf. Henri Grange, Les idées de Necker (Necker’s ideas), Paris, Klincksieck, 1974, p. 163.

See for example Sur la législation . . . , op. cit., p. 136: “All [the ideas] which can minister to the common good, belong to the sovereign; and pondering them is an important part of the august functions entrusted to him.”

The theme of the imitation of the ancients, insofar as it concerns the extension of law, will be developed in Book XVI, Ch. 8: Des imitateurs modernes des républiques de l’antiquité.

Mémoires de Louis XIV écrits par lui-même, composés pour le Grand Dauphin, son fils et adressés a ce Prince . . . , edited and published by J. L. M. de Gain-Montagnac, Paris, Garnery et H. Nicolle, 1806, 2 vol. Constant comes back to these Mémoires later on (especially pp. 391–393). They had appeared in February 1806 (as is shown by an order by Napoleon to Cambacérès on 24 February 1806, Correspondance de Napoléon Ier . . . , Paris, 1862, t. XII, p. 117). On 27 March Constant writes to Claude Hochet: “This morning I began the Mémoires of Louis XIV. I find it very hard to believe that it can all be his. There are sentences of the man of letters type. Although I am still on the thirtieth page only, I have already noticed several, among others one on the finer points of the love of glory, where there is an if I may be so bold as to say and an affectation which absolutely smack of the writer, not of the king. I do not call into question the authenticity of the Mémoires but their organization and modern editing. The theory of despotism expounded in them rather well, rests as always on the petitio principii these gentlemen always use. They assume the only alternative is between the despotism of a single man and that of several and they conclude that the former is better. No doubt, but we could have neither the one nor the other.” Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël, Lettres à un ami. Cent onze lettres inédites à Claude Hochet, published and with an introduction and notes by Jean Mistler, Neuchâtel, La Baconnière (1949), pp. 116–117. Constant’s Journal intime records the reading of the Mémoires of Louis XIV on 28 March 1806 (and not the 27th, as the letter to Hochet suggests). Contrary to what Alfred Roulin thought (Benjamin Constant, Oeuvres, Paris, Gallimard, 1957, p. 1531, n. 2 of p. 568), Benjamin had indeed read the text of these Mémoires and not just the extracts which appeared in the Mercure de France.

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book III.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book III.

Constant is interpreting rather than quoting Condorcet’s thought here. Here is the text he is referring to, Bibliothèque de l’homme public, 2e année, t. I, Paris, Boisson, 1791, p. 55: “There is all the more reason government must not give its opinions as the basis of instruction, in that it cannot be regarded as attaining the level of the best minds of the century in which it operates. The holders of power will always be at a more or less great distance from the point arrived at by those intelligences destined to raise the body of enlightenment. Even were some men of genius to be numbered among those who exercise power, they could never attain, at all times, a preponderance which would permit them to apply in practice the results of their meditations. This trust in a deep thought whose direction one cannot discern, this willing submission to talent, this homage to fame, all cost too much in terms of self-esteem to become, at least for long, lasting sentiments, rather than a sort of forced obedience due to pressure of circumstances and reserved for times of danger and strife.”

Hofmann failed to find the source of this anecdote.

[Hofmann suggests that the philosopher in question is none other than Constant himself, resorting to a stylistic device. Translator’s note]

Hofmann was not able to unearth this reference, which could refer equally to Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, deputy to the Estates General and member of the Constituent Assembly of 1789, or to his father Victor, marquis de Mirabeau, the physiocrat known for his book called L’ami des hommes, which Constant also quotes.

See, for example, Book XII, Ch. 7, Des encouragements. Constant’s remark shows that at this stage of the writing, he had not yet decided on the definitive plan of his book.

Ed. cit., p. 533. The last sentence quoted by Constant has been displaced. In the original it comes immediately after the first sentence: “The people . . . a part of their authority.” Moreover, he has replaced the word “things” in the last sentence by “reasons” (French “motifs”).

Machiavelli, Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live. Constant in fact quotes the actual title of Ch. 47: Que les hommes, quoique sujets à se tromper dans les affaires générales, ne se trompent pas dans les particulières. Machiavelli, Oeuvres complètes, text presented and annotated by Edmond Barincou, Paris, Gallimard, 1952, p. 480 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade).

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book IV.

This is a reference first of all to the law of 20 fructidor an III (6 September 1795), then to that of 3 brumaire an IV (25 October 1795), which arranged for measures against refractory priests, and that of 7 vendémaire an IV (29 September 1795), which required priests to recognize the people’s sovereignty; and next to the law of 19 fructidor an V (5 September 1797), which effectively authorized the Directory to deport priests who would not comply. The issue is summarized in the book by Denis Woronoff, La république bourgeoise de Thermidor à Brumaire, 1794–1799, Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1972, pp. 139–146 (Nouvelle histoire de la France contemporaine, 3). For more details, see Jean Boussoulade, L’Eglise de Paris du 9 Thermidor au Concordat, Paris, Procure générale du Clergé, 1950.

Hofmann has not located this sentence anywhere in Rousseau’s work.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book IV.

On this jurisprudence, see Marc Bouloiseau, Etude de l’émigration et de la vente des biens des émigrés (1792–1830), Paris, Impr. nat., 1963, Deuxième Partie, Les étapes de la législation, Ch. 1, pp. 76–91.

A reference to Livre XXVI, Ch. 15 of De l’esprit des lois, in which Montesquieu says: “It is false reasoning to say that the individual good must yield to the public good: that holds only when what is at issue is the authority of the state, that is to say, the liberty of the citizen. This is not what happens in those cases when the issue is the ownership of goods, because the public good is always that everyone shall invariably keep possession of the property which the civil laws allow.” Ed. cit., p. 716.

On these numerous revolutionary laws, see Jacques Godechot, Les institutions de la France sous la Révolution et l’Empire, Paris, PUF, 1951, Ch. V, La justice révolutionnaire, pp. 316–328.

Constant’s information, which Hofmann has not been able to trace, probably came from Sismondi, who was a specialist in the history of the Italian republics.

On refractory priests and their persecution, see Jacques Godechot, Les institutions..., op. cit., passim , using the index references.

On 28 January 1789, General Ménard occupied the Pays de Vaud, which had just emancipated itself from the control of Berne four days earlier. At the beginning of February 1798, Generals Brune and Schauenbourg began military operations against Berne. See Johannès Dierauer, Histoire de la Confédération suisse, Lausanne, Payot, 1929, t. IV, Ch. IV and V, pp. 465–573. Constant and Mme. de Staël had tried to oppose the policy of the Directory and of Napoleon against the Swiss. See Hofmann’s thesis, Première Partie, Ch. 2, p. 167, n. 215.

Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, op. cit., t. I, pp. 174–175, speaks of a plague at Athens under Pericles, but does not speak of the moral consequences of this illness.

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book V.

Constant is probably interpreting this passage from De l’esprit des lois, Livre XX, Ch. 10 ( éd. cit., p. 653): “In the States with commercial economies, banks have fortunately been established, which by means of credit have created new indices of value. But it would be a mistake to set them up in States which have only luxury commerce. To put them in countries governed by single individuals is to suppose money on the one hand and power on the other; that is, on the one hand the option to have everything without power, and on the other power and no option to have anything. Under such governments only the ruler has ever had or ever could have had accumulated wealth. Everywhere there is any such, once it becomes sizeable, it becomes first of all the prince’s wealth.” Constant has come back to this thought about Montesquieu and the banks in the Additions, p. 532, lines 10–11. See Annexe III in Hofmann, Les “Principes de politique” de Benjamin Constant, Droz, 1980, Tome II. [Hereafter referred to as Principes de politique (Hofmann’s edition).]

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book VI.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book VI.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book VI.

See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book VI.

This probably refers to the law of Valerius Poplicola, Consul in 509 bc , to whom Livy refers, Histoire Romaine, II.8.2: “Among others the law which permits an appeal to the public against a magistrate and that which places anathemas on the person and goods of anyone who aspires to the throne. . . .” Livy, Histoire romaine, Livre II, text edited by Jean Bayet and translated by Gaston Baillet, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1954, p. 13.

[This is a reference to a fifteenth-century farce of unknown authorship, Le Maistre Pierre Patelin. Translator’s note]

On the subject of mass petitions Constant said in his speech to the Tribunat of 12 pluviôse an VIII (1 February 1800): “There have been too many abuses of these during the course of our Revolution. Each one of our crises has been followed by a deluge of such petitions which never proved anything but the profound terror of the weak and the despotism of the strong.” Archives parlementaires. Recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des Chambres françaises de 1800 à 1860, Paris, P. Dupont, t. I, p. 133.

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Rapport sur l’instruction publique fait au nom du Comité de constitution à l’Assemblée nationale les 10, 11 et 19 septembre 1791, Paris, Baudoin et Du Pont, 1791, pp. 11–12.

See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book VI.

Ed. cit, pp. 261–263.

Ibid., p. 319: “This is why the laws of proscription, of confiscation, which are called: Salus populi, have never saved the people.”

Ibid., p. 307, as Constant’s first reference indicates; here is Ferrand’s precise text: “Any man living in a society, and who has explicitly or implicitly sworn to obey the laws, has acquired three rights which no one can take from him and which he cannot lose save by his own fault or choosing: the right to liberty, the right to safety, and the right to property.”

Ibid., p. 310. Here is the complete citation of this sentence: “Indeed it is not by dint of injustices that one can reorganize a State, which is only a justly constituted society.”

In De la force du gouvernment, Constant had written in the same way: “As long as you think of arbitrary government as only a tool to be snatched from your enemy for you to use, your enemy will strive to snatch it from you.” Ch. 8, p. 104 of the 1796 edition.

This Latin quotation has been recopied from Ferrand’s work, op. cit., t. I. 2e éd. 1803, p. 418, n. 1, which gives the following reference: “Cic. Hist. pp. 170–171.” The first part of the quotation, up to the ellipsis, comes from De lege agraria, III, 5; here is the complete text and the translation: “Omnium legum iniquissimam dissimillimamque legis esse arbitror eam quam L. Flaccus interrex de Sulla tulit, ut omnia quaecumque ille fecisset essent rata.”—“Of all the laws, I judge to be the most iniquitous and least like a law that which the interrex Lucius Flaccus passed in respect of Sulla, to legalize all the acts of the dictator.” Cicero, Discours, t. IX, Sur la loi agraire . . . , text edited and translated by André Boulanger, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1932, p. 109. The second part of the quotation comes from De Legibus, I, 42, whose exact text is “Nihilo credo magis illa [lex] quam interrex noster tulit, ut dictator quem vellet civium nominatem aut indicta causa inpune posset occidere.”—I believe in no right more strongly than that law which an interrex passed in our case that a dictator may kill which people he may nominate, with impunity, cause having been given. Cicero, Traité des lois, text edited and translated by George de Plinval, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1959, p. 24. [The French translation (pp. 122–123 of the Hofmann edition) is very free and seems to be rendering indicta causa as “without a trial” ( sans proces ). One of the three classicists consulted by the translator thought that indicta causa might be best rendered by “the case made public” or “the case having been made public.” Translator’s note]

Claude Carloman de Rulhière, Eclaircissements historiques sur les causes de la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes et sur l’etat des protestants en France, s.l., 1788, t. II, pp. 278–279. “At the first report of these movements (the insurrection in the Cévennes), each of the two parties mutually accused each other of having caused them. If the oppression had continued, said one, there would have been no uprising. If the oppression had not started, said the other, if the policy had remained that of conversions by enlightened instruction and gentleness, there would have been no malcontents.”

This is probably not a quotation. Furthermore, nothing in Book II, Ch. 7 of Politics is related to the words indicated by Constant. On the other hand, Aristotle debates at length these questions of the causes of revolutions and of the guarantees against the changing of constitutions, in Book V of this same work. See Aristotle, La politique, a new translation with an introduction, notes, and index by J. Tricot, Paris, J. Vrin, 1962, t. II, pp. 337–425.

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book VII.

[The persecution of the Protestants by the dragoons. Translator’s note]

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book VII.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book VII.

See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book VII.

See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book VII.

See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book VII.

“The Letters of Junius” appeared anonymously on 21 January 1769 in Woodfall’s newspaper, Public Advertiser . He published them in complete form in 1772, but other incomplete editions had already come out. The purpose of these letters was to discredit the policies of the duke of Grafton and Lord North. The anonymity of their author has never been definitively unmasked. The names of Gibbon, Burke, and Paine have been mentioned, but various clues permit us to believe it more likely that Sir Philip Francis was the author. These letters are still famous for their style, which constitutes them as a masterpiece of the pamphlet form. See the entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 13 (1973), s.v. Junius.

Constant was probably familiar with the work of Louis-Philippe Ségur, Histoire des principaux événements du règne de F. Guillaume II, roi de Prusse, Paris, F. Buisson, an IX (1800) , which gives the text of this Edict of Censorship (t. I, pp. 400–405) and gives a commentary ( ibid., pp. 62–64). Frederick William II declares indeed at the beginning of this text: “Although we are perfectly convinced of the great and diverse advantages of a moderate and well-regulated freedom of the press in terms of expanding the sciences and all useful knowledge [. . .] experience has shown us, however, the troublesome consequences of complete freedom in this regard.”

Without being able to be categorical on this point, since he has not found the text to which reference is made here, Hofmann thinks, nevertheless, that Constant is referring to the editors of the Journal de l’Empire or of the Mercure de France, men completely devoted to Napoleon. See the study by André Cabanis, “Le courant contre-révolutionnaire sous le Consulat et l’Empire” (in the Journal des Débats and the Mercure de France ), Revue des sciences politiques, No. 24, 1971, pp. 33–40. Among these editors, there were Fiévée and Geoffroy, whose target was often the ideology of the Enlightenment and 1789 and who advocated all-powerful monarchy. One finds, in particular, in an article in the Mercure de France (No. 257, 21 June 1806, pp. 533–554) signed by De Bonald, this reflection which must have struck Constant: “Freedom of thought was only therefore freedom to act; and how could one demand from government an absolute freedom of action, without rendering pointless all the pains taken by the administration to maintain peace and good order, or rather, without turning society upside down?” ( ibid., p. 551). And the same author a little further on identifies “diversity of religious and political opinion” as “the main cause of the French Revolution” ( ibid., p. 552).

[Lettres de cachet. Letters bearing the king’s seal, containing orders for imprisonment of individuals or their banishment without trial. Translator’s note]

Titus Livy, Histoire romaine , I, 59, 3, éd. cit., t. I, p. 95.

This reference has not been pinned down by Hofmann.

See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book VII.

Constant cut the citation in two; after pusillanime [cowardly], Bentham had written: “A nation kept in a constant inferiority by institutions who oppose any kind of progress became [ sic ] the prey of the people who had acquired a relative superiority.” Constant modified the original text at the end of the citation as well. Bentham said: “These nations . . . always offered an easy conquest and once captivated [or enthralled] they managed only to change the color of their chains.” Ed. cit., t. III, p. 21. [Constant was working—excessively freely—from a French translation. His referencing cannot be deemed reliable on this occasion. Translator’s note]

Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Cours d’étude . . . , op. cit., t. IV, p. 2: “There are therefore two sorts of barbarism, the one which follows enlightened centuries and the one which precedes them; and they are not like each other.”

[Hofmann has had difficulty deciphering the folio French here, so the English is uncertain too by definition. Translator’s note]

In writing these pages, Constant is indicating without naming the leading French newspapers, led by the Mercure de France , whose content was more and more limited to panegyrics, anagrams, and acrostics.

Gaëtano Filangieri, La science de la législation, Paris, Cuchet, 1786, t. II, p. 105, n. 1. Here is the complete quotation from which Constant also borrows other expressions. “The conquest of the Gauls cost Caesar ten years of exhaustion, victories, and negotiations. It cost Clovis at the head of a handful of Franks, so to speak, a day. Was the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old Clovis a better general than Caesar? Were the Franks more valiant than the Romans? No. Caesar had to fight a people who had always been free or happy. Clovis found the Gauls oppressed and enslaved for more than five centuries. This is the difference in a nutshell.”

See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book VII.

Constant indicates here all the opponents of the doctrine of human perfectibility, such as Fontanes, Fiévée, de Feletz.

Gilbert Burnet, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la Grande-Bretagne sous les règnes de Charles II et de Jacques II . . . , translated from Gilbert Burnet’s English, London, Th. Ward, 1725, 3 vol.

Claude Carloman de Rulhière, op. cit., t. I, pp. 378–379: “It was thought necessary to exclude from even the lowest municipal offices, after their abjuration, those who in the same century had given Sully to the Kingdom.” There is no question in this passage of torture on the rack!

David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, Basil, J.-J. Tourneisen, 1789, t. XI, pp. 272–289, in an article entitled [The] State of Affairs in Scotland and describing the effects of the despotism of Charles II on the Scots. The pages given by Constant do not correspond precisely to the text of his note.

Ibid., t. XII, p. 17: “And when the poor deluded creatures refused to answer, capital punishments were inflicted on them. Even women were brought to the gibbet for the pretended crime.” And p. 18: “They all refused and were condemned to a capital punishment by drowning. One of them was an elderly women; the other two were young; one eighteen years of age, the other only thirteen.”

Constant’s references to Rulhière are accurate. It is interesting, however, to compare his note with the original texts in order to appreciate the art with which he mingled with his own prose the language of the author he was quoting. Thus in t. I, p. 351: “This was the occasion of a terrible law: Those who, when they are ill, refuse the sacraments, will, after their deaths, be dragged through the mire, and their goods confiscated. If they recover, they will be condemned to make amends, the men by going to the galleys forever, the women by imprisonment, both having their possessions confiscated.” T. I, p. 355: “But in most of our towns we had only too often this dreadful spectacle, corpses dragged through the mire, and too often also we saw enraged priests, viaticum in hand, escorted by a judge and his bailiffs, going to the houses of the dying, and soon afterward the fanatical populace, making cruel sport of carrying out the law themselves in all its horror.” T. II, pp. 177–178: “. . . I would say here that one saw at the bedside of the sick, a priest, surrounded by bailiffs and their assistants, carrying in the most solemn pomp the blessed sacrament, the most awesome of mysteries, urging a dying man to commit sacrilege, and making a mock of him to the crowd drawn there by curiosity, some of them trembling at the profanity, some shaking with joy at the sight of the humiliated heretic, reduced to a scandalous hypocrisy in order to keep his substance intact for his family and some worthless adornments for his grave.”

Constant, in this compressed survey of international politics from the sixteenth century to 1805, naturally understands by the House of Austria the Hapsburg dynasty, whose possessions, from Charles V to the War of the Spanish Succession, extended among others to Spain. A series of treaties to which Constant makes reference were signed between France and Spain, the latter understood as an Austrian dominion. Thus, after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) France takes from the Holy Roman Empire the three bishoprics, Mets, Toul, and Verdun. At the Treaty of Vervins (1598) Spain loses Vermand, Picardy, Calais, etc. In 1648 following the Treaty of Westphalia, Spain loses sovereignty over the United Provinces, and France gains Alsace from the Empire. Eleven years later, following the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), France occupies ten Imperial towns in Alsace. By the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678, France obtains the Franche-Comté. In 1714, by the Treaty of Rastatt, which brings an end to the wars of the Spanish succession, the kingdom of Spain no longer belongs to the Hapsburgs, and as Constant calculates it in the forty-nine years leading up to the Treaty of Hubertsburg (1763), Austria loses in succession Naples and Sicily (1738), Parma (1748), and Silesia (1763). Finally, Austria abandons also some territories after the Treaties of Campoformio (1797), Lunéville (1801), and Bratislava (1805), this last constraining the Austro-Hapsburg Empire to abandon Venice, Dalmatia, the Tyrol, and Vorarlberg. Constant’s view is very French. One could object that though Austria lost many possessions to the benefit of France, she obtained significant territorial compensations in the East at the expense of Poland and Turkey (in the eighteenth century). Moreover, Constant’s argument is not very convincing. He starts from the principle that the dwindling of the Hapsburg realms stems from the lack of liberty extended to enlightened thought. In fact, what Austria lost was to the advantage of equally despotic princes, such as Louis XIV.

John Barrow, Voyage en Chine, formant le complément du voyage de Lord Macartney, translated from the English, with notes, by J. Castéra, Paris, F. Buisson, an XIII (1805), 3 vol. Constant must have read at least the two accounts in the Mercure de France, 2 frimaire an XIV (23 November 1805), pp. 393–402, and 22 March 1806, pp. 537–542.

Hofmann has not identified this man of genius. The passage is repeated in Constant’s account of Mme. de Staël’s Corinne in the Publiciste of 12 May 1807. Ephraïm Harpaz in his edition of Constant suggests Fauriel or Charles de Villers. Benjamin Constant, Recueils d’articles, 1795–1871 , with introduction, notes, and commentaries by Ephraïm Harpaz, Geneva, Droz, 1978, p. 88, n. 6 bis.

Paul Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach, Système de la nature ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral, M. Mirabaud, London, 1770.

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book VIII.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book VIII.

Some of the advantages Constant observes in relation to the proliferation of sects had already been spotted by Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, new translation with notes and observations by Germain Garnier, Paris, H. Agasse, 1802, t. IV, pp. 203–212.

Hofmann was not able to find out where Constant got his information on the prayer wheels, but his explanation is certainly wrong. M. Jean Eracle, curator of the Geneva Museum of Ethnography, has kindly furnished some information on the subject: “What is known in the West as a ‘prayer wheel’ and takes different forms and sizes belongs to Tantrist Buddhism, both in its Tibeto-Mongol and Sino-Japanese forms. The proper name of this object is ‘Wheel of the Law.’ Whoever makes it turn participates in the teaching of the Buddha who, according to the venerated expression, ‘set in motion the wheel of the law.’ The prayer wheel then has symbolic significance and is not a way of ‘praying without effort.’ Moreover, whoever works it generally recites sacred invocations at the same time. Thus one often sees pilgrims telling beads with one hand and making the wheel turn with the other. The wheel is thus like a thought condenser. Moreover, it links the body to the words of the invocations and to the devout thoughts of the person praying.” Extract from a letter from M. Jean Eracle to the editor.

[For a compendious discussion of these Persian (specifically Zoroastrian) deities, see David J. Levy, “‘The Good Religion’: Reflections on the History and Fate of Zoroastrianism,” in his The Measure of Man, Claridge, 1993, pp. 170–190. Translator’s note]

Jacques Necker, Du pouvoir executif dans les grands Etats, s.l., 1792, t. II, p. 205. Here the economist makes himself a grammarian and criticizes the use of certain neologisms.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book VIII.

Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Réflexions sur le fanatisme, in Recueil des opinions de Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Paris, Migneret, 1791, t. IV, pp. 98–99.

Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Opinion sur la propriété des biens du clergé, novembre 1789, in Recueil des opinions . . . , op. cit., t. II, p. 71.

Ibid., pp. 74–75. Constant has not given us the following passage: “he can keep it or leave it. If opinions are free, no one can bind the opinions of others. No one can bind even his own, for being free, he reserves the right to abandon it if he judges it wrong.”

Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Opinion sur la propriété . . . , op. cit, pp. 75–76.

Ibid., p. 73.

Ibid., pp. 73–74. The actual text has: “If religion precludes any association, any relationship of supremacy or subjection with political government, the social pact admits for its part no religious clause.”

Ibid., p. 72. The original text is: “I maintain that the social body is by its nature a stranger to religion, such that it cannot profess any religion, and that it cannot reject any unless this religion is a menace to public order. . . .”

The reference is correct.

Ibid.

This obviously recalls the controversy Constant raised against Kant in Des réactions politiques . See Hofmann’s thesis, Première Partie, Ch. 2, p. 143.

The date is wrong. Constant is referring to the Réponse d’Abraham Furtado, Président de l’Assemblée des Juifs, au discours des commissaires de S.M.I. et R. le 18 septembre 1806, published in the Moniteur of 22 September 1806, pp. 1171–1172, and published as a pamphlet (BN, 4 o Ld 184 225).

For example, in De l’importance des opinions religieuses, London, 1788 , and in the Cours de morale religieuse, Geneva, 1800.

François-René de Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme . Deuxième Partie: Poétique du christianisme . The first edition of this work appeared in 1802.

A reference to the causes célèbres of religious intolerance against which Voltaire protested in publishing notably his Treaty on Tolerance and in interceding each time with the Parlements to have the victims and their families rehabilitated. Jean Calas was broken alive on the wheel in 1762. Jean-François Lefebvre, knight of La Barre, was decapitated (and not executed on the wheel) in 1766 at nineteen (not seventeen). He is the only one of the three whose rehabilitation Voltaire was not able to obtain. Finally, Pierre-Paul Sirven managed to escape death by fleeing to Switzerland. Calas and Sirven were accused of murder, the first of his son and the second of his daughter, La Barre of having committed sacrilegious acts in relation to religion and its symbols.

Constant is referring to the “Declaration of 16 April 1757 [not 1767], punishing with death all those convicted of having composed, printed, sold or smuggled writings tending to attack religion, to stir up emotions, to attack royal authority, to upset public order and public peace.” Quoted from Marcel Marion, Dictionnaire des institutions de la France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris, A. Picard, 1923, s.v. Censure.

Constant in his notes indicated the following reference: “Montesquieu. VI. 2.” The second chapter of Livre VI of De l’esprit des lois is entitled indeed De la simplicité des lois criminelles dans divers gouvernements (On the simplicity of the criminal laws in divers governments). Among other things, Montesquieu says here: “One hears it said constantly that justice should be rendered everywhere as it is in Turkey. Will it therefore be only the most ignorant of all the nations which will have seen clearly into the thing in the world it matters most that men should know? [. . .] you will see that the penalties, the expenses, the delays, the very dangers of justice are the price each citizen pays for his freedom.” Ed. cit., p. 557.

Constant had addressed Parliament a few years before on this subject. The law he had opposed in Parliament wanted to abbreviate due process in order to be able to struggle more effectively against banditry raging at the start of the Consulate, which made the roads unsafe. This explains the reference to brigands and murderers. See his oration to the Tribunat of 5 pluviôse an IX (25 January 1801).

Hofmann was not able to pin down Constant’s references nor to find the sources he used.

Hofmann has not uncovered the facts to which Constant is referring here.

This is about the law of 22 prairial an II (10 June 1794). On this subject see Jacques Godechot, Les institutions . . . , op. cit., p. 323.

These military commissions, established by the decree of 9 October 1792 to judge emigrés found with arms, comprised only three or five military judges and a public prosecutor. They pronounced one sentence only: death, which was effected immediately. These commissions were an even more terrible instrument than the revolutionary courts. See Godechot, op. cit., pp. 324–325.

[Hirelings. Translator’s note]

In the proceedings of the National Assembly between 30 May and 1 June 1791, the deputies decided to keep the death penalty. Their speeches made reference to Montesquieu and Beccaria, among other philosophers. Among the speakers, Robespierre was against the death penalty, Brillat-Savarin in favor.

[Also called Catherine the Great in the Anglophone world. Translator’s Note]

By the name Botany Bay, Constant means the colonial penitentiary at Sydney, in Australia.

Constant summarizes here the critique made particularly by William Godwin. He had translated some of Godwin’s work. See Benjamin Constant, De la justice politique (unpublished translation of a work by William Godwin), edited by Burton R. Polin, Quebec, les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1972 (Droit, science politique 5), Livre VI, Ch. 7, pp. 307–309. One also finds the same critique of the prerogative of mercy in Jeremy Bentham, in his Principes du code pénal, Troisième Partie, Ch. 9, op. cit., t. II, pp. 432–434.

The Court of Cassation, according to the terms of the laws of 27 November and 2 December 1790, had the attributions of: “annulling all procedures in which due process had been violated and invalidating any judgment which expressly contravenes the text of the law.” Cf. Edmond Seligman, La justice en France pendant la Révolution (1789–1792), Paris, Plon-Nourrit, pp. 321 and following.

[The lansquenets were German mercenary footsoldiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Constant explicitly says the writers in question are cowards and implicitly that they are low-born and mercenary. Translator’s note]

See on this subject the old but still useful article by Pierre Larousse in the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle , s.v. Propriété, Section II: Légitimité du droit de propriété . This article has the merit of bringing out Constant’s originality and locating him both among those who, like him, see property as a social institution (Pascal, Domat, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Tronchet, Robespierre) and specifically against those who represent property as “anterior to society,” such as Mercier de la Rivière, Destutt de Tracy, and Cousin. Locke’s name should be added to the latter list.

Constant is thinking in the first place of Godwin, in the last book of whose Enquiry Concerning Political Justice defects in the system of property are analyzed. One can also number among philosophers hostile to property in the eighteenth century Morelly and his Code de la nature , then Linguet, and in some respects Mably.

Honoré-Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, De la législation ou principes des lois, Livre I, Ch. 3 De l’établissement de la propriété , where Mably preaches a certain egalitarianism, and Ch. 4 Des obstacles insurmontables qui s’opposent au rétablissement de l’égalité détruite, where he gives up the idea of imposing social equality. The references are to the Oeuvres complètes de l’Abbé de Mably , Lyon, J.-B. Delamollière, 1792, t. IX.

The same idea is seen in Madame de Staël, Des circonstances actuelles, éd. cit. , p. 173: “Now, there are two elemental interests, so to speak, which split the world: the need to acquire and the need to conserve.”

Machiavelli, Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live, Ch. V, Oeuvres complètes, op. cit. , pp. 392–394.

Book XVI, On Political Power in the Ancient World .

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book X.

[The helots were prisoners of war of Sparta, subsequently enslaved. The city of Mycenae, like Sparta situated in Laconia, was conquered by the Spartans and its inhabitants enslaved. Translator’s note]

A reference to the great peasant war which in 1524 and 1525 ravaged not only Swabia but the whole of what is now southern Germany, including even Alsace.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book X.

Aristotle, La politique, VI, 4, a new translation with an introduction, notes, and index by J. Tricot, Paris, J. Vrin, 1962, t. II, pp. 441–442.

See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note I at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note J at the end of Book X.

Hofmann was able to find neither author nor definition.

See Constant’s Note K at the end of Book X.

See Constant’s Note L at the end of Book X.

In Ch. 3 and 4 of this same Book X.

See Constant’s Note M at the end of Book X.

[It had one huge such institution: slavery. Translator’s note]

A very similar argument is found in Mme. de Staël ( éd. cit., p. 46): “There is a point in all debate where the foolish and the wise separate. It is when destructive action is over and the matter in hand is to form a link which reunites what the emptiness of some prejudice or other has disunited.” Constant will return to this theme in Ch. 4 and 5 of Book XVIII, in relation to revolutions.

See Constant’s Note N at the end of Book X.

Above all, Aristotle attributes a great importance to the middle class. On this subject see Raymond Weil, Politique d’Aristote, Paris, A. Colin, 1966, pp. 94–97, Le citoyen et l’homme de bien, and pp. 159–173.

See Constant’s Note O at the end of Book X.

A reference to the National Convention, 1792–1795. See Constant’s Note P at the end of Book X.

Aristotle, La politique, V, 8, éd. cit., t. II, p. 382.

In Ch. 9 of this same Book X.

We can compare Constant’s arguments on the advantages of reelection with Madame de Staël’s in Des circonstances actuelles, éd. cit. , pp. 187–190.

In Book IV, Ch. 2, The idea which usually develops about the effects which the proliferation of the laws has and the falsity of that idea .

For once, Constant agrees with Rousseau, who declared in his Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes: “It is not, therefore, by the degradation of enslaved peoples that the natural disposition of man for or against servitude should be judged, but by the huge efforts made by all free peoples to guarantee themselves against oppression . . . I feel that it is not for slaves to reason on freedom.” Oeuvres complètes, éd. cit., t. III, pp. 181–182.

On the reform projects of Alexander I, see the letter from F.-C. de La Harpe to the Emperor on 16 October 1801, in Correspondance de Frédéric-César de La Harpe et Alexandre Ier, published by Jean-Charles Biaudet and Françoise Nicod, t. I, 1785–1802, Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1978, pp. 316–330.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, p. 421. “There are still today, in each of the United Kingdoms, these great estates which have remained, without interruption, in the same family, since the time of feudal anarchy. One only has to compare the present state of these domains with the possessions of neighboring small proprietors, to judge, without other argument, how little such extensive holdings are favorable to progressive cultivation.”

In Ch. 14 of this same Book X, On the Action of Government on Property .

This quotation from Cato the Elder has clearly been borrowed from Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 73, and not from the original, which says: “Ut ex agricolis et viri fortissimi et milites strenuissimi gignuntur, maximeque pius questus stabilissimusque consequitur minimeque invidiosus, minimeque male coginantes sunt qui in eo studio occupati sunt.”—“But it is the peasants who produce the strongest men and the bravest soldiers. It is to them the most just gains accrue, as well as the most reliable and least subject to envy. Those absorbed by these concerns are the least evil minded.” Cato, De l’agriculture, edited, confirmed, and translated by Raoul Goujard, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1975, p. 9. [Constant here takes from Adam Smith, unacknowledged, a supposed quotation from Cato the Elder. Hofmann corrects the Latin quotation wrongly reproduced by Smith. Translator’s note]

Constant quotes from The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Ch. 10 (French translation from the English, op. cit., t. I, p. 262). Smith here opines that apart from fine arts and the high professions, no activities require such a range of knowledge and experience as agriculture.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 509–510. It may be useful to relate the English author’s argument here: “A creditor of the state has unquestionably a general interest in the prosperity of a country’s agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce, and therefore in the various lands being well maintained and the capital advantageously managed. If one of these things were lacking or were to fail generally, the product of the various taxes would no longer be sufficient to pay him the annuity or the return which is owed him. But a state creditor, considered simply as such, has no interest in such and such a piece of land being in good shape or such and such a piece of capital being well run. As a state creditor he is not familiar with any piece of land or capital; he has none under inspection, none he can busy himself with. There is not one particular one that cannot be totally wiped out without for the most part his even suspecting or at least without his being directly affected.”

Constant had left a blank in which to indicate the precise place in De l’esprit des lois where Montesquieu explains how the Romans swindled the financiers by devaluing the currency during the Second Punic War. [Livre XXII, Ch. 11. Translator’s note]

Jacques Necker, De l’administration des finances de la France, s.l., 1784, t. II, pp. 378–379: “The growth of public debt in like manner has distorted the social outlook, by multiplying in some countries the number of people with an interest contrary to the general interest. Rentiers desire, above all else, the wealth of the royal treasury; and since the extension of taxation is the most fertile source of this, the contributors (and above all the people, who are the biggest element in this, and have no money to lend) find today within the very bosom of the State, an adversarial faction whose credit and influence grow from day to day.”

Constant is in error here. The book he means, A brief examination into the increase of the revenue, commerce, and navigation of Great Britain, from 1792–1799, Dublin, Graisberry and Campbell, 1799, is not by Beeke but by George Rose.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, pp. 439–489; Ch. 4 of Book III is called How the commerce of the towns contributed to the improvement of the country .

Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur , in Adam Smith, op. cit. , t. V, p. 309. Note XXXII, called Des pouvoirs législatifs et judiciaires, et de leur rapport avec la propriété .

In particular Ch. 5 of Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live in Machiavelli, Oeuvres complètes, éd. cit. , pp. 392–394. This chapter is entitled, more precisely, To whom more confidently to entrust the care of liberty, to the great or the people, and which of the two more often cause difficulty, he who wishes to acquire or he who wishes to conserve .

Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Histoire moderne , Livre X, Ch. 4 Considérations sur l’Europe au moment du seizième siècle et par occasion sur les effets du commerce , in Cours d’étude . . . , op. cit. , t. IX, pp. 456–471.

Emmanuel Siéyès, Essai sur les privilèges , s.l.n.d. [1788], 48 p.

Constant was mostly inspired for this note by Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres, éd. cit., pp. 114–115, n. 9.

In Proclamation VII of the Constitution of an XII, Article 53 we find: “The oath of the Emperor is understood as follows: ‘I swear never to levy any taxation, never any tax, save in observance of the law.’”

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book XI.

[Constant says propriété (property), where English would expect proprietor ( propriétaire ). Translator’s note]

See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note I at the end of Book XI.

In Ch. 5 of this same Book XI, How Taxation Becomes Contrary to Individual Rights .

See Constant’s Note J at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note K at the end of Book XI.

The example and figures come from Jacques Necker, De l’administration des finances, op. cit., t. I, pp. 84–88.

See Constant’s Note L at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note M at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note N at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note O at the end of Book XI.

Hofmann was unable to locate the passage indicated by Constant. On the other hand, in Ch. 11 of La dîme royale (the royal tithe), Vauban does express himself analogously. “I even dare say that of all the temptations against which princes must most guard themselves, those are they which drive them to extract everything they can from their subjects, since being able to do anything to the peoples entirely subject to them, they are quite likely to ruin them without noticing.” Sébastian Le Prestre de Vauban, La dîme royale, ed. Georges Michel, Paris, Guillaumin, s.d. [1887], p. 192.

See Constant’s Note P at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note Q at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note R at the end of Book XI.

See Constant’s Note S at the end of Book XI.

[Constant uses the word cour, which suggests that he typically has royal government in mind for this fault. Translator’s note]

Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d’économie politique ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent et se consomment les richesses, Paris, Impr. de Crapelet, an XI, 1803, t. II, pp. 480–494.

This example has been made available by Charles Ganilh, Essai politique sur le revenu public des peuples de l’antiquité, du moyen-age, des siècles modernes et spécialement de la France et de l’Angleterre, depuis le milieu du XVe siècle jusqu’au XIXe, Paris, Giguet et Michaud, 1806, t. II, p. 350: “In England the land tax which at four shillings in the pound produces £2,037,627, about 47,000,000 francs, occasions lots of grumbling, while the barley tax in its various forms yields £3,000,000, about 69,000,000 francs, and is barely felt.”

In the article “Atmosphère” in the Encyclopédie, signed by d’Alembert, it is said that a man carries a weight of 33,600 pounds.

Adam Smith, op.cit., t. III, p. 81.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 450–451. Smith here asserts that it is never advantageous to subcontract taxation. Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. II, p. 449: “It seems to me that if one wished to harmonize the interests of public revenue with the security of taxpayers, then only the lower tax officials should be concerned with the volume of revenue, while the superiors should be accorded only salaries sufficient to purchase talent and even satisfy ambitions.”

Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, De la richesse commerciale ou principes d’économie politique appliqués à la législation de commerce, Geneva, J.-J. Paschoud, an XI (1803), t. I, pp. 19–38. This first chapter, to which Constant refers, is entitled The Origin of National Wealth. In the pages indicated the author shows how any contribution must be based on income.

These figures and this example come from Ganilh, op. cit. , t. II, pp. 350–351, himself drawing on George Rose, A brief examination . . . , op. cit.

Don Geronimo de Ustariz, Théorie et practique de commerce et de la marine, Paris, Vve Estienne et Fils, 1753, Seconde Partie, Ch. XCVI and XCVII; especially p. 107: “I do not doubt for a moment that such is the cause of the destruction of our manufactures.” This example of the Alcavala and the reference to Ustariz are taken from Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. II, pp. 306–307. Adam Smith speaks of it too, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 444–445.

Antonio de Ulloa, Voyage historique de l’Amérique méridionale fait par ordre du roi . . . , Paris, C.-A. Jombert, 1752, 2 vol. This reference too comes from Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, p. 34.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 257–554.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, pp. 408–448.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. cit., p. 416.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, pp. 465–466, Ch. 11.

Jacques Necker, op. cit., t. I, p. 43. Constant has changed the text slightly. The original says simply: “That which exceeds this measure.”

Constant got this reference to Hume from Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. II, p. 404 (note).

In Book II, Ch. 6 On Individual Rights When Political Authority Is Thus Restricted .

See Constant’s Note A at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note B at the end of Book XII.

We do not know whom Constant means—perhaps the Abbé Morellet, who appears a bit later.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, Ch. 1.

This example is taken from Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, p. 143. Smith says the distiguished French economist, the Abbé Morellet, had listed fifty-five joint-stock companies in various parts of Europe which had failed since 1600 despite the exclusive privileges they enjoyed, because their administration was poor.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note D at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note E at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note F at the end of Book XII. [Constant here, and in the previous note, is referring to premodern economic and legal forms, the charters and corporations of medieval origin. Translator’s note]

[The French noun “fixation” could be translated by the more neutral “determination” or “setting.” Translator’s note]

Reply by Sganarelle to Géronte in Le médecin malgré lui, Acte II, Scene IV.

See Constant’s Note G at the end of Book XII.

In particular by Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, p. 163.

See Constant’s Note H at the end of Book XII.

[The right of aubaine enabled French monarchs to claim the property of nonnaturalized persons dying in France. It was finally abolished in 1819. Translator’s note]

This reference seems aimed at exposing the motives presented to the Conseil d’Etat on 3 March 1803, by Jean-Baptiste Treilhard with regard to the Civil Code. This is where Treilhard justifies the partial reestablishment of the right of aubaine, abolished in 1789. Procès-verbaux du Conseil d’Etat contenant la discussion du projet du Code civil, t. II, Paris, 1803, pp. 444–447. [The key idea was that a foreigner who died in France would have his goods confiscated unless a Frenchman living in that foreigner’s country had the right to leave his wealth to his heirs. Translator’s note]

See Constant’s Note I at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note J at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note K at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note L at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note M at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note N at the end of Book XII.

The only place Hofmann has identified where Linguet calls owners monsters is in the conclusion of his Théorie des lois civiles; having accused philosophy of bringing no remedies to the pains of the human condition, but only consolations, Linguet exclaims: “How much wiser would be the terrible but sincere voice willing to tell me: ‘Suffer and die in chains; such is your lot. . . . Be content with your portion, since you can hope for no other. And even when the monster whose fodder you must be devours you, submit to your fate with resignation, since you cannot change it.’” Simon Nicholas Henri Linguet, Théorie des lois civiles ou principes fondamentaux de la société, London, 1767, t. II, p. 519.

See Constant’s Note O at the end of Book XII.

A little earlier in this same Book XII.

See Constant’s Note P at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note Q at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note R at the end of Book XII.

Hofmann has not been able to identify these men.

See Constant’s Note S at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note T at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note U at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note V at the end of Book XII.

Jacques Necker, De l’administration . . . , op. cit., t. III, p. 239.

Ibid. , p. 240.

See Constant’s Note W at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note X at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note Y at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note Z at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note AA at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note BB at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note CC at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note DD at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note EE at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note FF at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note GG at the end of Book XII.

Constant found the example of this decree of 1731 in Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, p. 332.

See Constant’s Note HH at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note II at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note JJ at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note KK at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note LL at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note MM at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note NN at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note OO at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note PP at the end of Book XII.

See Constant’s Note QQ at the end of Book XII.

Decoration of the Order of the Holy Spirit, created in 1578 by Henry III and abolished under the Revolution.

Decoration of the Order of St. Michael, created in 1469 by Louis XI and abolished under the Revolution.

Earlier in this same Book XII.

[We would speak more easily today of the guild system. “ Jurandes ” (guild leaders) is a fifteenth-century term; “maîtrises” (master craftsmen) is thirteenth century, and the phrase “jurandes et maîtrises,” which Constant uses here, is itself fifteenth century. Translator’s note]

Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, L’Ami des hommes ou traité de la population, Hambourg, Chrétien Hérold, 3e éd., 1758, t. I, p. 28.

Constant in fact merely refers to rather than quotes the marquis de Mirabeau’s book, L’Ami des hommes, op. cit., t. I, pp. 31–33.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, p. 142. [The sections within quotation marks are from the 1802 French translation by Garnier, here translated back into English. Translator’s note]

Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre XXIII, Ch. 11.

The whole passage reads: “It is condescending talk and feeble analysis which have led to its being said that the poorer people were, the larger the families would be, while the more burdened with taxes we are, the more we will equip ourselves to pay them: two sophisms which have always ruined kingdoms and always will.” Ed. cit., p. 689.

Sir Francis d’Ivernois, Tableau historique et politique des pertes que la Révolution et la guerre ont causées au peuple français, dans sa population, son agriculture, ses colonies, ses manufactures et son commerce, London, Impr. de Baylis, 1799, t. I, p. 18: “All I have managed to put together from witness and conjecture leads me to conclude that the scythe of Revolution and war killed between two and three million French people. It is true that I lack the documents and official papers to lend this figure evidential proof.”

George Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, t. XI, Histoire naturelle des animaux et de l’homme, t. II, nouvelle éd., Lausanne, J.-P. Heubach; Berne, Nouvelle Societé typographique, 1785, pp. 207–208.

Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur, in Adam Smith, op. cit., t. V, pp. 284–286, Note XXX De ce que la guerre dernière a coûté à la population de la France . What Constant presents as an observation by Garnier does not in any case figure in this note. Garnier is actually quarrelling with Buffon’s calculations but not in the terms Constant cites and not in the same figures.

This law is discussed at length by Montesquieu in De l’esprit des lois, Livre XXIII, Ch. 21, and by Gaëtano Filangieri, La science de la législation, éd. cit., t. II, pp. 26–27.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, Discours préliminaire, pp. viii–ix.

Say, op. cit., t. I, p. 193: “It should not be carelessly assumed that a certain commerce can absolutely not be done other than with a company. This has very often been said of the trade with India, and yet for more than a century the Portuguese did it without a company, better than any other nation.”

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 130–131: “When a society of merchants undertakes, at its own expense and risk, to establish some new branch of commerce with distant and uncivilized people, it may be reasonable to incorporate it as a joint-stock bank, and to grant it if successful, the monopoly of this trade for a certain number of years.”

Alexandre-Balthazar de Paule, baron de Baert-Duholant, Tableau de la Grande-Bretagne, de l’Irlande et des possessions anglaises dans les quatre parties du monde, Paris, Maradan, an X, 1802, t. I, pp. 90–93 on Birmingham and pp. 105–108 on Manchester.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, pp. 252–253.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, pp. 176–178.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 35, p. 290.

Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre IV, Ch. 2, t. III, pp. 64–65. Constant is inspired by Smith’s text rather than reproducing it faithfully.

Ibid., t. III, pp. 3–52.

Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., t. I, pp. 119–157.

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Lettres sur les grains, écrites à M. l’abbé Terray, contrôleur général, par M. Turgot, intendant de Limoges, s.l.n.d. [1788].

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 207.

This decree forbade all persons, on pain of death, to engage in the exportation of wheat, grains, and vegetables or to construct warehouses for these commodities.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 216: “However, the popular hatred to which this occupation is exposed in famine years, the only years when it can be lucrative, puts off all the people with wealth and position in the society.”

There is a confusion over the author here: the work quoted is by Pierre-Joseph-André Roubaud, Représentations aux magistrats contenant l’exposition raisonnée des faits relatifs à la liberté du commerce des grains et les résultats respectifs des règlements de la liberté, s.l., 1769. The Abbé Morellet was also an expert on the grain trade, since he had written a Réfutation de l’ouvrage qui a pour titre: Dialogue sur le commerce des blés [of the Abbé Ferdinando Galiani], London, 1770; and an Analyse de l’ouvrage intitulé: De la législation et du commerce des grains [by Jacques Necker], Paris, Pissot, 1775.

Jacques Necker, Sur la législation et le commerce des grains, Paris, Pissot, 1776, p. 180: “This is an evil practice, this making compassion for the people serve to fortify proprietors’ rights; it is almost to imitate the art of those terrible animals who, on the banks of the rivers of Asia, take on the voices of children in order to eat grown-ups.”

Ferdinando Galiani, Dialogues sur le commerce des blés, London, 1770.