The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns

Benjamin Constant

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The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns.

Gentlemen,

I wish to submit for your attention a few distinctions, still rather new,between two kinds of liberty: these differences have thus far remainedunnoticed, or at least insufficiently remarked. The first is the liberty theexercise of which was so dear to the ancient peoples; the second the one theenjoyment of which is especially precious to the modern nations. If I am right,this investigation will prove interesting from two different angles.

Firstly, the confusion of these two kinds of liberty has been amongst us, inthe all too famous days of our revolution, the cause of many an evil. France wasexhausted by useless experiments, the authors of which, irritated by their poorsuccess, sought to force her to enjoy the good she did not want, and denied herthe good which she did want. Secondly, called as we are by our happy revolution(I call it happy, despite its excesses, because I concentrate my attention onits results) to enjoy the benefits of representative government, it is curiousand interesting to discover why this form of government, the only one in theshelter of which we could find some freedom and peace today, was totally unknownto the free nations of antiquity.

I know that there are writers who have claimed to distinguish traces of itamong some ancient peoples, in the Lacedaemonian republic for example, oramongst our ancestors the Gauls; but they are mistaken. The Lacedaemoniangovernment was a monastic aristocracy, and in no way a representativegovernment. The power of the kings was limited, but it was limited by theephors, and not by men invested with a mission similar to that which electionconfers today on the defenders of our liberties. The ephors, no doubt, thoughoriginally created by the kings, were elected by the people. But there were onlyfive of them. Their authority was as much religious as political; they evenshared in the administration of government, that is, in the executive power.Thus their prerogative, like that of almost all popular magistrates in theancient republics, far from being simply a barrier against tyranny becamesometimes itself an insufferable tyranny.

The regime of the Gauls, which quite resembled the one that a certain partywould like to restore to us, was at the same time theocratic and warlike. Thepriests enjoyed unlimited power. The military class or nobility had markedlyinsolent and oppressive privileges; the people had no rights and no safeguards.

In Rome the tribunes had, up to a point, a representative mission. They werethe organs of those plebeians whom the oligarchy -- which is the same in allages -- had submitted, in overthrowing the kings, to so harsh a slavery. Thepeople, however, exercised a large part of the political rights directly. Theymet to vote on the laws and to judge the patricians against whom charges hadbeen leveled: thus there were, in Rome, only feeble traces of a representativesystem.

This system is a discovery of the moderns, and you will see, Gentlemen, thatthe condition of the human race in antiquity did not allow for the introductionor establishment of an institution of this nature. The ancient peoples couldneither feel the need for it, nor appreciate its advantages. Their socialorganization led them to desire an entirely different freedom from the one whichthis system grants to us. Tonight's lecture w ill be devoted to demonstratingthis truth to you.

First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a French-man, and acitizen of the United States of America understand today by the word 'liberty'.For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to beneither arrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by thearbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone toexpress their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose ofproperty, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and withouthaving to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone's right toassociate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or toprofess the religion which they and their associates prefer, or even simply tooccupy their days or hours in a way which is most compatible with theirinclinations or whims. Finally it is everyone's right to exercise some influenceon the administration of the government, either by electing all or particularofficials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which theauthorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Now compare this libertywith that of the ancients.

The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several partsof the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war andpeace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, inpronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship ofthe magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, inaccusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients calledliberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the completesubjection of the individual to the authority of the community. You find amongthem almost none of the enjoyments which we have just seen form part of theliberty of the moderns. All private actions were submitted to a severesurveillance. No importance was given to individual independence, neither inrelation to opinions, nor to labor, nor, above all, to religion. The right tochoose one's own religious affiliation, a right which we regard as one of themost precious, would have seemed to the ancients a crime and a sacrilege. In thedomains which seem to us the most useful, the authority of the social bodyinterposed itself and obstructed the will of individuals. Among the Spartans,Therpandrus could not add a string to his lyre without causing offense to theephors. In the most domestic of relations the public authority again intervened.The young Lacedaemonian could not visit his new bride freely. In Rome, thecensors cast a searching eye over family life. The laws regulated customs, andas customs touch on everything, there was hardly anything that the laws did notregulate.

Thus among the ancients the individual, almost always sovereign in publicaffairs, was a slave in all his private relations. As a citizen, he decided onpeace and war; as a private individual, he was constrained, watched andrepressed in all his movements; as a member of the collective body, heinterrogated, dismissed, condemned, beggared, exiled, or sentenced to death hismagistrates and superiors; as a subject of the collective body he could himselfbe deprived of his status, stripped of his privileges, banished, put to death,by the discretionary will of the whole to which he belonged. Among the moderns,on the contrary, the individual, independent in his private life, is, even inthe freest of states, sovereign only in appearance. His sovereignty isrestricted and almost always suspended. If, at fixed and rare intervals, inwhich he is again surrounded by precautions and obstacles, he exercises thissovereignty, it is always only to renounce it.

I must at this point, Gentlemen, pause for a moment to anticipate anobjection which may be addressed to me. There was in antiquity a republic wherethe enslavement of individual existence to the collective body was not ascomplete as I have described it. This republic was the most famous of all: youwill guess that I am speaking of Athens. I shall return to it later, and insubscribing to the truth of this fact, I shall also indicate its cause. We shallsee why, of all the ancient states, Athens was the one which most resembles themodern ones. Everywhere else social jurisdiction was unlimited. The ancients, asCondorcet says, had no notion of individual rights. Men were, so to speak,merely machines, whose gears and cog-wheels were regulated by the law. The samesubjection characterized the golden centuries of the Roman republic; theindividual was in some way lost in the nation, the citizen in the city. We shallnow trace this essential difference between the ancients and ourselves back toits source.

All ancient republics were restricted to a narrow territory. The mostpopulous, the most powerful, the most substantial among them, was not equal inextension to the smallest of modern states. As an inevitable consequence oftheir narrow territory, the spirit of these republics was bellicose; each peopleincessantly attacked their neighbors or was attacked by them. Thus driven bynecessity against one another, they fought or threatened each other constantly.Those who had no ambition to be conquerors, could still not lay down theirweapons, lest they should themselves be conquered. All had to buy theirsecurity, their independence, their whole existence at the price of war. Thiswas the constant interest, the almost habitual occupation of the free states ofantiquity. Finally, by an equally necessary result of this way of being, allthese states had slaves. The mechanical professions and even, among somenations, the industrial ones, were committed to people in chains.

The modern world offers us a completely opposing view. The smallest states ofour day are incomparably larger than Sparta or than Rome was over fivecenturies. Even the division of Europe into several states is, thanks to theprogress of enlightenment, more apparent than real. While each people, in thepast, formed an isolated family, the born enemy of other families, a mass ofhuman beings now exists, that under different names and under different forms ofsocial organization are essentially homogeneous in their nature. This mass isstrong enough to have nothing to fear from barbarian hordes. It is sufficientlycivilized to find war a burden. Its uniform tendency is towards peace.

This difference leads to another one. War precedes commerce. War and commerceare only two different means of achieving the same end, that of getting what onewants. Commerce is simply a tribute paid to the strength of the possessor by theaspirant to possession. It is an attempt to conquer, by mutual agreement, whatone can no longer hope to obtain through violence. A man who was always thestronger would never conceive the idea of commerce. It is experience, by provingto him that war, that is the use of his strength against the strength of others,exposes him to a variety of obstacles and defeats, that leads him to resort tocommerce, that is to a milder and surer means of engaging the interest of othersto agree to what suits his own. War is all impulse, commerce, calculation. Henceit follows that an age must come in which commerce replaces war. We have reachedthis age.

I do not mean that amongst the ancients there were no trading peoples. Butthese peoples were to some degree an exception to the general rule. The limitsof this lecture do not allow me to illustrate all the obstacles which thenopposed the progress of commerce; you know them as well as I do; I shall onlymention one of them.

Their ignorance of the compass meant that the sailors of antiquity always hadto keep close to the coast. To pass through the pillars of Hercules, that is,the straits of Gibraltar, was considered the most daring of enterprises. ThePhoenicians and the Carthaginians, the most able of navigators, did not risk ituntil very late, and their example for long remained without imitators. InAthens, of which we shall talk soon, the interest on maritime enterprises wasaround 60%, while current interest was only I2%: that was how dangerous the ideaof distant navigation seemed.

Moreover, if I could permit myself a digression which would unfortunatelyprove too long, I would show you, Gentlemen, through the details of the customs,habits, way of trading with others of the trading peoples of antiquity, thattheir commerce was itself impregnated by the spirit of the age, by theatmosphere of war and hostility which surrounded it. Commerce then was a luckyaccident, today it is the normal state of things, the only aim, the universaltendency, the true life of nations. They u ant repose, and with repose comfort,and as a source of comfort, industry. Every day war becomes a more ineffectivemeans of satisfying their wishes. Its hazards no longer offer to individualsbenefits that match the results of peaceful work and regular exchanges.

Among the ancients, a successful war increased both private and public wealthin slaves, tributes and lands shared out. For the moderns, even a successful warcosts infallibly more than it is worth. Finally, thanks to commerce, toreligion, to the moral and intellectual progress of the human race, there are nolonger slaves among the European nations. Free men must exercise allprofessions, provide for all the needs of society.

It is easy to see, Gentlemen, the inevitable outcome of these differences.Firstly, the size of a country causes a corresponding decrease of the politicalimportance allotted to each individual. The most obscure republican of Sparta orRome had power. The same is not true of the simple citizen of Britain or of theUnited States. His personal influence is an imperceptible part of the socialwill which impresses on the government its direction.

Secondly, the abolition of slavery has deprived the free population of allthe leisure which resulted from the fact that slaves took care of most of thework. Without the slave population of Athens, 20,000 Athenians could never havespent every day at the public square in discussions. Thirdly, commerce does not,like war, leave in men's lives intervals of inactivity. The constant exercise ofpolitical rights, the daily discussion of the affairs of the state,disagreements, confabulations, the whole entourage and movement of factions,necessary agitations, the compulsory filling, if I may use the term, of the lifeof the peoples of antiquity, who, without this resource would have languishedunder the weight of painful inaction, would only cause trouble and fatigue tomodern nations, where each individual, occupied with his speculations, hisenterprises, the pleasures he obtains or hopes for, does not wish to bedistracted from them other than momentarily, and as little as possible.

Finally, commerce inspires in men a vivid love of individual independence.Commerce supplies their needs, satisfies their desires, without the interventionof the authorities. This intervention is almost always -- and I do not know whyI say almost -- this intervention is indeed always a trouble and anembarrassment. Every time collective power wishes to meddle with privatespeculations, it harasses the speculators. Every time governments pretend to doour own business, they do it more incompetently and expensively than we would.

I said, Gentlemen, that I would return to Athens, whose example might beopposed to some of my assertions, but which will in fact confirm all of them.Athens, as I have already pointed out, was of all the Greek republics the mostclosely engaged in trade, thus it allowed to its citizens an infinitely greaterindividual liberty than Sparta or Rome. If I could enter into historicaldetails, I would show you that, among the Athenians, commerce had removedseveral of the differences which distinguished the ancient from the modernpeoples. The spirit of the Athenian merchants was similar to that of themerchants of our days. Xenophon tells us that during the Peloponesian war, theymoved their capitals from the continent of Attica to place them on the islandsof the archipelago. Commerce had created among them the circulation of money. InIsocrates there are signs that bills of exchange were used. Observe how theircustoms resemble our own. In their relations with women, you will see, again Icite Xenophon, husbands, satisfied when peace and a decorous friendship reignedin their households, make allowances for the wife who is too vulnerable beforethe tyranny of nature, close their eyes to the irresistible power of passions,forgive the first weakness and forget the second. In their relations withstrangers, we shall see them extending the rights of citizenship to whoeverwould, by moving among them with his family, establish some trade or industry.

Finally, we shall be struck by their excessive love of individualindependence. In Sparta, says a philosopher, the citizens quicken their stepwhen they are called by a magistrate; but an Athenian would be desperate if hewere thought to be dependent on a magistrate. However, as several of the othercircumstances which determined the character of ancient nations existed inAthens as well; as there was a slave population and the territory was veryrestricted; we find there too the traces of the liberty proper to the ancients.The people made the laws, examined the behavior of the magistrates, calledPericles to account for his conduct, sentenced to death the generals who hadcommanded the battle of the Arginusae. Similarly ostracism, that legalarbitrariness, extolled by all the legislators of the age; ostracism, whichappears to us, and rightly so, a revolting iniquity, proves that the individualwas much more subservient to the supremacy of the social body in Athens, than heis in any of the free states of Europe today.

It follows from what I have just indicated that w e can no longer enjoy theliberty of the ancients, which consisted in an active and constant participationin collective power. Our freedom must consist of peaceful enjoyment and privateindependence. The share which in antiquity ever;one held in national sovereigntywas by no means an abstract presumption as it is in our own day. The w ill ofeach individual had real influence: the exercise of this will was a vivid andrepeated pleasure. Consequently the ancients were ready to make many a sacrificeto preserve their political rights and their share in the administration of thestate. Everybody, feeling with pride all that his suffrage was worth, found inthis awareness of his personal importance a great compensation.

This compensation no longer exists for us today. Lost in the multitude, theindividual can almost never perceive the influence he exercises. Never does hiswill impress itself upon the whole; nothing confirms in his eyes his owncooperation. The exercise of political rights, therefore, offers us but a partof the pleasures that the ancients found in it, while at the same time theprogress of civilization, the commercial tendency of the age, the communicationamongst peoples, have infinitely multiplied and varied the means of personalhappiness.

It follows that we must be far more attached than the ancients to ourindividual independence. For the ancients when they sacrificed that independenceto their political rights, sacrificed less to obtain more; while in making thesame sacrifice! we would give more to obtain less. The aim of the ancients wasthe sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this iswhat they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of security inprivate pleasures; and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutionsto these pleasures .

I said at the beginning that, through their failure to perceive thesedifferences, otherwise well-intentioned men caused infinite evils during ourlong and stormy revolution. God forbid that I should reproach them too harshly.Their error itself was excusable. One could not read the beautiful pages ofantiquity, one could not recall the actions of its great men, without feeling anindefinable and special emotion, which nothing modern can possibly arouse. Theold elements of a nature, one could almost say, earlier than our own, seem toawaken in us in the face of these memories. It is difficult not to regret thetime when the faculties of man developed along an already trodden path, but inso wide a career, so strong in their own powers, with such a feeling of energyand dignity. Once we abandon ourselves to this regret, it is impossible not towish to imitate what we regret. This impression was very deep, especially whenwe lived under vicious governments, which, without being strong, were repressivein their effects; absurd in their principles; wretched in action; governmentswhich had as their strength arbitrary power; for their purpose the belittling ofmankind; and which some individuals still dare to praise to us today, as if wecould ever forget that we have been the witnesses and the victims of theirobstinacy, of their impotence and of their overthrow. The aim of our reformerswas noble and generous. Who among us did not feel his heart beat with hope atthe outset of the course which they seemed to open up? And shame, even today, onwhoever does not feel the need to declare that acknowledging a few errorscommitted by our first guides does not mean blighting their memory or disowningthe opinions which the friends of mankind have professed throughout the ages.

But those men had derived several of their theories from the works of twophilosophers who had themselves failed to recognize the changes brought by twothousand years in the dispositions of mankind. I shall perhaps at some pointexamine the system of the most illustrious of these philosophers, ofJean-Jacques Rousseau, and I shall show that, by transposing into our modern agean extent of social power, of collective sovereignty, which belonged to othercenturies, this sublime genius, animated by the purest love of liberty, hasnevertheless furnished deadly pretexts for more than one kind of tyranny. Nodoubt, in pointing out what I regard as a misunderstanding which it is importantto uncover, I shall be careful in my refutation, and respectful in my criticism.I shall certainly refrain from joining myself to the detractors of a great man.When chance has it that I find myself apparently in agreement with them on someone particular point, I suspect myself; and to console myself for appearing fora moment in agreement with them on a single partial question, I need to disownand denounce with all my energies these pretended allies.

Nevertheless, the interests of truth must prevail over considerations whichmake the glory of a prodigious talent and the authority of an immense reputationso powerful. Moreover, as we shall see, it is not to Rousseau that we mustchiefly attribute the error against which I am going to argue; this is to beimputed much more to one of his successors, less eloquent but no less austereand a hundred times more exaggerated. The latter, the abbe de Mably, can beregarded as the representative of the system which, according to the maxims ofancient liberty, demands that the citizens should be entirely subjected in orderfor the nation to be sovereign, and that the individual should be enslaved forthe people to be free.

The abbe de Mably, like Rousseau and many others, had mistaken, just as theancients did, the authority of the social body for liberty; and to him any meansseemed good if it extended his area of authority over that recalcitrant part ofhuman existence whose independence he deplored. The regret he expresseseverywhere in his works is that the law can only cover actions. He would haveliked it to cover the most fleeting thoughts and impressions; to pursue manrelentlessly, leaving him no refuge in which he might escape from its power. Nosooner did he learn, among no matter what people, of some oppressive measure,than he thought he had made a discovery and proposed it as a model. He detestedindividual liberty like a personal enemy; and whenever in history he came acrossa nation totally deprived of it, even if it had no political liberty, he couldnot help admiring it. He went into ecstasies over the Egyptians, because, as hesaid, among them everything was prescribed by the law, down to relaxations andneeds: everything was subjected to the empire of the legislator. Every moment ofthe day was filled by some duty; love itself was the object of this respectedintervention, and it was the law that in turn opened and closed the curtains ofthe nuptial bed.

Sparta, which combined republican forms with the same enslavement ofindividuals, aroused in the spirit of that philosopher an even more vividenthusiasm. That vast monastic barracks to him seemed the ideal of a perfectrepublic. He had a profound contempt for Athens, and would gladly have said ofthis nation, the first of Greece, what an academician and great nobleman said ofthe French Academy: What an appalling despotism! Everyone does what he likesthere. I must add that this great nobleman was talking of the Academy as it wasthirty years ago.

Montesquieu, who had a less excitable and therefore more observant mind, didnot fall into quite the same errors. He was struck by the differences which Ihave related; but he did not discover their true cause. The Greek politicianswho lived under the popular government did not recognize, he argues, any otherpower but virtue. Politicians of today talk only of manufactures, of commerce,of finances, of wealth and even of luxury. He attributes this difference to therepublic and the monarchy. It ought instead to be attributed to the opposedspirit of ancient and modern times. Citizens of republics, subjects ofmonarchies, all want pleasures, and indeed no-one, in the present condition ofsocieties can help wanting them. The people most attached to their liberty inour own days, before the emancipation of France, was also the most attached toall the pleasures of life; and it valued its liberty especially because it sawin this the guarantee of the pleasures which it cherished. In the past, wherethere was liberty, people could bear hardship. Now, wherever there is hardship,despotism is necessary for people to resign themselves to it. It would be easiertoday to make Spartans of an enslaved people than to turn free men intoSpartans.

The men who were brought by events to the head of our revolution were, by anecessary consequence of the education they had received, steeped in ancientviews which are no longer valid, which the philosophers whom I mentioned abovehad made fashionable. The metaphysics of Rousseau, in the midst of which flashedthe occasional sublime thought and passages of stirring eloquence; the austerityof Mably, his intolerance, his hatred of all human passions, his eagerness toenslave them all, his exaggerated principles on the competence of the law, thedifference between what he recommended and what had ever previously existed, hisdeclamations against wealth and even against property; all these things werebound to charm men heated by their recent victory, and who, having won powerover the law, were only too keen to extend this power to all things. It was asource of invaluable support that two disinterested writers anathematizing humandespotism, should have drawn up the text of the law in axioms. They wished toexercise public power as they had learnt from their guides it had once beenexercised in the free states. They believed that everything should give waybefore collective will, and that all restrictions on individual rights would beamply compensated by participation in social power.

We all know, Gentlemen, what has come of it. Free institutions, resting uponthe knowledge of the spirit of the age, could have survived. The restorededifice of the ancients collapsed, notwithstanding many efforts and many heroicacts which call for our admiration. The fact is that social power injuredindividual independence in every possible war, without destroying the need forit. The nation did not find that an ideal share in an abstract sovereignty wasworth the sacrifices required from her. She was vainly assured, on Rousseau'sauthority, that the laws of liberty are a thousand times more austere than theyoke of tyrants. She had no desire for those austere laws, and believedsometimes that the yoke of tyrants would be preferable to them. Experience hascome to undeceive her. She has seen that the arbitrary power of men was evenworse than the worst of laws. But laws too must have their limits.

If I have succeeded, Gentlemen, in making you share the persuasion which inmy opinion these facts must produce, you will acknowledge with me the truth ofthe following principles. Individual independence is the first need of themoderns: consequently one must never require from them any sacrifices toestablish political liberty. It follows that none of the numerous and too highlypraised institutions which in the ancient republics hindered individual libertyis any longer admissible in the modern times.

You may, in the first place, think, Gentlemen, that it is superfluous toestablish this truth. Several governments of our days do not seem in the leastinclined to imitate the republics of antiquity. However, little as they may likerepublican institutions, there are certain republican usages for which they feela certain affection. It is disturbing that they should be precisely those whichallow them to banish, to exile, or to despoil. I remember that in 1802, theyslipped into the law on special tribunals an article which introduced intoFrance Greek ostracism; and God knows how many eloquent speakers, in order tohave this article approved, talked to us about the freedom of Athens and all thesacrifices that individuals must make to preserve this freedom! Similarly, inmuch more recent times, when fearful authorities attempted, with a timid hand,to rig the elections, a journal which can hardly be suspected of republicanismproposed to revive Roman censorship to eliminate all dangerous candidates.

I do not think therefore that I am engaging in a useless discussion if, tosupport my assertion, I say a few words about these two much vauntedinstitutions. Ostracism in Athens rested upon the assumption that society hadcomplete authority over its members. On this assumption it could be justified;and in a small state, where the influence of a single individual, strong in hiscredit, his clients, his glory, often balanced the power of the mass, ostracismmay appear useful. But amongst us individuals have rights which society mustrespect, and individual interests are, as I have already observed, so lost in amultitude of equal or superior influences, that any oppression motivated by theneed to diminish this influence is useless and consequently unjust. No one hasthe right to exile a citizen, if he is not condemned by a regular tribunal,according to a formal law which attaches the penalty of exile to the action ofwhich he is guilty. No one has the right to tear the citizen from his country,the owner away from his possessions, the merchant away from his trade, thehusband from his wife, the father from his children, the writer from hisstudious meditations, the old man from his accustomed way of life. All politicalexile is a political abuse. All exile pronounced by an assembly for allegedreasons of public safety is a crime which the assembly itself commits againstpublic safety, which resides only in respect for the laws, in the observance offorms, and in the maintenance of safeguards.

Roman censorship implied, like ostracism, a discretionary power. In arepublic where all the citizens, kept by poverty to an extremely simple moralcode, lived in the same town, exercised no profession which might distract theirattention from the affairs of the state, and thus constantly found themselvesthe spectators and judges of the usage of public power, censorship could on theone hand have greater influence: while on the other, the arbitrary power of thecensors was restrained by a kind of moral surveillance exercised over them. Butas soon as the size of the republic, the complexity of social relations and therefinements of civilization deprived this institution of what at the same timeserved as its basis and its limit, censorship degenerated even in Rome. It wasnot censorship which had created good morals; it was the simplicity of thosemorals which constituted the power and efficacy of censorship.

In France, an institution as arbitrary as censorship would be at onceineffective and intolerable. In the present conditions of society, morals areformed by subtle, fluctuating, elusive nuances, which would be distorted in athousand ways if one attempted to define them more precisely. Public opinionalone can reach them; public opinion alone can judge them, because it is of thesame nature. It would rebel against any positive authority which wanted to giveit greater precision. If the government of a modern people wanted, like thecensors in Rome, to censure a citizen arbitrarily, the entire nation wouldprotest against this arrest by refusing to ratify the decisions of theauthority.

What I have just said of the revival of censorship in modern times appliesalso to many other aspects of social organization, in relation to whichantiquity is cited even more frequently and with greater emphasis. As forexample, education; what do we not hear of the need to allow the government totake possession of new generations to shape them to its pleasure, and how manyerudite quotations are employed to support this theory! The Persians, theEgyptians, Gaul, Greece and Italy are one after another set before us. Yet,Gentlemen, we are neither Persians subjected to a despot, nor Egyptianssubjugated by priests, nor Gauls who can be sacrificed by their druids, nor,finally, Greeks or Romans, whose share in social authority consoled them fortheir private enslavement. We are modern men, who wish each to enjoy our ownrights, each to develop our own faculties as we like best, without harminganyone; to watch over the development of these faculties in the children whomnature entrusts to our affection, the more enlightened as it is more vivid; andneeding the authorities only to give us the general means of instruction whichthey can supply, as travelers accept from them the main roads without being toldby them which route to take.

Religion is also exposed to these memories of bygone ages. Some bravedefenders of the unity of doctrine cite the laws of the ancients against foreigngods, and sustain the rights of the Catholic church by the example of theAthenians, who killed Socrates for having under- mined polytheism, and that ofAugustus, who wanted the people to remain faithful to the cult of their fathers;with the result, shortly after- wards, that the first Christians were deliveredto the lions. Let us mistrust, Gentlemen, this admiration for certain ancientmemories. Since we live in modern times, I want a liberty suited to moderntimes; and since we live under monarchies, I humbly beg these monarchies not toborrow from the ancient republics the means to oppress us.

Individual liberty, I repeat, is the true modern liberty. Political libertyis its guarantee, consequently political liberty is indispensable. But to askthe peoples of our day to sacrifice, like those of the past, the whole of theirindividual liberty to political liberty, is the surest means of detaching themfrom the former and, once this result has been achieved, it would be only tooeasy to deprive them of the latter.

As you see, Gentlemen, my observations do not in the least tend to diminishthe value of political liberty. I do not draw from the evidence I have putbefore your eyes the same conclusions that some others have. From the fact thatthe ancients were free, and that we cannot any longer be free like them, theyconclude that we are destined to be slaves. They would like to reconstitute thenew social state with a small number of elements which, they say, are aloneappropriate to the situation of the world today. These elements are prejudicesto frighten men, egoism to corrupt them, frivolity to stupefy them, grosspleasures to degrade them, despotism to lead them; and, indispensably,constructive knowledge and exact sciences to serve despotism the more adroitly.It would be odd indeed if this were the outcome of forty centuries during whichmankind has acquired greater moral and physical means: I cannot believe it. Iderive from the differences which distinguish us from antiquity totallydifferent conclusions. It is not security which we must weaken; it is enjoymentwhich we must extend. It is not political liberty which I wish to renounce; itis civil liberty which I claim, along with other forms of political liberty.Governments, no more than they did before, have the right to arrogate tothemselves an illegitimate power.

But the governments which emanate from a legitimate source have even lessright than before to exercise an arbitrary supremacy over individuals. We stillpossess today the rights we have always had, those eternal rights to assent tothe laws, to deliberate on our interests, to be an integral part of the socialbody of which we are members. But governments have new duties; the progress ofcivilization, the changes brought by the centuries require from the authoritiesgreater respect for customs, for affections, for the independence ofindividuals. They must handle all these issues with a lighter and more prudenthand.

This reserve on the part of authority, which is one of its strictest duties,equally represents its well-conceived interest; since, if the liberty that suitsthe moderns is different from that which suited the ancients, the despotismwhich w as possible amongst the ancients is no longer possible amongst themoderns. Because we are often less concerned with political liberty than theycould be, and in ordinary circumstances less passionate about it, it may followthat we neglect, sometimes too much and always wrongly, the guarantees whichthis assures us. But at the same time, as we are much more preoccupied withindividual liberty than the ancients, we shall defend it, if it is attacked,with much more skill and persistence; and we have means to defend it which theancients did not.

Commerce makes the action of arbitrary power over our existence moreoppressive than in the past, because, as our speculations are more varied,arbitrary power must multiply itself to reach them. But commerce also makes theaction of arbitrary power easier to elude, because it changes the nature ofproperty, which becomes, in virtue of this change, almost impossible to seize.

Commerce confers a new quality on property, circulation. Without circulation,property is merely a usufruct; political authority can always affect usufruct,because it can prevent its enjoyment; but circulation creates an invisible andinvincible obstacle to the actions of social power.

The effects of commerce extend even further: not only does it emancipateindividuals, but, by creating credit, it places authority itself in a positionof dependence. Money, says a French writer, 'is the most dangerous weapon ofdespotism; yet it is at the same time its most powerful restraint; credit issubject to opinion; force is useless; money hides itself or flees; all theoperations of the state are suspended'. Credit did not have the same influenceamongst the ancients; their governments were stronger than individuals, while inour time individuals are stronger than the political powers. Wealth is a powerwhich is more readily available in all circumstances, more readily applicable toall interests, and consequently more real and better obeyed. Power threatens;wealth rewards: one eludes power by deceiving it; to obtain the favors of wealthone must serve it: the latter is therefore bound to win.

As a result, individual existence is less absorbed in political existence.Individuals carry their treasures far away; they take with them all theenjoyments of private life. Commerce has brought nations closer, it has giventhem customs and habits which are almost identical; the heads of states may beenemies: the peoples are compatriots. Let power therefore resign itself: we musthave liberty and we shall have it. But since the liberty we need is differentfrom that of the ancients, it needs a different organization from the one whichwould suit ancient liberty. In the latter, the more time and energy mandedicated to the exercise of his political rights, the freer he thought himself;on the other hand, in the kind of liberty of which we are capable, the more theexercise of political rights leaves us the time for our private interests, themore precious will liberty be to us.

Hence, Sirs, the need for the representative system. The representativesystem is nothing but an organization by means of which a nation charges a fewindividuals to do what it cannot or does not wish to do herself. Poor men lookafter their own business; rich men hire stewards. This is the history of ancientand modern nations. The representative system is a proxy given to a certainnumber of men by the mass of the people who wish their interests to be defendedand who nevertheless do not have the time to defend them themselves. But, unlessthey are idiots, rich men who employ stewards keep a close watch on whetherthese stewards are doing their duty, lest they should prove negligent,corruptible, or incapable; and, in order to judge the management of theseproxies, the landowners, if they are prudent, keep themselves well-informedabout affairs, the management of which they entrust to them. Similarly, thepeople who, in order to enjoy the liberty which suits them, resort to therepresentative system, must exercise an active and constant surveillance overtheir representatives, and reserve for themselves, at times which should not beseparated by too lengthy intervals, the right to discard them if they betraytheir trust, and to revoke the powers which they might have abused.

For from the fact that modern liberty differs from ancient liberty, itfollows that it is also threatened by a different sort of danger. The danger ofancient liberty was that men, exclusively concerned with securing their share ofsocial power, might attach too little value to individual rights and enjoyments.

The danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of ourprivate independence, and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we shouldsurrender our right to share in political power too easily. The holders ofauthority are only too anxious to encourage us to do so. They are so ready tospare us all sort of troubles, except those of obeying and paying! They will sayto us: what, in the end, is the aim of your efforts, the motive of your labors,the object of all your hopes? Is it not happiness? Well, leave this happiness tous and we shall give it to you. No, Sirs, we must not leave it to them. Nomatter how touching such a tender commitment may be, let us ask the authoritiesto keep within their limits. Let them confine themselves to being just. We shallassume the responsibility of being happy for ourselves.

Could we be made happy by diversions, if these diversions were withoutguarantees? And where should we find guarantees, without political liberty? Torenounce it, Gentlemen, would be a folly like that of a man who, because he onlylives on the first floor, does not care if the house itself is built on sand.

Moreover, Gentlemen, is it so evident that happiness, of whatever kind, isthe only aim of mankind? If it were so, our course would be narrow indeed, andour destination far from elevated. There is not one single one of us who, if hewished to abase himself, restrain his moral faculties, lower his desires, abjureactivity, glory, deep and generous emotions, could not demean himself and behappy. No, Sirs, I bear witness to the better part of our nature, that nobledisquiet which pursues and torments us, that desire to broaden our knowledge anddevelop our faculties. It is not to happiness alone, it is to self-developmentthat our destiny calls us; and political liberty is the most powerful, the mosteffective means of self-development that heaven has given us.

Political liberty, by submitting to all the citizens, without exception, thecare and assessment of their most sacred interests, enlarges their spirit,ennobles their thoughts, and establishes among them a kind of intellectualequality which forms the glory and power of a people.

Thus, see how a nation grows with the first institution which restores to herthe regular exercise of political liberty. See our countrymen of all classes, ofall professions, emerge from the sphere of their usual labors and privateindustry, find themselves suddenly at the level of important functions which theconstitutions confers upon them, choose with discernment, resist with energy-,brave threats, nobly withstand seduction. See a pure, deep and sincerepatriotism triumph in our towns, revive even our smallest villages, permeate ourworkshops, enliven our countryside, penetrate the just and honest spirits of theuseful farmer and the industrious tradesman with a sense of our rights and theneed for safeguards; they, learned in the history of the evils they havesuffered, and no less enlightened as to the remedies which these evils demand,take in with a glance the whole of France and, bestowing a national gratitude,repay with their suffrage, after thirty years, the fidelity to principlesembodied in the most illustrious of the defenders of liberty.

Therefore, Sirs, far from renouncing either of the two sorts of freedom whichI have described to you, it is necessary, as I have shown, to learn to combinethe two together. Institutions, says the famous author of the history of therepublics in the Middle Ages, must accomplish the destiny of the human race;they can best achieve their aim if they elevate the largest possible number ofcitizens to the highest moral position.

The work of the legislator is not complete when he has simply brought peaceto the people. Even when the people are satisfied, there is much left to do.Institutions must achieve the moral education of the citizens. By respectingtheir individual rights, securing their independence, refraining from troublingtheir work, they must nevertheless consecrate their influence over publicaffairs, call them to contribute by their votes to the exercise of power, grantthem a right of control and supervision by expressing their opinions; and, byforming them through practice for these elevated functions, give them both thedesire and the right to discharge these.

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The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns.