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JEAN-LOUIS DELOLME AND THE POLITICAL SCIENCE OF THE ENGLISH EMPIRE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2012

IAIN McDANIEL
IAIN McDANIEL*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Department of History, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT[email protected]
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Abstract

This article aims to extend our understanding of eighteenth-century political science through a re-examination of the writings of Jean-Louis Delolme (1741–1806). Beginning with an account of Delolme's conception of a modern ‘science of politics’, the article demonstrates that Delolme's ambition to rest the study of politics on scientific foundations developed in the context of an evolving concern with the stability and durability of the English ‘empire’. Underlining Delolme's critique of traditional republican political science as well as the comparative science of politics set out in Montesquieu's The spirit of the laws, the article thus sheds light on the connection between eighteenth-century conceptions of political science and eighteenth-century analyses of the English constitution and the British state. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the resonance of Delolme's central ideas in late eighteenth-century debates, in Britain, America, and France, about the character and properties of the modern constitutional republic.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 21 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

This article forms part of my research for the project ‘Die Wissenschaft des Politischen um 1800’, an Excellenzinitiativ project at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. I would like to thank Eckhart Hellmuth for his support in Munich, as well as Annette Meyer and Martin Schmidt for stimulating discussions of the project. I would also like to thank the journal's two anonymous referees for prompting me to clarify and sharpen some points, Michael Sonenscher and Nicholas Phillipson for much helpful information and advice over the years, and Istvan Hont for his ongoing support, encouragement, and guidance.

References

1 Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The federalist, with letters of ‘Brutus’, ed. Terence Ball (Cambridge, 2003), No. 9, p. 36.

2 On social science see Baker, K. M., ‘The early history of the term “social science”’, Annals of Science, 20 (1964), pp. 211–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Robert Wokler, ‘Ideology and the origins of social science’, in Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, eds., The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century political thought (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 588–709. See the argument for grounding the moral and political sciences in the natural sciences in the Marquis de Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain, ed. O. H. Prior (Paris, 1933), pp. 191–2, as quoted in Ruth Scurr, ‘Inequality and political stability from ancien régime to revolution: the reception of Smith's, AdamTheory of moral sentiments in France’, History of European Ideas, 35 (2009), pp. 441–9Google Scholar.

3 For the eighteenth-century understanding of Montesquieu as a contributor to the ‘science of politics’, see Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The federalist, No. 47, p. 235; see also Carrithers, David W., Mosher, Michael A., and Rahe, Paul A., eds., Montesquieu's science of politics: essays on The spirit of the laws (Lanham, MD, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 Adair, Douglass, ‘“That politics may be reduced to a science”: David Hume, James Madison, and the tenth Federalist’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 20 (1957), pp. 343–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 On the science of man in Scotland see, most recently, Phillipson, Nicholas, Adam Smith: an enlightened life (New Haven, CT, 2010)Google Scholar.

6 See e.g. de Warville, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, The life of J. P. Brissot, deputy from Eure and Loire, to the National Convention (London, 1794), pp. 31–3Google Scholar; d'Ivernois, Francis, Des révolutions de France et de Genève (London, 1795), pp. 406–7Google Scholar; Joseph de Maistre, Against Rousseau: ‘On the state of nature’ and ‘On the sovereignty of the people’, ed. Richard Lebrun (Montreal, 1996), p. xii.

7 Ruff, Edith, Jean-Louis de Lolme und sein Werk über die Verfassung Englands (Berlin, 1934)Google Scholar; Machelon, Jean-Pierre, Les idées politiques de Jean-Louis de Lolme (1741–1806) (Paris, 1969)Google Scholar; Francis, Mark and Morrow, John, ‘After the ancient constitution: political theory and English constitutional writings, 1765–1832’, History of Political Thought, 9 (1988), pp. 283–302Google Scholar; Spitz, Jean-Fabien, ‘Jean-Louis de Lolme et l'impossible garantie des droits de l'individu dans les gouvernements républicains’, Revue Montesquieu, 4 (2000), pp. 89–114Google Scholar; David Lieberman, ‘Introduction’, in Jean-Louis Delolme, The constitution of England, ed. David Lieberman (Indianapolis, IN, 2006), pp. ix–xxi; David Lieberman, ‘The mixed constitution and the common law’, in Goldie and Wokler, eds., The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century political thought, pp. 317–46, at pp. 336–40; Wootton, David, ed., The essential Federalist and anti-Federalist papers (Indianapolis, IN, 2003), pp. xxxiii–xxxivGoogle Scholar. I owe a general debt to the argument set out in David Wootton, ‘Liberty, metaphor, and mechanism: “checks and balances” and the origins of modern constitutionalism’, in David Womersley, ed., Liberty and American experience in the eighteenth century (Indianapolis, IN, 2006), pp. 209–74, although my interpretation of Delolme differs from Wootton's in emphasis, substance, and detail.

8 Criticisms of Delolme were presented in Stevens, John, Observations on government, including some animadversions on Mr Adams's defence of the constitutions of government of the United States of America: and on Mr De Lolme's Constitution of England (New York, 1787)Google Scholar. See n. 96 below.

9 Jean-Louis Delolme, The constitution of England, ed. David Lieberman (Indianapolis, IN, 2007), pp. 20–1. Unless otherwise stated, all subsequent references are to this edition (hereafter: Delolme, Constitution). I indicate changes Delolme made to successive editions in the main body of the article.

10 Ibid., p. 304.

11 According to the review of the work in the Monthly Review, Delolme was ‘far too sanguine in his expectations of the stability and durableness of the English constitution’. Monthly Review, 53 (Dec. 1775), p. 465.

12 On the different versions of this text, see n. 75 below.

13 Delolme, Jean-Louis, Parallel between the English constitution and the former government of Sweden; containing some observations on the late revolution in that kingdom; and an examination of the causes that secure us against both aristocracy, and absolute monarchy (London, 1772)Google Scholar.

14 A great deal of Delolme's writing suggests detailed engagement with the political theory of The second discourse and The social contract. A more detailed study than is possible here, however, would also stress overlap between Delolme and Rousseau: for example, Delolme's ideas of representation, and his distinction between government and sovereignty, are reminiscent of ideas set out in The social contract. Here, the Genevan context is significant: Delolme claimed that Geneva was the republic ‘in which I formed my principles’. For the Genevan context of Rousseau's own writings, see Rosenblatt, Helena, Rousseau and Geneva (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bernardi, Bruno, Guénard, Florent, and Silvestrini, Gabriella, eds., Religion, liberté, justice sur les Lettres écrites de la montagne de J.-J. Rousseau (Paris, 2005)Google Scholar; Whatmore, Richard, ‘Rousseau and the représentants: the politics of the Lettres écrites de la montagne’, Modern Intellectual History, 3 (2006), pp. 385–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Silvestrini, Gabriella, ‘Le républicanisme de Rousseau mis en contexte: le cas de Genève’, Les Études Philosophiques, 83 (2007), pp. 519–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 E.g. David Lieberman, ‘Introduction’, in Delolme, Constitution, pp. xiv–xv.

16 For Montesquieu's anxieties about Britain, see Sonenscher, Michael, Before the deluge: public debt, inequality, and the intellectual origins of the French revolution (Princeton, NJ, 2007), pp. 41–52Google Scholar.

17 For Delolme's early admiration for Rousseau, and the democratic content of his early Genevan writings, see Machelon, Les idées politiques, pp. 23–5.

18 Delolme, Constitution, p. 259.

19 The striking term ‘metapolitics’ was a neologism, coined by Delolme for the 1784 edition. Delolme, Constitution, p. 275n. The parallel German term Metapolitik, conceived as a foundational science of mankind, was first used regularly in Germany slightly later (in the late 1780s and early 1790s); see e.g. Schaumann, Johann Christian Gottlieb, Wissenschaftliches Naturrecht (Halle, 1792), pp. 314–16Google Scholar, Schlözer, August Ludwig, Allgemeines Statsrecht und Statsverfassungslere (Göttingen, 1793), pp. 29–78Google Scholar.

20 Delolme, Constitution, p. 259.

21 Ibid., p. 14.

22 Delolme's idea of a ‘history of man’ featured in his remarkable – and extremely funny – History of the flagellants, or the advantages of discipline; being a paraphrase and commentary on the Historia flagellantium of the abbé Boileau (2nd edn, London, 1777), p. 292.

23 Delolme, Constitution, p. 21.

24 Ibid., p. 275.

25 Ibid., pp. 317–18n.

26 Ibid., p. 20. On Delolme's mechanical metaphors, see Wootton, ‘Liberty, metaphor, and mechanism’, and, more broadly, see Mayr, Otto, Authority, liberty, and automatic machinery in early modern Europe (Baltimore, MD, 1986)Google Scholar.

27 Delolme, Constitution, p. 15n.

28 Ibid., p. 9.

29 Ibid., p. 20.

30 Delolme, Parallel, p. 13. For the terminology of ‘real power’ in the Parallel, see pp. 11, 13, 17–18, 35n.

31 The distinction between active and passive powers was commonplace in eighteenth-century psychology and natural philosophy. In psychology, the distinction is associated with Locke; see the critique of Locke's distinction in Reid, Thomas, Essays on the active powers of man (Edinburgh, 1788), pp. 23–4Google Scholar. In natural philosophy, one of the main examples of a truly ‘active’ power was that of gravity (especially the sun's gravity), an independent force that exerted its ‘active power’ upon the other bodies in the solar system. See also the references to active powers in the debate on the ‘laws of motion’ between by Henry Home, Lord Kames, and John Stewart, in (Philosophical Society of Edinburgh), Essays and observations, physical and literary (Edinburgh, 1754), pp. 1–140.

32 Delolme, Constitution, p. 218. On ‘virtual’ power, see Parallel, p. 18n.

33 Delolme, Constitution, p. 139.

34 Ibid., p. 218.

35 Delolme, Parallel, p. 51; Delolme, Constitution, pp. 275–6.

36 Delolme, Jean-Louis, The constitution of England (London, 1775), p. 423Google Scholar. The passage is revised in editions after 1781; see Delolme, Constitution, pp. 312–13.

37 Delolme, Constitution, p. 342.

38 For a near-contemporary assessment of the revolution in these terms (although it was published after Delolme's work) see Sheridan, Charles Francis, A history of the late revolution in Sweden: containing an account of the transactions of the last three Diets of that country; preceded by a short abstract of the Swedish history (London, 1778), esp. pp. 1–31Google Scholar.

39 Delolme, Parallel, pp. 1–11.

40 Ibid., p. 19.

41 Ibid., pp. 22–3.

42 James Harrington, ‘The preliminaries, showing the principles of government’, in James Harrington, The commonwealth of Oceana and A system of politics, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 33–4. Harrington's own work was indebted to natural philosophy, especially the anatomical and physiological work of William Harvey; on Harrington's ‘political anatomy’ see Cohen, I. Bernard, ‘Harrington and Harvey: a theory of the state based on the new physiology’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 55 (1994), pp. 187–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Delolme, Parallel, p. 56.

44 David Hume, ‘Idea of a perfect commonwealth’, in David Hume, Political essays, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 221–33. For contextualization, see Levy, Jacob T., ‘Beyond Publius: Montesquieu, liberal republicanism and the small-republic thesis’, History of Political Thought, 27 (2006), pp. 50–90Google Scholar; Will R. Jordan and Scott Yenor, ‘Federalism and David Hume's perfect commonwealth’, in Ann Ward and Lee Ward, eds., The Ashgate research companion to federalism (Farnham, 2009), pp. 121–35.

45 Delolme, Parallel, pp. 60–1n.

46 Delolme, Constitution, pp. 167–9.

47 Ibid., p. 238.

48 Ibid., p. 200n.

49 Ibid., p. 200n.

50 Ibid., p. 170.

51 Ibid., p. 167.

52 Ibid., p. 174.

53 For the redefinitions of liberty, see e.g. ibid., pp. 32, 122, and Delolme, Parallel, pp. 49–50.

54 Delolme, Constitution, p. 169.

55 For the passages criticizing Montesquieu see ibid., pp. 304–5, 317–18n.

56 Ibid., p. 28.

57 Delolme claimed that England was ‘in reality a more Democratic State than any other we are acquainted with’. Ibid., p. 280n.

58 Delolme, Parallel, p. 52 n. 54. The relevant passage from Virgil (Georgics, 4.212–13) is: ‘rege incolumi mens omnibus una est; amisso rupere fidem, constructaque mella diripuere ipsae et cratis solvere favorum’ (‘While he [the king] is safe, all are of one mind; when he is lost, straightway they break their fealty, and themselves pull down the honey they have reared and tear up their trellised combs’). The passage was widely cited in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century discussions of monarchy and in discussions of the nature of human sociability vis-à-vis the animal sociability of bees. For two prominent citations, see Samuel Pufendorf, Of the law of nature and nations, ed. Jean Barbeyrac, trans. William Percivale (London, 1710), p. 509, and John, Henry St, Lord Bolingbroke, Philosophical works (5 vols., London, 1754), iv, pp. 54–5Google Scholar. The English translation is from Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA, 1965).

59 Delolme, Parallel, p. 35n.

60 Ibid., pp. 54–5.

61 Ibid., p. 39.

62 Ibid., pp. 25–6.

63 Delolme, Constitution, p. 195.

64 Ibid., pp. 139, 322.

65 According to Delolme, representatives were like political barometers; those ‘delicate instruments which discover the operations of Nature, while they are yet imperceptible to our senses they will warn the People of those things which of themselves they never see but when it is too late’. See ibid., pp. 177, 185, and Delolme, ed., The constitutions of the several independent states of America (London, 1782), p. vii.

66 For the image of the ‘ship of state’, see e.g. Delolme, Constitution, pp. 65, 303.

67 Ibid., p. 291n.

68 Ibid., p. 303.

69 Ibid., pp. 288–303 (and citations at pp. 75, 295, 298, 303).

70 Ibid., pp. 284–5.

71 Ibid., p. 342.

72 Ibid., p. 305.

73 Ibid., p. 15.

74 Delolme, ed., The constitutions of the several independent states, pp. v–viii. In the brief ‘Editor's Advertisement’ to this volume, Delolme discussed the balance between executive and legislative power in various American states and the consolidation of the United States as ‘one common Republic’ or ‘collective North-American Commonwealth’.

75 The second and third parts of the work – which have not been located – were to deal with the ‘Changes which have, since the Year 1780, been effected in the Constitution of Ireland – and of the Influence these Changes may have on the Government and Constitution of Great Britain’. See Delolme, Jean-Louis, The British empire in Europe: part the first, containing an account of the connection between the kingdoms of England and Ireland, previous to the year 1780. To which is prefixed, an historical sketch of the state of rivalry between the kingdoms of England and Scotland, in former times (Dublin, 1787)Google Scholar. The same text, with some modifications, was published as Delolme, Jean-Louis, An essay containing a few strictures on the union of Scotland with England; and on the present situation of Ireland (London, 1787)Google Scholar. This version was also bound with editions of Defoe, Daniel, The history of the union between England and Scotland, by Daniel Defoe: with an appendix of original papers. To which is now added a life of the celebrated author (London, 1786)Google Scholar.

76 Delolme, Constitution, p. 10.

77 This passage only appears in the second edition of The constitution of England; see Delolme, Jean-Louis, The constitution of England, or an account of the English government, in which it is compared with the republican form of government, and occasionally with the other monarchies in Europe (2 vols., London, 1778), i, p. 32Google Scholarn.

78 Gould, Eliga H., The persistence of empire: British political culture in the age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000), p. 134Google Scholar. See also J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Empire, state and confederation: the War of American Independence as a crisis in multiple monarchy’, in John Robertson, ed., A union for empire: political thought and the British Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 318–48; LaCroix, Alison, The ideological origins of American federalism (Cambridge, MA, 2010), pp. 105–31Google Scholar.

79 Delolme, Constitution, p. 329.

80 Ibid., pp. 332–3.

81 For the context see Semmel, Bernard, ‘The Hume–Tucker debate and Pitt's trade proposals’, Economic Journal, 75 (1965), pp. 759–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelly, Paul ‘British and Irish politics in 1785’, English Historical Review, 90 (1975), pp. 536–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schweitzer, D. R., ‘The failure of William Pitt's Irish trade propositions 1785’, Parliamentary History, 3 (1984), pp. 129–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Delolme, British empire in Europe, pp. 20–3.

83 Ibid., p. 31.

84 Ibid., p. 31.

85 Ibid., p. 30.

86 Ibid., pp. 73, 86. See Molyneux, William, The case of Ireland being bound by acts of parliament in England, stated (Dublin, 1698)Google Scholar.

87 Delolme, British empire in Europe, p. 112. For the political economy of the debate, see Istvan Hont, ‘The “rich country-poor country” debate revisited: the Irish origins and French reception of the Hume paradox’, in Carl Wennerlind and Margaret Schabas, eds., David Hume's political economy (London, 2008), pp. 244–323.

88 Delolme, British empire in Europe, p. 125.

89 Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, eds. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (2 vols., Oxford, 1979), ii, p. 944.

90 Delolme referred to the dangers that England would have faced, had Bartholemew Columbus successfully persuaded Henry VII to fund an English expedition to Mexico and Peru; see Delolme, Constitution, p. 313.

91 Ibid., p. 16.

92 Anon., An essay on constitutional liberty: wherein the necessity of frequent elections of parliament is shewn to be superseded by the unity of executive power (London, 1780)Google Scholar.

93 Gillies, John, Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, comprising his practical philosophy, translated from the Greek; illustrated by introductions and notes; the critical history of his life; and a new analysis of his speculative works (2 vols., London, 1797), ii, pp. 61–3Google Scholar, 393, Beattie, James, Elements of moral science (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1790–3), ii, pp. 372–4Google Scholar, 419.

94 de Lolme, Jean-Louis, Die Verfassung von England, dargestellt und mit der republicanischen Form und mit andern europäischen Monarchieen verglichen, mit einer Vorrede begleitet von F. C. Dahlmann (Altona, 1819), p. xiiGoogle Scholar. ‘Am wenigsten mußte er denen einleuchten, welche, erhitzt von dem amerikanischen Umschwunge, in der Form der Monarchie überhaupt nur Veraltung sahen; denn sein Trachten eben war, den Freystaat im Königthume darzustellen und den Wahn zu entfernen, als gehe der Freyheit Foderung auf die möglichste Verringerung der königlichen Macht.’

95 See Mounier, Jean-Joseph, Considérations sur les gouvernements, et principalement sur celui qui convient a la France (Versailles, 1789)Google Scholar, and de Calonne, Charles-Alexandre, Considerations on the present and future state of France (London, 1791), p. 190nGoogle Scholar. According to Calonne, Delolme provided support for the claim that the ‘representatives of the people would soon become their tyrants, if the King should not possess the power of a persevering and absolute refusal of his sanction’. On Mounier's admiration for Delolme, see Sonenscher, Michael, Sans-culottes: an eighteenth-century emblem in the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 2008), pp. 298–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 For Condorcet's critique of Delolme, see the extensive ‘Notes’ (written by Condorcet, Fillipo Mazzei, and Pierre Samuel du Pont) attached to Stevens, John, Examen du gouvernement d'Angleterre (London, 1789)Google Scholar. On this publication, see Appleby, Joyce, ‘The Jefferson–Adams rupture and the first French translation of John Adams’ Defence’, American Historical Review, 73 (1968), pp. 1084–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Hamilton cited Delolme's work in Federalist, No. 70, in which Hamilton argued for the compatibility between republican government and a ‘vigorous executive’. See Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The federalist, No. 70, p. 347. On Hamilton's appropriation of Delolme, see Scheuerman, William E., ‘American kingship? Monarchical origins of modern presidentialism’, Polity, 37 (2005), pp. 24–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.