The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns

Sarah,

I am going to try and read some of your assigned readings for American Heritage this semester.  I will let you know my thoughts on what I read.  I enjoyed reading Benjamin Constant’s “The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns”.  He was born in Switzerland so he has to be a pretty cool guy.  I agree that there is definitely a difference between the "Liberty of the Ancients" and the "Liberty of the Moderns", the main difference being slavery and the limited number of people that could participate in the liberty of the ancients.  I do disagree a bit with his assertion about war.  Constant states that “War is all impulse, commerce, calculation. Hence it follows that an age must come in which commerce replaces war. We have reached this age.”  I think that history has proven that man has not completely replaced war with commerce.  Since he wrote those words we have seen two major world wars and hundreds of other wars throughout the world.  I would say that he is at least partially correct.  Free trade between nations definitely reduces some of the incentives to go to war but I don’t think it completely eliminates them.  Having said that, commerce or capitalism has pulled more people out of poverty and granted more people individual and political freedom than any other idea ever conceived my man.

I love this statement by Constant, “Individual liberty, I repeat, is the true modern liberty. Political liberty is its guarantee, consequently political liberty is indispensable. But to ask the peoples of our day to sacrifice, like those of the past, the whole of their individual liberty to political liberty, is the surest means of detaching them from the former and, once this result has been achieved, it would be only too easy to deprive them of the latter.”  Our founding fathers understood this fact perfectly.  Unfortunately, the French did not quite grasp this concept in their revolution and ended up with the warring Napoleon Bonaparte.  As for our day, the more government does for it’s citizens, like government run healthcare,  the less political freedom they end up with.  Constant backs up this premise when he states about the government, “They will say to us: what, in the end, is the aim of your efforts, the motive of your labors, the object of all your hopes? Is it not happiness? Well, leave this happiness to us and we shall give it to you. No, Sirs, we must not leave it to them. No matter how touching such a tender commitment may be, let us ask the authorities to keep within their limits. Let them confine themselves to being just. We shall assume the responsibility of being happy for ourselves.”  It is our duty to, even our God given, inalienable right to “pursue our own happiness”.  The government’s duty is to secure these rights, to provide justice and a level playing field for all. 

In addition to happiness, Constant says that self-development is also important.  “It is not to happiness alone, it is to self-development that our destiny calls us; and political liberty is the most powerful, the most effective means of self-development that heaven has given us.”

My favorite quote about the role of government by Constant comes in the final paragraph where he states, “…respecting their individual rights, securing their independence, refraining from troubling their work…”  Too often our own government troubles our work and thus our happiness with excessive taxes and burdensome regulations.  In many cases our government needs to get out the way and let us use our Modern Liberty to pursue our own happiness.
PS I also drew a picture of Benjamin Constant for you.