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1. JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES
VOLUME 19, NO. 1 (WINTER 2005): 97-104

BOOK REVIEW

Benjamin Constant. Principles of Politics Applicable to All Gov-
ernments. Edited by Etienne Hoffman. Translated by Dennis
O'Keefe. Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi. Indianapolis,
Ind.: Liberty Fund, 2003.

ONE WOULD THINK THAT perhaps the most important book from the
person Nicholas Capaldi called “the key thinker in the French clas-
sical liberal tradition between Montesquieu and Tocqueville” would
have been translated from French into English long ago. But there
was not a complete English translation of Benjamin Constant’s 1810
Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments until 2003. Now,
Dennis O’Keefe’s fine translation reveals that English speakers have
been missing access to a major voice on behalf of liberty for almost
two centuries. In fact, because his prose is so insightful and inspira-
tional, as well as unknown, doing it justice requires relying on his
own words.

Born in Switzerland in 1767, Constant was strongly influenced
by the Scottish Enlightenment, which he encountered when he was
sent to study in Edinburgh from 1783 to 1785. It turned him into a
lifelong advocate of infusing those classical-liberal principles into
the political life of France, where he became a citizen in 1798. Both
the French Revolution and Napoleon's authoritarianism, which he
adamantly opposed, gave impetus to that quest.

It would be easy to become distracted from the insights in Prin-
ciples by Constant’s interesting life. For instance:

+ he picked up a serious gambling problem while in Edinburgh;

+ he had a “stormy” relationship with Germaine de Staél, the
center of Paris’s leading salon and perhaps the most brilliant,
influential woman in Europe at that time;

* he moved widely in the intellectual circles of the day;

» he wrote what some consider the first romantic novel (Adolphe,
in 1816) as well as longer works and shorter political tracts; and

+ he was very actively involved in politics, almost always in
opposition to the abuses of the current regime, which, given
the changes in France over the period, qualifies as a soap
opera by itself.

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98 — JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 19, NO. 1 (WINTER 2005)

Much of that can be discovered in the Introduction to Principles.
For those particularly interested in such aspects of Constant’s life, an
excellent source is Jim Powell's “Benjamin Constant—Liberty and
Private Life,” in the October 1997 edition of The Freeman.

Principles in many ways begins with the French Revolution, as
Constant in Book I (of eighteen) laments the abuses that arose in the
name of freedom during that period:

It was in the name of freedom that we got prisons, scaffolds, and
endless multiplied persecution. (p. 4)

Rousseau’s theory that political power is unlimited . . . seems to me
false and dangerous. In my view, this is the theory we must hold
responsible for most of the difficulties the establishment of free-
dom has encountered among various nations, for most of the
abuses which worm their way into all governments of whatever
type, and indeed for most of the crimes which civil strife and polit-
ical upheaval drag in their wake. It was just this theory which
inspired our Revolution and those horrors for which liberty for all
was at once the pretext and the victim. (p. 13)

When no limit to political authority is acknowledged, the people’s
leaders, in a popular government, are not defenders of freedom,
but aspiring tyrants, aiming not to break, but rather to assume the
boundless power which presses on the citizens. (pp. 19-20)

The abuses in the name of freedom then lead into Constant’s dis-
cussion in Books IT and III of the legitimate bounds of government, and
the fact that all governments have overstepped those bounds, a theme
Constant returns to repeatedly. This section also contains the first of
several mentions of the distinction between positive and negative
rights, in its reference to “maintaining the society, at negative protec-
tion” (p. 53), which Isaiah Berlin credited Constant with originating:

Political society cannot exceed its jurisdiction without being
usurpative. . . . When a government of any sort puts a threatening
hand on that part of individual life beyond its proper scope . . .
even if it were the whole nation, except for the man it is harassing,
it would be no more legitimate for that. (p. 31)

The majority can make the law only on issues on which the law
must pronounce. On those on which the law must not pronounce,
the wish of the majority is no more legitimate than that of the
smallest minorities. (p. 33)

There are things about which the legislature has no right to make
law . .. areas of individual existence in relation to which society is
not entitled to have any will. (pp. 35-36)

In no nation have individuals enjoyed individual rights in all their
fullness. No government has confined the exercise of political


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BOOK REVIEW — 99

authority to strictly necessary limits. All have gone far beyond this.
(p- 47)

The doctrine of boundless obedience to the law has perhaps been
the cause of more evil than all the other errors which have led men
astray. (p. 402)

The three ensuing books comment on government overstepping
its bounds by multiplying laws, and the corruption and progressive
erosion of freedom that results:

The proliferation of laws . . . has the bad effect of falsifying indi-
vidual morality. (p. 63)

It is a mistake to hope the proliferation of laws will save us from
the tyranny of men. In multiplying laws you necessarily create
more government agents. Consequently, you give a larger number
of men power over their fellows and thus double the likelihood of
its arbitrary misuse. (p. 65)

When laws proliferate, this is a sign that government is no longer
keeping to its natural sphere . . . by acting outside its proper
sphere, government corrupts . . . those on whom it acts; it also cor-
rupts in particular those through whom it acts. (p. 66)

Arbitrary government is to moral life what plague is to the body.
(p. 78)

One blow against individual freedom calls forth others. Once the
government enters this fatal road, it finishes soon by being in no
way preferable to a faction. (p. 88)

Several books then turn to the rights to which individuals are enti-
tled, and which governments therefore cannot transgress, in a manner
that would not have been out of place at America’s Constitutional
Convention. Constant also engages in an extensive discussion of
property, taxation, and government intervention in economic affairs
that one could only wish today’s politicians would take to heart:

Political freedom would be of no value if the rights of individuals
were not sheltered from all violation. Any country where these
rights are not respected is a country subjected to despotism. (p.
103)

Property being necessary, then, to the perfecting and prosperity of
the social condition, it follows that it must be surrounded by all the
safeguards. (p. 168)

If owners possess improper powers, they will be enemies of free-
dom and justice, not as owners, but as privileged persons. If they
are not privileged, they will be their most faithful supports. . .
Privileges and society are always at war. The latter wants a rule;
the former wants exceptions. (p. 185)


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100 — JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 19, NO. 1 (WINTER 2005)

Political authority must never, as part of its action over property,
offend inviolable rights. (p. 192)

The legitimate jurisdiction of government over the transmission of
property is extremely limited. It should guarantee the latter and
leave it alone. . . . The same considerations . . . have led govern-
ments to progressive taxation, compulsory borrowings, and taxes
directed solely against the wealthy. These measures have been so
fully rebuked by experience, however, that it is almost superfluous
to demonstrate their futility and danger. (p. 198)

The government, having to provide for the internal defense and
external security of the State. . . . The governed have the right for
their part to demand of the government that the sum of all taxes
does not exceed what is necessary for the purposes it must attain.
(p. 205)

Everywhere that the constitution of the State does not block the
arbitrary proliferation of taxes, everywhere the government is not
held up by insurmountable barriers to its ever growing demand . . .
neither justice, nor morality, nor individual freedom can be

respected. (p. 220)

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 jurisdic-
tion . . . it follows not at all that it has the right to use against the
economic activity of one person, in favor of another’s, means
which it must forbid equally to all. (p. 228)

Once having set itself up as the citizen's guardian, it would soon
become their tyrant. . . . Let government intervene only to maintain
both combinations and individuals in their respective rights and
within the limits of justice, freedom will see to the rest, and suc-
cessfully at that. (p. 230)

The government which forces men toward any end whatsoever is
an arbitrary and vicious government. (p. 234)

Government, once it has arrogated to itself the right to intervene in
the affairs of business . . . often appeals to force. (p. 251)

Our only resource is in freedom and justice. . . . Leave [people] to
enjoy in peace the fruits of their labors, the equality of rights, and
the freedom of action which belong to them. You will serve them
much better by not showering them either with favors or injustices.
(p. 257)

What must government do then? Stay out of it. . . . There are
numerous circumstances when it can do good only by not acting
at all. . . . A thousand arguments and facts crowd around me, all
tending to supply ever stronger evidence for this principle. (p.
259)


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Book Review — 101

Respect the natural course of things. Let people be happy, that is,
let everyone be free to seek his own happiness, without hurting
other people's . . . all of which can be expressed in one word: free-
dom. (p. 265)

Constant then turns to war, in a manner reminiscent of Robert
Higgs's Crisis and Leviathan:

War is now only a scourge. . . . War unsettles, without compensa-
tion, every kind of social guarantee. The domestic controls it seems
to authorize put individual freedom at risk. (p. 278)

The measures which ensure the triumph of war prepare the col-
lapse of the law. (p. 283)

Under whatever point of view we consider this terrible question of
war, we have to be convinced that any enterprise of this kind which
does not have a defensive purpose is the worst outrage a govern-
ment can commit, because it brings together the disastrous effects
of all the outrages of government. It endangers all kinds of freedom,
harms every interest, tramples underfoot all rights, combines and
authorizes all forms of domestic and foreign tyranny, depraves the
rising generations, divides the nation into two parts, of which one
scorns the other and passes readily from scorn to injustice, pre-
pares future destructions by way of past ones, and purchases with
the misfortunes of the present those of the future. (p. 285)

Wars . . . are great evils in themselves [that] also lead to all the other
ills. (p. 286)

The public force necessary for peace is entirely negative, namely
public safeguards. . . . In peace each man needs only his work,
efforts, and individual resources. . . . Peace presents no precise pur-
pose. It is a condition in which each person freely forms projects,
meditates on the means, gives play to his personal plans. (p. 355)

Book XV then turns to an important summary of Constant’s
arguments:

We have surveyed almost all the matters on which government,
exceeding the limits of strict necessity, can take action on grounds
of alleged utility. We found that in all these, had people been left to
themselves, less bad and more good would have happened. . ..

Governments must watch out that nothing trammels our diverse
faculties, but must not permit them to take a hand therein. . . . The
governors are those guards, put in place by individuals who come
together precisely so that nothing shall trouble their peace of mind
or upset their doings. If the governors go further, they become
themselves a source of trouble and upset. . . .

It is not a crime in man to want to manage himself by his own
lights, even when the government finds them imperfect. It is a


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crime in government, however, to punish individuals because they
do not adopt as their interest what seems so to other men... when,
after all, each person is the judge in the last resort. To subordinate
individual wishes to the general will, without absolute necessity, is
gratuitously to set up obstacles to all our progress. Individual
interest is always more enlightened on what concerns it than col-
lective power, whose fault is the sacrificing to its purposes, with-
out care or scruple, of everything which opposes it. It needs to be
checked and not to be encouraged.

To increase the force of collective authority is never other than giv-
ing more power to some individuals. If the wickedness of man 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. (pp. 321-23)

What relates only to the individual must be referred only to the
individual. It cannot be said too often that the general will is no
more worthy than the individual one, when it steps outside its
jurisdiction. (p. 325)

Public interest is only individual interests prevented from harming
each other. The principle on which rests the need for the unity of
the electoral body is therefore completely erroneous. (p. 327)

People have not grasped that [governments] should conserve only
guarantees of freedom, of the independence of individual faculties
and, to that end, of individual physical safety. (p. 338)

For a people to progress, it suffices that government does not
shackle them. . . . The government which leaves it alone favors it
enough. (p. 343)

From government's ability to do great harm it is concluded that it
can do much good. These two questions are very different. (p.
345)

The final books then offer some conclusions:

What needs to be done, therefore, is to purchase political freedom
as cheaply as possible, that is, to leave as much personal freedom
as possible, in all its forms, and in every respect. (p. 362)

Governments have no more right than before to arrogate to them-
selves illegitimate power. . . . We still possess today the rights we
owned at all times, the eternal rights of justice, equality, and safe-
guards, because these rights are the purpose of human societies. (p.
365)

Government is in its rightful place only when it is a curb. . . . But
when it wants to encourage, direct, arouse, and enthuse and comes
forward with pretentious talk, always followed by coercive meas-
ures, it is ridiculous in failure and despotic in constraint. (p. 369)


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Book REviEw — 103

Individuals must enjoy complete freedom of action for all innocent
or unimportant actions. (p. 383)

Individuals must enjoy a boundless freedom in the use of their
property and the exercise of their labor, as long as in disposing of
their property or exercising their labor they do not harm others
who have the same rights. If they do so harm them, society inter-
venes, not to invade anyone’s rights but to guarantee the right of
all. (p. 383)

Society has no right to be unjust toward a single one of its members.
... The whole society minus one is not authorized to obstruct the lat-
ter . . . save in those cases where that use or that exercise would
obstruct another individual possessing the same rights. (p. 384)

Freedom is a power only in the sense that a shield is a weapon. . . .
Abuses, whoever their author, taking place always at the expense
of another’s freedom, have never been the consequences of these
principles, but rather their reversal. (p. 385)

It is quite unnecessary to sacrifice the least part of the principles of
freedom for the organization of legitimate and sufficient govern-
ment authority. (p. 386)

The principles of freedom . . . preserve the rights of all people. . . .
These principles are the sole lasting means of real happiness, of
assured peace, of ordered activity, of improvement, tranquility and
durability. (p. 386)

No just law can coexist with a single despotic measure. One cannot
deny freedom to some people and accord it to others. . . . Freedom
is a complete and ordered system. A single deviation destroys it.
(p. 413)

The friends of freedom. . . . It is on them, however, that the hope of
the human race depends. (p. 420)

Having read Principles, it is hard not to agree with Nicholas
Capaldi, whose introduction summarized it by saying that “Con-
stant was focused above all on liberty” (p. xx), and that “Constant
returns again and again with arguments against those who assert
the prerogatives of society against those of the individual . . . and
equally with arguments favorable to individualism.” (p. xxi)

Perhaps nowhere did Constant say it better than when he said:

Men used to freedom see in the oppression of a single citizen . .. a
punishable assault against the whole of civil society. (p. 292)

Government has nothing to do save see that men do not hurt each
other. (p. 308)

It is thought that despotism must be somewhere, either in the
hands of one man or several. Rather than despotism, however, we
can establish in its place something called freedom. (p. 393)



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One can wonder why, given Constant’s clear insight into the fact
that all governments have far overstepped their legitimate bounds,
it didn’t lead him to analyze whether the minimal government he
advocated could be sustained. It seems that he simply did not sys-
tematically investigate that question.

Constant was writing in response to government abuses in the
name of freedom during the French revolution, which proved that
democracy was not a panacea for such abuses, followed by still more
abuses under Napoleon. As a result, he was primarily concerned
with spelling out how any country ought to behave—principles that
no government, however constituted, ought to be allowed to vio-
late—and especially in using those principles to improve political
life in France by restoring liberty as much as possible from the tat-
ters it had been reduced to. He did not focus on whether the limited
government ideal he was working toward, so immensely better than
the political reality he faced, would also be subject to erosion by the
same tendencies he decried. But even though Constant did not
address all the questions modern thinkers now consider, the analy-
sis of whether and how it might be possible in a practical way to
achieve and maintain an appropriately limited government is a nat-
ural extension of his work.

In Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments, Benjamin
Constant deals with political authority, law, freedom of thought and
religion, property, taxation, war, and more, with liberty as his con-
stant foundation. It earned Isaiah Berlin's description of him as “the
most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy.” Over and
over, he eloquently and insightfully makes the moral case for liberty,
which is the foundation on which further advance in that direction
must build. For that, it easily merits space on the bookshelf of every
lover of liberty.

Gary M. Galles
Pepperdine University