Commentary on Filangieri’s Work. Benjamin de Constant
which demands their intervention. In all this, the word conquest is never pronounced. But is the people’s blood less likely to flow? What does it matter to them under what pretext it is shed! The pretext itself is at bottom nothing more than another insult.
Therefore, contrary to the over-confident Filangieri’s suggestion, we must not trust ourselves to reason’s influence on thrones, and to rulers’ wisdom to preserve the world from the plague of unjust or useless wars. The wisdom of the nation must take part. I said in chapter 2 how it should participate.
[print edition page 18]
CHAPTER FIVE
A salutary fermentation is going to give birth to public happiness.
INTRODUCTION, P. 11.
If one judged only by appearances, one could not help but feel sadness and pity for the human species when comparing the future Filangieri promises it here with the situation in which almost all the peoples of Europe find themselves today. What has become of that desire for improvement and reform which inspired societies’ upper classes? Where is that freedom of the press which honored both the rulers who did not fear it and the writers who used it? The superstition whose defeat the Neapolitan writer celebrates—is it not the object of regret for all the holders of power? Incapable of reproducing it as it used to be—blind and cruel but sincere—they make efforts to replace it by command performances and calculated intolerance, no less harmful and much less excusable. Do we not see hypocrisy attempting to rebuild everywhere what the Enlightenment overthrew? Are not the foundations of fanaticism being laid in every country?
What does it matter that spiritual claims have bowed to political authority, if that authority makes religion into a tool and thus acts against freedom with double force? What use is it to us to have deprived aristocratic oppression of its ancient name of feudalism if it reappears under a new name, just as demanding and more astute? If the domination the old feudal lords lost should go to the large landowners, who are for the most part the feudal lords of times past? If large landholdings, made inalienable by entailments and always increasing because they are inalienable, recreate oligarchy? Finally, just as feudalism seeks to reappear under a less frightening name, has not despotism, which mores had made gentler, forsworn its philanthropic gestures? Has it
[print edition page 19]
not already replaced the outdated axiom of divine right with a terminology whose only advantage is that it is more abstract? Does it not use that terminology just as much to forbid to peoples all examination of the laws, and all resistance to arbitrary power?
This painful comparison of what has happened with what we had the right to hope for should not discourage us, however. Momentary disappointment was in the nature of things; ultimate success is as well.
When the principles of justice and freedom are proclaimed by philosophers, it often happens that the classes called superior rally to them, because these principles’ consequences, still relegated to an obscure future, do not offend. It would be wrong to conclude from this that these classes will continue to want the system that they seem to—I will go farther—that they certainly believe they have adopted. In man’s heart there is a need for approval which even power will be led by, when it flatters itself that it will not cost it any real sacrifice to satisfy. It follows that when public opinion is strongly aroused against despotism, aristocratic pride, or religious intolerance, the kings, nobles, and priests try to please opinion, and the privileged of various kinds ostensibly make common cause with the mass of the nations against their own prerogatives. Sometimes they are even sincere in the abnegation they manifest. While they win applause by repeating principles that do not seem likely to be applied any time soon, the intoxication of their words creates disinterested emotions in them, and they imagine that if it should happen (always convinced that it will not), they would be ready to do everything that they say.
But when the moment of truth arrives, interest demands the bill from vanity for the promises it has made. Vanity made them comfortable with the theory, interest makes them furious with the practice. They praised reforms on condition that they did not happen, like people who would celebrate the sun, provided the night would never end. In fact, dawn has come, and almost all those who had invoked it have declared themselves its opponents, and all the signs of improvement that Filangieri pompously lists for us have fled like vain glimmers of light.
As we see, this backward movement was inevitable, and it shows us a very important truth: reforms which come from above are always deceptive. If interest is not the motivation of all individuals, because some individuals’ nobler nature rises above the narrow ideas of egoism, interest is the motivation of all classes. One can never expect anything effective or complete from a class which seems to act against its own interest. It may well abjure its interest
[print edition page 20]
momentarily, but it will always come back to it, and as soon as the moment comes to permanently consummate the sacrifice, it will retreat, voicing reservations and qualifications which it did not suspect itself amid its protestations of sacrifice and devotion. This is what we are witnessing today. The absolute monarchy, the clergy, the nobility, all want to take back the prerogatives they surrendered, accusing the people of theft for having taken what was offered, crying out against injustice and trickery with a precious naiveté, solely because they were taken at their word.
But should we infer from these recent efforts that our hopes are forever disappointed and that humanity’s cause is lost beyond appeal? Certainly not. We should be grateful for the passing enthusiasm and vain imprudence of the various privileged classes. They popularized the principles they now condemn. In order to begin a war against the institutions which oppress them, nations often need leaders from the classes which profit from these institutions. Too much humiliation robs people of courage, and those who profit from abuses are sometimes the only ones capable of attacking them. These leaders call up the popular army, discipline it, and train it. It is lucky when they remain faithful to it! But if they desert, the army is [still] nevertheless in being. It easily replaces the apostates who abandoned it with men taken from its midst, and more identified with its cause. Thus, while victory may perhaps be delayed, it becomes more certain and more complete because there are no longer foreign interests among the victors who slow down the march or distort the goal.
Therefore fear nothing from momentary coalitions and declarations of circumstance, the forces ostentatiously deployed to frighten us. One does not abandon the philosophical flag without cost. Despotism, aristocratic pride, clerical power, all wanted to have the honor of it: they must also bear the costs. These costs can be decreased by a rational resignation. They can be cruelly increased by resistance. But the fate of the human species is decided. The reign of privilege is over.
Tyranny is only formidable, says an English author, when it smothers reason in its childhood. Then it can stop its progress and keep men in a long imbecility. But there is only a moment when all-powerful reason can be successfully proscribed. Once the moment has passed, all efforts are vain, the struggle has begun, the truth appears to all minds. Opinion separates itself from the government, and the government, rejected by opinion, resembles those bodies struck by lightning which contact with the air reduces to dust.
[print edition page 21]
CHAPTER SIX
It is really astonishing that among the many writers who have devoted themselves to studying law … each has only considered a portion of this immense edifice.
INTRODUCTION, P. 12.
Filangieri’s phrase contains the germ of a great truth, but he seems to have neither sufficiently understood it nor sufficiently developed it. He criticizes writers who have treated legislation separately from politics mostly from a literary angle, because they have not understood how to consider their subject