François-Jean Marquis de Chastellux: Agriculture and Population the Truest Proofs of the Welfare of the People: Or, an Essay on Public Happiness: An Investigation on the State of Human Nature Through the Several Periods of History, from the Earliest Date to the Present Time. Originally published in 1772. Volume II.
Having pointed to the deficiency of human happiness, of the welfare of the people in antiquity, in his second volume Chastellux turns to modernity, arguing that his Europe, Europe in the eighteenth century, has seen the widest extension of public happiness in world history, although he expects better still to come. The immediate task is to remove the vestiges of feudalism while fending off a mistaken esteem for ‘the ancients.’
Because there is a “connection between the happiness of mankind and their legislation,” and “the rude covenants which supplied the place of laws amongst the barbarian nations” of early Europe have not been thoroughly expunged, these drags on humanity ought to be removed (II. Sec.3. i.1). Europe’s rude origins persist, as seen in such terms as ‘fief,’ ‘vassalage,’ and ‘lord paramount’—words indicating that Europeans are “the heirs of the Goths and the Lombards” (II. Sec. 3. i.2). To this day, even representations of antiquity can bring European savagery to the surface, as when “young students from the academy, or perhaps even from the philosophical schools,” attend some play featuring “an actor, whom the public seem to idolize,” offend one another during the course of the performance, and end up killing one another in a duel (II. Sec.3. i.2-3). “One might suppose the theater to be filled with the citizens of Athens,” but they are, “in their transports,” “converted into Sicambrians, or Scandinavians” (II. Sec.3. i.3). But simply “examine our laws, observe our customs, and see how continually prejudice and reason, politeness and barbarity are blended together”; Europeans still “resemble those formidable animals, whom it is necessary to render tame,” and to do so “we must think on their natural ferocity” (II. Sec.3. i.3). As for their barbaric past, “it is of little consequence what we have been, provided there be no reason to blush for what we are” (II. Sec.3. i.3). Even with that barbaric past the differences between “our laws and the laws of the ancients” are considerable and worthwhile (II. Sec.3. i.5).
The connection between human happiness and law, indeed between law and the character of men “in general,” consists of example and custom. “What people shall set these examples, what people shall form these customs”—the rulers, the politeuma—must therefore be understood (II. Sec.3. i.4). We must not then hesitate to trace Europe’s origins back to feudalism, “if we wish to acquire some idea of those powerful nations, who, dividing amongst each other the western part of this little quarter of the globe, called Europe, are, to the eye of philosophy and reason, the whole world” (II. Sec.3. I.5). Nor is Chastellux indulging in what anthropologists will later call ‘ethnocentricism’: not only did the Europe of his time enjoy substantial imperial ‘reach’ on other continents, but modern philosophy and reason, in the form of modern science and the technology it has invented, were already transforming the world in their image, from Beijing to Rio de Janeiro. As he foresaw, modernity has conquered the planet, and Chastellux anticipated that it might.
He is also right about conquest. Europeans are “all equally the posterity of those barbarous people who have ravaged the earth. Here are no indigenous nations. Our ancestors have all conquered the country which we inhabit, or, at least, continued to be the sources of a future race, they, notwithstanding, yielded up their rights, their customs, and even their names to the conquerors” (II. Sec.3. i.5). The universality of modernity and of conquest are facts that our contemporary ideologues of ‘Third Worldism’ incline to cover over.
Throughout all of human life, ancient, medieval, and modern, two human types have predominated: agriculturalists, living in fertile lands, migrating peacefully only when the lands they have cultivate give out; and warriors, living in mountains or deserts, probably fugitives from the valleys but returning to conquer them when the comfortably settled populations become “corrupted by success,” no longer able to fight (II. Sec.3. i.6). “Hence arise two principles of government, absolutely opposite to each other: and from hence, also, proceeds the entirely new organization of political societies,” the one active, the other passive (II. Sec.3. i.11).
What was “the general spirit, which actuated the barbarians, who invaded our western countries” (II. Sec.3. i.13)? Feudalism existed “in potentia amidst the first establishment of these barbarians” (II. Sec.3. i.16). Barbarians were organized as military units, a “politico-military” order,” with “a king, chiefs, and officers”; “this army takes possession of a country in which they mean to settle” (II. Sec.3. i.19). They enslave the peaceful farmers, whom they rule initially “with terror,” but the longer they stay the more “the conquerors melt into humanity, and the laws and customs of [the farmers] begin to prevail” (II. Sec.3. i.21). The barbarians slowly become civilized, while retaining “all their singular ideas of a personal vassalage,” obedience to a person, a form of rule “independent of properties” persisting in an agricultural setting for which property rights are necessary for prosperity (II. Sec.3. i.17n.).
Chastellux considers England a purer example of such rule than France. The Gauls, when conquered by the barbaric Franks, were already under subjection to the Roman law, but the English Saxons were half-savage, conquered by the Romans but never fully mastered by them. In England, chieftains, called ‘thanes,’ ruled clans consisting of freemen and serfs. The clans met in assembly and, unlike the Franks, who were “always at war,” the Saxon clans for the most part stayed at home, cultivating their lands (II. Sec.3. i.39). Even Charlemagne, who reduced many of the warring peoples of continental Europe “to subjection,” could not establish solid property rights and never adequately moderated “the spirit of war” there (II. Sec.3. i.43). After Charlemagne, “the lot of humanity was more miserable than ever” (II. Sec.3. i.43).
Nonetheless, “an entirely new form of government,” an “effect of chance” unanticipated by “the ancients who discussed, supposed, and guessed at everything,” proceeded from this first stage of feudalism. “This is feudal government in its second state, in its regularity, and such as it still exists in our times” (II. Sec.3. 43). Beginning with Henry IV, French kings exchanged “benefices” for revenues, supplies, and services from the aristocrats. Benefices were guarantees that aristocratic lords could pass their titles to their heirs. But by stabilizing aristocratic succession the kings strengthened the aristocrats vis-à-vis themselves. The Roman Catholic priests, often the second sons of aristocrats, took the opportunity to enrich themselves. “The people alone are neglected: they were considered as the spoil for which all disputed, the prey form which each received his share of carnage” (II. ec.3. i.46-47). The people were granted very limited rights, namely, instruction in reading and writing for the children, liberty to sell their produce at market, and a sub rosa right to settle disputes among themselves—this, a privilege formally reserved to their landlords.
But with the weakening of monarchy and the laws monarchs had established and enforced, aristocrats began to fight one another, again. “One barbarous, dreadful law long remained; it was the law of war,” specifically, “combats against each other, and even against their sovereigns, whensoever their feudal rights could not be otherwise determined” (II. Sec.3. i. 49). This was trial by combat, “worthy of such ferocious men” (II. Sec.3. i.49). On occasions when they became exhausted, aristocrats turned not to the monarch but to their fellow aristocrats among the clergy for arbitration of disputes. At the same time, while “the church usurped an authority over the secular powers, the pope usurped an absolute authority over the church,” eventually raising their own armies and attacking “the most respectable crowns” with the weapon of excommunication (II. Sec.3. i.53). “Ferocious chiefs, satiated with having worried each other, and at once he victims of absurd credulity and infamous debauchery,” saw their riches squandered by Church-inspired attempts to conquer Jerusalem, having abandoned their estates for the deserts of Palestine (II. Sec. 3. i.54). With “all policy, divine and civil, violated and aggravated by turns, such is the picture in which human misery and depravity seem carried to their utmost length” (II. Sec.3. i.54). Even the revival of learning seen in the thirteenth century amounted to something like the temporary rally of the terminally ill, who “recover from a long agony to breathe for a moment, and then relapse” (II. Sec.3. i.54). “It may with propriety be said, that wheresoever the mind can make herself mistress of the truth, the worst is over. In this respect, she resembles a swallow which, being confined within a room, strikes itself a hundred times against the wainscot or the ceiling, before it can discover the window, which some beneficent hand has thrown open to facilitate its escape.” (II. Sec.3. i.59n.). No such beneficent hand extended to European minds during these centuries.
Given the existence, and persistence, of the feudal system throughout Europe, Chastellux must still account for the differences between England, France, Germany, and Italy within that system, significant differences indeed. Although the Normans conquered England in 1066, a series of “shocks” (rebellions, famine, plagues) enabled “the great vassals” eventually to take arms “for the preservation of their rights,” less than two centuries later (II. Sec.3. i.59). “From hence arose that government of property and representation, that free and half-democratical government which subsists at present” (II. Sec.3.59-60). Not so in France, where “new forms were introduced” not by the aristocrats but by the kings; these new forms included the “Estates General” and the system of “sovereign courts,” the beginnings of “absolute monarchy” (II. Sec.3. i.60). In Germany, “ignorance, ferocity, differentiation [i.e., the many sovereign German political communities], and a rival spirit kept alive by a balance of powers” sustained themselves longer than in other European countries; “force was the perpetual alternative” to reconciliation (II. Sec.3. i.60). Finally, Italy saw “two tyrants”—pope and Holy Roman emperor—ruling “under pretense that they were successors,” one of the Apostle Peter, the other of Charlemagne—jostled for power along with many city-state republics and “little tyrants” who squabbled internecinally rather in the manner of the ancient Greeks (II. Sec.3. i.61). Chastellux examines each country in more detail.
“In England, the first complaints were made by the Great, against the crown” (II. Sec.3. i.62). These aristocrats allied with the burghers, many of them in the commercial towns. This led to the Magna Carta, stipulating an elected Parliament “always assembled, always in action, under the name of conservators of the public liberties (a wise precaution, to which this Charter is indebted for its permanence)” (II. Sec.3. i.63). The aristocracy was divided into greater and lesser barons, the latter eventually “blended with the simple knights,” a much more numerous class; “this is the origin of what the English call Gentry” (II. Sec.3. i.63 and 63n.). Since only the greater barons could afford to attend Parliament regularly, it became effectively a ‘house of lords.’ Near the end of the thirteenth century, Edward I called together representatives of the gentry in the counties and the burghers in the towns to assemble in the ‘Model Parliament’; this ‘house of commons’ was empowered not only to advise but to consent to laws. “Of all portions of the British government,” the House of Commons “is the portion the most founded on reason, and the most favorable to property” (II. Sec.3. i.64).
“In France, the case is totally different” (II. Sec.3. i.66). There, “the people, harassed by the tyranny of the Great, and a general anarchy, had recourse to the royal authority” (II. Sec.3. i.66). Thus dependent upon royal favor, the people had no institutional ground on which to defend their liberties. Although eventually assembled in Philip the Fair’s “Third Estate,” French burghers acted “like some inferior, admitted to the table of a great man”; moreover, they were called to assemble only occasionally, when the king was assured of their compliance to his wishes, for brief sessions that allowed little or no time for debate. “Thus, then, these assemblies rather contributed to shake the feudal government,” to hinder the aristocrats and empower the king, “than to establish a representative government” (II. Sec.3. i.69). Meanwhile, the clergy amassed riches; France is “continually destined to be the victim of religion” (I. Sec.3. 2.78). Religious persecution of Christians deemed heretics (most notably the Albigenses) and Jews roiled the country; “an intolerant spirt has raged in France as violently as in any other state whatever” (II. Sec.3. ii.87). [1] There was no real peace under the kings from Clovis through Louis XIV—well beyond the medieval period.
Chastellux calls medieval Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, “a great Club of sovereigns, who have subjected themselves to strict rules and chosen one of their number to take the great chair” as emperor, “and act as president” (II. Sec.3, i.72). Thus, the rights of the princes are respected, the rights of the people largely neglected. “The question is whether the Germanic government renders the people more happy,” and the answer is no; they “languish under oppression” (II. Sec.3. i.73). While the regime guards the hunting rights of one prince another, it “also deprives Germany of fine roads, of canals, of arts, and of riches,” with guard houses instead of manufacturers dotting the landscape (II. Sec.3. i.73).
In Italy, the rivalry between Emperor and Pope has allowed the several “weaker states a time to rise and to secure themselves” (II. Sec.3. i.62-63). Of Italy’s two “celebrated republics,” Venice is the worse, the rulers “keep[ing] the people in ignorance and slavery,” the aristocrats conspiring against one another in the Great Council, at times active, at times devolving power into the hands of the smaller Council of Forty, effectively a subcommittee of the larger, unwieldy, factionalized Great Council. The Doge, elected for life by the Great Council, often encouraged such factionalism. Chastellux reserves discussion of the other important republic, Florence, for his consideration of the Renaissance.
In general, then, modern European governments owe their origins to barbarism. “Formed in ignorance,” European governments remain shadowed by some of “the darkness that covered the earth from the Constantine to the Medicis” (II. Sec.3. i.74). “Our monarchies are old, but our reason is still young” (II. Sec.3. i.74). The problem was that philosophy and the “agreeable arts” generally, once awakened, remained where they were in Constantine’s time, with the “rational sciences neglected,” “the study of nature” still subordinated to “the study of words”; “all minds were possessed with a passion for frivolous controversies and empty subtleties” (II. Sec.3. i.75). That is, the Renaissance or rebirth of thought, the period from Erasmus to Descartes, saw “the human understanding…engaged in little else but sharpening its faculties”—a good thing in itself, but not yet conducive to the public happiness (I. Sec.3. i.75). Chastellux decries his contemporaries’ “frenzy for exalting the past ages, at the expense of blackening the age in which we live” (II. Sec.3. ii.88). Such sentiments impede “the progress of human reason”: “What, in fact, can be more discouraging than this persuasion, that as we proceed, we constantly become worse?” (II. Sec.3. ii.89). On the contrary, in “those times, in which the useful sciences [were] not being sufficiently expanded, mankind could only have acted right by chance or by instinct” (II. Sec.3. ii.89). The notion that we must deplore the luxuries of modern times in contrast with the austere piety of the Middle Ages and even the rebirth of philosophy in the Renaissance ignores the fact that in those times “the only remedy which could be devised” to stop plague and famine was “to order prayers and processions,” while “the causes and the cures of plagues [were] not the objects of inquiry” (II. Sec.3. ii.96). “More processions but no physicians”: such was the “convention suggested by ignorance, to preserve the union of terror and idleness” seen in the clergy (II. Sec.3. ii.96). “The good old time is a moral superstition; it will, indeed, pass away like other superstitions, but its disappearance will be later, on account of those vain ideas with which it is connected,” especially the supposition that “sound morals” are “the fruits of opinion” instead of “honest toil” (II. Sec.3. ii.107). Religious orthodoxy and the valorization of military heroism result from, and reinforce, indolence and aristocracy, regimes in which rule over opinion and contests of honor prevent the peaceful virtues of industry and thrift from flourishing, and indeed look down upon those virtues with contempt. “In order to regret the good old time, it is necessary to be ignorant. It must however be confessed that, in these times,” near the culmination of the Enlightenment, ignorance is still no rarity” (II. Sec.3. ii.110).
Prior to the Enlightenment, “people were not only strangers to real happiness,” they “had never taken the road which might have led to it,” and even “the most esteemed governments, and the most revered acts of legislation have never been directed to that sole end of all government, the acquisition of the greatest welfare of the greatest number of individuals” (II. Sec.3. iii.112). Crucially, this is also the “universal end of all philosophy” (II. Sec.3. iii.124). Chastellux regards the purpose of government and of philosophy to be identical, very much unlike the more cautious political philosophers of classical antiquity, who understood the political life and the philosophic life to be in tension; philosophy might find ways to prevent Athens from sinning twice against philosophy, but the inclination to such sin would always be there. Chastellux shares the optimism of the moderns, and especially of the Enlightenment moderns. “We shall attempt to prove, first, that a principle tending towards perfection, a cause of amendment, exits at present; secondly, that this principle and this cause have already acted in a very sensible manner” (II. Sec.3. iii.112-113). He is convinced that although religion and classical philosophy, wedded to one another and to the regimes of prior times, precipitated catastrophe, the modern philosophy of the Enlightenment, liberated from religion but wedded to regimes, and especially to republican regimes, will enable man to reach “the height of moral perfection” in accordance with a “science, a doctrine for each individual” and “a science for societies, for empires, and for mankind in general” (II. Sec.3. iii.113).
What has delayed the Enlightenment, and what hinders it, still? “We generally err,” even when we reason, “by considering things too abstractly” (II. Sec.3. iii.115). Here is where Florence comes in. “Happy Florence! dear to every people, free, yet not ambitious, rich, yet not conquering! thou, New Athens! and yet far more amiable, far more fortunate than Athens, since without falling under the yoke of tyrants, thou has rather appeared to abdicate than to lose thy liberty, and has, in fact, only exchanged it, for the mildest of all governments” (II. Sec.3. iii.118). Florence under the rule of the Medici, “justly considered as the restorers of arts and sciences,” benefited by the fall of the Greeks, who were “the greatest enemies of reason” because they reasoned abstractly, fell to the Turks (II. Sec.3. iii.120). “It was a fortunate stroke in favor of the human understanding, when the saber of the Turks cut asunder the Gordian knot of this miserable logic,” tool of the Catholic Church (II. Sec.3. iii.121). In the Renaissance, “the study of books…preceded the study of things,” and that is understandable, as “to read usefully, it was first necessary to read right” (II. Sec.3. iii.122). While it is true that “when these studies had been revived, still mankind remained, for a while at a greater distance from the proposed end, than they had ever been,” because books became the human mind’s sole object, “substituting the instrument in the place of the work”—he “who admires authors too much finds it difficult to surpass them, and all worship degenerates into superstition”—two men, Montaigne and Bacon, managed to rise above mere erudition and to look at the nature of things. These were the first enlightened minds—uninfluential until subsequent centuries, to be sure, but making a start. Meanwhile, even the pope who encouraged the renaissance of letters, Leo X, paid for his patronage by establishing “a commerce of indulgences”—the “last stage of despotism” at which “every soul revolted and grew sensible,” Chastellux notes with some irony, “that salvation had been rated at too dear a price” (II. Sec.3. iii.126). And in the political realm, the Hapsburgs and Bourbons fought treasury-draining wars. The French became convinced, “having paid excessive taxes,” that “the glory of the king their master was purchased at rather dear a price,” too, as did the English, who “also pulled down their fortune and their treasures” in fighting that king (II. Sec.3. iii.140).
“Peace, highly advantageous to the progress of reason, and philosophy, is particularly so, when appearing amongst a people already exhausted and satiated with war”; it is at that point “that all frivolous ideas are effaced” and pain channels minds away from “agreeable subjects” to “useful subjects” (II. Sec.3. iii.141). Indebted princes “permit [their subjects] to be happy, that they may be either more patient or more able to pay” those debts (II. Sec.3. iii.141). The “love of riches” had hitherto caused human calamities, spurring wars and intensifying the desire for luxury among the few, at the expense of the many, but now it became “the remedy for those calamities with which it had afflicted human nature” (II. Sec.3. iii.141). Such words as ‘feudal’ and ‘domanial’ fall into disfavor, “while the words, property, agriculture, commerce, liberty, supply the place of the barbarous vocabulary of the schools” as “scholar will become patriots” and philosophers will be citizens” (II. Sec.3. iii.142). With utilitarian, Enlightenment philosophy turning nature to the relief of man’s estate, as Bacon urges, “whoever shall have rendered himself useful, whether by his actions, his example, or his writings, shall find his name within the registers of beneficence”—as the useless honor bestowed upon clergy and warriors gives way to honor bestowed upon such philosophers as Descartes, “who found the laws of Dioptrics,” Newton, who found “the laws of Optics,” and Franklin, “another Prometheus,” whose discovery of how electricity might be harnessed has “placed mankind on an equality with the gods of antiquity” by “rendering the celestial fire docile to” man’s laws (II. Sec.3. iv.161-162).
Chastellux dislikes Aristotle while retaining something like Aristotelian moderation. He endorses the Enlightenment revolution in thought but opposes political revolution, precisely because it disturbs the orderly course of scientific reason. “The most fortunate circumstance which can happen in general to every people is to preserve their princes and their forms of government” (II. Sec.3. iii.138). Politically, this means a “rational” and “necessary” form of the balance of power in Europe, one in which weak states are secure from “any daring attack, any sudden and rapidly conducted invasion,” a security that can be obtained by a system of “defensive alliances, which will not suffer the strongest powers to attack the weakest powers, without being exposed to a long and doubtful war,” and adjustments to political borders in a way that enables a weak power, “when attacked” to “find time to have recourse to its allies” (II. Sec.3. iii.138). This arrangement, too, will divert some funds from commercial to military use, and the actual practice of balance-0f-power geopolitics continues to impede “the voice of reason” (II. Sec.3. iii.140).
All of this means that the sobriety induced by bloodshed and debt will not suffice, by itself, to further public happiness; nor will the progress of philosophy by itself do so. “I know that political misfortunes dispose the people to listen to the voice of reason; but this voice must be lifted up somewhere; it must possess powers of expression, and above all, it must be listened to with pleasure,” as “the human mind” becomes “more enlightened with regard to facts and more indifferent about opinions,” no longer sending men to war over the doctrine of transubstantiation” (II. Sec.3. iii.145-146). At the same time, a philosophy of “logomania,” of syllogism—those “quirks of Aristotle” (II. Sec.3. iii.149n.) criticized by Bacon—must be expunged in favor of modern science. And even that will not do.
“It was not sufficient that men had obtained a knowledge of the physical world,” an enterprise whereby “the human species found only half its food” (II. Sec.3. iv.162). “A vast field was opened…in the moral world” (II. Sec.3. iv.161), as “slavery always begins with opinion” (II. Sec.3. iv.167). Here is where the Reformation performed its service. The “Gospelers,” as Chastellux calls the Protestants, who initially lacked any institutional standing, had “recourse to natural law,” in the light of which they “attentively scrutinized the principles of the civil and ecclesiastical government” (II. Sec.3. iv.167). Themselves scrutinized by the people and condemned by the Catholic Church, they found it “necessary to preserve an austerity in their morals and severity in their tenets” (II. Sec. 3. iv.167). But “controversy, the dangerous flame of which frequently burns but always enlightens, submitted everything to discussion,” and “from this theological labor” an “unexpected fruit” emerged: “Philosophy arose slowly on the ruins of opinion,” now teaching “the people, their rights, the sovereigns their duty, and all, moderation” (II. Sec.3. iv.168). Modern moral and political philosophy recalls the wisdom of Solon, who undertook to give the Athenians not “the best laws which he could possibly have enacted but the best laws which they could have followed”; “let us,” we moderns, we men of the Enlightenment, “allow that the welfare of mankind is of all objects the most interesting, and that even the good may be too dearly bought” (II. Sec.3. iv.173).
After all, “what architect will ever advise the setting fire to Paris, that it may be afterwards rebuilt on a regular and magnificent plan?” (II. Sec.3. iv.174). (The answer would be Napoleon, and then Hitler—precisely the sort of men Chastellux seeks to prevent the Enlightenment from spawning.) While a lawgiver may impose “whatsoever laws he chooses” upon “an unpolished people,” “the business of reason, of philosophy, and of sound polity is rather to amend than to change the government,” rendering democracy “less licentious,” aristocracy “less haughty,” monarchy “less ambitious,” and despotism, if it “can still exist within enlightened nations,” “more mild, and, at the least, bend to reason” (II. Sec.3. iv.174). We see this already in the republican confederacies of Holland and Switzerland, and in some of the states within the Austrian Empire. These modern states enjoy more liberty than the freest of the ancient states, if partly because both households and farms in modern Europe feature no slavery, “a barbarous custom, which separated the human species into two classes, and which unworthily debased the most serviceable of all individuals” (II. Sec.3. v.210). The abolition of slavery, in addition to the advances of modern science in medicine and technology, accounts for the far greater populations of modern European states, and a burgeoning population indicates an augmentation of happiness among the people.
The prosperity of republics and the abolition of slavery in Europe follows a general pattern. “The greater number of those provinces which compose our modern monarchies”—the overwhelming majority of regimes at the time—enjoy “privileges, laws, and customs, which limit the sovereign authority” (II. Sec.3. iv.177). The same condition prevails in North America, where the constitutions of Locke, governing South Carolina, and William Penn, governing the state named for him, differ as far from the laws of Sparta as the way a farm is managed and the Benedictine Order—even given the substantial slave population of South Carolina. In England’s American colonies, “the leading principle of [the] moral system is equality” and “the leading principle of [the] political system is agriculture” (II. Sec.3. iv.179).
How to prove that modern liberty and enlightenment conduce to happiness? Chastellux posits agriculture and population as the main indicators of public happiness. Agriculture fosters industriousness and supports a larger population. He demonstrates (at some length) modern agriculture to be more productive than that of antiquity. The moral benefits of industry over idleness have already been shown. But is population increase beneficial? And does it result from wise and just legislation? After all it might be caused by material, not moral causes, by favorable climates and soils. Chastellux directs his readers’ attention to England. England supports a people whose agriculture steadily increases its production at a rate higher than the population growth; it must consume more per capita than nations that do not see such prosperity. “This, then, is the surest sign of the felicity of mankind” (II. Sec.3. vii.256). And yet, the English climate is far from favorable to agriculture and it, along with “their ancient manners and their frequent revolutions”—all conducing “to discontent and melancholy” (II. Sec.3. vii.264). Soils and climate are the physical causes of public happiness, methods of agricultural production, moeurs and political stability the non-physical causes, the ones that can be shaped by legislation. Sound laws conduce to civil peace in one sense; the make civil war less frequent. They do not prevent “oppositions, remonstrances, murmurs,” and these do not make a nation “miserable” (II. Sec.3. viii.273). They are rather signs of life and intelligence. “Behold a vain and stupid people, whose frivolousness blinds for a moment, but who, certainly, are running forwards to their own ruin. On the contrary if I perceived all minds in action; if I observed them scrutinizing whatsoever might be good or bad, useful or detrimental; if public welfare, although frequently misunderstood, was the object of all their inquiries; if their conversations, whether reasonable or splenetic, were often turned to legislation, agriculture, and commerce; if all these interesting questions were discussed; if all different opinions were advanced, debated, and refuted; I should say, Behold a people already exceedingly estimable, who begin to be happy, who deserve to be happy, and who, in the end, will be more happy.” (II. Sec.3. viii.275). Rome ascended with dissension; the civil peace under such tyrants as Nero and Domitian was “the calm of the grave” (II. Sec.3. viii.277).
On the opposite extreme from the calm of the grave is war. If the deadening peace under tyranny paralyzes minds in silence, war “intoxicates the mind with a thirst for transient glory and amuses the people with public rejoicing, which are always interrupted by the tears of individuals”; wars distract minds from “objects of real utility” (II. Sec.3. viii.278). Chastellux hopes that war will become “less obstinate and more uncommon,” thanks to Europe’s network of alliances and mutual defense treaties, which “have rendered Europe one vast republic, one immense confederacy” (II. Sec.3. viii.281). Armaments have become quite expensive, military knowledge has diffused equally among the nations, the powerful nations groan under debt and taxes. “National hatred” might still incite war, but “national hatred exists only amongst the mob” and modern peoples are preoccupied with commerce. Religious fanaticism? No: “such is the progress of reason, that, were a superstitious people still to exist, they would be governed by wise and enlightened princes; and were superstitious princes to exist, they would govern people too well instructed to second their folly” (II. Sec.3. viii.281-282). As for some barbarian conquest, where would the conquerors come from. The Ottoman Turks are in decline; “their empire will be portioned out and dismembered, so that from its vast ruins, free and happy states will arise” (II. Sec.3. viii.285).
If calamities return to Europe, they will not arise from “vulgar and barbaric prejudice” but from “some sound maxims newly established” (II. Sec.3. viii.286). The “generally acknowledged utility of a very extensive commerce” is one such sound maxim, but it might be pursued by the wrong means, as for example through imperial wars, the most recent of which had cost France most of her North American colonies. (II. Sec.3. viii.286). Prosperity cannot issue from “a rage for planting stakes in the snow” (II. Sec.3. viii.286). Empire aims at “exclusive commerce,” monopoly instead of free trade; “all traffic not founded on a free exchange of commodities is not commerce, but a tribute” (II. Sec.3. viii.287). And every such extensive rule “must fall, sooner or later, and involve commerce in its ruin” (II. Sec.3. viii.287). Even now, the Americans are moving “towards independence,” although Chastellux judges that a “civil war” for independence will likely be avoided, that “a contentious peace,” not “a decisive war” between England and the colonies seems more likely (II. Sec.3. viii.295).
Chastellux bases his optimism regarding a lasting peace in Europe not upon the goodwill of princes but the exigencies of finance. Princes may be “the arbiters of mankind” but they are also “the slaves of nature and the times” (II. Sec.3. ix.312). “The wants of the exchequer are the truest tutors of kings” (II. Sec.3. ix.307). National indebtedness has occurred because the wealthy classes in Europe can afford to pay for wars but do not want to, while the people may sometimes want to go to war but cannot afford to pay for it. Since (as Locke argues) all riches and all property derive from labor, and since “the real inequality of fortune lies between those who labor and those who make others labor,” the rich “purchas[e] the labor of the people in competition with the state,” their rival when it comes to obtaining labor (II. Sec.3. ix.319, 322). Such competition strips the land of its cultivators and strips the cultivators of the artisans who supply them with tools. “Thus, nations have been crushed because the burden which should have been divided between all has been borne only by those classes of citizens the most useful to the state,” those who work for a living (II. Sec.3. ix.322). To avoid this, states fighting wars borrow money, spreading out the necessary financial exactions. Hence debt, which effectively gambles property you own in the hope of acquiring more property by war, no matter what your political regime is. Statesmen who contemplate war with the intent of augmenting the public happiness should ask themselves: Are the people in need of an immediate alleviation of suffering, as when a foreign state attacks? and Does the money needed to win the war cost more than the benefits the state is likely to receive from it? National debt in itself isn’t the problem; “excessive expenses” are (II. Sec.3. ix.253). Given that “all labor,” the source of wealth, “represents subsistence for one part of the citizens,” the laborers, and “enjoyments for the other part,” those who hire labor, “every disposition which attacks this commerce makes a direct attack on the welfare of nations”; this places all public expense, whether for fighting wars or improving the conditions of peace, in a “predicament” best solved, to the extent it can be solved, by keeping state expenses as low as possible—that is, as low as is consistent with the public welfare (II. Sec.3. ix.355).
Whom to target for budget cuts? “No saving could be truly advantageous to the state, except the saving which diminishes the number of useless men maintained at the expense of productive and industrious men” (II. Sec.3. ix.363). Soldiers can be very far from useless, but priests are another story, being “idle, useless” men who have “renounced the world” and bring “no children on the state,” and do not defend the state from its enemies (II. Sec.3. ix.363). Chastellux’s Enlightenment allies are mistaken to attack religion with ridicule. “It is not irreligion but sound policy that shall throw open the cloisters,” policies that will end public subsidies to clergy, inducing most of them to start working for a living, leaving the few dedicated priests, “true ministers of morality and virtue,” to “receive that respect to which they are entitled” (II. Sec.3. ix.365).
Chastellux concludes his book by answering what he describes as a frequent, important but “extremely dangerous” criticism of the Enlightenment project: “In what will it all end? Will not man be constantly the same?” (II. Sec.3. Conclusion 366). He answers by observing that human beings can exercise decisive influence over their way of life, as legislation and morals “render men either more, or less happy,” as Montesquieu and Helvétius have shown (II. Sec.3. Conclusion 366). Thanks to that, “great progress” has already occurred, as Chastellux has undertaken to prove; the public happiness of the moderns far exceeds that of the ancients (II. Sec.3 Conclusion 366).
For this progress to continue, men must be further enlightened. Education is the indispensable precursor of sound legislation. What has “established so great a difference between man and man, between nation and nation” is “error”—whether political, philosophic or religious. Chastellux”s book amounts to a compendium of such errors, despotism and religious intolerance being first among them. The discovery of the Americas impeded progress by giving “baits to the ambition of maritime nations,” thereby prolonging despotic rule (II. Sec.3. Conclusion 373). And although Christianity succeeded in “diffus[ing] among mankind a uniform and general system of morality,” that morality “soon disappeared under its multiplied dogmata, and this morality itself was never extended to all the different relations of man, in his social capacity”—that is, Christian morality remained centered on relations among individuals, love of God and love of neighbor (II. Sec.3. Conclusion 373). But now, the intellectual and moral landscape has been cleared, as the ideas and moeurs of the philosophes permeate Europe and begin to permeate the rest of the world, thanks especially to commerce, which works toward “encompas[sing] all those parts of the world which are still barbarous, still too far removed from perfection, in order that sensible minds may be induced to desire a longer life”; “assimilate mankind, therefore, and you make them friends,” “affiliate them by their opinions” (II. Sec.3. Conclusion 375). “Philosophers! Preachers! Moralists! rather employ your talents in forming a people of honest men, than a small number of heroes” (II. Sec.3 Conclusion 375).
The failure of the Enlightenment project to eliminate war and tyranny, despite its efforts to establish free commerce among peoples, to turn the “logomania” and “logomachia” of ancient philosophy to experimental science for utilitarian purposes, and its vast expansion, effectively the universalization of education, has not gone unremarked. The attempt to take morality out of the alleged clouds and bring it down to the low but solid ground of individual self-interest has indeed weakened the religions, but it has not ridded human souls of fanaticism. Less noticed, perhaps, is the intellectual counterpart of that low but solid ground. Plato understood philosophy as an enterprise for the very few, and not because he was an ‘aristocrat.’ Philosophy inquires into the settled customs and beliefs of any regime in which it arises; if brought to the attention of the citizens in a careless way, it will be misunderstood and misapplied, as Plato’s Letters demonstrates. To Enlightenment men, even to such a moderate as Chastellux, all manner of men deserve the title, ‘philosopher.’ Frederick the Great, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson—all of them ‘philosophers.’ Political men are invited to assume philosophic pretensions. This has not gone well.
Note
- Chastellux acerbically remarks that “it was not recollected that [Jews] had crucified the Son of God until God had permitted them to become rich” (II. Sec.3. ii.86).
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