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USURPATION AND “THE SOCIAL” IN BENJAMIN CONSTANT'S COMMENTAIRE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2018

GIANNA ENGLERT
GIANNA ENGLERT*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist University E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

As part of Benjamin Constant's academic “revival,” scholars have revisited the political and religious elements of his thought, but conclude that he remained uninterested in the nineteenth century's major social and economic questions. This article examines Constant's response to what would later become known as “the social question” in his Commentary on Filangieri's Work, and argues that his claims about poverty and its alleviation highlight central elements of his political liberalism, especially on the practice of citizenship in the modern age. By interpreting social issues through his original political lens of “usurpation,” Constant encouraged skepticism of social legislation and identified the political implications of a “disinherited” poor class. The lens of usurpation ultimately limited the scope of Constant's solutions to poverty. But his attention to social and economic issues prompts us to reexamine the category of “the social” and its uses in the history of liberal thought, particularly the place of class concerns in the French liberal tradition.

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Articles
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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 55 - 84
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

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Footnotes

A version of this paper was presented at the 2017 PPE Society Meeting in New Orleans, and I thank the participants for their feedback. Thank you also to David Golemboski, who offered comments on an earlier draft, and to the coeditors and anonymous referees at Modern Intellectual History.

References

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29 Constant, Commentary, 5.

30 Franco Venturi, for example, exclaimed, “How poorly Constant knew the world of eighteenth-century Naples!” Venturi, Franco, “Gaetano Filangieri: Nota introduttiva,” in Venturi, Illuministi Italiani, vol. 5. (Milan and Naples, 1962), 601–782, at 647Google Scholar. See also Cordey, Pierre, “Benjamin Constant, Gaetano Filangieri et la ‘Science de la législation’,” Revue européenne des sciences sociales 18/50 (1980), 55–79Google Scholar; Donato, “Benjamin Constant and the Italian Enlightenment.”

31 In his introduction to the 1822 edition, Salfi urged the French to “follow the method that Filangieri proposed to make light rebound in the midst of darkness.” Quoted in Ferrone, The Politics of the Enlightenment, 181.

32 On the 1822 edition see Cordey, “Benjamin Constant, Gaetano Filangieri et La ‘Science de la législation’,” 63–5.

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36 Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 22, summarizes the relationship similarly: “Filangieri was less the subject of his analysis than an occasion for it.” Ferrone, The Politics of the Enlightenment, 183, goes further, claiming that Constant was “inventing . . . an enemy to annihilate from start to finish.”

37 Kahan, “Introduction,” xii.

38 Constant, Commentary, 71.

39 Simonde de Sismondi, J. C. L., Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population, 2 vols. (Paris, 1819), 1: 368Google Scholar; Sismondi, , “Analysis of a Refutation of New Principles of Political Economy Published in the Edinburgh Review by a Follower of Mr. Ricardo,” in Sismondi, New Principles of Political Economy, ed. and trans. Hyse, Richard (New Brunswick, 1990), 599–616, at 612Google Scholar.

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42 Sismondi, Nouveaux principes, 2: 303. Constant did not approve of either Malthus's or Sismondi's arguments against marriage and procreation for the poor. Constant, Commentary, 92, 96, 100.

43 Constant, Commentary, 54. This was an extension of Constant's broader preoccupation with the “prerogative of crime prevention” and the use of arbitrary measures to prevent alleged criminality. See Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1810), trans. Dennis O'Keeffe and ed. Etienne Hoffman (Indianapolis, 2003), 74–80.

44 Constant, Principles of Politics, 529. For a brief summary of the Settlement Act and the right to relief see Jones, Gareth Stedman, An End To Poverty? A Historical Debate (New York, 2004), 74–9Google Scholar.

45 Constant, Principles of Politics, 529.

46 Constant, Commentary, 55.

47 On apprenticeships and trade associations see ibid., 144–5.

48 Ibid., 57.

49 Filangieri, The Science of Legislation, 20–21.

50 Constant, Commentary, 54, emphasis mine.

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53 Ibid., 203.

54 Archives parlementaires, vol. 31 (4 May 1821), 253.

55 Ibid., 252.

56 Ibid. Jennifer Pitts notes that Constant's parliamentary speeches on the slave trade were part of a broader attack on the “desire for profit” that motivated Restoration politics. Pitts, “Constant's Thought on Slavery and Empire,” 132.

57 Constant, Commentary, 55.

58 Constant, Benjamin, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and Their Relation to European Civilization (1814), in Constant: Political Writings, ed. Fontana, Biancamaria (Cambridge, 1988), 44–169, at 85, 88Google Scholar.

59 Ibid., 97.

60 The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation was authored prior to Constant's volte-face and willingness to serve under Napoleon during the Hundred Days. Constant reflected on this shift in Mémoires sur les Cent-Jours, in Constant, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 14 (Tübingen, 1993).

61 Constant, Commentary, 57.

62 Archives parlementaires, vol. 31 (4 Mai 1821), 252. Richard Cobden would later explicitly denounce “monopolists” in his discussion of the English Corn Laws, “that parent of all other monopolies.” Richard Cobden, “Free Trade. Speech VIII” (London, 8 February 1844), in Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, ed. James E. Thorold Rogers, vol. 1 (London, 1908), 58–68.

63 Constant, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation, 95, 97.

64 Constant, Commentary, 57. Constant also described the Poor Law's restriction on physical mobility as an instance of usurpation. By denying the individual the right to mobility and thus the control over his “most basic property” (his physical body) the law represented a “flagrant usurpation” of liberty. See ibid., 144 n. 3.

65 Ibid., 4.

66 Richard Whatmore argues that Constant saw Britain as a “model modern republic.” Though he praised its constitution, a look at Constant's assessment of English commercial law in the Commentary and during his political career complicates this claim. Whatmore, , “The Politics of Political Economy in France from Rousseau to Constant,” in Bevir, Mark and Trentmann, Frank, eds., Markets in Historical Contexts: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World (Cambridge, 2004), 46–69, at 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Constant, Commentary, 4–5.

68 Ibid., 55

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71 For a good typology of French assessments of England (that nonetheless omits Constant) see Romani, Robert, “Political Economy and Other Idioms: French Views on English Development, 1815–48,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 9/3 (2002), 359–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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73 Ibid., 44.

74 See the 1815 edition of Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Representative Governments, in Constant: Political Writings (Cambridge, 1988), 183–93.

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80 Ibid., 94.

81 Ibid., 64.

82 Ibid., 60–61.

83 Ibid., 61.

84 Ibid., 63.

85 Sismondi, “Foreword to the Second Edition,” 10.

86 Sismondi, Nouveaux principes, 1: 45, 2: 335–6.

87 Say, England and the English People, 14, 21.

88 Constant, Commentary, 60: “The masses do not consent that there should be classes that dominate them, unless they believe they see in the supremacy of these classes utility for themselves.”

89 Ibid., 109. Note that Constant appropriated the term “proletarians” from Sismondi.

90 Filangieri, The Science of Legislation, 254–66.

91 Constant, Commentary, 117. This is one point where we should question the accuracy of Constant's interpretation of Filangieri. Though Filangieri mentioned the possibility of resurrecting Agrarian laws, he mentioned an important caveat to this suggestion. Though the laws were well suited to other times and regimes, “circumstances are changed, and the mode of operation must be also changed.” Filangieri was not quite such an advocate of Agrarian laws as Constant claimed. Filangieri, Science of Legislation, 266.

92 Constant, Principles of Politics, 167.

93 Constant, Commentary, 248. Recall that even some of Constant's fellow liberals in the Chamber supported trade restrictions.

94 Villèle introduced the bill to reestablish primogeniture in 1826, but it had been in preparation since at least 1824, and the issue itself had been a matter of discussion since the beginning of the ministry in 1821. On the bill see Nettement, Alfred, Histoire de la Restauration (Paris, 1869), 284–308Google Scholar; for part of the debate see Archives parlementaires, vol. 46 (28 March 1826), 444–51.

95 Constant, Commentary, 119.

96 Ibid., 111.

97 Ibid.

98 Gauchet, “Benjamin Constant,” 40–41.

99 See Dunoyer, Charles, “Esquisse historique des doctrines auxquelles on a donné le nom d'Industrialisme c'est-à-dire, des doctrines qui fondent la société sur l'Industrie,” Revue encyclopédique (Paris, 1827), 371–8Google Scholar. Left-leaning liberal advocates of industrie, a commitment to work, production, and labor as the cure of France's ills, regularly claimed Constant as one of the founders of their own ideology, citing his discussion of the “age of commerce” in The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation. Dunoyer is representative of this view.

100 Constant, Principles of Politics, 175.

101 Constant, Commentary, 112.

102 Ibid., 175.

103 Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns,” 326.

104 Constant, Commentary, 22.

105 Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns,” 327.

106 Ibid. See also Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 31–52.

107 Constant mentioned constitutional monarchy as a constraint on majorities in Commentary, 49.

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109 Constant, Commentary, 44.

110 Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 43.

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112 Constant, Principles of Politics, 166.

113 Constant, Commentary, 44 and 46.

114 Constant, Principles of Politics, 166.

115 Ibid., 166, 171.

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119 Ibid., 179.

120 Ibid.

121 Ibid., 183.

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