Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

by Benjamin Constant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

580 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1815

About the author

Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born, nobleman, thinker, writer and French politician.

Constant was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, to descendants of noble Huguenots who fled France during the Huguenot wars in the early 16th century to settle in Lausanne. He was educated by private tutors and at the University of Erlangen, Bavaria, and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In the course of his life, he spent many years in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Great Britain.

He was intimate with Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and their intellectual collaboration made them one of the most important intellectual pairs of their time. He was a fervent liberal, fought against the Restauration and was active in French politics as a publicist and politician during the latter half of the French Revolution and between 1815 and 1830. During part of this latter period, he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower legislative house of the Restoration-era government. He was one of its most eloquent orators and a leader of the parliamentary block first known as the Independants and then as "liberals."

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the high-sounding title, this book does indeed contain many universal insights and useful maxims. Given how useful much of it is, it is astonishing that it was not translated into English in its entirety until the 1980s, despite being penned circa 1810. Constant represents something of a missing link between Montesquieu and Frédéric Bastiat or Alexis de Tocqueville in the Liberal tradition. His work tries to avoid constitutional questions or taking sides between forms of governments, provided the outcome was a free society. He took it for granted that tyranny was undesirable, alongside anarchy: “Despotism resembles anarchy in that it destroys public safeguards and tramples on due process. It differs from anarchy only in that it then demands for itself the due process it has destroyed.” (p 8)

Constant, being opposed to anarchy, does not consider government evil as such: “Government is the use of public force against individuals. When it is used to stop them hurting each other, it is a good government. When it is used to oppress them, it is a frightful government.” (p 7) When it comes to oppression, he again and again circles back to its long-term futility: “Thought alone can do battle with thought.” (p 14) Further, “The only way to weaken an opinion is to establish free discussion.” (p 144)

No matter the form of government, in practice it must be limited: “The sovereign does have the right to punish, but only for culpable actions. He does have the right to wage war, but only when society is attacked. He does have the right to make laws, but only when they are necessary and insofar as they are just. There is, therefore, nothing ’absolute,’ nothing arbitrary in these prerogatives.” (p 22) Further, “In a society whose members have equal rights, it is certain that no member can on his own make obligatory laws for the others.” (p 31)

Constant recognizes the need for balance between the majority and minorities in a society: “If the right of the majority, that is, the strongest, were not recognized, the right of the minority would be. This is to say that injustice would weigh down on a greater number of people.” (p 32) Yet, “To defend the rights of the minorities is therefore to defend the rights of all. Everyone in turn finds himself in the minority. The whole society is divided into a host of minorities which are oppressed in succession.” (p 35)

Constant recognized the dangers of Utilitarianism even before its strongest articulation by John Stuart Mill: “Actions cannot be more or less just; but they can be more or less useful. In hurting my fellow men, I violate their rights. This is an incontestable truth. But if I judge this violation only by its utility, I can get the calculation wrong, and find utility in the violation.” (p 40)

Constant also clearly saw a truth that members of representative societies are still grappling with in disbelief, the lack of true leadership among most of the elected representatives, as inevitably “Their opinions will be at the level of ideas in the widest circulation. For this very reason they will be excellent at maintaining the society, at negative protection. They will be useless at leadership.” (p 53)

Constant identified the many reasons for the almost unstoppable tendency for government to expand itself, even in spite of the many clear, rational arguments against such intrusive growth. For starters, once people are assigned the duties of governing, they are inclined to do as much as they can, both to feel productive and to satisfy their egos with seeing what good jobs they do. If a law is unpopular or not really necessary, it is better to leave it on the books but fail to enforce it, winning appreciation for the failure to enforce it, but retaining the power to do so arbitrarily. Last, “Nothing is simpler than passing off the effect for the cause. The more a government measure offends against freedom and reason, the more it drags in its wake disorder and violence. Then government attributes the need for the measure to the disorder and violence themselves.” (p 75)

Furthermore, “men are bound to be unhappy with a system which replaces favoritism only by freedom. Freedom creates, so to speak, a negative good, although a gradual and general one. Favoritism brings positive, immediate, personal advantages. Selfishness and short-term views will always be against freedom and for favoritism.” (p 259)

Probably the portion of Constant’s work least applicable in our day and age is his conviction that only propertied individuals ought to exercise political rights. While common enough in his era, the time for such thinking has passed. While his general argument is that those without property would be inclined to turn government into a tool of plunder (probably true), he was clearly naïve in his belief that the propertied would never turn the government into a tool of repression to preserve their riches and positions (and this even while he mentions the example of medieval nobility doing just this!). In his estimation, only a person with enough real estate to support himself should enjoy political suffrage. Even assuming one accepted his overall premise, in today’s world of capital, it would be astonishing to limit suffrage to landowners. This section of the work does raise the question of whether those who pay more might not have a legitimate cause to have more say in the business of government, or at least its fiscal functions. This may be an area where modern ideas of equality have eliminated even the thought of debate or further inquiry.

Not only in terms of civil and political concerns, but in economic ones as well, government must be strictly limited and focused on the negative: “Society having no political prerogatives over individuals except when these prevent them harming each other, likewise economic activity, unless taken to be injurious, is subject to no such jurisdiction.” (p 228) Further, “the effect of government intervention in matters of production, though sometimes necessary perhaps, is never positively advantageous.” (p 259)

The ultimate rationale for liberty and limited government, whatever its form, is that “those who govern are as prone to error as the governed.” (p 301) Put alternatively, “To increase the force of collective authority is never other than giving more power to some individuals. If the wickedness of men is an argument against freedom, it is an even stronger one against power. For despotism is only the freedom of one or a few against the rest.” (p 322)

Constant saw the alternative to a system of liberty, and it was perhaps not unlike Aldous Huxley’s vision of a dystopian future (though Constant’s vision was informed by his personal experience in the French Revolution): “They would like to constitute the new social State with a small number of elements that claim to be uniquely adapted to the situation of the modern world. These elements are: prejudices to frighten men, greed to corrupt them, frivolity to stupefy them, coarse pleasures to degrade them, despotism to rule them, and, of course, positive knowledge and exact science to serve the despotism more adroitly.” (pp 364-365)

The work is excellent and eminently quotable, the above merely scratch the surface. The double system of both footnotes and endnotes make it a little awkward, but it preserves the way Constant wrote it. The translation is excellent, not distracting in the least from the work’s readability. A work very worth reading, especially as it represents an important step in the Liberal intellectual tradition.

[Craig Bolton]

PRINCIPLES OF POLITICS APPLICABLE TO ALL GOVERNMENTS by BENJAMIN CONSTANT (2003)