Benjamin Constant

My last publication, a copy of which I hope you have received, has

already explained to you, I suppose, what are my notions on

modern patriotism. It cannot, like that of the ancients, be

irrevocably confined within the narrow bounds of a particular

territory. Liberty, religious feelings, humanity, are the general

property of our species; and when the government of a nation

attempts to rob the world of all that ought to be dear to every

inhabitant of the world—when it tramples on every idea, every

hope, every virtue—that nation, as long as it consents to be the tool

of that government, is no longer composed of fellow-citizens, but

of enemies that must be vanquished, or madmen that must be

chained.

After these prophetic observations, Constant concluded:

I have often boasted of your friendship, when your literary and

political eminence were my only mode of communicating with you,

unknown to yourself, and when I had but very faint hopes of your

remembering me. You may, therefore, well believe that the renewal

of that friendship has been one of the greatest pleasures I have ever

experienced.^50

During the next fourteen years Constant’s fame overtook that of
Mackintosh who, despite his wide experience—Recorder of Bombay,

Professor of Law and General Politics at the East India Company College,

Haileybury from 1818 to 1824, Member of Parliament, political writer—

and despite his brilliance in so many fields, notably philosophy and

history, had never really achieved greatness in any one. On 29 May 1828
Mackin-tosh wrote thanking Constant for his ‘occasional Remembrance’

of him and congratulating him ‘on the Strength gained & gaining’ by him,

that is his success as a politician in the liberal cause.
51
Now on 2 July 1829

he wrote again, enclosing a speech he had lately composed and had the
letter delivered by hand by his son-in-law who was passing through Paris:

The Speech I send you only as a Proof that after an Acquaintance of more

than Forty Stormy Years We continue to think alike.—especially on

Questions of Faith and Justice.’
52
Constant marked the letters ‘à

conserver’—‘to be kept’.
During the French parliamentary session which ran from January to August 1829 it
became more and more evident that Martignac’s efforts to govern were proving
ineffective. Constant was as busy as ever, not only writing speeches but resuming the
journalistic work he had tended to neglect the previous year. According to C.P.Courtney,

Apotheosis 257