7 - The French predicament: aristocratic liberalism in the Second Empire

Summary

Liberal political thought of the 1850s and 1860s is often neglected in the existing literature. In comparison with major thinkers such as Benjamin Constant during the Restoration period, or Alexis de Tocqueville during the July Monarchy, the Second Empire seems to offer but little of interest to the historian of political ideas. Thus, G. A. Kelly describes the liberalism of the 1850s and 1860s as a ‘Parnassian liberalism’, a doctrine in retreat from political competition to spheres of culture and criticism. However, this view does not do justice to the vibrancy of liberal thought in the Second Empire. Faced with the dictatorship imposed by Napoleon III, a marked revival of liberal thought took place. As André Jardin points out, in the 1850s and 1860s the French elite became more, not less, attached to the liberty it had lost.

In particular, it is possible to argue that the themes of aristocratic liberalism were widespread in the debates of the 1850s and 1860s. Many liberals of the Second Empire were deeply influenced by Montesquieu's aristocratic liberalism. The events of 1848–1852, while highlighting the inadequacy of bourgeois Orléanist liberalism, revived concerns about the levelled condition of modern societies in general and of French society in particular. As a result, Tocqueville's analysis of the dangers of democracy found a responsive audience in the 1850s and 1860s. But Second Empire liberals also reached back to the themes developed during the Restoration period.