Liberal Pluralism and the Napoleonic Empire (1802–15)

Constant’s most famous political writings, the focus of this chapter, were composed during the years following his expulsion from the Tribunat in 1802. Special attention is given to the 1806 manuscript Principes de politique applicables a tous les gouvernements [published only in 1980];1 De l’esprit de conquete et de l’usurpation [published in 1814];2 Reflexions sur les constitutions, la distribution des pouvoirs, et les garanties, dans une monarchie constitutionnelle [1814];3 De la responsabilite des ministres [1815];4 and Principes de politique applicables a tous les gouvernements representatives et particulierement a la Constitution actuelle de la France [1815].5 These works drew from his writings of the 1790s and especially from the unpublished manuscript Fragments d’un ouvrage abandonne sur la possibilite d’une constitution republicaine dans un grand pays, discussed earlier. They present a more systematic liberalism than contained in these earlier writings, but nothing substantially new.6 This consistency was also demonstrated in the speeches and writings of his later years—his addresses to the Chamber of Deputies and, most famously, his 1819 address “De la liberte des Anciens comparee a celle des Modernes”—which also drew from the earlier manuscripts.