- The most convenient modern edition of Constant’s lecture on freedom in ancient and
modern times is in Benjamin Constant, De la liberté chez les Modernes. Ecrits
politiques, ed. Marcel Gauchet, Paris: Le Livre de poche (Pluriel, 8346), 1980 (De la
liberté des Anciens is to be found on pp. 491–515). Marcel Gauchet’s excellent
introduction to his edition was at least partly responsible for the revival of interest in
Constant’s political thought during the 1980s.
- See Kurt Kloocke, op. cit., p. 355, notes 237 and 238.
- Benjamin et Rosalie de Constant, Correspondance 1786–1830, ed. Alfred et
Suzanne Roulin, Paris: Gallimard, 1955, p. 230.
- ‘De la traite des nègres au Sénégal’, La Minerve française, 18–23 August 1819,
listed in C.P.Courtney, A Guide to the Published Works of Benjamin Constant,
Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation (Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century,
239), 1985, p. 233.
- Ibid., pp. 233–7.
- Constant’s pamphlet was the Lettre à M.le marquis de Latour-Maubourg, ministre
de la guerre, sur ce qui s’est passé à Saumur les 7 et 8 octobre 1820, Paris: Béchet
aîné; Rouen: Béchet fils, 1820, which first appeared around 19 October 1820. The
incident in Lucien Leuwen occurs during an electoral mission which Leuwen
undertakes with his secretary Coffe to Blois. They distribute pamphlets, which
causes a riot. Lucien receives a handful of mud in his face outside an inn and leaves
Blois ingloriously and in great haste. Although Stendhal’s novel is concerned with
politics and political morality under the July Monarchy—that is after 1830—there
are passages in it that are strongly reminiscent of some of Constant’s experiences
during the previous decade.
- See C.P.Courtney, A Bibliography of Editions of the Writings of Benjamin Constant
to 1833, op. cit., pp. 99–100, item 42.
- Benjamin Constant, Mémoires sur les Cent-Jours. Texte établi par Kurt Kloocke.
Introduction et notes par André Cabanis (Œuvres complètes de Benjamin Constant,
série I, vol. 14), Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993, introduction, passim.
- C.P.Courtney, A Bibliography of Editions of the Writings of Benjamin Constant to
1833, op. cit., pp. 115–18, item 50.
- On Constant’s intellectual relationship with Rousseau, see Paul Hoffmann,
‘Benjamin Constant critique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau’, Revue d’histoire littéraire
de la France, vol. 82, no. 1 (janvier-février 1982), pp. 23–40. Hoffmann’s
sympathies are noticeably with Rousseau whom Constant is alleged to have
misunderstood. For a more balanced view, see Marcel Gauchet’s introduction, op.
cit., and Stephen Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism,
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984.
- See note 14 above.
- Kurt Kloocke, op. cit., p. 362.
- Ibid., p. 363. Constant wrote to Villèle secretly:
You do not wish to see me re-elected, and your agents are working as
hard as they can to prevent that from happening. I believe that they
will not succeed, but here is what I propose: a man who compromised
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