The Danger of Being a Gentleman (Works of Harold J. Laski)

And Other Essays

Harold J. Laski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317586586
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An excellent and entertaining essayist, Laski's volume deals with the issues of politics and law in Europe and American during the 1920s and 30s. It is unified by the concpetion of democracy as a society of equals sharing in a common good.

V The English Constitution and French Public Opinion, 1789–1794

DOI: 10.4324/9781315742595-5

I

French interest in the English Constitution was remarkable during the eighteenth century. In part, no doubt, this was the outcome of the rapid rise of discontent with the ancient régime in the latter years of Louis XIV; the sense of dissatisfaction with their institutions made many turn with envious eyes to a country which had seemed to solve so many of the problems of civil liberty which they themselves had only begun to pose as problems. In part, also, it was due to the work of the numerous exiles who left France after the Revocation. They contributed in a remarkable degree to an understanding of English life and habits such as previous Frenchmen had rarely possessed. One has only to compare the accounts available in seventeenth-century France with those available, in increasing numbers, after 1700 to realize how different in quality were the materials for understanding. It is hardly too much to say that the England of Walpole impressed itself upon the France of the philosophes with something of the pungent excitement of a new civilization.

That does not mean that, before 1789, Frenchmen bowed down in abject worship of English institutions. Eulogy, indeed, there was in abundance ; Voltaire and Montesquieu are only the greatest names in a chorus of praise. That neither fully grasped their nature was, perhaps, less important than the fact that they lent the immense weight of their authority to the wide belief that Englishmen enjoyed civil liberty, and that this happy condition was the result of the English Constitution. Criticism goes through several phases Before the Seven Years’ War it was episodic and fragmentary. Père Castel thinks Montesquieu “trop et tout anglican”¹; Véron de Forbonnais dislikes the separation of powers and is already unfavourably impressed by the evidence of electoral corruption. He denies the reality of religious toleration and doubts whether juries are sufficiently enlightened to do justice.²The President Lavie—an able but neglected thinker—dislikes the royal veto in particular and thinks that, in general, the powers of the Crown might easily become a road to despotism in the hands of an ambitious King.³But it is Voltaire who tells us that Montesquieu’s praise of the English Constitution is that which, in his book, most pleased Frenchmen ; and it is the Encyclopaedia which, through the pen of Jaucourt, tells us to regard Parliament as the “most august senate in Europe.” “All Europe,” wrote Lavie in 1755,⁴“admires and perhaps a part of it envies the English Constitution.”

L’Homme Moral (1756), p. 104. 2 “Du Gouvernement d’Angleterre” in Opuscules de M. F. (Véron), pp. 170–225. Abrégé de la République de Bodin (1755), esp. p. 317. Website: Ibid., I, 308.

After the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War criticisms, naturally enough, begin to multiply. England is out of fashion; a writer like Fougeret de Montbron can find a ready audience for his Préservatif contre l’anglomanie. Poems, essays, pamphlets, against England then abound ; and Chais’ translation of Brown’s gloomy Estimate had a big sale.⁵A public could even be found for the ten curious volumes in which Genet gave massive extracts from English writers to prove that the downfall of the “modern Carthage” was at hand.⁶Something, too, may perhaps be attributed to Rousseau’s unfavourable verdict ; though here we must remember that, of all his major works, the Social Contract had in its early years the least influence.⁷

The translation appeared in 1758. Lettres sur les Écrits Publics de la nation anglaise (1757–1759), 10 volumes. It is, indeed, not until after his death that the Social Contract begins to be seen at its real importance. M. Mornet found a copy in one only of the 500 libraries he has catalogued (Revue d’Histoire Littéraire, 1910).

And after the conclusion of the war, regard for the English Constitution took on a new lease of life. Every one knows Gibbon’s stately satisfaction at the high regard he found in French drawing-rooms : England is clarum et venerabile nomen gentibus.⁸Lefèvre de Beauvray can hardly contain his indignation at the passion for things English;⁹and that forgotten genius, Linguet—one of the most remarkable of Marx’s precursors—though he wrote an able criticism of the English Constitution, was yet constrained to admit that his fellow-citizens regarded the average Englishman as “rich, enlightened, generous, brave and free.”¹⁰From that acrid temperament this is eulogy indeed. It was not for nothing that the Lettres sur les Anglais of the abbé Leblanc should have been found by M. Mornet in 96 of the private libraries whose contents he was able to survey.¹¹

Autobiography (ed. of 1897), p. 260. Dictionnaire Social et Patriotique (1770) and compare his Adresse à la Nation Anglaise (1757). Annales; I, 75. See note 7, p. 28, supra.

There is little doubt but that from the Seven Years’ War to the opening of the Revolution discussion, and largely eulogy, of the English Constitution was in the fashion; the popularity of English visitors, Horace Walpole, Wilkes, Hume, Sir John Sinclair, may account for some of this. No less important, however, we may assume, was the growing breakdown of French institutions. “I would rather,” wrote Mlle de Lespinasse,¹²be the last member of the House of Commons than King of Prussia.” Holbach may have dissented¹³; but that eminent lawyer Elie de Beaumont, after a long conversation with the elder Pitt, has no doubt of its excellence. Nor, with some passing criticism, has the Duc de Croy¹⁴; and Helvetius emphasizes his conviction that English advantages over France are due solely to the form of government ; “the parliamentary system,” he writes,¹⁵“has the happy result of bringing enlightened men to the control of government.” Nor is it unimportant that so widely-read a writer as Grosley can feel not only that the English Constitution has found the happy medium between slavery and anarchy, but also that—a significant remark—it gives, with fiscal equality, religious toleration and respect for property, its proper place in the State to the bourgeoisie.”¹⁶And the abbé Coyer, who, it is true, tended to see all Englishmen through rose-coloured spectacles, had no doubt that their virtues were the outcome of their constitution.¹⁷

Lettres (ed. Asse), p. 151. Cf. Wickwar, The Baron d’Holbach (1936, George Allen & Unwin). Revue Britannique (1895), p. 17. Letter to Hume, April I, 1795. Londres (1770). Nouvelles Observations sur l’Angleterre (1779).

Once more, I note that all is not eulogy in these years. French sympathy for the American cause, after 1774, re-awakened the critical note. Blackstone is found too eulogistic¹⁸; account is taken of electoral corruption, the faction of parties, the excessive duration of Parliament.¹⁹The system of criminal justice may be praised, but episcopal docility and mob-violence are noted.²⁰The weakness of the royal power may find favour; but the complexity of the system awakens reproof.²¹Among the critics, too, are well-known names, Target,²²for instance, Linguet²³and the Physiocrats ;²⁴for the latter, the separation of powers, in the assumed English fashion, was the denial of the central principle of political wisdom.²⁵Le Trosne thought English political liberty an illusion;²⁶Turgot thought the Americans had excessively imitated the English system ;²⁷and Mably thought Englishmen destined to be the passive slaves of the Court since the supremacy of the executive threatened the delicate equilibrium of the whole edifice.²⁸Yet, in general, it is, I think, fair to say that the eulogies outweigh, both in volume and quality, the criticisms upon the system. After he has resumed all these, Raynal, at the height of his meretricious popularity, can conclude that no Constitution “has ever been better organized” than the English.²⁹The average Frenchman had a profound sense that England was, as Voltaire so often insisted, “the temple of liberty.”³⁰The Parliament of Paris can say in 1776 that “England is the country which freedom seems to have chosen for a refuge.”³¹So, too, felt Madame Roland³²and Sébastien Mercier.³³If the English Constitution is not perfect, thought the younger Mirabeau,³⁴“at least it is the best known anywhere.” And there are few instructed Frenchmen of the time who would not have echoed Lally-Tollendal’s grave eulogy of the English criminal law.³⁵

Journal Encyclopédique, June 1st, 1775. Website: Ibid. L’Observateur Français (1769). Website: Ibid., and cf. Journal Anglais (1775–1776), Vol. 1, 361. Les États Généraux. La France plus qu’Anglaise (1788) and the Annales, cf. Théorie des Lois Civiles (1767), 1, 294, and Lettres sur la Théorie (1770), passim. Cf. Dupont de Nemours in Ephémérides (1770), Vol. VI, p. 210 f. M. de La Rivière, Ordre Naturel, XXI, p. 159. Ordre Social, Ch. VI. Letter to Dr. Price in Mirabeau, Considérations sur l’Ordre de Cincinnati, p. 190. Œuvres (1789), Vol. VIII, p. 60. Histoire des deux Indes. Œuvres (Moland), Vol. 37, p. 388. Remontrances du Parlement de Paris, III, 319. Lettres (ed. Perrouet), II, 6. L’An 2440, 11, 108, 127. Lettres à Chamfort, October 13, 1784. Essai sur quelques changements (1786), p. 65.

This long prelude is necessary to the argument that is to follow. I have sought to show how widespread was the interest in the English Constitution and how eager in general were observers of significance to recognize in its qualities the secret of freedom. That there was criticism, even ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• I The Danger of Being a Gentleman: Reflections on the Ruling Class in England
• II On the Study of Politics1
• III Law and Justice in Soviet Russia
• IV The Judicial Function
• V The English Constitution and French Public Opinion, 1789–1794
• VI The Committee System in English Local Government1
• VII Nationalism and the Future of Civilization
• VIII Mr. Justice Holmes For His Eighty-ninth Birthday1