Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur, in Adam Smith, op. cit., t. V, pp. 204–208 Du taux de l’intérêt de l’argent .

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, pp. 366–367.

Ibid., pp. 275–303; Ch. 14 is on lending at interest and Ch. 15 on the legal rate of interest.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, pp. 366–367: “It has to be said that if the legal rate of interest must be something above the current market rate, it still must not be too much above it. If, for example, in England the legal rate were fixed at eight or ten percent, the greater part of the money would go to spendthrifts or schemers, the only group of people willing to pay so dearly for money.”

The references to the two Greek orators were furnished to Constant by Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, op. cit., t. I, p. 372.

Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur, in Adam Smith, op. cit., t. V, pp. 214–233.

Sebastien-Joseph de Carvalho e Melo, marquis de Pombal, Mémoires, s.l., 1784, t. I, pp. 118–124.

Alexandre-Balthazar de Paule, baron de Baert-Duholant, Tableau de la Grande-Bretagne . . . , op. cit., t. IV, pp. 91–120.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 473. Hofmann says Constant takes liberties with the text, but retains the meaning. [Critics of modernity rarely draw attention to the sheer savagery of economic regulation in premodern times. Translator’s note]

Probably a reference to Charles Pictet de Rochemont, Tableau de la situation actuelle des Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Paris, Du Pont, 1795.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 529: “If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect freedom and justice, there is no nation in the world which would ever have been able to prosper. Fortunately, nature in her wisdom has placed in the body politic many protections proper to remedying most of the bad effects of human folly and injustice, just as she has put them in the human body to remedy those of intemperance and sloth.”

Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 11, t. II, pp. 164–165: “However, the particular interest of those who follow a particular branch of commerce or manufacturing is always in some respects different and even contrary to that of the public.”

Ibid., t. I, pp. 179–201, in Ch. 9 Des profits des capitaux .

These details are brought together at the beginning of A Few Additional Points, p. 529.

This reference to Sully’s Mémoires comes from Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. I, pp. 315–316, n. 1, the text being as follows: “Sully, who did not see the benefits of manufacturing and trade, opposed the edict favoring navigation, and constantly found fault with Henry IV’s provisions for establishing the manufacture of Flemish-style tapestries in France and Dutch-style linens, as well as for setting up colonies in Canada, and trading establishments in the Indies.” See on this point Mémoires de Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, Liège, F.-J. Desoer, 1788, t. V, pp. 63–72 (Livre XVI, 1603).

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, p. 247.

Rather than Ch. 7 it is Ch. 5, Digression sur le commerce des blés et sur les lois y relatives, to which Constant seems to be referring; Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, pp. 206–249. The precise idea that the regulations create an imaginary necessity is not, however, explicit in this chapter.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 293–311; Ch. 36 is called Du commerce des grains and, just as in Smith, it does not feature the idea put forward by Constant.

Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur , in: Adam Smith, op. cit., t. V, pp. 202–204, Note XXI Des erreurs de Montesquieu en économie politique .

This critique of Montesquieu comes directly from Say, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 23.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, pp. 525–526. Constant summarizes rather than quotes here.

Gaëtano Filangieri, La science de la législation, Livre II, Ch. 15 and 16, éd. cit., t. II, pp. 186–215. By “many others” Constant certainly means the physiocrats, Quesnay, Gournet, Le Mercier de la Rivière, etc.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, pp. 110–128; we read, for example: “The quantity of each product brought to market naturally adjusts itself to the effective demand.”

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 241–251, Livre I, Ch. 30 Si le gouvernement doit prescrire la nature des productions, p. 241. Here one reads: “Truth to say, no government action has any influence on production.”

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

King of Sweden (1682–1718), whose famous military genius Voltaire related in his Histoire de Charles XII (1731).

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

Hofmann failed to find this quotation from Machiavelli.

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

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

This reflection can be compared with what Constant says in his Journal intime, 10 June 1804: “The new ideas one has should be announced as new only as little as possible. On the contrary, they should be given as far as may be the appearance of received wisdom, so that they may be accepted less painfully. And if one is obliged to agree on the novelty of one of one’s ideas, it should be surrounded with a whole cortege of ideas to which the public is already more accustomed.”

On these writers who preach war thus, see Constant’s letter of 13 messidor an X (2 July 1803) to Fauriel, in: Victor Glachant, Benjamin Constant sous l’oeil du guet, Paris, Plon, 1906, pp. 50–51.

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

On pp. 287–288, but the reference is not clear.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, p. 426.

Lucain, La guerre civile (La pharsale), Livre I, vv. 373–374 and 384–386. See the edition by A. Bourgery, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1926, t. I, pp. 17–18. “It is no longer my fellow citizen, against whom I will have heard the call of your trumpets, Caesar [. . .] our arms will push the battering ram which will sunder the foundation walls of the city whose annihilation you command, even were it Rome.”

[The French translator thinks the “arms” are “ours.” The Latin has “these shoulders.” Translator’s note]

In Ch. 2 De la corruption du principe de la démocratie .

In Book VIII.

In Book III, Ch. 5.

In Book XII, Ch. 4.

In Book I, Ch. 3: “For as long as reason is not convinced, error is ready to reappear at the first event which unleashes it.”

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

See De la force du gouvernement, Ch. 7, p. 94, note: “Truth is one, but error is multiform.”

In Book III, Ch. 3.

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

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

For example, Book XII, Ch. 7.

In Book VII, Ch. 5.

Hofmann does not know who this author is.

Hofmann was unable to verify this.

In an article in the Moniteur of 9 fructidor an IV (26 August 1796), De la restitution des droits politiques aux descendants des religionnaires fugitifs, Constant had already said: “The late king of Prussia, by his blind contempt for everything which appeared in German, has rendered the progress of enlightenment the only service which government could, that of leaving it alone.” From the text published in Béatrice Jasinski, L’engagement de Benjamin Constant. Amour et politique (1794–1796), Paris, Minard, 1971, p. 255.

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

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

Constant has drawn the example of this so-called error of Montesquieu from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, pp. 150–151: “M. de Montesquieu says that the practice of wrestling caused the Thebans to win the battle of Leuctra; but he has forgotten that this battle was joined in the 102d olympiad; such that it was then four hundred years that the Spartans had also practiced wrestling, which did not, however, save them from a total defeat.” De Pauw gives no reference, and it seems probable that Montesquieu never alluded to this anecdote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is in Ch. 2 of Book XII that Montesquieu writes: “A man who was tried and was to be hanged the next morning, would be freer than a Pasha is in Turkey.” Ed. cit., p. 509.

William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, London, 1793, vol. 1, p. 124. Constant translated this work. See Benjamin Constant, De la justice politique, unpublished translation of the work of William Godwin, edited by Burton R. Pollin, Quebec, University of Laval Press, 1972.

In the Bibliothèque de l’homme public, op. cit., p. 47: “The ancients had no notion of this kind of liberty; they seemed indeed to have no purpose in their institutions save to annihilate it. They would have liked to allow men only ideas and feelings found in the legislator’s provision. For them nature had created only machines, whose springs law alone must regulate, whose actions law alone direct.”

Claude-Adrien Helvétius, De l’homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son education, London, 1776. Constant refers the reader above all to the first section of the work, entitled: Que l’éducation nécessairement différente des différents hommes est peut-être la cause de l’inégalité des esprits, jusqu’à présent attribuée à l’inégale perfection de leurs organes.

Constant is evidently referring to Mémoires sur l’instruction publique in Bibliothèque de l’homme public, t. I, Paris, Buisson, 1791.

Adam Smith, op. cit., Book V, Ch. 1, t. IV, pp. 143–145.

Condorcet, op. cit. Condorcet says here: “It is much more important that the government does not dictate the common doctrine of the moment as eternal truth, lest it make of education a tool for consecrating prejudices it finds useful, and an instrument of power out of that which should be the most certain barrier against all unjust power.”

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, p. 146.

Condorcet, op. cit., p. 44.

The anecdote of the demagogue Sophocles and the reference to Diogenes Laertius are in Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, op. cit., t. I, pp. 232–233.

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

Edmund Burke, Réflexions sur la Révolution de France et sur les procédés de certaines sociétés à Londres relatifs à cet événement, Paris, Laurent; London, Edward, s.d., p. 12: “But when men act in a body, freedom is power. ”

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

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

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

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

Constant is citing a part of the discourse by Jacques-Fortunat Savoye de Rollin, given to the Legislative Body on 13 ventôse an IX (4 March 1801), in favor of the Projet de loi relatif à la formation des listes d’éligibilité. This discourse appeared in the Moniteur of 15 ventôse an IX, No. 165, p. 687.

Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, Quelques considérations sur l’organisation social en général et particulièrement sur la nouvelle constitution, Corps législatif, Commission du Conseil des Cinq-Cents, séance du 25 frimaire an VIII (16 December 1799), Paris, Impr. nat., frimaire an VIII (1799), pp. 25–26.

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

Jacques Necker, Dernières vues de politique et de finance, offerte à la nation française, s.l., an X, 1802, p. 4: “It would be a mistake to reckon that by this political disposition one had had in view only to make more sure of the suitability of the chosen.”

Constant is inspired directly by Montesquieu here: “It never happened,” says Xenophon, “that the lower class ever demanded elected officers who might compromise their safety or glory.” De l’esprit des lois, Livre II, Ch. 2, éd. cit., p. 533. It is amusing to observe that Gaëtano Filangieri uses the same quotation, and without giving his source, in La science de la législation, Paris, Cuchet, 1786, t. I, pp. 191–192. Constant, who also knew this work, could just as easily have found this example from Xenophon in Filangieri. This shows once again how far Montesquieu was read and used. Thanks to a reference supplied by Montesquieu, one can go back to Xenophon, La république des Athéniens I, 3. Compare Xenophon, Anabase, Banquet, Economique, De la chasse, République des Lacédémoniens, République des Athéniens, new translation with observations and notes by Pierre Chambry, Paris, Garnier, 1954, p. 510.

The Titus Livy example seems to come from Montesquieu too, De l’esprit des lois, Livre II, Ch. 2 ( éd. cit., p. 533).

That of 5 fructidor an III (22 August 1795).

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

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

Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., t. I, p. 456 (1803 edition): “There have been scarcely any centuries for four thousand years when that vast and beautiful empire has not been exposed to civil wars, invasions, conquests, and dismemberments. But it is just this which makes its moral stability most astonishing.” And on p. 457: “Honor must therefore be rendered to the wise legislators and profound moralists, who, in so to speak amalgamating China with its most ancient laws and morals, made them inseparable, and made of this amalgam the most powerful preservative against all dangerous novelty.”

A quotation from Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le prophète, by Voltaire. Hofmann points out that Constant took the part of Zopire in this play at the beginning of 1806. Séide’s exact words are: “I have anticipated your order.”

Like Moses on Mount Horeb, Exodus 17, 1–7.

Constant summarizes here what Sebastien-Joseph de Carvalho e Melo (marquis de Pombal) says in his Mémoires, s.l, 1784, t. I, pp. 118–124.

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

[Known in modern writings in English as Peter the Great. Translator’s note]

See the letter from F. C. de La Harpe to Alexander I, in Jean-Charles Biaudet and Françoise Nicod, Correspondance de Frédéric-César de La Harpe et Alexandre Ier, t. I, 1785–1802, Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1978, pp. 316–330.

Francis Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, Book VI, Exempla antithetorum XL , The works of Francis Bacon, collected and edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, London, 1858, vol. 1, p. 704.

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

Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, De la monarchie prussienne sous Frédéric le Grand, London, 1788, t. I, pp. viii–ix.

Here is the exact text of Cornelius de Pauw at the point indicated by Constant: “The condition in which Greece was placed made the abolition of slavery there impossible; for it would have been necessary for all the republics in that part of the world to be in exact agreement. . . . And as long as they did not free the helots who were the basis of their power, the other states could not give liberty to the slaves who were equally the basis of theirs.”

In Ch. 6 of Book XI, éd cit., p. 587.

Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre IV, Ch. 5, t. III, pp. 244–245: “This assurance which the laws of Great Britain give to each individual, to be able to count on the enjoyment of the fruits of his own labor, is on its own enough to make a country prosper, in spite of all these regulations and twenty other laws of commerce no less absurd. . . . The natural effort of each individual to improve his condition, when that effort is given the right to develop with freedom and confidence, is a principle so powerful that, on its own and without help, not only is it capable of bringing society to prosperity and affluence, but it can even surmount a thousand absurd obstacles with which the folly of human laws comes to impede its march, although the effect of these obstacles is always more or less to undermine its freedom or attenuate its confidence.”

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

This was on the other hand the subject of a “grand treatise” on politics, from a work abandoned in 1806, entitled “On the Possibility of a Republican Constitution in a Large Country,” of which only the Fragments remain.

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

In Book XIII, Ch.1.

A reference to the dialogue between King Pyrrhus and his minister Cyneas, related in Plutarch, Vies, t. VI, Pyrrhos-Marius—Lysandre-Sylla. Text edited and translated by Roger Flacelière and Emile Chambry, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1971, pp. 43–44. Cyneas asked the king what the latter would do after conquering the Romans. Pyrrhus replied that he envisaged new conquests forever until there were no more peoples to submit. The purpose of the apologue is to show the absurdity of the spirit of conquest.

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

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. I, pp. 64–65. “When Vespasian mounted the throne, he declared that the state was unsustainable unless a way were found of raising 6,900,000,000.” Hofmann points out that Constant omitted a zero.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Le quatrième discours Au sujet d’une accusation pour blessures avec préméditation de meurtre. Lysias, Discours, text edited and translated by Louis Gernet and Marcel Bizos, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1924, t. I, pp. 80–84.

Madame de Staël, De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, revised, corrected, and enlarged second edition, Paris, Maradan, an IX. Préface de la seconde édition, t. I, pp. 13–14.

A reference to François René de Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme ou beautés de la religion chrétienne, Deuxième partie, Livre II, Ch. 10. In the Paris edition, by Migneret, 1802, t. II, pp. 96–98, Chateaubriand takes up the idea of a comparison, but does not, strictly speaking, plagiarize Mme de Staël.

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

[The French word “ jouissances, ” which Constant uses, can mean both private pleasures and the enjoyment of property tenures and so on. Translator’s note]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hofmann was unable to find a specific passage on Plato’s refusal to give laws to Arcadia, but notes that the philosopher’s contempt for wealth is to be found in Book V of the Laws. The French text he cites is in Oeuvres Complètes, t. XI/2, text edited and translated by Edouard des Places, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1951, pp. 99–102.

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

For these sacrifices of children by their father, see Mme de Staël, Des circonstances actuelles, éd. cit., p. 244.

On Mably and his possible influence on the revolutionaries, see the clarifications by Ephraïm Harpaz, “Mably et la postérité,” Revues des sciences humaines, 1954, pp. 25–40; “Mably et ses contemporains,” ibid., 1955, pp. 351–366; “Le social de Mably,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale, t. XXXIV, 1956, pp. 411–425.

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

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

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

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

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

Constant himself, as President of the Commune of Luzarches, had scrupulously ensured that the observation of fairs and the revolutionary calendar be respected. See Hofmann’s thesis, Première Partie, Ch. 2, pp. 92–93.

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

Aemilius Mamercus, consul and dictator in 438, 437, 433, and 426 bc , in 433 bc reduced the term of office of censors from five years to eighteen months. Constant probably got this from Machiavelli, Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live, Ch. XLIX, in Oeuvres complètes, op. cit., p. 485.

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

Antoine Ferrand, L’Esprit de l’histoire ou lettres politiques et morales . . . , Paris, Vve Nyon, 1802.

Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. I, pp. 66–67.

See Ganilh, op. cit., t. I, p. 221, n. 1. Ganilh’s note supported the following text: “The ancients were in a permanent state of hostility between themselves. Without mutual communication, they saw and treated each other as enemies.” Cicero in Les devoirs, I, 37, says, “Among our ancestors in fact we called hostis him whom now we call peregrinus, foreigner.” Text edited and translated by Maurice Testard, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1965, t. I, pp. 121–123.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 122–123.

C.-A. Walckenaer, Essai sur l’histoire de l’espèce humaine, Paris, Du Pont, 1798, Livre VI, pp. 251–368, Des peuples cultivateurs, après l’introduction des manufactures et du commerce et la séparation des professions.

This note is taken from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, pp. 70–71. Hofmann does not know to which edition Constant’s page reference (114) relates. The reference is to the Panegyric of Isocrates in his Discours, text edited and translated by Georges Mathieu and Emile Brémond, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1938, t. II, p. 24.

Xenophon, La république des Athéniens, II, 16: “But as they did not have the chance to build their city on an island, here is what they do. Confident in their maritime superiority, they deposit their wealth in the islands, leaving Attica to be ravaged, because they understand that if they have mercy on it they will lose other more important goods.” Xenophon, Anabase . . . , éd. cit., p. 518.

Isocrates, Trapésitique, 35–37. See the edition of the Discours, éd. cit., t. I, pp. 81–82. Constant has taken the example and the reference from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 335.

All this note and the reference are from Cornelius de Pauw, ibid., p. 191.

It is again from Cornelius de Pauw ( op. cit., t. I, p. 69) that Constant has drawn this illustration with the references to Samuel Petit and Plutarch.

Plutarch, Solon, 24, 4: “He permitted citizenship to be granted only to people banished in perpetuity from their country or who come to set up in Athens with all their family with a view to establishing a trade.” Plutarch, Vies, t. II, Solon, Publicola, Themistocle, Camille, text edited and translated by Robert Flacelière, Emile Chambry, and Marcel Juneaux, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1961, p. 39.

Xenophon, La république des Lacédémoniens, VIII, 2: “in the other States, the most powerful do not even want to have the appearance of fearing the magistrates and regard such fear as a mark of baseness. In Sparta, on the contrary, the most notable men are the most submissive to the authorities; they glory in their humility and pride themselves when they are called on, obeying not by walking but at the double.” Xenophon, Anabase . . . , éd. cit., p. 489.

“When all the time we see or notice some atrocity or other, for all our very sweet disposition, the repetition of these painful events drives any feeling of humanity away from our hearts.” Cicero, Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino, in Discours, t. I, text edited and translated by H. de la Ville de Mirmont, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1921, p. 126.

This example and the reference come from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 168.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Les antiquités romaines, Paris, Ph.-N. Lottin, 1723, pp. 16–23.

Plato, La république, X, XIII, 615c, in Oeuvres complètes, t. VII, 2e partie, text edited and translated by Emile Chambry, Les Belles Lettres, 1934, p. 115. See also Plato’s other great work on politics, Les lois, Livre X, in ibid., t. XII/1, text edited and translated by A. Dies, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1956, pp. 141–148. The same example is found in Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. II, p. 46.

Ibid., p. 62: “Solon had the advance and prosperity of Athenian manufactories so much at heart that he took it upon himself to make a law against idlers, one which soon fell into disuse . . . The true freedom, said Socrates, consists in working when one wishes and not working when one does not.” There is another note by Constant on this law of Solon in Annexe I, Principes de politique (Hofmann’s edition), p. 654.

François-Emmanuel d’Emskerque, vicomte de Toulongeon, De l’esprit public. Mémoire désigné pour être lu à la dernière séance de l’Institut national, Paris, Impr. de Du Pont, 1797, pp. 9–10: “We are astonished by the ease of domination the ancient legislators had: it is because they were talking to the human mind still in its infancy. People believed in apparitions, political miracles, and auguries. The strong, simple man listened and believed. The mature human mind no longer believes on trust. To give it laws you have to persuade it, which is more difficult than giving it to believe something.”

Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. II, pp. 121–122.

Xenophon, La république des Athéniens, I, 13, in Xenophon, Anabase . . . , éd. cit., p. 512.

This remark on music among the Athenians, and the reference to Xenophon, come from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 225.

Hofmann says that unless Constant found these axioms in a commentary by Mably, his claim of fidelity to Mably’s text is not upheld. Hofmann could find them in none of the most cited editions. In the instances which follow he has collated the axioms with the text of De la législation ou principes des lois, published in t. IX of the Oeuvres complètes de l’abbé de Mably (Lyon, J.-B. Delamollière, 1792).

“For my part, I make do with demanding morality, and I am not at all scared of poverty” (p. 16).

See previous note.

An amalgam of two distinct passages in the original: “What does a superiority one owes to wealth matter?” (p. 17) and “Such and such an arrangement would make commerce flourish, some other would enrich the treasury and double the State’s revenues” (pp. 19–20).

“You see with what wisdom nature had prepared everything to lead us to common ownership of assets, and prevent our falling into the abyss into which the establishment of property has thrown us” (p. 58).

“I could think it more worthwhile for the human race to have a few virtues than many advantages. What will happen to the population? people will say. I reply that it would be better to count only a million happy men on the whole earth than to see on it that numberless multitude of the poor and enslaved who live only a half-life in degradation and poverty” (p. 68).

“The laws will always put up only a useless resistance to the efforts of avarice and the vices which flow from it, if they do not start by diminishing the finances of the State” (p. 97).

This formulation perhaps summarizes what Mably says (pp. 107–108) on rampant greed allied to public debt.

“I hope that useless arts will never be reestablished among us; that they are forbidden. I hope they will let the necessary arts retain a certain coarseness, which suits them so well” (p. 122) and “I would not stop talking to you about the sumptuary laws, if I wished to have you know all their advantages. They must be extended to everything” (pp. 112–113).

Summary of a long diatribe against trade (pp. 113–115).

Summary of pp. 116–120.

“You will never restrain these active and haughty feelings if you do not have recourse to agrarian laws” (p. 120).

“What care must not the laws take in order that the citizens do not go abroad in order to amass wealth they will repatriate?” (p. 125).

“The republic will never form excellent citizens, as long as education is not public and general. Will you let the paterfamilias make his own rules in this respect?” (p. 309).

Phrase summarizing pp. 324 and following.

On p. 354, Mably, contrary to Plato, who demands death for atheists, says he would believe “his law wiser, if it made do with sentencing an incorrigibly guilty man to lifetime incarceration.”

Summary of Ch. 3 of the last book, On the Need for a State Religion (pp. 355 and following).

“When a deist is locked up for violating the law of silence imposed on him, let nothing be forgotten with regard to instructing him and making him understand his fault [. . .] If after a long correction a deist still has the same thirst for fame and martyrdom, it will finally be necessary to reconcile yourself to treating him like an atheist” (pp. 364–365).

Summary of pp. 388–389.

See the article by Ephraïm Harpaz, “Mably et ses contemporains,” op. cit., pp. 360–366, for numerous examples which uphold Constant’s remark.

Honoré-Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Observations sur l’histoire de France. The first edition had appeared in Geneva in 1765. In Oeuvres complètes de l’abbé de Mably, éd. cit., t. I–II.

“All the moments of their day were filled with some duty [. . .] Everything was prescribed by law, even relaxation and human functions [. . .] Finally, love itself, that passion, Aristias, too often so imperious, so puerile, so fiery, so weak, was only a simple relaxation after work; it was the law which opened and closed the queen’s apartment to the prince.” Honoré-Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Entretiens de Phocion sur les rapports de la morale avec la politique, in: Oeuvres complètes de l’abbé de Mably, éd. cit., t. IX, pp. 71–72.

Louis-Mathieu Molé, op. cit., pp. 211–214. If Constant calls Molé’s Essais new, this is probably to distinguish them from those Francis Bacon brought out in 1597 under the same title.

Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., lère éd. (1802), t. I, pp. 63–66; 2e éd. (1803), t. I, pp. 72, 75–78. The passages quoted by Constant (he has not mentioned the numerous excisions) are the same in both editions; however, in the second, Ferrand is even more eloquent on this subject and has added between p. 72 and p. 75 a long development.

Hofmann was unable to determine to what passages by Isocrates or Plato this observation refers, nor in which author’s work Constant found the reference.

Gaëtano Filangieri, La science de la législation, éd. cit., t. IV, pp. 42–64, Ch. VII Des peines d’infamie.

In Livre XXIII, Ch. 21 notably, where Montesquieu declares: “The corruption of morals destroys censorship, itself established to destroy the corruption of morals; but when this corruption becomes general, censorship no longer has any force.” Ed. cit., p. 692.

Constant had already spoken of the jurisdiction of the government on the actions of individuals in Book V, Ch. 2.

See Book XV, Ch. 1, n. 2.

[This heading is inconsistent with the title page on p. 458 of the French text. Translator’s note]

Constant has earlier said, in Book I, Ch. 3, “Individual rights are freedom; social rights are the guarantee.”

See notably Book X, Ch. 10 and Book XI, Ch. 4.

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

One finds something of an echo, still very clear, of this theme of subaltern power in La France nouvelle of Prévost-Paradol. Indeed he says in his preface: “Who can tell me, however, that in producing this book I have not labored above all for the advance of some subaltern agent, capable of thinking he has an interest in laying hands on this innocent treatise on politics and history, perhaps to prove his zeal, perhaps, even more innocently, because discovering nothing reprehensible in this writing, he is afraid just because of this of having understood it imperfectly, and is afraid of not seeming at all sufficiently scandalized,” pp. ii–iv in the edition by M. Lévy, 1868. Later on he says again: “We are therefore reduced, when we pick up our pen, to reckoning with not only the calculated resolution of those who really have power, but with the foolish eagerness of those who have been the smallest fragment of it.” Ibid., p. v.

The quotation from Ferrand is from p. 449, above all, and in the second edition of 1803.

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

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

Mémoires de Louis XIV, éd. cit., pp. 17–19.

Hofmann failed to locate this passage in Spinoza. The idea, however, is found in Ch. 6 and 7 of the Traité de l’autorité politique, in the discussion on monarchy. Spinoza, Oeuvres complètes, text translated, revised, and presented by Roland Caillois, Madeleine Francès, and Robert Misrahi, Paris, Gallimard, 1954, pp. 1008–1046.

The reference is to the second edition of 1803. The exact sense of Ferrand’s sentence is comprehensible only if we lay out the whole paragraph from which it is drawn. “In a word, the interest of the legitimate sovereign is to maintain everything in order. Therefore the more legal force it has, the more order will be maintained. The sovereign justice of God comes from this sovereign power.”

Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., 2e éd, 1803, t. III, p. 38, n. 1: “Consequently there is no government less monarchical than that of the second race, during the last hundred years.” Elsewhere (p. 148) in the same tome, Ferrand says: “to examine the character of all the kings of the third race is to be convinced that only one, Louis XI, was able to form and execute this venture” [“to take royal authority a greater step forward than all it had taken till then,” ibid., p. 147].

Constant is probably thinking of the Pensées, Fragment No. 60, where the author declares, for example: “Custom is the whole of equity, just because it is received. This is the mystical basis of its authority. Whoever seeks to reduce it to principles, destroys it. Nothing is so faulty as these laws which redress errors. Whoever obeys them because they are just, obeys what he imagines to be justice, but not the essence of the law. Law is all of a piece. It is the law and nothing more. He who seeks its reasons will find them feeble and slight. . . .” Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres complètes, editing and annotation by Louis Lafuma, Paris, Le Seuil, 1963, p. 507, (L’Intégrale).

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

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

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. I, p. 158.

Constant, it seems, basing himself on what Bentham says, ibid., t. II, pp. 382–383, imagines what the latter’s response would be on “the ill which a penal law produces.”

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

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, pp. 380–381. Here is the passage to which Constant refers: “If one has grasped the idea of a true offense, it will easily be distinguished from offenses of imaginary ill, those acts innocent in themselves, ranked among offenses by prejudice, antipathies, administrative errors, and ascetic principles, almost as healthy foods are regarded among certain peoples as poisons and unclean eating. Heresy and sorcery are offenses of this class.”

Ibid., t. I, p. 157: “I can remain standing or sit down, enter or leave, eat or not eat, etc. The law says nothing about that. The right that I exercise in this respect, however, I get from the law, because it is the law which criminalizes all violence by which people might try to prevent me doing as I please.”

This anecdote appeared earlier in the Journal intime, dated 21 December 1804: “In the midst of this reverie the idea which dominates me is of this Turk who said: I give thanks every day to His Highness for having my head on my shoulders.”

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

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

Chamfort specifically states at this point, “by means of good public education.”

Nicholas-Sébastien Roch, known as Chamfort, Maxims and Thoughts, Ch. 8 On Slavery and Freedom: France before and after the Revolution; in Oeuvres de Chamfort, collated and published by one of his friends, Paris, an III, t. IV, p. 206.

We come across this quote from Machiavelli again in Mme. de Staël’s notes, Des circonstances actuelles, éd. cit., p. 382. The exact text runs: “But he who wants merely to establish that absolute power the ancients called tyranny must on the contrary leave in existence nothing of the established order.” Machiavelli, Discours sur la première décade de Tite-Live, Ch. XXV, in Oeuvres complètes, éd. cit., p. 441.

The comparison of laws with weapons and of certain branches of law with declarations of war comes from Mme. de Staël, op. cit., p. 37.

This phrase picks up one by Mme., de Staël, from Des circonstances actuelles, Livre II, Ch. 4 ( ed. cit., p. 298): “Jadis, des Grecs prisonniers en Sicile obtinrent leur liberté de leurs ennemis en leur récitant quelques vers d’Euripide.” [In times past, Greek prisoners in Sicily obtained their freedom from their enemies by reciting to them some verses of Euripides.] It seems, however, that Mme. de Staël found it in Plutarch, Vies parallèles, Vie de Nicias, paragraph 29.

An almost identical image occurs in Mme. de Staël’s Des circonstances actuelles, op. cit., Livre II, Ch. 2, p. 236.

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

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

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. I, p. 154: “Thus to declare by law that such and such an act is prohibited is to establish that act as an offense.”

Ibid., t. II, pp. 380–384.

Hofmann failed to find the passage quoted by Constant.

Jacques Necker, op. cit., t. I, p. 77 (error in Constant’s numbering).

Hofmann could not establish this reference.

M. Patrice Thompson has published this addition to Book I, Ch. 1 in his book La religion de Benjamin Constant: Les pouvoirs de l’image, Pisa, Paccini, 1978, Annexe II, pp. 552–557. Hofmann admits that the whole passage reads like an introduction to Principles of Politics, but he has preferred to keep it as an addition in the way that Constant presented it.

[“Principles,” as in the title of the work. Translator’s note]

The blues and greens were originally the respective colors of the charioteers who competed for the prize in the races in the hippodromes of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, above all in the sixth and seventh centuries; the two rival factions which disturbed the Empire at that period were also designated by the same device, the aristocrats standing up for the blues and the people for the greens. This historical allusion was common in Constant’s time, when it evoked the profound and irremediable antagonism between those who supported the Revolution and those who supported monarchical reaction. Bentham, without referring to the history of his own time, speaks of it in order to denounce the futility of political hates: “Have we not seen the citizens of Rome and Constantinople divide themselves into implacable factions on behalf of actors, charioteers, and gladiators? And to give importance to these shameful quarrels, did they not pretend that the success of the Greens or the Blues presaged plenty or famine, the victories or reverses of the Empire?” Op. cit., t. I, p. 15.

This brief introduction to the quotation from Jefferson which follows makes it apparent that the drafting took place in 1810.

Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801, the whole text of which can be found in the complete edition by Henry Steele Commager, Documents of American History, New York, F. S. Crofts, 1947, pp. 186–187. In the Lausanne manuscript of the Additions, Jefferson’s text is in English.

Constant was a Tribune from January 1800 to January 1802.

Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Opinion sur une motion de M. Mirabeau, combattue par M. Barnave, in: Recueil des opinions . . . , op. cit., t. II, p. 232.

On the direct causes of this curious proclamation, which must have surprised Constant greatly, see Gustave Le Poittevin, La liberté de la presse depuis la Révolution, 1789–1815, Geneva, Slatkine-Mégariotis Reprints, 1975, pp. 159–161 (Reprint de l’éd. Paris, 1901).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contract social, Livre IV, Ch. 2, éd. cit., pp. 440–441.

“[Men] have not been able to join up and enjoy the benefit of civil liberty, without renouncing the fatal prerogatives of savage freedom, without submitting, at a word from the general will, all the forces of each individual will.” Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., 1803 edition, Préface, pp. xxi–xxii.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social, Livre III, Ch. 15, éd. cit., p. 429.

Ibid., pp. 429–430.

Ibid., p. 430.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, pp. 1–503.

The examples supplied in this note 1 of Ch. 1 come from Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, Recherches sur les constitutions . . . , op. cit., p. 112.

Petronius, Satiricon, CXIX, vers. 45–49. In place of hoc dedecus est populi the text has hoc dedocoris populo. The French text, translated from the Latin by Alfred Ernout, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1922, p. 137, runs in English: “Cato was beaten and repulsed by the people. His conqueror, more humiliated than he, blushed to have carried off the fasces [rods of authority] of a Cato, for, and this is what shows the infamy of the citizens and the ruin of manners, this is not a man excluded from power, rather in him it is the power and honor of Rome which fall.”

This in any case is the formulation of Article 6 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, of 26 August 1789.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit. The exact text is: “If the supporter of the principle of utility should find, in the banal catalogue of the virtues, an action which led to more pain than pleasure, he would not hesitate to regard that alleged virtue as a vice.”

See, for example, ibid., t. I, p. 11. “Since each man having the same right as another to lay down his feeling as a rule for all feelings, there would no longer be a common measure nor universal court to which one could appeal over it.” See also ibid., p. 133.

The exact text says: “For if one judges everything by feeling, there is no longer any way of distinguishing between the injunctions of an enlightened conscience and those of a blind one.”

Ibid., p. 137.

Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., 2e éd. (1803). The correct citation is: “All government must be instituted for the happiness of the men who are subject to it. . . .”

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. I, p. 98.

It is worth citing the whole paragraph to which Constant refers: “But although these two arts (morality and legislation), or two sciences, may have the same purpose, they differ greatly as to their extent. All actions, be they public or private, belong to morality. This is a guide which can lead the individual, as if by the hand, in all the details of his life, in all his relations with his fellows. Legislation cannot, and if it could it ought not to, exercise a continual and direct intervention on men’s conduct. Morality prescribes to every individual the doing of all that is advantageous to the community, his personal advantage included. But there are many acts useful to the community which law must not command. There are likewise many harmful acts which it should not forbid, although morality does. Legislation, in a word, has just the same core as morality, but not the same circumference.” Ibid., pp. 98–99.

Ibid., p. 103.

Hofmann was unable to find this definition by Bentham.

[N.B.: This commentary should have been included under Additions, Book III, Ch. 3. In Hofmann’s text it appears as point 4, Ch. 1. It is not clear whether the error is from Constant or Hofmann or both. Translator’s note]

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 557.

Hofmann could not find the distinction in the place indicated by Constant.

Benjamin Constant, De la justice politique, op. cit., p. 270.

[Assemblies of citizens, voted in, and acting as an electoral college. Translator’s note]

“Nobody is a man of goodwill if he is not a frank and religious observer of the laws.” Article 5 of the Duties enumerated in the Déclaration des droits et des devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen, put at the head of the Constitution, 5 fructidor an III (22 August 1795).

A reference to Article 4 of the same Déclaration: “Nobody is a good citizen if he is not a good son, a good father, a good brother, a good friend, and a good husband.”

Ferdinando Galiani, Dialogues . . . , op. cit., pp. 249–250.

Which ravaged the city in 1755.

Hofmann could not find this quotation, which might come, as so often with the “words” of Voltaire, from an oral source.

Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre XXVI, Ch. 15.

Stanislas-Marie de Clermont-Tonnerre, Réflexions sur le fanatisme, in: Recueil des opinions, op. cit., t. IV, p. 90.

L’esprit de l’histoire, 2e éd, t. I, p. 392.

Hofmann could not find this sentence in L’esprit de l’histoire.

See Constant’s Note A at the end of the Additions.

The rival supporters of the operas by Gluck and Piccini in the late eighteenth century.

Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, Berlin, G.-J. Decker, 1773, t. II, p. 332: “This government resorts mainly to the birch and the baton.”

See Constant’s Note B at the end of the Additions.

Hofmann was unable to find this reference in the work of Cornelius de Pauw.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 199–202, in which he cites a passage in Hume’s History of England.

Constant is criticizing here the whole of Ch. 18 of the fourth part of the Principes du code pénal: pp. 134–137, entitled Emploie du mobile de la religion.

The Interim of Augsburg was an edict proclaimed on 15 May 1548, provisionally regulating conflicts between Protestants and Catholics.

Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre XI, Ch. 6, where in particular this passage occurs: “The power to judge must not be lodged in a permanent Senate, but exercised by persons drawn from the body of the people.”

The exact sentence is: “The judges should be of the same social condition as the accused and his peers.”

In Livre XII he evokes “an Athenian and Roman law which permitted the accused to retire before the judgment.” The reference to t. I, p. 59, probably means that Constant is referring to the 1749 Amsterdam edition of L’esprit des lois.

[Under the ancien regime, not only were many administrative positions in the government apparatus hereditary, but as a complement to this, their holders could also sell them. Translator’s note]

The man named Gach, first name unknown, wrote a brochure entitled Des vices de l’institution du jury en France, Paris, Petit, an XIII (1804). Perhaps it is this work Constant invokes in his letter of 19 April 1806 to Prosper de Barante (published in the Revue de deux mondes, t. XXXIV, 1906, p. 242). He would not have been able to read it in this case until after redrafting his Book IX of Principes de politique, and that would explain why he speaks of Gach only in the Additions and not in the text.

See Constant’s Note C at the end of the Additions.

Hofmann holds that Constant has been imprecise. The proper text is: “Juries will never be well-informed enough nor determined enough to fulfill the intentions, the principal object of the jury system [. . .] Such is our indifference to everything connected with public administration; such among us is the power of egotism and individual interest, the tepidness, or rather the absence of public spirit, that the new law which will establish trial by jury will not be carried out in its most essential particulars.” Gach, op. cit., pp. 10–11.

“I have for my part the strongest of all authorities, that of the facts, of the experience of twelve years.” Ibid., p. 12.

Constant is not quoting but summarizing Gach’s book, pp. 38–39.

Constant is not quoting but summarizing. Ibid., pp. 40–41.

P.-J. Lauze de Péret, Traité de la garantie individuelle et des diverses preuves en matière criminelle, Paris, Impr. de Caillot, 1805, p. iv.

Constant does not quote but summarizes Gach’s book, op. cit., p. 42.

Gach, op. cit., p. 90.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, p. 421.

Constant does not quote, as one might think, but rather interprets Bentham’s thought in this place.

This is above all the Third Part of the Principes du code pénal, entitled Des peines, op. cit., t. II, pp. 380–434.

“There are not in the city two thousand people who have any property.” Cicero, Les devoirs, II.21.73. Text edited and translated by Maurice Testard, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1970, t. II, p. 55.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 490–491.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, p. 523.

Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre III, Ch. 2, t. II, pp. 413–421.

[This is new material. There is no Ch. 17 in the original Book X. Translator’s note.]

A large part of this “material” comes from Constant’s discourse before the Tribunat on 28 ventôse an IX (19 March 1801) on the public debt, published in Archives parlementaires . . . , op. cit., t. II, pp. 652–660.

[The name given to the extraordinary commissions under the ancien régime, authorized to punish the condemned by burning. Translator’s note]

Constant is referring to the laws which followed the coup d’Etat of 18 fructidor an V, and which reactivated those of the Terror. See on this subject the extensive treatment by Georges Lefebvre, Le Directoire, Paris, A. Colin, 1971, Ch. 8, pp. 87–96. See also Jacques Godechot, Les institutions . . . , op. cit., pp. 454–456.

See Constant’s note D at the end of the Additions.

See Constant’s note E at the end of the Additions.

See Constant’s note F at the end of the Additions.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, p. 79.

See Constant’s note G at the end of the Additions.

See Constant’s note H at the end of the Additions.

Mémoires de Louis XIV, op. cit., t. I, p. 156. The original text says: “All the goods possessed, as much by the people of the church as by laymen, to be used at any time as by wise stewards, this is to say, according to the general need of the State.”

See Constant’s note I at the end of the Additions.

Nicolas-François Canard, Principes d’économie politique, Paris, F. Buisson, 1801, p. 175.

[Hofmann says the reference is almost certainly wrong. Translator’s note]

This time the figures do refer to the tome and pages of Sismondi.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, pp. 354–355.

Nicolas-François Canard, op. cit., p. 197.

De l’esprit des lois, Livre XII, Ch. 4. Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II. p. 380, criticizes this same quotation from Montesquieu by saying: “A constant truth which proves that frugality enriches States and prodigality ruins them. If prodigality ruins monarchies, however, it could not be suitable for them, since it is not suitable for any State to become dependent and poor.”

Jacques Necker, op. cit., t. I, p. 43.

Ibid., p. 47.

Ibid., p. 48; the fuller text reads: “Until now I have looked at the unreasonable extent of taxation only in terms of justice; one can also identify in this extent a constant source of ills and vexations.”

Hofmann believes this reference is to Benjamin, comte de Rumford, Essais politiques, économiques et philosophiques, t. I, Geneva, G.-J. Manget, 1799, pp. 44–45 and 97–99.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, pp. 52–60. Constant does not give an exact reference.

Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce, Geneva, Cramer et Cl. Philibert, 1750, t. IV, col. 1075–1097, s.v. Compagnie des Indes. Constant found this information in Sismondi, De la richesse commerciale . . . , op. cit., t. II, pp. 309–310 and n. 2.

This is not a quotation, but an interpretation of the following text: “This first law on corporations was backed up by a host of regulations on how artisans must work, on the qualities their work must have, and on the visits of the judges to whom it is fitting to subject them. As if the consumers for whom the work is intended, and who buy only what suits them, were not the best of all judges for the inspection of the goods.” Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., t. II, pp. 284–285.

Hofmann was unable to find anything on carts and carriages in the six-volume French version of Blackstone’s commentaries, Paris, Bossange, 1822–1823, though it has a detailed index.

Contrary to his usual practice, Constant refers here to the tome and the pages of the work by Adam Smith cited. In his normal referencing this would be Livre I, Ch. 8.

The reference and the example very probably come from Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., Livre III, Ch. 2, t. II, pp. 156–220.

François-Louis-Auguste Ferrier, Du gouvernement considéré dans ses rapports avec le commerce, Paris, A. Egron, an XIII (1805). The pages indicated by Constant correspond to Ch. 2 De l’argent, considéré comme moyen d’échange—En quel sens il est richesse pour le pays.

Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre IV, Ch. 1 Du exportation du numéraire, t. III, pp. 3–52.

Ibid.

Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 5 Du numéraire, t. I, pp. 136–137.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre II, Ch. 17 Du papier monnaie, t. II, pp. 42–52.

Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, De la monarchie prussienne sous Frédéric le Grand, London, 1788, t. I, pp. 167–168.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, p. 310.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, p. 21.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 215.

Constant does not quote but summarizes the argument of these pages, pp. 128–129.

Constant should have said pp. 133–135.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, pp. 13–14.

Marquis de Condorcet, De la législation des grains depuis 1692. Analyse historique à laquelle on a donné la forme d’un rapport à l’Assemblée nationale, in Bibliothèque de l’homme public, Paris, Buisson, 1790, t. XII, pp. 105–243.

Ibid., p. 20. Only this sentence is a quotation. What follows it is a summary of pp. 110–111.

Constant’s three last references do not correspond perfectly to Condorcet’s text, although one cannot be sure to which passages they would relate better.

This second chapter of Livre III is called Comment l’agriculture fut découragée en Europe après la chute de l’empire romain, op. cit., t. II, pp. 413–439.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre IV, Ch. 14, t. II, pp. 279–280. [Hofmann points out that Constant’s quote is accurate at the beginning but later drops into paraphrase. Translator’s note]

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 465.

Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Livre XXIII, Ch: 15, where he says, for example: “These machines, whose purpose is to compress skill, are not always a good thing. If a product is at a middling price, which suits the buyer and the workman who made it equally well, machines which would simplify production, that is to say diminish the number of workers, would be pernicious.”

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 7, t. I, p. 36. There is a total confusion as to the invention of the machine-made stockings. It was an Englishman, William Lee, who invented machine-made stockings, at the end of the sixteenth century. The circumstances surrounding this discovery have remained obscure, and the legend has somewhat modified the facts. What is certain, however, is that William Lee, faced with his compatriots’ lack of interest in his machine, emigrated to France, perhaps invited by Henry IV, who had promised to bestow certain privileges upon him. The assassination of the king in 1610 called everything into question. We do not know whether William Lee died wretched in France or returned to England. In any case, his frame was repatriated and the stocking industry flourished in that country in the middle of the seventeenth century. Finally, in 1656, Louis XIV decided to establish a stocking industry in his castle in Madrid. He entrusted this duty to Jean Andret, who brought back the secret from England. For more details, see L’histoire générale des techniques, published under the direction of Maurice Dumas, t. II Les premières étapes du machinisme, Paris, PUF, 1965, pp. 236–249.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, pp. 440–441.

Charles Pictet de Rochemont, Tableau de la situation actuelle des Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Paris, Du Pont, 1795. Constant’s reference is not faithful.

Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens . . . , op. cit., t. I, pp. 81–82.

James Steuart, An inquiry into the principles of political economy, being an essay on the science of domestic policy in free societies, J. Williams and R. Moncrieffe, 1770, t. I, p. 146.

Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, op. cit., t. II, pp. 115–118.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. II, pp. 163–165.

Ibid., t. I, pp. 307–308.

The author of the Tableau de la Grande Bretagne, quoted earlier, Alexandre-Balthazar de Paule, baron de Baert-Duholant.

Hofmann did not manage to locate this anecdote in Necker’s work.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 556.

Voyages de M. le chevalier [Jean] Chardin en Perse et autres lieux de l’Orient, Amsterdam, J.-L. de Lorme, 1711. Hofmann could not find the reference. Constant got it from Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens . . . , op. cit., t. I, p. 277.

Simon de la Loubère, Du royaume de Siam, Amsterdam, A. Wolfgang, 1691, t. I, Deuxième Partie, pp. 212–213. The example and the reference are supplied by de Pauw, ibid., and Hofmann notes that Constant repeats the latter’s error. The Siamese had to serve six months a year at court and not six years.

Mémoires de Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, Liège, F.-J. Desoer, 1788, t. V, pp. 219–220. The sentence which Constant presents is word for word from Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 321–322.

The Roman numerals refer to Garnier’s Preface to Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I.

[Assignats or promissory notes were issued by the Revolutionary governments. Translator’s Note]

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. III, p. 384.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., Livre I, Ch. 35, t. I, p. 292.

Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, L’ami des hommes . . . , op. cit.; in the places indicated by Constant, one finds the idea that wars do not particularly cut down populations, but are especially fatal on account of the physical damage they entail.

[The Zend-Avesta are the sacred writings of the Parsees, usually attributed to Zoroaster. Translator’s note]

Hofmann has not been able to locate this remark by Bentham.

Perhaps Constant is referring to Politics, I. III. 4: “Certain people think there is a science, that of the power of the master, and that it is the same for the head of the family, the master, the statesman and the king, as we said at the beginning. For others the denomination of master is against nature: it is only in virtue of the law that one is a slave and the other free; in nature there is no difference; consequently such authority is not just, since it is violence.” Aristotle, Politique, translated by Jean Aubonnet, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1960, t. I, pp. 16–17.

Ferdinando Galiani, op. cit., p. 162: “A truth that pure chance brings to birth like a mushroom in a meadow is no good for anything. We do not know how to use it if we do not know where it comes from, how and by what chain of reasoning it derives. A truth outside its intellectual ancestry is as harmful as error.”

William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice . . . , op. cit. (1793 edition), t. II, pp. 551–552.

[This was a temporary and not a permanent embassy, a three-man visit in 153 bc , including Carneades, the head of the Academy founded in Athens by Plato. Carneades outraged Roman opinion by delivering two speeches on successive days, for and against justice. Translator’s note]

Histoires diverses d’Elien, translated from the Greek with commentary, Paris, Moutard, 1772, p. 60.

Hofmann says that the first page (p. 145) of Cornelius de Pauw cited carries no reference to the judgment of theatrical pieces.

Histoires diverses d’Elien, op. cit., p. 49.

Hofmann was unable to locate the references to theatrical judgments in Diodorus Siculus or Quintilian.

Antoine Ferrand, op. cit., (2e éd. of 1803) t. I, p. 333.

The example Bentham chose is drunkenness and fornication. He concludes by saying: “Instead of having suppressed a vice, the law will have sown some new and more dangerous ones.”

Constant quotes (accurately) the comte rather than the marquis de Mirabeau; Hofmann could not find the sentence in question in the sizeable work of the famous orator.

Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre V, Ch. 1, t. IV, p. 146.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. IV, p. 149, “The discipline of colleges and universities in general is not instituted for the advantage of the scholars, but for the interest, or to put it better, for the convenience, of the masters.”

Charles Pictet de Rochemont, op. cit., t. II, pp. 90–100.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. II, p. 438.

Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre V, Ch. 1, Art. 2, De la dépense qu’exigent les institutions pour l’éducation de la jeunesse. Constant does not cite or summarize, but refers to the whole body of this Article 2, t. IV, pp. 146 and following, especially.

Germain Garnier, Notes du traducteur, in: Adam Smith, op. cit., t. V, pp. 1–10, Note I, entitled: How far should government get involved in education?

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, p. 271.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, p. 181.

Constant refers to the following passage: “One encouragement, however, which is far more important than all the rest, is that in England the peasant class enjoys all the security, independence, and regard which the law can procure for it.” Adam Smith, op. cit., Livre III, Ch. 4, t. II, p. 485. Nowhere else did Hofmann find any reference to the regard which comes with popular election. Elsewhere Smith has suggested that voting by shepherds is associated with social unrest. Livre V, Ch. 1, t. IV, pp. 239–240.

Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen-âge, Paris, H. Nicolle, 1809, t. IV, p. 369.

Ibid., p. 370.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, p. 42.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., p. 264.

Cicero, De legibus, II, 2, 5. [It is for the fatherland that we must die, to it we must wholly devote ourselves, in it we must place and consecrate, so to speak, everything which is ours. Translator’s note]

Sextus Pomponius, Ad Q. Mucium, Liber XXXVII, De captivis et de pos liminio. The title means, “Concerning prisoners of war and the right to reclaim their former status.” The text runs: “For if we have neither friendship nor mutual hospitality nor a treaty made for the purpose of friendship with some nation, the latter are, to be sure, not at war with us, but that which comes to them from our property becomes theirs, and a free man of ours, taken prisoner by them, becomes their slave too; and it is the same if something comes to us from them.” Otto Lenel, Palingenesis iuris civilis, Leipzig, 1889, t. II, col. 77.

Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 68.

Ibid., pp. 67–68. Constant is summarizing, rather than citing.

Here is what Montesquieu says in the indicated place: “But if the spirit of commerce unites the nations, it does not unite individuals in the same way. We see that in the countries which are driven only by the spirit of commerce, there is traffic in all human actions and all the moral virtues: the littlest things, those that humanity demands, are made and exchanged there for money.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projetée, published for the first time in the Collection complète des oeuvres de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, citoyen de Genève, Geneva, 1782, t. I, pp. 418–539. Constant is probably referring to this passage called Application: “But a great nation which has never mingled with its neighbors must because of this have many mores which are singular to it and which perhaps are degraded day by day by the general momentum in Europe for adopting the tastes and mores of the French. The ancient usages should be maintained and reestablished and suitable ones be introduced, which are proper to the Poles. These usages, if they were neutral or even bad in certain respects, provided they were not essentially so, will always have the advantage of enhancing the affection of the Poles for their country and of giving them a natural repugnance for mingling with strangers. I regard as good fortune their having the appearance of individuality. Guard this advantage with care.” In Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, éd. cit., t. III, p. 962.

Hofmann could not find this passage in Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. II, pp. 335–351, in Ch. 14 De la satisfaction honoraire, and pp. 352–358, in Ch. 15 Remèdes aux délits contre l’honneur.

See Constant’s Note J at the end of the Additions.

Mémoires de Louis XIV, op. cit., t. I, pp. 62–63.

[Constant probably means Thrasea Paetus, stoic philosopher and senator, who was condemned by Nero in ad 66 and took his own life. Translator’s note]

Jean-François Laharpe, Lycée ou cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, Paris, H. Agasse, an VII (1799), t. II, p. 252.

Jeremy Bentham, op. cit., t. I, p. 5.

Andocides, Sur les mystères, I, 96–98, in Discours, text edited and translated by Georges Dalmeyda, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1930, pp. 47–48.

Jean-Jacques Barthélémy, Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, Paris, Venice, J. Storti, 1790, t. I, p. 120. [Presumably Constant means “instruments of justice.” Translator’s note]

David Hume, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, Basil, J.-J. Tourneisen, new ed. 1793, t. I., pp. 27–28. Constant’s translation is very close to the original text.

Ibid., pp. 28–29, passim.

See Constant’s note K at the end of the Additions.

[“Unsure whither the fates are carrying us.” Constant gives no attribution for the Latin, but it is in Virgil, Aeneid, III, 7. Virgil has described how Aeneas and his companions after the siege of Troy wander about and land on the coast of Africa, where Dido, the queen of Carthage, invites them all to dinner. Aeneas then narrates the earlier events to her, and in this passage a large band of survivors gather under his leadership, build ships, and set sail without knowing where they are going. Translator’s note]

This proposition was first made by Boulay de la Meurthe, 3 vendémiaire an VI (24 September 1797), after the coup d’Etat of 18 fructidor. See Georges Lefebvre, La France sous le Directoire (1795–1799), Paris, Editions sociales, 1977, p. 453.

References to the mass levy proposed by Jourdan on 9 messidor an VII (27 June 1799). Compare ibid., p. 673.

The law of hostages was adopted 22–24 messidor an VII (10–12 July 1799); see ibid., p. 676.

Adam Smith, op. cit., t. I, pp. 283–285.

Ibid., t. II, pp. 336–351.

Constant draws the moral lesson from Ch. 3 Comment les villes se formèrent et s’agrandierent après la chute de l’Empire romain. Ibid., t. II, pp. 439–462.

This is the tome, chapter, and page of Sismondi’s book.

[Salmoneus, King of Elis, in the Peloponnese. Translator’s note]

Seneca, Lettres à Lucilius, 81, 29. The exact text is “et cum singulorum error publicum fecerit. . . . ” (The error of individuals has made the general mistake; today the general mistake makes that of individuals.) [Seneca is talking about the things which Stoic philosophers used to despise—wealth, honor, power, etc., and he writes more fully as follows: “For they are not praised because they are desirable, but they are desired because they have been praised, and when the mistaken belief of individuals has caused a general one, the general one causes the mistaken belief of individuals.” The French text is from the translation by Henri Noblot, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1965, p. 100: “L’erreur des particuliers a fait l’erreur generale; aujourd’hui l’erreur generale fait celle des particuliers.” Translator’s note]

Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, op. cit., t. I, p. aIV.

Here is the text by Bentham: “The means we are going to present are such as will end in several cases this internal discord, diminish this tension between motives, which often exist only through the clumsiness of the lawmaker, by the clash he has created himself between the natural and the political sanction, between the moral sanction and the religious one.”

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 16–17.

Charles Ganilh, op. cit., t. II, pp. 224–251.

David Hume, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, Basil, J.-J. Tourneisen, 1793, t. I, p. 54.

Jean-Baptiste Say, op. cit., t. I, pp. 449–465.