Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

In Principles of Politics, first published in 1815, Constant explores the subjects of law, sovereignty, and representation; power and accountability; government, property, and taxation; wealth and poverty; war, peace, and the maintenance of public order; and freedom, of the individual, of the press, and of religion.

Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), born in Switzerland, became one of France’s leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician.

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was a French-Swiss po-litical writer and novelist. He combined a lively political career with a fertile literary output, while entertaining a series of liaisons with some of Frances most prominent women. Constant was an able parliamentarian, a cham-pion of liberalism and the author of The History of Reli-gion. Posterity, however, remembers him as the man who bared the anatomy of a destructive passion in the story of Adolphe (1816).