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THE PUBLIC LAW OF EUROPE (Droit public de lEurope): Reflections on a French 18th century Debate Martti Koskenniemi The Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg brought out recently a massive fourvolume work on the Ius publicum europaeum, containing comparative essays on the history and situation of public law in the various European countries.1 The expression Ius publicum europaeum the Public law of Europe is however more familiar to international lawyers from the title of Carl Schmitts polemical analysis of the territorial order that was centred on Europe during approximately three hundred years between the 16th and 19th centuries.2 But as both a product and a critique of that order, the expression originates in France where its first widely published appearance took place in the title of a collection of treaties between European nations from the Peace of Westphalia to the mid18th century, namely Abb Gabriel Bonnot de Mablys Droit public de lEurope (1746).3 Mably published the treaties together with commentaries on the context of their conclusion and their objectives and later supplemented this work with a long essay in which he sketched a science of negotiations the mastery of which would enable European monarchs and diplomats to pursue their fundamental interests in peace and war rationally, in accordance with their situation and relative power, and so to avoid the calamities that in the past excessive ambition, greed and fear among monarchs had caused. 4 The present essay is a reflection of the context in which Mably published his three-volume treatise with its lengthy introduction. Did it express the nature of a
Armin von Bogdandy, Pedro Cruz Villaln & Peter M. Huber, Handbuch Ius Publicum Europaeum (4 vols., Heidelberg, Mller 2008). 2 Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Vlkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1988 [1950]), 3 Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Le droit public de lEurope. Fond sur les traitez conclus jusquen lanne 1740 (2 vols, The Hague, Duren 1746). The work had many subsequent editions. One with Mablys last version of the famous introductory essay came out as Le droit public de lEurope. Fond sur les traitss. Prcds de Principes des ngociations pour servir dintroduction. Nouvelle dition (Amsterdam & Leipzig, Arkste et Merkus 1773). 4 Modern edition: Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Principes de ngociations pour servir dintroduction au droit public de lEurope.(Intr. & notes par Marc Blissa, Paris, Kim 2001), 45. It is to this edition that references below will be made.
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Europe-wide legal order? In contemplating this, it has to be first noted that the history of early modern political and legal thought in Europe is sharply divided in two departments. One focuses on the tradition of natural law and natural right in England and Germany. The key figures are the Englishmen Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the Dutchman Hugo Grotius and a whole list of German university scholars from Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius to Immanuel Kant, the trajectories converging in the Scottish Enlightenment and especially in the work of Adam Smith. Another department is interested in the development of French political institutions, especially absolutism and the march to the revolution. Names that stand out are the politique proponent of sovereignty, Jean Bodin, writers in raison dtat tradition from Giovanni Botero to Cardinal Richelieu, enlightenment pamphleteers from Fnlon to Voltaire, the work of encyclopaedists and physiocrats from Diderot to Quesnay and left republicans from Rousseau to Robespierre. While the vocabulary of the law of nature and of nations plays a key role in the former, its significance in the latter seems either negligible or appears idiosyncratic to the environment of the collapse of the ancien rgime. Of course, the departmental wall is porous. Hume, Montesquieu and Smith are outstanding examples of cross-cutting influences. Much of modern natural law penetrated France through Huguenot writings from Germany and Switzerland. Mably himself was impressed by English ideas of liberty but like most of his interlocutors he rejected the (English) turn to commercial society. But in general, the hostility and mutual incomprehension between Richelieu and Grotius was reflected in the relative absence in France of the kind of politico-legal debate focused on natural law that took centre-stage in England (and Scotland) and at German universities. Many reasons have contributed to this. Differences in political and constitutional history and culture have been important. Religious differences, the role of the Church and the position of universities have played a role. So have different attitudes to law and lawyers. In this essay I will use the theme of European public law (Droit public de lEurope) to examine more closely the French debates about the international political world in the century leading up to the revolution. I am especially concerned to enquire to what extent

the French debate was carried out through themes and positions that were not shared with the rest of Western Europe at the time. The tradition of jus naturae et gentium that developed from Spanish neo-scholasticism, via Grotius to the civil and metaphysical philosophies in Germany and to political economy in England (Hume and Smith), was paralleled in the French quarrel between ancients and moderns, in the debates about the roles of virtue and luxury in the government of European polities and about the omnipresent metaphor of balance of military, political and economic power in Europe. Though law was omnipresent in these debates, what it meant and how it was to operate in the government of Europe brought out striking differences.

1. The Time of Absolutism French jurists played a central role in the development of constitutional law and political theory during the wars of religion in the 16th century as [t]he state rapidly disintegrated into a composite of local seigneuries, city-states and factions which warred with royalty itself.5 This prompted anxious theorization on such matters as the powers of the king vis--vis the nobility and the estates as well as on the role of provincial parlements in the administration of the country. On all three sides of the controversy Catholic, Protestant and politique jurists were putting forward historically founded constitutional theses in support of their respective positions. 6 The most famous product of the debates was Jean Bodins (1530-1596) Six livres de la rpublique (1576) that laid out the theory of sovereignty as the absolute and perpetual power over the commonwealth.7 The theory of sovereignty which was by no means invented by Bodin articulated in legal terms the needs of a strong central power that could put an end to the internal chaos in France by uniting the country around a strong kingship. It was used to full effect by Cardinal Richelieu whose long reign (16161642) contributed to the silencing of further debate on public law and the
Frank W Church, Constitutional Thought in Sixteenth Century France. A Study in the Evolution of Ideas (Boston 1941), 74. 6 See further Church, Constitutional Thought in Sixteenth Century France, 74-178. 7 Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty. Four Chapters from the Six Books of the Commonwealth (J. Franklin ed., Cambridge University Press1992 [1576]), Bk I Ch 8 (1).
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constitutional limits of supreme power. Bodin had regarded sovereignty compatible with the ruler being bound by a robust set of fundamental laws, natural law and the law of nations. Speculation on such constraints became, however, politically impossible during the dictatorship of Richelieu and his follower, Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661). French public law in the 17th century was charactersised by loyal support to the monarch. In Charles Loyseaus (15641627) Trait des seigneuries (1610), monarchy, sovereignty and the state were united in a single whole as the puissance absolue. Three types of limits were still foreseen to it, namely those following from divine law, the rules of natural justice and the fundamental laws of the realm. Sovereignty was understood in a territorial fashion and the prince doit user de son souveraineti selon sa proper nature, et en la forme et aux conditins quelle est tablie.8 Two devades later, Cardin Le Bret (1558-1655) had in his De la souverainet du Roi (1632) removed sovereignty completely fro any standards of assessment. Th French monarchy was in no way dependent on any secylar rules sa premire marqye est de ne dpendre que de Dieu seul.9 Absolutism in Le Bret was sityated outside temporality altogether including any form of temporal control only the salic law that governed succession governed it. For the absolutist Le Bret, all legal sources for determining the power of the king came from Roman law absolutist as it was. The per to wage war conclude or break treaties came only from sovereignty; there was no international order but everyihg came from inside the sovereignty of the most Christian king.By the time of the turn to absolutism by Louis XIV in 1661 there was no longer any live tradition of constitutional debate in France. The field was fully occupied by the religiously grounded apologetics of Louis reign by his crown jurist, Jacques-Bnigne Bossuet (1627-1704). Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf all wrote their naturalist rracts as scientific pieces, intended to universal application, as part of general theories of the law and state. The French wrote in awholly different way. Their reference was
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Cornette, Fiction, 33. Le Bret De la souveraint, I.9 (cited on p 36).

French law and French history and French monarchy. Even Domats naturalist tract did not propose to set out a general theory of statehood or of sovereignty. To some extent, this resulted from divine law: France was its subject. And Loysay and de Bret spent much time congratulating the French for the excellence of the French monarchy and the glories of Frances history. If something was said of other countries, this was only by way of comparison and invairaibly to Frances advantage. There was a just war tradition, but under the divine Kingship paradigm justice tended to coalesce with what the King wanted (De Bret, Loyseau, Domat, Bossuet). By the end of the 17th century, the naturalist tradition had begun to appear largely as a preserve of Protestantism. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis in 1685, Huguenots would use the vocabulary of natural law to vent their anti-French sentiments and attack Louis alleged efforts at universal monarchy. 10 There was something to this of course. The motives for Louis endless wars changed in the course of his reign, but the search for La gloire remained predominant among them even as the actual operations turned increasingly from conquest to protecting the security of the realm.11 By the last decade of the century, France itself was financially and psychologically exhausted by the diversion of all available public resources to endless warfare. The countryside had been abandoned and bad harvests in 1693-94 contributed to widespread famine in parts of the country. Wanton destruction in the course of the war effort especially the destruction of the Palatinate in the winter of 1688/89 had created an anti-French coalition in Europe further contributing to dissatisfaction at home for which there really was no open channel of expression. Even a privileged observer, such as Archbishop Fnelon (1651-1715), the preceptor of the royal princes at Versailles, had to circulate his famous Letter to Louis XIV in the 1690s secretly among friends and refrain from ever sending it to the king himself.
See e.g. Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society (1687) (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund 2002), 11-12, 5-6 (17-18); Leibniz, Mars Christianissimus, (1683) in Political Writings (P Riley ed., Cambridge University Press 1972), 121-145. 11 On the predominant role of glory in Louis wars, see John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV 16671714 (London, Longmans, 1999), 27-43.
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Fnelons letter summarised the main points of the early criticisms against Louis: the malevolence of Louis courtiers, indifference towards the suffering of the population, the uses of glory and vengeance as motives of war, the appeal to French security for action that undermined the security of everyone else and drove them to unite against France, as well as the imposition of unjust conditions of peace for the vanquished: the une guerre injust nen est pas moins injuste pour tre heureuse.12 Even the ostensibly just causes invoked to reunite frontier regions with France was no good [c]onsultez des gens instruits et droits, ils vous diront que ce que javance est clair comme le jour.13 What Fnelon had to suggest to change this state of affairs in his instructions to his royal student was adherence to common rules of justice and humanity, faithfulness and modesty in public and private life and the prohibition of morally dangerous trade of luxuries.14 The theme of the corrupting influence of luxuries together with an attack of Colberts economic policies as ruinous for the countrys morale were key themes in Fnelons most famous book, The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699). Here Fnelon celebrated ancient virtues as the proper directions to govern France, consisting above all of moral adroitness, modesty, love of truth and justice, keeping ones word even to ones enemies and following the laws of war and humanity.15 In the narrative, as Telemachus arrived on the Island of Crete, admired by visitors and famous for its hundred prosperous villages, he found out that the only reason for unhappiness in the country was created by the desire for superfluities. Hence, Minos, the wisest of kings and lawmakers, had decreed that children should be educated in the simple life, to only to compete in the excellence of virtue and the achievement of glory. Courage was associated not only with fearlessness in war but trampling excess riches underfoot. Ici on punit trois vices qui sont impunes chez les autres peoples: lingratitude, la dissimulation et lavarice.16
Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fnelon, Lettre { Louis XIV, in Lettre Louis XIV et autres crits politiques (Paris, Bartillat 2011), 49. 13 Id. 50. 14 Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fnelon, Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de royaut. Mmoire pour le duc de Bourgogne (c. 1708-9) , in Lettre Louis XIV, 75, 80-85. 15 Id. 101. 16 Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fnelon, Les aventures de Tlmaque, fils dUlysses, in Ouvres de Fnelon, Archevque de Cambrai, (Tome 3, Paris, Lefevre, 1835 [1699]), 26.
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Fnelon rejected the separation of private and public morality that had been inextricable from the neo-Machiavellian doctrine of arcana imperii promoted by Richelieu and the publicists of the raison dtat tradition.17 In his view, what was needed, and lacking, was moral leadership under the king that would educate the country in peacefulness and virtue; economic resources, for example, ought to be oriented towards flourishing agriculture and not wasted in trade of superfluities.18 A State that would grow prosperous by relying on domestic resources, he argued, would also be stronger in its foreign policy and would have no need for demonstrations of militarism.19 In the upcoming battle between the ancients and the moderns among French intellectuals after Louis death in 1715, Fnelon would be immediately classed among those looking to examples of virtue taken from antiquity against the supporters of an emergent commercial modernity. As such, however, he would remain on the sidelines on the eighteenth-century debates on the principles of European government, including the role and character of the law of nature and of nations. The language of virtuous rule would re-emerge only towards the end of the century, and then no longer in the context of reforming monarchy.

2. The Peace of Utrecht crystallization of the Public Law of Europe The Treaties of Utrecht of April 1713 that ended the Spanish war of succession (1700-1714) provided the first clear articulation, at a diplomatic level, of European public law. The death of Charles II of Spain had created the danger of the union of French and Spanish crowns something that other powers were not going to accept. In this context, Fneleon composed a series of memoranda for friends in the court, such as the Duke of Chevreuse, to speak against the war as
See further Martti Koskenniemi, International law and Raison dtat. Rethinking the Prehistory of International Law, in Benedict Kingsbury & Benjamin Strumann (eds), The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations. Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (Oxford University Press 2011), 308-310. 18 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Harvard University Press 2006), 25-27. 19 For a comment, see Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge. Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton University Press 2007), 110.
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contrary to French interests and in favour of a rapid and just peace.20 As the peace talks began in 1710, he lamented their slowness and proposed to include in the delegations alongside professional diplomats also men of substantive reputation who would be alien to the kinds of scheming that he assumed would take place in regular peace talks.21 It was not to be so. The French minister Colbert de Torcy filled the delegation with seasoned courtiers whom he could trust to outmanoeuvre their counterparts in the best tradition of ancien regime diplomacy. The negotiations lasted for many years and went through a number of phases involving precisely the kind of secret bargaining, often outside the negotiation room, and sometimes directly between the ministers, that Fnelon wished to exorcise from virtuous policymaking but that was an essential part of the system of public law and diplomacy among Europes absolutist sovereigns.22 The expression droit public europen appeared only in the Franco-Dutch Peace treaty to affirm the list of derivative titles in international law that had already been laid out by Grotius.23 But the treaties famously contained a broader legal principle, too: The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, together with the earlier Peace of Westphalia and the Vienna Treaties of 1815, belongs to the series of great peace instruments that formed the constitution so to speak of Europe. In 1713 as in 1648 and 1815, the European balance of power was restoredThe principle of just balance of power (iustum potentiae aequilibrium) was explicitly included in the text of the treaty of Utrecht. It was thus elevated into the rank of a principle of international law and became a fundamental constitutional principle of the Droit public de lEurope.24 Situated approximately mid-way between the conferences of Westphalia (1648) and Vienna (1815), Utrecht has come to be known as the event when the search
For the Memoranda, see Oevres de Fnelon, Achevque de Cambrai. (Tme 3, Paris, Lefevre, 1835), 410-441. 21 See Lucien Bly, Lart de la paix en Europe. Naissance de la diplomatie moderne XVIe XVIII sicle (Paris, PUF 2007), 433, 452. 22 Bly, Lart de la paix, 503-524. A good account of the conduct of the peace talks from the French perspective is in Dale Miquelon, Envisioning the French Empire: Utrecht 1711-1713, 24 French Historical Studies (2991), 653-677. 23 Wilhelm Grewe, Epochs of International Law (Berlin, De Gruyter 2000), 395. 24 Grewe, Epochs, 282.
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for equilibrium between the powers became the cornerstone of the European order. In this regard, Fnelon was successful. Alongside writing appeals against the war he produced a memorandum as an annex to his instructions to the young crown prince regarding the need for European powers to ally against the inevitably hegemonic design of the strongest among them. Such leagues, whether defensive or offensive, would serve the role that laws and magistrates serve in domestic contexts against excessively powerful families. To work for equilibrium is thus to work { la libert, { la tranquillit, eu salut public. It is to operate a kind of loi naturelle de la sret denations.25 As Emer de Vattel put it half a century later in his Law of Nations (1758), had the powers during the Spanish succession crisis allowed the union of the two crowns, they would according to all the rules of human foresight have been nothing less than delivering Europe to servitude, or at least to the most critical and precarious situation. Hence he concluded that Europe now formed a political system with closely connected interests that can be best preserved by maintaining a political equilibrium and forming confederacies in order to oppose the more powerful potentate, and prevent him from giving law to his neighbours.26 The peace of Utrecht consists of a large number of treaties but they are distinguished by three aspects. First is the diplomatic organization of Europe after the settlement of the crisis over the Bourbon succession in Spain and France that provided occasion to state the principle of the balance of power as the heart of European public law. The Treaty also affirmed the global reach of that law by containing provision on the freedom of the seas (the end-point of the hundred-year war of books) and on the Anglo-French colonial settlement in North America.27 France lost Newfoundland, Acadia (Nova Scotia) and Hudsons Bay but retained the Cape Breton coast and French fishermen received the right to fish off the coast of Newfoundland. The third aspect and the arguably most coveted prize of the settlement was the fate of the asiento the transfer of the
Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fnelon, Sur la necessit des former des alliances, tanst offensives que defensives contre une puissance trangre qui aspire manifestement la monarchie universelle, in Oeuvres compltes, tome 3, 360-363, 361a-b. 26 Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations (Ed & intr by B .Kapossy and R. Whatmore, (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund 2008 [1758]), Bk III Ch III 44,47, 48 (493, 496-7). 27 Schmitt, Nomos, 153-156.
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monopoly of Atlantic slave trade to the English South Sea Company.28 In addition, there were territorial arrangements under which Britain received Gibraltar and France parts of the Habsburg inheritance in Spanish Netherlands, Milan and Sardinia. The treaties thus set up a principle of European security, settlement of problems relating to colonial rivalry, and the organization of the Atlantic slave trade. Utrecht was no utopian peace arrangement but diplomacy as usual. But the world around it was in full change. The crisis of European conscience that had permeated European intellectual life at the turn of the century was slowly passing. The novel spirit of the early Enlightenment viewed many aspects of the ancien regime, including its absolutist ideas of kingship and its endless dynastic wars, with a critical eye. The peacemakers at Westphalia three quarters of a century earlier had been content in consolidating the state system as a response to the religious crisis. Early eighteenth-century spirits wanted to aim higher, speculating on science, history and a universal law of nations, debating the values of secularism and enlightened rule over European populations.29 The latter part of the reign of the Sun King had demonstrated that the problems of domestic absolutism became international problems. Something had to be done to tackle them. 3. Abb de Saint-Pierre One of the participants in this debate was Charles Irene Castel, Abb de SaintPierre (1658-1743) who produced in 1712-1713, in the context of the negotiations to the Treaty of Utrecht, the most widely read proposal in the 18th century concerning the establishment of an international institution designed to secure peace in Europe. Saint-Pierres design was debated in by Leibniz, Voltaire and by Rousseau and most of French political elite was aware of it. Despite his reputation as a idealist and a pacifist, Saint-Pierre was actually neither one nor
The point about the centrality of the trade aspects of the treaty arrangements especially for France is made in Miquelon, Envisioning the French Empire, 654-655. 29 See especially Marc Blissa, Fraternit universelle et intrt national (1713-1795). Les cosmopolitiques du droit des gens (Paris, Kim 1998) 7-18, passim.
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the other. Unlike Fnelon and the ancients, he had a bleak view of human nature. We are slaves of our passions, he held, and when we are carried away by what he called an unjust passions, the only thing that can restrain us is la crainte dun mal plus fcheux et plus terrible que le bien quil desire de ne peut paratre desirable. 30 Together with many contemporaries, Saint-Pierre felt that the bonds of ancient virtue were loosening and that moral education or the example of the ancients would not suffice to halt this process. His experience as the Chaplain of the Duchess of Orlans from 1692 had opened to him the gates to the court in Versailles and convinced him of the decisive role that passions played in public life. Mere appeals to reason, the standards of Christian piety or to the altruism of natural law would remain without effect in the conditions of modern France. The proposal was therefore not to get rid of passions but to use them for virtuous purposes. This was the idea of countervailing passions. As had been suggested by Spinoza (1632-1677): An affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite to, and stronger than, the affect to be restrained.31 In the early 18th century, passion was increasingly understood as an ineradicable aspect of human life. Humans could not be made saints by uprooting their passions. Instead, passionate energy and affects were to be turned to virtuous purposes by supporting constructive passions against wicked ones.32 As it was put by Montesquieu in the middle of the century: It is fortunate for men to be in a situation where, though their passions may prompt them to be wicked, they have nevertheless an interest in not being so. 33 Saint-Pierres plan was based on a realist, even a Hobbesian view of human nature and of the nature of European politics. It relied on utilitarian, selfinterested calculations of the sovereigns themselves. Mon dessein est de montrer avec vidence que tous les Souverains ont plus dintrt de signer la
Abb de saint-Pierre, Projet de paix perpetuelle, I & III, as cited in Merle L. perkins, Civil Theology in the Writings of the Abb de Saint-Pierre, 18 Journal of the History of Ideas (1957), 245. 31 Spinoza, Ethics, 120. 32 This is the classic point in Albert Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests. 33 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
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Trait fondamentale, que de rfuser de signer.34 It was in their own best interest to set up a permanent union that could arbitrate their differences and enforce their promises to each other. Saint-Pierre even made his own the famous saying of the proto-realist Duke of Rohan from Richelieus time princes command peoples, but interest commands princes.35 He did not try to reform princes but to convince them that they themselves had a genuine interest in peace, that peace, rather than war, was the best way for European monarchs to preserve their security and well-being. They could, of course, continue to wage wars and sign peace treaties. But in so doing they could never be wholly certain that their neighbours might not immediately breach their promises once they felt they had developed the capacity for victory. One is, as he put in a series of elaborate passages, always dependent on the one is afraid of.36 Moreover, even if princes could guarantee peace for themselves, they could not guarantee it to their dynasties in the future.37 As long as sovereigns could breach their promises and treaties with impunity, nothing could make them feel safe. As with humans in general, the only way to durable peace was to set up a formidable authority that could launch a revenge immediately when unjust passions take over. This, of course, is what Hobbes had been saying in the context of the English civil war half a century earlier. Only a Leviathan could guarantee civil peace. Saint-Pierre was careful not to refer to Hobbes but what he was saying about international peace amounted to the same. Monarchs were irrational, passionate creatures, dangerous to themselves and their peoples. The only way to restrain them was to provide for a supranational authority that can take action against them in case they violate the peace. This was not pacifism: it was a system of constant, institutionalised threat of force.38

Abb de Saint-Pierre, Abreg du projet de paix perpetuelle (Rotterdam, Beman 1729), 42. Abb de Saint-Pierre, Projet pour render la paix perpetuelle entre les Souverains Chretiens, (Utrecht, Schouten 1717), 66-71.
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Saint-Pierre, Abreg, 12-13. On Saint-Pierres Hobbesian political theory, see Merle J. Perkins, The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Abb de Saint-Pierre (Geneva, Droz 1959), 52-62. See also Thomas Kaiser, The Abb de saint-Pierre, Public Opinion and the Reconstruction of the French Monarchy, 55 Journal of Modern. History (1983), 626-627
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Saint-Pierre was born in 1658. He was educated in Jesuit colleges in Rouen and Caen but soon gave up the plan to join the clergy. Instead he moved to Paris where he participated in fashionable society, receiving powerful mentors close to the court of Louis XIV. His early years were devoted to science and he was appointed to the Acadmie franaise in 1695 from which, however, he was later expelled owing to his attacks on the corruption of the regime. On the strength of his experience close to the court he began to write profusely on the reconstitution of the French monarchy. He had been appalled by the clientelism and inefficiency of the last years of the reign of the Sun King. State finances lay in ruins and the countryside was gripped in widespread misery . In a number of articles and letters, Saint-Pierre proposed fiscal reforms and the introduction of proportional taxation as remedies to the crisis.39 He believed that financial mismanagement had led to a situation where the State could no longer receive credit at levels that would enable carrying out of even normal administrative tasks. He advocated the turning state administration into an impersonal bureaucracy, a machine, to prevent its use for the purposes of clientelism and corruption. For this purpose, the rule of law was needed not only for concerns of efficiency but for the preservation of the liberty of the citizens.40 Saint-Pierre was disappointed at the abstract and unorganised nature of prior debates on politics and natural law. An effectual politics was to be based on evidence and esprit de raisonnement, and it would need to be of practical use in the administration of the state. In order to tech political methodologically he suggested the establishment of an Acadmie politique that would teach a new science, namely a science de gouvernment.41 Saint-Pierre was a monarchist and a defender of the thse royale in the contemporaneous constitutional debates. This did not mean that he was in favour of absolutism. He knew that monarchs were as vulnerable to irrational

On his economic plans and his design for restructuring French administration, see Perkins, The Moral and Political Philosophy, 73-81. 40 See especially Thomas E. Kaiser, The Abb de Saint-Pierre, Public Opinion, and the Reconstitution of the French Monarchy, 55 Journal of Modern History (1983), 618-643. 41 It can be noted that a diplomatic school, was set up in the Louvre by the Marquise de Torcy, the Foreign Minister, in the Louvre, but it operated less than ten years, after which it had to be closed.
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passions as other humans, having surveyed the consequences of the last years of Louis reign. He did not have faith in preaching virtue to the king, and chose the argument from enlightened self-interest instead. It was in the monarchs own interest possess a well-functioning administrative machinery. The same arguments underlay Saint-Pierres famous plan for European reorganisation and peace. The first edition of this work appeared in 1712, as the talks on ending the wars of Spanish succession had been under way already for many years, as Mmoire pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe.42 This was followed up the following year the year of the Treaty by Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe. As soon as the latter publication had come out, Leibniz sent a letter to the Abb congratulating him of the passion and rationality of the proposal as a contribution to European politics. It is not known whether Saint-Pierre himself had been present in Utrecht. There is no mention of him in the Acta diplomatica. But he was a friend and assistant to the Cardinal de Polignac who was one of the French negotiators and very well aware of the course of the negotiations. 43 There is no doubt that the reference in the peace plan to the present peace which the Abb says cannot be believed to be lasting was precisely to the treaties made at Utrecht in 1713. As a literary achievement, the Projet was unimpressive. It consisted of three volumes of poorly organised, repetitive arguments in defence of a permanent organisation in Europe to guarantee the peace and security among European sovereigns and for resolving any disputes through arbitration. Perhaps for this reason, the Abb produced an Abreg of the plan in 1729 that then remained the focus of much debate of the nature and possibility of peace in Europe throughout the 18th century. 44 The Projet consisted of seven separate discourses. Like the two other proposals of the period to which it is usually compared those of the Englishmen William Penn and John Bellers they were limited to Europe. Saint-Pierre did not believe
Charles Castel de Saint-Pierre, Mmoire du projet pour render la paix perpetuelle (pour le ministre M. de Torcy, 1 septembre, 1712). 43 Perkins, Moral and Political Philosophy, 51. 44 Abb de Saint-Pierre, Abreg du projet de paix perpetuelle (Rotterdam, Beman 1729).
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in the realism of any universal peace system. In the first version, he included both Turkey and Russia, but later on dropped Turkey and even came to advocate joint European war against it. The main point repeated over again was that it was in the Monarchs own interest to set up a permanent organisation to free themselves from fear of attack and rebellion. In fact, the language of the plan was more concerned over domestic conflict than interstate war. Adopting the plan would enable peaceful growth of trade and industry, and thus the not only the survival but the prosperity of the ruling dynasties. Among European States, Saint-Pierre concluded, there is not one for which it would not be more advantageous to sign the treaty for the establishment of this society than not to sign.45 Mutual promises among sovereigns, truces, commercial treaties, guarantees and alliances were, history had shown, fragile and easily set aside in preparation for war. They, like the balance of power that was now becoming the leading European policy were precarious and dependent on the whims of princes and on changes of national fortune.: Il est impossble de que le Systme de lquilibre rende la paix durable en Europe; quainsi les malheurs de la Guerre se renouvelleront incessamant & dureront tant quil ny aura pas entre les Souverainetez Chrtiennes une Socit permanente qui leur donne sret suffisante de lexecution des promesses fairtes dans les Traitez46 With these, war will always be coming.47 Saint-Pierre thus proposed the establishment a permanent institution, a Union europenne with 18 or 24 sovereign members (the number varied in different parts of the plan) all of which would be Christian, European States. In making his proposal, Saint-Pierre wrote that he was following the examples of the constitution of the GermanRoman Empire and the famous plan of the foreign minister of Henry IV, the Duke of Sully. Both claims were dubious. Saint Pierre believed wrongly that the German estates had entered the empire as sovereigns and that Sullys specific had not really been to direct the plan against Austria.48 The main thrust of the
Charles Castel de Saint-Pierre, Mmoire, Troisime discours, 153. Saint-Pierre, Mmoire, Deuxime disocurs, 73. 47 Saint-Pierre, Mmoire, Primire discours, 48 In Fact, the German estates had never been sovereign and the hegemonic purposes of Sullys design were well-known. See Patrick Riley, The Abb de St. Pierre and Voltaire on Perpetual Peace in Europe, 137 World Affairs (1974), 187-189.
45 46

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proposal was in Discourse Four that consisted of a draft Treaty on the European Union with 12 fundamental articles and 8 important ones. 49 These consisted of five principal elements: First was a promise by the members of the union that they would agree to preserve the existing territorial and dynastic status quo in Europe and would never seek to challenge it by arms. Because this also applied to rebellion and civil war, the Union would take on a perpetual guarantee of the ruling dynasties. With the guarantee provided by the Union, they would have sret suffisante. In fact, the Union was not to intervene in the affairs of its members for any other reason than for implementing these guarantees, including the suppression of any domestic dissent ({ soumettre les esprits rebelles) and guaranteeing the maintenance of the constitution.50 But the plan did include an engagement taken in no doubt in view of the problem of Spanish succession that no sovereign could rule over two or more States. Peaceful changes were not excluded and any disputes about borders or succession would be resolved through arbitration by the Union. Second was the permanent institution of the European Union after the model of the United Provinces and the Holy Roman Empire. The sovereigns would be permanently represented in a Senate that would meet at some free city where each sovereign would have one vote. 51 However, the fundamental articles of the union could be amended only by unanimous vote while the important ones for three quarters majority. Thirdly, the Senate was to organise European commerce in such a fashion that all States would draw optimal benefit from it. There would be a general most-favoured nation treatment and the detailes of the trading system would be based on majority votes while amendments would require a two-thirds majority. The senate would also set up a Chamber of Commerce in each major town that would have alternate jurisdiction with the
Saint-Pierre, Mmoire, Quatrime discours, 271-366. Saint-Pierre, Mmoire, Quatrime discours, 273. Article 2 provided that the union could take action to see to it that the monarchic or republican form is maintained but also that the internal electoral laws and capitulations are honoured (276-277) and article 3 that during periods of regency or othereise weakness in ruling house, nothing threatens its security (279-281). 51 Article 1, Saint-Pierre, Mmoire, Quatrime discours, 271.
49 50

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courts of the defendant to adjudicate any trade disputes between individual merchants or States brought to them. The members of the union would agree to see to the enforcement of any judgment thus made. Fourthly, the Senate would also arbitrate between sovereigns either by itself or by choosing suitable mediators for that task. A member taking arms against others or refusing to execute a judgment or will be declared enemy of all and war will be waged against it. 52 Fifthly, there would be a joint military force to protect the Union from external dangers particularly against the Turks as well as internal dangers, rebellion and civil war. The costs of the army, like all costs of the operation of the Union would be based on the contributions of each member in accordance with their relative fortunes at the beginning as decided my a majority vote and thereafter by a majority of three fourths. Saint-Pierres proposals were not written in the form of a utopia in the way of a More or a Campanella. They were based on a realistic awareness of the role of self-interest in foreign policy and in making the argument that self-interest among European monarchs would be best realised within the kind of union that he proposed. Nevertheless, his contemporaries remained sceptical of the proposals. Neither his friend, the fellow royalist and former foreign minister Marquis dArgenson nor the other colleagues whom he kept meeting regularly at the famous Club Entresol of which he was one of the founding members during its brief existence in 1723-1731 felt able to associate themselves with his peace proposals. This is not to say that they would have regarded his other proposals for instance those concerning French administrative and fiscal reforms as unworthy of serious consideration. In fact, the proposal concerning proportional taxation was briefly tested at a provincial level. For the rest of his life, SaintPierre kept revising and re-publishing versions of his plan. But he was never able to convince his colleagues or French political leaders of the realism of his proposed plan. When the project was communicated to the Cardinal Fleury, the effective ruler of France during the time of the Regency, read it sympathetically, responding only: Vous avez oubliez un article essentiel, celui denvoyer des

52

Saint-Pierre, Mmoire, Quatrime discours,

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missionaries pour toucher les coeurs des princes et les persuader dentrer dans vos vues. 53 4. Rousseaus criticism: virtue and republicanism The Projet was widely circulated among especially French elites who generally regarded them as hopelessly inadequate and also contradictory. As Voltaire saw it, it was as likely that peace could be maintained among European sovereigns as the peace between elephants and rhinoceros, wolves and dogs. Carnivorous animals will tear each other apart at the first occasion.54 Many accused the plan of being self-defeating. It was based on the assumption that Europe would be ruled by monarchical absolutists who were now suggested to give up a part of their absolute powers for an international Union. The most famous comments were those by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written respectively as Extract of the Plan for Perpetual Peace in 1756 and published five years later and the Judgment on Perpetual Peace, written in that same year but published in 1782. The former was a kind popularization of the Plan, the latter a statement on it by Rousseau himself. Rousseau used much ink to express his admiration of Saint-Pierre so much so in fact that the reader is left some doubt about whether the praise was intended seriously. He began his critique by noting that [i]f ever moral truth were demonstrated, I should say that it is the utility, national no less than international of this project.55 Rousseaus main critique was that although the Abb was right in presuming that only a permanent union could bring about his desired objective, there was no possibility that it could be realized in a foreseeable future. It presumed, namely that the monarchs really were rational egoists namely that would be able to see their real interests and oppose them to their short-term passions and desires. But this, as Saint-Pierre himself had had occasion to testify, was not the case. It remained, as he said, the illusions of a
Quoted in Frederick L. Schuman, The Ethics and Politics of International Peace, 42 International Journal of Ethics (1932), 149 54 Quoted in Bois, LEurope, 211. 55 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Critique of Saint Pierres Project, in A Lasting Peace. Through the Federation of Europe and The State of War (C.E. Vaughan transl. London 1917), 92-93.
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truly human heart, admirable but unworkable. Thus Rousseau came to the melancholy conclusion that within a context of monarchical absolutism, it would be intrinsically impossible to attain more than an unstable balance of power that perpetual peace remained a utopia. It would first be necessary to change the constitution of the state itself as Kant famously would argue in Perpetual Peace so that it would become a republican constitution. Because, as the Kantians have argued ever since, a lasting peace can only be set among nations with a republican constitution, it was first necessary to actually change the internal regime of states. In the end, then, the discussion about peace that was triggered by the Spanish wars of succession or perhaps more relevantly, the endless violence launched upon Europe by Louis XIV merged with debates concerning the wellfoundedness of monarchical rule and the possibilities of republican constitution. Those debates, again, led to the French revolution and a different kind of sense of when war might be not only be possible but necessary and just. Today, there is a big debate on the democratic peace thesis. Are democracies intrinsically averse to war? Statistics tell us that although democracies have often gone to war, they have never done this with each other. The EU was at one point imagined as a peace plan, with two strategies in mind: First, institutionally tie down its members so that war among them would become unthinkable. And second, to educate its members into becoming democratic. We may be facing a period when the unions own power will diminish for that eventuality, it must be hoped that its members remain democratic enough to carry out the Unions pacific purpose.

5. The Encyclopaedists Although Saint-Pierre occasionally referred to natural law or the law of nations, he did not do much with either. What he had imbibed from the natural law tradition was the sense that society was composed of essentially self-regarding individuals whom reason persuaded to forego immediate satisfaction of their desires so as to attain more valuable long-term goals. This was the heart of what

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both Hobbes and Pufendorf had been teaching and for the purposes of the plan for perpetual peace, it sufficed for Saint-Pierre to extrapolate from them a set of behavioural directives for sovereigns as the foundation for a new European order. Rousseau, however, was as critical of the natural law tradition as he was of Saint-Pierres effort to solidify the dynastic status quo. As is well-known, in Du contrat social (1762) he attacked Grotius characteristic method of reasoning [which] is always to offer fact as proof of right. It is possible to imagine a more logical method, but not one more favourable to tyrants.56 The target of Rousseaus critique was the weight Grotius attached to customs and treaty practices as evidence of the content of the law his famous a posteriori method. In producing a justification for state power in the warlike character of the natural state, the tradition had actually created the situation from which it claimed to produce an exit: All ran towards their chains believing that they were securing their liberty.57 War did not end with the establishment of States, Rousseau wrote in the brief, unfinished extract on the principles of the laws of war, but began with it: of this the books of savants and jurisconsults knew nothing.58 The law of nations was a chimera: without a guarantee beyond the utility of the one who submitted to it, it was followed only when that seemed useful.59 That the philosophes were generally critical of the natural law trafition is wellknown. The thick works on ius naturae et gentium produced at German enlightenment universities of Halle and Gttingen were usually read no further than to note that the flagrant contradiction between heavy and repetitive style with the stylistic ideals of the salon. Voltaires attitude is typical, and expressed with characteristic sharpness. Instead of reading Grotius and Pufendorf, people should take up the ancient writers on the topic of natural law and the law of nations:

Jean-Jacques Roussseau, The Social Contract (M. Cranston transl. & intr. Harmondsworth, Penguin 1958), 51 57 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality (M. Cranston transl. & intr., Harmondworth, penguin 1984), Part II (122). 58 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Principes du droit de la guerre, in Principes du droit de la guerre. crits sdur la paix perpetuelle (B Bernardi & G Silvestrini eds. Paris Vrin 2008), 69-81. 59 Rousseau, Principes du droit de la guerre, 70.
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Croyez-moi, lisez les Offices de Cicron. Rien ne contribuera peut-tre dplus rendre un esprit faux, obscure, confus, incertain, que de lecture de Grotius & Puffendorf, & de Presque tous les commentaries sur le Droit public.60 And yet, Voltaire himself could not avoid making constant reference to natural law, as indeed did all of his colleagues. What, for example, could have become of the Dclaration de droits de lhomme et du citoyen without a literary culture that habitually received all good things from nature and its laws? The philosphes had no difficulty to resuscitate ancient notions of law and morality when their positions needed a formal defence.61 But these references were rarely connected with robust jurisprudential arguments. Instead, they appear predominantly as rhetorical devices, appealing to the readers recognition of the self-evident truth of what is being said, clearing the way for getting on with the pragmatic work of reform that was what Voltaire and his colleagues were mostly interested in.62 If a more elaborate grounding was needed, they utilised the analytical method that suggested that society, like nature, ought to be dissolved into its composite parts in order to examine its operation to individuals in other words and, interpreting individual behaviour empirically, by reference to the passions, they tried to achieve a reconstruction of rational rules within a utilitarian calculus.63 In the Preliminary Discourse to his and Diderots Encyclopaedia (1751), for example, dAlembert recounted practically the whole of cultural progress in terms of utilitarian need-fulfilment. The development of arts and sciences emerged from [t]he necessity of protecting our own bodies from pain and destruction, especially from the effort of the body to provide for its endlessly

Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique (nouvelle edition, tome III, rey, Amsterdam 1789), 513. Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (2nd edn., Yale University Press 2003 [1932]), 33-70. 62 See Peter Gay, Voltaire and Natural Law, in Voltaires politics. The Poet as Realist (Princeton University Press 1959), 343-346 and The Party of Humanity. Essays in the French Enlightenment (New York, Norton 1959), 60-62, and (an express response to Becker), 198-202. 63 For this method, see e.g. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 1979 [1951]), 18-27, 234-248, 254-256.
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multiplying needs.64 The historical progress of arts, for example, would begin from the more immediately necessary (such as agriculture) so as to develop into increasingly more abstract forms. In this process, we also discover that natural law which we find within us, the source of the first laws which men must of necessity have created. Its origin he attributed, as a good empiricist, to the universal experience of oppression suffered by the weak in the hands of the strong.65 Among aspects of dAlemberts vision of general cultural progress was a a universal system of morality. The universality of that system would no longer be looked for with God or an original act of creation, however, but from the cooperation of reason and nature unfolding for the human eye for the first time through the vocabularies of knowledge and imagination that it was the point of projects such as the Encyclopdie to serve.66 Hence the famous cosmopolitanism of the mid-18th century literary class. 67 The encyclopaedists were not a homogeneous group. Nevertheless, in their use of the law of nature and of nations, their analytical-compositive method almost invariably made them return to individual human nature, conceived in terms of passions and desires, the urge to avoid pain and to attain pleasure, from which they would proceed to a long-term, enlightened sense of self-preservation that encompassed concern for other humans not only in particular societies, but in humankind as a whole. As Schumpeter has pointed out, what unified this otherwise disparate group of intellectuals was their recurrent recourse to the vocabulary of natural law, often without express acknowledgment of the tradition itself, as the simplest way to refer to human nature, and thereby to their whole programme of reform, not least to the advancement of what they called natural rights.68 The most radical of the group, Baron dHolbach, for example, produced a fully naturalist structure of universal morality in which all
Jean Le Rond dAlembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot (R Schwab transl. & intr., Chicago University Press 1995), 11, 14. 65 dAlembert, Preliminary Discourse, 14-15. 66 And as graphically illustrated in the Detailed System of Human Knowledge appended at the end of the Preliminary Discourse, dAlembert, Preliminary Discourse, 143-157. 67 Out of a huge literature, see e.g. Peter Coulmas, Les citoyens du monde. Histoire du cosmopolitanisme (Paris, Albin Michel 1995), 206-240 and of course, Blissa, Fraternit universelle. 68 Joseph Schumpeter, Histoire de lanalyse conomique. I Lage des fondateurs (Paris, Gallimard 1983 [1953]), 196-197.
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rights and duties were determined in view of the search for happiness, understood as continuous pleasure. nous fonderons la science des moeurs sur notre sensibilit physique, sur les dsirs dont nous sommes constamment anims, sur lamour continuel que chacun de nous a pour lui-mme, sur nos vrais intrts.69 The task of law was to lead humans from the pursuit of blind passions to enlightened interests, to the necessity to be useful for those whose assistance is needed for our own felicity.70 The social contract and the binding force of legislation are likewise based on calculations of long-term utility: the laws are des decisions dintrt, de lexprience, de la raison de corps contre lintrt personnel ou les passions aveugles des members. 71 There is in dHolbach no normative difference between natural and positive law; the legislator merely declares what natural law says, and the latter may never contradict the former. Only scientific and technical issues remain about how to reach general happiness, interpreted as always also compatible with enlightened individual interests.72 This was the basis of the law of nations, too: Une nation est oblige, pour son proper intrt, de partager les mmes vertus que tout homme doit montrer son semblable, ft-il tranger ou inconnu. 73 All nations have a duty of humanity towards each other, none may do to others anything that is not within the boundaries of the equitable: Tels sont les principes du droit des gens, qui nest au fond que la morale des peoples.74 This means that sovereigns do not exist in a state of nature with each other; all humans are joined individually and as members of their nations in a moral community where war, for example, is only an expression of the vain search for
Baron DHolbach, Systme social ou principes naturels de la morale et de la politique. Tome I (Paris, Niogret, 1822), 77. 70 DHolbach, Systme social tome 92 71 DHolbach, Systme social tome I 308. 72 DHolbach, Systme social tome 310-311. 73 Baron DHolbach, La morale universelle, ou les devoirs de lhomme, fonds sur la nayure. Tome second (Paris, Masson 1820), tome 2, 2. 74 DHolbach, Morale universelle 2, 4.
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glory, the avarice of tyrants. But history shows that conquests are seldom useful, that large military forces are economically destructive and that wars create injustice. The law of nations is what reason dictates as in the interests of humanity as a whole.75 DHolbach may have been extreme as materialist but he did put forward the logical consequences of a naturalism widely shared among the encyclopaedists. There was a general problem at the heart of that sentiment, however. Their enlighteners critique of metaphysics was based on the rejection of the universal truth of Christianity. Morality and law differed by time and place; each community had its own history and its own values that were reflected in the spirit of its laws, as Montesquieu famously argued. But they also insisted to argue about a shared human nature and reason on the basis of which it would be possible to argue about universal rights and duties for which they felt they were the mouthpiece. Which way was it going to be? Perhaps it was this problem that led the jurist Antoine-Gaspard Boucher dArgis (1708-1791) to write the essays on natural law and the law of nations in the Encyclopaedia by wholly conventional reference to the old debates about the relations of ius naturae and ius gentium from the Digest to Grotius and the modern natural law writers. The canon reproduced by Boucher dArgis contained a restatement of many of the positions the philosphes had been attacking as part of the politics and diplomacy of the ancien regime.76 Hence Diderot resolved to insert in the Encyclopaedia an essay on Droit naturel by himself in the form of a brief philosophical discourse. If the law of nature is universal, and can be found by reasoning, what is it? A person who reasons,
DHolbach, Morale universelle 2, 2-21. Boucher dArgis, Droit des Gens and Droit de la Nature ou Droit naturel, Diderot & dAlembert, Encyclopdie, ou dictionnaiore raisonn dees arts et des mtiers etc., University of Chicago ARTFL Encyclopedia Project (Robert Morissey ed.: http://encyclopedie.unchicago.edu), 5: 126 and 131. In particular, Boucher dArgis rehearsed the themes about the relative overlap between natural law and the law of nations since their confusing definitions in the Digest. His own position was that natural law was a law of reason, universally valid among humans, and that the law of nations was divided into primary and secondary, the former dealing with rules of public and private law valid everywhere, the latter containing those conventional rules that nations have agreed or followed in practice. Most of the entries were written as overviews of the doctrines of Pufendorf and Burlamaqui.
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Diderot claimed, will find it as the same as the general will of humankind: elle serait toujours relative { la volont gnrale & au dsir commun de lespce entire. Of the whole species this meant that the general will was not voluntary, but a scientific statement of what might be useful for the human race. In this form, it was also compatible with the naturalism of dAlemberts preliminary discourse. In an argument intended to counter the Hobbesian objection that basing natural law on a search for self-preservation will lead into a war of all against all, Diderot expressly rejects the way of pure voluntarism. Les volonts particulires sont suspectes; elles peuvent tre bonnes ou mchantes, mais la volont gnrale est toujours bonne.77 The general will is a real, psychological will but a scientific proposition about the needs of the species. It is what is useful for humankind a whole. 78

6. Political Economy and the New Naturalism This view became eventually the heart the new naturalism that integrated the law of nations within a series of assumptions about the operation of society in accordance with natural laws governing the functioning of the economic system. By mid- 18th century, the modern tradition of natural law had began to seem incapable of producing concrete and credible policy advise for governments struggling with economic difficulties often related to foreign wars. In France, the Colbertism had been undermined by the financial difficulties of the last years of the reign of Louis XIV problems to which Saint-Pierre and his colleagues at the Entresol, for example, had been intensively seeking a solution. This was the context, also, of the emergence in France of the debate between the ancients and the moderns that focused on the role of luxury in political community. Was the development of a commercial society that could be witnessed in England a beneficial or a corrupting influence? A new generation of political thinkers such as Pierre le Pesant, Sieur de Boisguilbert (1646-1714) and Richard
Diderot, Droit naturel, in Encyclopdie 5: 115-116. For Diderots (and dAlemberts) utilitarianism see Catherine Larrire, Linvention de lconomie au XVIIIe sicle (Paris, PUF 1992), 51-57, 67-75; Cassirer, Philosophy of Enlightenment, 246-248.
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Cantillon (c. 1680-1743) began to focus on the importance of agriculture for the production of national wealth and to advocate free trade as the most efficient way of making it operative between the different classes of economic actors. They were followed by the Physiocrats who borrowed extensively from the natural law tradition, arguing that the economy possessed its own intrinsic laws distinct from the rules of political government. The economy would work best if left to its own devices, while it was the task of legislation to see to it that no obstacles were introduced to the use of property rights. The leading lights of the movement were Marquis de Mirabeau (1715-1789) and the medical doctor Francois Quesnay 1694-1774). But the most outspoken member of the group of Les conomistes was Paul-Pierre Mercier de la Rivire (1719-1801) whose concern was with laying out the natural order of political societies in which he integrated the economic system through the unfortunately labelled doctrine of legal despotism. Le Merciers Natural and Essential order of Political Societies (1767) was an effort to operationalise the theory of natural law in the service the emerging commercial society. There was, he wrote, a natural order for societies that linked physical necessities to their object. Cet ordre nest quune branche de lordre physique.79 By grasping this humans could realise the two objects of their actions: enjoyment of pleasure and avoidance of pain.80 From these objectives it followed that the first right of all humans was self-preservation. This right was absolute, as was its concomitant, the right to acquire for oneself whatever was useful. For every right, there was a duty, and society which was necessary for humans could be articulated in terms of the absolute rights and duties of individuals towards each other.81 The repetition over again of the italicized expression absolute by Le Mercier was intended to highlight the necessary character of this order of relationships and to justify the despotism of the laws that were expected to do nothing but give effect societys natural order in a system of natural rights and duties.
Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 37. la naturea voulu que [les hommes] ne connussent que deux mobiles, lapptit des plaisirs & laversion de la douleur, Le Mercier de la Rivire, Lordre naturel et essentiel des socits politiques (Nourse, Londres 1767), 33. 81 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 11-17.
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Societies are based on the search of happiness, and greatest happiness was abundance: le plus grand bonheur possible consiste pour nous dans la plus grande abondance possible dobjets propres { nos jouissances.82 To achieve this, production had to increase. This, again, was possible only in a regime of liberty through the free use of our forces and our properties: labondance ne peut sobtenir que par lde grandes dpenses & de grands travaux.83 In this way property and liberty were thus both part of the essential order of society. If social order was a the natural, physical world, it followed that there was nothing arbitrary about it, and ruling society presupposed awareness of its operative laws. This awareness gave us knowledge of absolute justice and absolute injustice.84 Everything either pointed to increased abundance or it did not: the necessity of social laws depended on the compelling force of natural laws; private vices turn into public virtue: dans la systme de la nature chaque homme tend perpetuellement vers son meilleur tat possible, & quen cela mme il travaille & concourt ncessairement former le meilleur tat possible de corps entier de la socit.85

From these premises Le Mercier was led to follow Quesnay into an authoritarian notion of government under laws that had the absoluteness of physical laws. Quesnay had already written that [t]he natural laws of the social order are themselves the physical laws of perpetual reproduction of those goods necessary to the subsistence, the conservation, and the convenience of men.86 From this premise, Quesnay developed a very rigorous notion of the rule of law. It was the Monarchs duty to legislate in accordance with the natural order of society. Though he called this legal despotism, it was not monarchic absolutism; the laws that would govern society were to be the intrinsic laws of the social order.
Le Mercier Lordre naturel, 27 (emphasis in original). Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 33. 84 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 11. 85 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 35. 86 Quesnay, Despotisme de la Chine, quoted in David McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism. A Reinterpretation ( (University of California Press 1988), 123.
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Any legislation deviating from this would be immediately invalid. Le Mercier advanced exactly the same point of view. Society was to be ruled by laws that were absolute in their necessity. They were natural laws with which all positive legislation was to be in accordance. Good positive laws, Le Mercier wrote, had already been written, the only task was now to discover them in a necessary calculus and the dictate to society at large .87 Sous le despotisme lgal, lautorit despotique des loix & celle du Souverain, ne font quune seule et meme autorit.88 In this system, there was no basis to distinguish between legislative and executive power: one was merely the extension of the other. Partager lautorit, cest lannuller.89 The tutelary authority could also only be a single human being, the monarch. A multitude of opinions would create chaos, while the power and correctness of legislation would be guaranteed by the proof of the laws of the social order (la force intuitive et dterminante dvidence).90 Such evidence also operates against misuse of authority: an arbitrary despotism can only fail in the long run.91 In any case, the sovereign and the nation were entangled in a symbiotic relationship: both needed each other, each had an interest in the wellbeing and strength of the other.92 Exactly the same principles were operative at the international level, too. In the first place, the same natural society that preceded the establishment of particular societies was not destroyed by the latter. When visiting distant peoples in peaceful conditions, the same hospitality and friendship are found as at home. And commercial relations expand all over the world linking humans to each other in a network of rights and duties they usually observe without thinking. This means, in the second place, that different political societies are thus not fundamentally different, either, but branches of the same tree, parts in the
Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 75-78., 105, 113. Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 181. 89 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 129. 90 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 100, 101-104, 130. On the Physiocrat idea of legal despotism, see further McNally, Political Economy, 121-129. 91 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 163-165, 170-178. 92 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 201-203.
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natural human society that is necessarily universal.93 A European federation, for example, is no chimera it cannot even be created because it exists already. on doit la supposer toujours faite, ou plutt toujours existente sans lentremise daucunes conventions expresses { cet gard, & par la seule force de ncessit dont elle est la suret politique de chaque Nation en particulier.94 It is true that short-sighted passions have driven nations to war. The balance of power that European diplomacy has developed to prevent this has, Le Mercier argued, actually led to even more struggles because it is based on the idea that the nations are divided against each other, and should be constantly on guard against attacks. But nature compels nations to regard each other as brothers, having the same rights and the same duties as individuals among themselves. For the riots of the prosperity of nations lies in the way they follow the essential order of societies, and that means respecting the rights and freedoms of each other. 95 Like Montesquieu and the other Physiocrats, Le Mercier represented the Doux commerce thesis, advocating the beneficent character of free trade among nations. Although there was agreement on this at home, prejudiced minds still were apprehensive of freedom of trade among nations. [Istvan Hont]

7. Droit public as a language or analysis and critique: Mably Until the 17th century jurists had been largely responsible for the development of political and constitutional theory in France. La Botie and Montaigne had been lawyers and the writings of Hotman, Bodin and the author of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos articulated or invented the constitutional principles through which France would emerge as a political community from the religious wars. As
Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 318-320. Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 323. 95 Le Mercier, Lordre naturel, 331-333.
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we have seen, their influence rapidly declined in the 17th century when most jurists turned into private law or propounded the divine origin of French kingship in a way that effectively prevented the emergence of a rationalist natural law in France in the way it had developed elsewhere on the continent, in England and among the diaspora Huguenot community. With Richelieu and Louis XIV, the parlements were stripped of their power and jurists even formally lost their intellectually leading position. As a result, most of them turned to examining the positive laws of the realm to that: up to the very end of the Ancien Rgime, there was no place in the educational system for such approaches as natural and international law which had already been taught at Dutch and German universities for more than a century. The study of history in France had been inaugurated and pursued by generations of innovative and influential jurists with the view of developing a firm basis for the legitimacy for the monarchy, for the State and for other public institutions. In the seventeenth century there were no longer any jurists of comparable intellectual status, and the same was the case throughout the eighteenth century. 96 As critiques of absolutism became to emerge at the turn of the century, they came from men such as Fnelon, Vauban, Saint-Simon or Saint-Pierre, not jurists but men of the clergy, military officials and courtiers worried over the state of the monarchy and whose criticisms came from different directions but were united by a sense of the loss of the crowns legitimacy a sense that would grow in the course of the century.97 Practically the only legal texts that dealt with fundamental constitutional issues, including the law of nature and of nations from a modern perspective were the translations of Pufendorf and Grotius by Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744), the Huguenot refugee in Geneva and Berlin of 1706 and 1724. The philosophical elites in enlightenment France had a very low opinion of jurists. Practically the only exception to this was Montesquieu whose
John Heilborn, The Rise of Social Theory (Cambridge, Polity, 1995), 67. See T.C.W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture. Old Regime Europe 16601789 (Oxford University Press 2002), 187-194.
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The Spirit of Laws (1748) dominated political and constitutional debates of midcentury, though less owing to its juristic brilliance than the value of its historical and sociological insights. Moreover, if its contribution to international debates followed largely from its comparative approach, this was one that had been an intrinsic part of the raison dtat tradition since Botero and Rohan in the previous century. Montesquieu could by no stretch of imagination be regarded as a disciple of Fnelon but already the latters brief reflections on the natural law of balance of power led into a comparative typology of states with regard to how they were positioned with respect to attaining hegemony on the continent. Examining the international world, then, not as a community or a system but as a platform of ambition and manoeuvring by individual states was deeply embedded in the French world-outlook. In the debates about French history and the government of France that commenced at the end of the reign of Louis XIV Saint-Pierre, as we have seen, represented the thse monarchique. But he insisted that the monarchy it ought to be rationalized and brought within legal rules. He projected his view at the international level by arguing that a peaceful union would actually be in the educated self-interest of European monarchs. Saint-Pierres colleagues at the Entresol and elsewhere were not persuaded. A different perspective on European peace was taken by another abb, namely Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709-1785) whose Droit public de lEurope (1746) became an immediate commercial success; it was published in several editions, translated into German and Italian and used in England as a university text.98 It also solidified the name of the political order of treaty-relations that had been created in Europe since the Treaty of Westphalia. The work was essentially a compilation of treaties, with commentaries on the context and purpose of each treaty in view of the fundamental interests of the parties. It was supplemented in 1757 with a long preface, entitled Principes de ngocations pour servir dintroduction au droit public de lEurope that provided both a critique of the short-sighted egoism of monarchic diplomacy and a theoretical articulation of European public law in
Johnson Kent Wright, A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France. The Political Thought of Mably (Stanford University Press, 1997), 36-37.
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terms of the search for their fundamental (in contrast to arbitrary) interests of European monarchs. Mably came from a relatively modest family of provincial noblesse de robe. Like his brother the philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, he had been taken into the protection of Madame de Tencin in whose salon he was introduced to Parisian elites. Through this means he also achieved in 1742 position as Secretary to Cardinal Tencin, serving as Minister of State in the government of Fleury, the aging counsel of Louis XV. Until his sudden break with Tencin in 1747 on a minor difference of opinion, Mably spent five years following and participating in the diplomatic events of the day. It was largely these experiences that prompted him to compile his Droit public de lEurope, together with its extended theoretical introduction.99 The collection of treaties was not the first of its kind large compilations of European treaty-texts had existed since mid-17th century. But it was distinguished by its relative conciseness, its rational organization and above all by the commentaries through which Mably introduced the treaties as parts of a system of foreign policy of European monarchs. Although the commentaries pretended to neutrality, they included criticisms of the policy of Louis XIV that prevented the publication of the work until the intervention of the marquis dArgenson, one of Saint-Pierres Entresol colleagues who had just left his post as Frances foreign minister.100 The principal importance of the work lay, however, in the introduction that was appended to the editions after 1757 and in which Mably could freely launch hic critiques of the short-sighted irrationality of the diplomacy and the warfare of ancien regime Europe..101 Like Saint-Pierre, Mably had commenced his career as a royalist. By the time of the publication of the Principes de ngociations, however, he had made a sharp turn and now preached in favour of republican values. His publications from this
See Wright, A Classical Republican, 35-38.; Marc Blissa, Introduction, in Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Principes de ngiciations. Pour servir dIntroduction au Droit public de lEurope (Paris, Kim 2001), 8-10. 100 Blissa, Introduction, 14. 101 Wright, Classical Republican, 54.
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time onwards have preserved his name in French intellectual history alongside Jean-Jacques Rousseau among the most vocal critics of the parti des modernes such as Voltaire or the physiocrats who had been extolling the benefits of the commercial society. Nor did he employ the kind of modern natural law that was based on self-preservation and that was associated with Hobbes, Grotius and Pufendorf. Mablys critiques of the ancien regime drew rather on the old Ciceronian heritage according to which humans were naturally endowed by reason and virtue, and that the best way to learn what they taught was to illustrate their operation during the Roman and, in Mablys case especially, Greek antiquity. 102 Mably would ground his critique of inequality among citizens and his critique of private property on neo-Stoic themes that would be later taken up as part of the Jacobin doctrine of republic of virtue. Although he has received the reputation of belonging with the early utopian socialists, in fact he was also critical of the political project of return communal property, describing it as no more than an agreeable dream.103 Mablys Principes de ngociations was an attempt to provide the basis for a rational science of diplomacy a science morale that would focus on the fundamental interests of all European States. Like Saint-Pierre, Mably was frustrated by the lack of organization of the rational study of politics in France. Richelieu had set up the Acadmie franaise already in 1635 and before the end of the century, altogether eight royal academies had been set up to produce experts who would be expected to provide advise for the king. But there was no place for the teaching of a science of politics. There had been a short-lived experiment by Louis foreign minister Colbert de Torcy (1665-1746) to set up a diplomatic academy in the Louvre in 1711-1719 with the motive of regularising the careers of younger attachs. As director of the academy Torcy appointed the jurist Yves Saint-Prest (c. 1640-1720) who had had a long and distinguished career in foreign affairs. The school had between 6 and 12 students and, under Saint-Prests meticulously composed program, mixed studies of Grotius and Pufendorf with practical exercises in the composition of diplomatic
On Mablys about face in the course of 1747-50 from the Parti des Modernes to the Parti des Anciens, see Wright, Classical Republican, 39-65. 103 Wright, Classical Republican, 103.
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correspondence and periods of traineeship at large embassies abroad. Despite the obvious utility of such an school, it was terminated during the Regency at Cardinal Dubos specific request, and despite proposals to that effect, no similar institution was set up in the course of the 18th century.104 This is not to say, of course, that there would not have been informal debates about the nature and possibilities of a scientific study of politics, including of natural law and the law of nations in early 18th century France. Saint-Pierre, for example, always saw his efforts at the reorganisation of the monarchy and the proposal for a European union as an extension of his interests in science. The Club dEntresol, too, provided a forum in which the highly select group of members could in relative freedom ponder on the possibilities and nature of an organised, scientific government of France as well as its external policy. But even those debates were too sensitive for the monarchy they came to an end with the Crowns diktat in 1731. At this time, law schools were completely devoted to the practical training of magistrates and universities were so much under the control of the Church that intellectuals, including the philosophes, wanted to have nothing to do with them. In particular, any reflection on the principles of natural and the law of nations, not to speak of the legal principles governing foreign policy, was excluded. One could talk politics only in the court and with the king.105 For all such reasons, Mablys effort to put forward a moral science of politics in his Droit public de lEurope and especially in the Principes de ngociations in 1757 had such great importance. Here Mably wove the French tradition of raison dtat that used comparative studies of the status of individual states and monarchs into a legal vocabulary of an overall utilitarian thrust. The result was a somewhat awkward critique of the irrationality of the diplomacy of the ancien rgime that nevertheless saw no way of fundamentally changing the basic rules with which

For a thorough study of the school, see Guy Thuilier, La premire cole dadministration. LAcadmie politique de Louis XIV (Genve, Droz 1996). Predominant reasons for the schools closure were the resistance of ambassadors to the inauguration of a practice whereby they could no longer choose their younger assistants, as well as the lack of interest in regular study shown by many of the students. In addition, an organized study of politics inside the administration was regarded with suspicion by a part of the kings entorage. 105 Heilbron, Rise of Social Theory, 68.
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European foreign policy was being played. Principes de ngiciations began with a history of the relations of European nations as the history of the ambition and greed of its rulers. European politics had been determined by family feuds (Habsburg/Valois; Habsburg/Bourbon) in which secret diplomacy and breaking of treaties were use in order to allow the rulers to satisfy their irrational passions.106 To emerge from this miserable state of things, all monarchs ought to learn, Mably suggested, to design and follow policies that were in accordance with their fundamental interests. All powers ought to fit their policies with their forces. They would need to learn to comply with rules that are appropriate to protecting and enhancing their relative position and not act on the basis of exceptional fortunes or misfortunes of war or the wisdom or stupidity of their rulers. The great mistake in France, for example, has been conceiving ruling a private matter, dependent on the whims of the ruler, especially his search for personal glory.107 Large armies and the search for luxury were all follies that undermined the states concentration on what is important namely finding a policy that respects its real, long-term interests.108 In describing this, Mably switched freely between the language of princes peoples and nations without producing a theory about their relationship. Nevertheless, Europe for him is above all a conglomerate of nations but nations that were, it seems, still unproblematically represented by its ruler. Mablys constructive proposal followed Saint-Pierre and the raison dtat writers: in determining their fundamental interests nations could be divided in four classes: ruling power (Now France), rival power (now England), and powers of second and third rank. Each possessed a fundamental interest, based on its relative position to others, that it would ignore only at its peril. By aiming higher than its forces allowed, or by neglecting constant vigilance, a nation was bound to disaster. Balance of power would never provide sufficient protection. In fact, it would usually favour the rival power (which is why William III had promoted
Mably, Principes de ngociations, 39-47. Mably, Principes de ngociations, 52-53. 108 Mably, Principes de ngociations, 57-62.
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it) and might even became a predatory mechanism allowing (as in the case of the partitions of Poland) dramatic redrawings of the political map.109 For the powers of the second and third order Mably recommended strategies alternating between principled pacifism and playing the principal powers against each other, defending the Machiavellian nature of his suggestions by their usefulness.110 The many chapters on strategies for alliances, in particular, were full of examples of both well thought out, and rash and dangerous negotiations. The point was always to adopt a consistent conduct, based on ones relative position, and then persist in following it (se faire une rgle certaine dans ses ngociations).111 In fact, Mably suggested, the powers had not taken sufficient notice of the recent passage from military to commercial society; fundamental interests were changing. Wealth instead of military might would become the new focus of policy. Territorial expansion, for example, would no longer have much point what use it is, he asked to conquer a village if that can only take place at the cost of expanding misery in ones own villages? The war just began by France and England (the seven years war) manifested a complete disregard of this fact, and was thus against the fundamental interests of both.112 For now on commerce and especially flourishing agriculture would provide the basis for State power and greatness. What Mably wanted his readers from Englands rise to the position of rival power was the dominant role commerce now played; the fate of Austria and Spain showed that neglect of this would bring even traditionally great powers down. And yet Mably was critical of luxury. Even a positive trade balance was harmful if it only led to the enrichment of the few they would either put the money in the safes or then spend it in luxuries. Luxury led to domestic inequality, a grave danger that was to be avoided. Trade was beneficent only if its fruit were
Mably, Principes de ngociations 75-76. Je rougirais des maxims machiavliques que je viens dexposer, sil ntait pas possible den tirer des consquences utiles aux hommes, Mably, Principes de ngociations, 85. 111 Mably, Principes de ngociations, 107. 112 Mably, Principes de ngociations, 79. Likewise, Mably, Droit public de lEurope. Fond sur les traits (tome 2, Genve, Comapgnie des Librairies 1768), Ch XII, 260-265.
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equally distributed at home. But only a well-functioning agriculture was the basis of a nations real and lasting economic strength.113 Already in his first book Mably had argued that luxury had been a predominant cause for the decline of ancient Rome and Sparta.114 In his later work, including the Principes de ngociations, he became even more insistent of the role of virtue even Stoic virtue in the government of the state. In a separate detour in the Principes, he would critique mercantilist ideas of warfare and the doctrine of commercial society he associated with David Hume. Luxury might profit the merchant, but not the society as a whole. It creates inequality, increases prices and in the long run undermines commerce itself: le luxe, loin dtre favorable au commerce, est, au contraire une symptome de sa dcadence prochaine.115 Luxury corrupts society but also leads to economic decline by benefiting only a small class of citizens. Hence the primary importance of agriculture and domestic exchange.116 In other late writings Mably would take an even stronger position against commercial society and in favour of virtuous republicanism in a cosmopolitan context. In a dialogue published in 1763 Entretiens de Phocion Mably put in the mouth of the Athenian military commander his (ancient) view that giving in to their passion for glory and riches provided the cause for the destruction of ancient polities. Against this he invoked the altogether traditional Ciceronian concept of right reason, recta ratio precisely the strategy that Saint-Pierre had rejected as a utopian. A life of avarice, greed, voluptuousness would never lead to lasting happiness. Passions are only useful if tamed by virtue and devotion to work for the happiness of ones country.117 And the good of ones country must be seen in the context of humanity itself. A nation that uses violence and betrayal against its neighbours will be trapped by the fear that it provokes in others.118 In long footnote Mably attacks the violent and unjust behaviour of European
Mably, Principes de ngociations,, 146-152. See Wright, A Classical Republican, 33-34. 115 Mably, Principes de ngociations, 150. 116 The argument of the self-destructive nature of commercial society is also made (by reference to the writings of Richard Cantollon), in Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Entretiens de Phocion sur le rapport du morale et la politique (Paris, Librairie de la Bibliothque Nationale 1872),, 125-131. See further, Wright, A Classical Republican, 60-64. 117 Mably, Entretiens de Phocion, 47-48. 118 Mably, Entretiens de Phocion, 52.
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nations in the past. The law of nations was known, but used perversely and in support of irrational ambition. Even lately, he wrote, the law of nations was falsely associated with passing treaties, neglecting its basis in reason and nature. Pendant quon ignore la loi par laquelle la nature lie tous les hommes, pendant quon ne cheche qu{ rtablir un droit des nations favourable lambition, { lavarice et { la force, peut-on tre dispos penser avec Socrate, Platon, Phocion et Cicron, que lamour de la patrie, subordonn { l amour de lhumanit, doit se prendre pour son guide, ou on sexpose { produre de grands malheurs? 119 True patriotism, Mably had Phocion argue, avoided violent conquest. It sought to make ones country loved and admired not because it its power subject to the vicissitudes of fortune but its justice and humanity.120 The conquest by Pericles may have brought wonderful riches to Athens. But while the prosperity of citizens grew, the republic became poorer. As luxury brought in greed, and everybody felt themselves deprived. In the end, the corruption of the soul of the Athenians led to the collapse of the city.121 For Mablys Phocion, the health of politics was based on virtue: le Providence a tabli une telle liaison entre la morale et la politique que le bonheur des Etats est attach la pratique des vertus.122 Passions such as love of glory and honour, firmness and heroism may sometimes be socially useful, just like some poisons may be used as medicine. In the end, however, Phocion tells Aristias, the city can be saved, if at all, only by disciplining politics by reason, expressed in the laws by a virtuous legislator.123 Mablys most striking text, however, was the dialogue on the Droits et devoirs du citoyen between a Frenchman and his English visitor, Lord Stanhope, written a year after the Droit public de lEurope but published only posthumously at the eve of the revolution in 1789. Here the Englishman comments on the midcentury conflict between the monarchy and the provincial parlements, advocating the calling of the Estates-General but also in fact a political

Mably, Entretiens de Phocion, 104. Mably, Entretiens de Phocion, 107-121. 121 Mably, Entretiens de Phocion, 122-133. 122 Mably, Entretiens de Phocion, 135. 123 Mably, Entretiens de Phocion, 141-142, 154-160. See also Wright, A Classical Republican, 8090.
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revolution in France.124 Stanhope takes the position of someone whom the words liberty and slavery never leave cold, an English republican rejecting the Frenchmans proposal to accept the conditions of loss of liberty in France in view of the anarchy and continuous revolutions that struggle against despotism would bring. Stanhope rejects the teaching of Grotius, Pufendorf, Wolff and Hobbes. Humans were born with natural rights and duties; the State did not create them. On the contrary, the state and its institutions were created to protect and strengthen pre-existing natural rights. The natural law tradition, Mably has Stanhope suggest, was born to justify despotism. It built sophisms upon sophisms to suggest that without kings there would be no security and happiness and that anarchy would reign. After all, Grotius published his writings in France with the blessings of Louis XIII.125 It taught absolute respect of laws while laws were often but unjust instruments of despots. Buy reference to Lockes Second Treatise, Stanhope then sketches a whole plan for a revolution mnage in which the Estates-General would carry out a complete reform of the political order, the executive and the judiciary would be separated and the royaltys position would be constitutionally delimited. Mablys views on the Droit public de lEurope as expressed in that three-volume work and the Principes de ngociations that served to introduce it were thus written as part of an oeuvre that was firmly critical of the institutions of anvien regime France but also of the proposals by the parti des modernes to reform it into a commercial society in the English fashion. They were written from the perspective of a classical republicanism that highlighted the active participation of virtuous citizens in the ruling of the state, with solidarity to humanity in general and the equality of all humans. He rejected both the practices of treatymaking and diplomacy of the European states-system as well as the natural law tradition that he like Rousseau saw as only offering a political legitimation to

Abb de Mably, Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen (Paris, Lacombe 1789). For the context, see Keith Michael Baker, A Script for the French Revolution: The Political Consciousness of Mably, in Inventing the French Revolution. Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press 1990), 88-91. Baker makes the useful point about Mablys specifically political insistence on the dependency of political and social change on contingent will and struggle, not as a an automatic product of economic or social forces. 125 Mably, Droits et devoirs, 19-21.
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the latter. The way the world was governed would have to be thought anew. Partial reforms would not be sufficient. A revolution was necessary, and this was not to be hindered by the temporary disorders and confrontations that it necessitated.

8. Abb Grgoire and the revolution In Droits et devoirs Mably was putting forward views that were strikingly prescient of the what the revolutionaries would be putting forward in 1789. 126 The critique of the inequality brought about by commercial society and recourse to the ethics of republican virtue all touched on themes that would be endlessly repeated in the debates of the Estates-General and later of the assemble nationale.

126

This aspect is particularly highlighted in Keith