Commentary on Filangieri’s Work. Benjamin de Constant
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of its moral and industrial faculties to its freedom, lives for some time after the loss of its rights on its old capital—on its acquired wealth, so to speak. But once the reproductive principle is dried up, the active, enlightened, industrious generation gradually disappears, and the generation which replaces it falls into inertia and bastardization.
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If one raises as an objection the example of other European states, who are no less strangers to constitutional institutions than Spain but who have not been subject to the same decline, I will explain this difference easily, by proving that these states retained a kind of freedom that was uncertain and without guaranties but real in its results, even though precarious in its duration. This gives me an opportunity to suggest some ideas about the political effects of the discovery of printing that I believe are important and that I think I was the first to develop.1
Formerly, in all European countries there were institutions associated with many abuses but which, by giving certain classes privileges to defend and rights to exercise, kept up activity among these classes and thus preserved them from discouragement and apathy. To this cause must be attributed the energy of character existing up to the sixteenth century, an energy of which we no longer find any trace by the time of the revolution which shook thrones and reforged souls. These institutions had been everywhere destroyed, or changed so much that they had lost almost all their influence. But around the time they collapsed, the discovery of printing gave men a new means of interesting themselves in their country. It allowed a new spring of intellectual movement to well forth.
In countries where the people do not participate actively in government, that is, everywhere where there is no freely elected national representation with very considerable prerogatives, freedom of the press to some extent replaces political rights. The educated part of the nation interests itself in the administration of affairs when it can express an opinion, if not directly, at least on the general principles of government. But when there is neither freedom of the press nor political rights in a country, people detach themselves entirely from public affairs. All communication between the rulers and the ruled is cut off. For a while, the government and the government’s supporters may regard this as an advantage. The government does not encounter any obstacles, nothing thwarts it, but it alone is alive; the nation is dead. Public opinion is the life of states. When public opinion is wounded in its principle, states perish and fall into dissolution. Consequently, and note this well, since the discovery of printing, certain governments have favored the expression of opinion by means of the press. Others have tolerated this expression, and others have smothered it. The nations among which this intellectual occupation
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has been encouraged or permitted are the only ones which have retained strength and life. Those whose governments have imposed silence on all opinion have gradually lost all character and vigor.
Such was the fate of Spain, subject as it was more than any other country in Europe to political and religious despotism. The moment constitutional freedom was taken from the Spanish, since no new path was open to their intellectual activity, they became resigned and fell asleep. The state suffered in consequence. Its death sentence was pronounced.
We must not believe that the gains of trade, the profits of industry, or even the necessity of agriculture are sufficient motivation for human activity. The influence of personal interest is often exaggerated. Interest is limited in its needs and crude in its pleasures. It works for the present without looking farther into the future. The man whose opinion languishes and is smothered is not excited for long even by his interest. A sort of stupor overtakes him, and just as paralysis spreads from one portion of the body to another, it also extends to one after another of our faculties.
Those who hold power would like their subjects to be passive in servitude and active in work, insensitive to slavery and ardent in all enterprises that have nothing to do with politics, resigned serfs and able tools. This combination of opposite qualities cannot last. It is not given to power to awaken or put to sleep peoples according to its convenience or its passing fancies. Life is not something that one alternately takes away and gives back. Human faculties come together: enlightenment applies to everything. It makes industry, the arts, the sciences progress, and then, analyzing this progress, it extends its own horizon. But its basis is thought. If you discourage thought in itself, it will be exercised apathetically for any purpose whatsoever. One might say that, indignant at being expelled from its proper sphere, thought wanted to avenge itself for the humiliation inflicted on it by a noble suicide. Human existence attacked at its core soon feels the poison reach even its furthest parts. You think you have limited only some superfluous freedom or taken away some useless pomp, but your poisoned weapon has wounded it to the heart. Human intelligence cannot remain stationary. If you do not stop it, it advances; if you stop it, it retreats; it cannot remain at the same point. Thus, although governments want to kill opinion and think they are encouraging interest, they discover that their clumsy double operations kill them both, to their great regret, and intellectual activity soon slows within the government
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itself. Where there is no public opinion a nation’s lethargy communicates itself to its government. Unable to keep the nation awake, the government ends up going to sleep along with it. Thus everything is silenced, everything weakens, everything degenerates and dies.
Such, I repeat, was the fate of Spain, and neither the beauty of the climate, nor the fertility of the soil, nor the domination of the two seas, nor the riches of the New World, nor, what was even more, the eminent faculties of that now admirable nation could save it from this fate. So true was it that it was the government which burdened this people’s lot, that as soon as a foreign invasion suspended this government’s action, the nation’s energy fully reappeared. What the coalition of Europe’s governments had been unable to do, what the bureaucratic ability of Austria and the belligerent ardor of Prussia had vainly attempted, the Spanish did. They did it without kings, without generals, without money, without armies, abandoned, disavowed by all the sovereigns. They had to repulse not only Bonaparte and French valor, but also the docile and zealous collaboration of the rulers whom he had forced or accepted into the ranks of his vassals.
Some partisan writers have attributed much heroism to religion, to ancient mores, to doctrines scrupulously transmitted from one century to another, and above all to the absence of what they call revolutionary ideas; but religion, ancient mores, and hereditary doctrines had been unable to prevent Spanish power from decaying, its industry from languishing, and its glory from being eclipsed. Bent beneath the yoke, each Spaniard was detached from his own destiny, which his will could not influence. Put back in possession of his natural portion of influence by an unexpected revolution and invested with the right to defend his country and himself, every Spaniard felt his strength reborn and his enthusiasm set alight. The absence of government returning the full use of their faculties to all, the full extent of these faculties was immediately rediscovered. No virtue, no talent was absent from the roll-call: so much is the most unequal struggle preferable to servitude!
Do you require additional proof of this important truth? By a deplorable fate, an oppressive government followed this inspired struggle, these patriotic victories. Informers and courtesans, a race hostile to kings and peoples alike, fooled a monarch who was led astray by inexperience and the prejudices of the day. Suddenly apathy, collapse, disgust for work, stagnation of industry, interruption of trade, fall of credit—all the symptoms of decadence and ruin
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which had signaled the decline of old Spain—reappeared in a Spain delivered from the foreigner. However, the causes to which its triumphs had allegedly been linked had lost none of their intensity. Spain possessed both its excessive worship and its attachment to its ancestors’ mores. But freedom had departed: it has now returned and already it is reopening all the springs of prosperity.
While I was writing this about Spain, a thought came to me; why should I silence it?
At the moment when a magnanimous nation which had just broken its fetters associated its deliverance with the king who governed it, at the moment when that king himself consecrated the new social pact by sacred oaths, how did it come about that in other parts of Europe