The Principles of Natural and Politic Law. Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui

      Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1694–1748) was a natural law professor at the Academy of Geneva. He was brought up in a family with long traditions both of wealth and of political influence. Not only was Jean-Jacques’s father a member of the ruling Genevan small council (petit conseil), but his grandfather had held a position in the council of two hundred (grand conseil) and his forefathers had been prominent in the politics of Lucca in Italy, the area from which his family originally came. In 1709 Jean-Jacques began studying philosophy and law at the Academy of Geneva, where he acquainted himself with Pufendorf ’s newly translated natural law treatises. (Jean Barbeyrac’s famous French translations of Pufendorf ’s two main natural law treatises were published in 1706 and 1707.) In 1716 Burlamaqui became a lawyer, but instead of working as such he started giving private lectures on natural law and in 1720 applied to the small council for the title of honorary professor. In 1720 and 1721 Burlamaqui traveled in Europe, visiting London, Oxford, Amsterdam, and Groningen, where he met Barbeyrac. Burlamaqui was made a member of the council of two hundred while away, and he remained active in Genevan politics for the rest of his life.

      In Burlamaqui’s time, Geneva was ruled mainly by the twenty-five members of the small council, though important decisions were also taken by the council of two hundred. The so-called general council (conseil général), comprehending all citizens (in itself a rather restricted category), had lost much of its influence. The Burlamaquis were a well-represented family in the two select councils. When Burlamaqui married the daughter of Jacob de Chapeaurouge, one of Geneva’s most influential men, in 1717, he became even better connected. When the small council created two professorships in jurisprudence, Burlamaqui complained that the planned posts involved more teaching duties than he could manage, given his ill health and popular private lessons. The small council, convoked without the Burlamaquis and Chapeaurouges, concluded that they’d have to leave one post unfilled for the time being. In this situation, the Burlamaquis and the Chapeaurouges took action: after a few maneuvers, the Burlamaquis and the Chapeaurouges succeeded in securing one of the posts for Jean-Jacques with only half the teaching originally planned for the post.

      Ill health, which Burlamaqui had already complained of in 1720, and his numerous private lessons made Burlamaqui desire a redefinition of his tasks, and in 1740 he was relieved of his teaching duties altogether. Failing health, including impaired eyesight, may also have influenced his published work, which he composed from lecture notes between 1740 and his death in 1748. By that time he had become a much respected and influential member of Geneva’s de facto aristocracy, a member of the small council (in 1742), and a defender of its authority against the demands of the bourgeoisie that power should be wielded by the general council. Respected as a teacher and a friend of the arts, Burlamaqui was involved in the public library and in the creation of a drawing school in Geneva.

      Burlamaqui’s lectures drew foreign students to Geneva, and his natural law treatise was translated into English, Latin, Dutch, Danish, Italian, and Spanish and republished in more than sixty different editions. The English translation became a standard textbook both at Cambridge and at the foremost American colleges. The first scholarly work on Burlamaqui was written by an American, Ray Forrest Harvey, who argued that the Genevan was well known by the Founding Fathers and that his writings exerted considerable influence on the American constitutional system.¹ Furthermore, Burlamaqui’s work was important to philosophes such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot. However, whether the ideas thus disseminated were Burlamaqui’s own has been a debated issue. It can be shown that Burlamaqui’s published work borrows extensively from Jean Barbeyrac’s French translations of the main natural law treatises of his time, especially Pufendorf ’s Les devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen (DHC) and Le droit de la nature et des gens (DNG) and from Grotius’s Le droit de la guerre et de la paix (DGP).² Often Burlamaqui omits mention of his sources, as most of his commentators have noted. The typical reaction has been to declare Burlamaqui an unoriginal plagiarist.³

      The heavy reliance of the Principles of Natural and Politic Law, especially its second part, on Barbeyrac’s editions requires an explanation. Burlamaqui published only one book in his lifetime, Principes du droit naturel (Geneva, 1747). Burlamaqui himself thought of the book as an introduction to a complete system of the law of nature and nations for students and beginners. He never published the whole system himself, but he laid out the main lines of one in lectures, which were preserved in students’ notes. These lecture notes had already attracted attention before Burlamaqui’s death, and his main reason for publishing the work was, as he states in his introduction, that he “began to apprehend, lest this work should be published against my will, in a very imperfect and mangled condition.”

      After Burlamaqui died in 1748, many felt that more of the master’s system should be published. Theology professor Jacob Vernet, who had been present at Burlamaqui’s death “as a friend and vicar,” wrote in a letter on the day of the interment that the notes on civil government were among Burlamaqui’s most original. Burlamaqui, Vernet wrote, had been editing his notes on “droit politique” but had not finished, so Vernet, possibly with other friends and colleagues, took the task upon himself. The result of these endeavors, Principes du droit politique (Geneva, 1751), remained unfinished in some central respects. It contained a great number of unidentified quotations and extracts, especially from the natural law treatises translated by Barbeyrac, and large portions of the book added little to Grotius, Pufendorf, and Barbeyrac. In the Principes du droit naturel, which Burlamaqui