Commentary on Filangieri’s Work. Benjamin de Constant

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СКАЧАТЬ entertain the idea of commerce. It is experience which shows him that war, that is to say the use of his strength against someone else’s, is exposed to various resistances and failures. This leads him to turn to commerce, a gentler and more certain means of engaging others’ interest in consenting to what agrees with his interest.

      War thus precedes commerce. One is the impulse of an inexperienced desire, the other the calculation of an enlightened desire. Commerce should therefore replace war, but in replacing war it discredits it, and makes war odious to the world. This is what we see today.

      The sole goal of modern nations is rest; with rest, comfort, and as the source of comfort, industry. War daily becomes more inefficient at attaining this goal. Its risks no longer offer, either to individuals or peoples, profits equal to peaceful work and regular exchanges. Among the ancients a successful war increased public wealth in slaves, tribute, and partitioned lands, while among the moderns a successful war infallibly costs more than it brings in.

      The situation of modern peoples therefore prevents them from being warlike out of interest, and particular reasons, also derived from the progress of the human species and thus from the difference between periods, add to the general causes that prevent the nations of our day from being warlike by inclination. The new way of fighting, the change in weapons, and artillery, have deprived military life of what was most attractive in it. There is no longer a struggle against danger; there is only fate. Courage must be imprinted with resignation or consist of insouciance. One no longer feels that pleasure of will, of action, of the development of physical and moral faculties which made the old heroes, the knights of the middle ages, love hand-to-hand combat. War has thus lost its charm as well as its utility.

      This means that a government which tries to talk about military glory today, and consequently of war as a goal, misunderstands the spirit of nations and of the times. Philip’s son1 would no longer dare propose to his subjects

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      the invasion of the universe, and Pyrrhus’s speech to Cineas would seem the height of insolence or folly.2

      Governments recognize truths as slowly as they can. Despite all their efforts, however, they cannot preserve themselves from the truth forever, and they have noticed the change that has taken place in the peoples’ temperament. They pay homage to it in their public acts and their speeches. They avoid openly confessing the love of conquest, and they take up arms only with a heavy heart. In this respect, as Filangieri observes, reason today has made its way to the thrones. But in forcing governments to change their language, has it, as it pleases the Italian philosopher to hope, enlightened the minds or converted the hearts of those whom chance has invested with authority?

      I regret that I do not believe so, for I do not see in their conduct more love of peace. I see only more hypocrisy. When Frederick attacked Austria to take Silesia, he said he only wanted to uphold ancient rights to give his realm an appropriate size. When England exhausted its men and its wealth to subjugate America, it only aspired to return lost children to the protective laws of the metropolis. When it brought devastation to India, it only intended to oversee its interests and assure the prosperity of its commerce. When a coalition of three powers broke up Poland, their only purpose was to return to the troubled Poles the tranquility disturbed by their internal struggles. When those same powers invaded a France which had become free, it was the tottering thrones they proposed to prop up. When today they crush Italy and threaten Spain, it is the social order 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.

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       CHAPTER FIVE On the Salutary Revolution Which Filangieri Foresaw

      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

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ