ARISTOCRATIC LIBERALISM IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE

Abstract

This article investigates the nature and prevalence of aristocratic liberalism in post-revolutionary France. Defenders of the aristocracy, it argues, departed from a specific conception of liberty, which can be distinguished both from a purely negative definition of liberty as the ability to do what one wanted to do, and from a republican conception of liberty as something that could be guaranteed through self-government alone. To legitimate the role of the aristocracy in post-revolutionary France, publicists and politicians developed a conception of liberty as a condition that could be guaranteed only through the existence of ‘intermediary powers’ between the central government and the people. Although this conception of liberty was severely criticized by Restoration liberals such as Benjamin Constant, it had a considerable impact on the debate about the best way to safeguard liberty in nineteenth-century France, as appears from texts by important political thinkers such as Tocqueville and Dupont-White.