With Mark Weinburg’s kind permission, I have posted on the Molinari site his hard-to-find 1977-78 translation of Augustin Thierry’s 1818 review of Destutt de Tracy’s 1806 commentary on Montesquieu’s 1748 Spirit of the Laws.
Tracy was a philosopher and free-market economist, and a friend of Thomas Jefferson (who translated and published several of Tracy’s writings, including the one Thierry is discussing here). Thierry, primarily a historian, was one of the radical liberal triumvirate who (along with Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer) developed an important version of liberal class theory in their journal Le Censeur Européen; Karl Marx would later refer to Thierry as “the father of the ‘class struggle’ in French historiography.” Montesquieu was a massively influential social and legal theorist, broadly liberal but not quite radical enough for Tracy and Thierry. Like many of Thierry’s book reviews, this one is in large part a springboard for Thierry to talk (particularly in the second half – which Weinburg makes the first half) about his own developing views in ways that don’t necessarily have all that much to do with either Tracy or Montesquieu.
This piece is especially famous for Thierry’s inspiring (but, in the event, unduly optimistic) prediction of what the coming century would bring:
“Federations will replace states. The despotism of men and of the law will be replaced by the loose but indissoluble bonds of interest. The inclination towards government, the first passion of the human race, will yield to the free community, the real need of civilized men. The era of empires has ended. The era of association is beginning.”
I am working on my own translation of Thierry’s article (as part of an exciting larger project about which you will learn more later), but in the meantime, enjoy!
Policy of Truth 