An Outline of the History of Libertarian Thought, Part II: From the Radical Whigs to the German Enlightenment

IV. The Radical Whigs and the American Revolution

Key Introductory Readings

David L. Jacobson (ed.), The English Libertarian Heritage: From the Writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). Introduction.

Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Harvard University Press, 1967). Especially Part II, “Sources and Tradition” and Part III, “Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics.”

Cecilia Kenyon (ed.), The Anti-Federalists (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). The Introduction.

The two most widely-read polemical Radical Whig authors were Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard. By means of their anti-clerical and anti-military essays, known collectively as The Independent Whig and Cato’s Letters (written between 1720–23), they kept alive the Radical Whig traditions of natural rights, suspicion of the ever-encroaching nature of State power, and justified rebellion. Gordon and Trenchard were able to transmit these revolutionary ideas in popular form to the American colonies. One must savor the strong defense of liberty made by Trenchard and Gordon in the original; the complete Letters have been reprinted by Da Capo Press as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters: Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, 2 vols. (N.Y., 1971). A useful selection from both the Independent Whig and Cato’s Letters, and a good introduction to their ideas, is found in The English Libertarian Heritage: From the Writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, ed. David L. Jacobson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). On Trenchard’s opposition to standing armies see Lois G. Schwoerer, “No Standing Armies!”: The Antiarmy Ideology in 17th Century England (John Hopkins University Press, 1974). Also see Caroline Robbins, The 18th Century Commonwealthman (New York: Athenaeum, 1968), pp. 115–125.

Thomas Hollis was an important connecting link between the English Commonwealthman tradition and the American Revolution. Hollis distributed libertarian tracts in both England and America and subsidized the publication of American revolutionary pamphlets, as well as reprinting the classics of the 17th century Commonwealthman tradition (such as Sidney and Locke). He was instrumental in supplying radical republican and libertarian literature to libraries in France, Switzerland, Italy, and to Harvard University. Caroline Robbins has written on “The Strenuous- “Whig: Thomas Hollis of Lincoln’s Inn,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, no. 7 (1950), pp. 407–53. See also Colin C. Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977).

The radical libertarian nature of the American revolutionaries has only been recently acknowledged by historians. The pathbreaking work showing the connection between 17th-century English commonwealthmen and the American Revolution is Bernard Bailyn’s collection of revolutionary pamphlets. Drawing upon Caroline Robbins’ work, his “General Introduction” to the Pamphlets of the American Revolution 1750–1776, vol. 1: 1750–1765, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Jane N. Garrett: (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1965) shows the “transforming libertarian radicalism” of the American Revolution in the writings of such revolutionary leaders as Jonathan Mayhew, Thomas Fitch, James Otis, Oxenbridge Thacher, Daniel Dulany and John Dickinson. An expanded version of the Introduction was published as The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1967) and in summary form Bailyn’s thesis can be found in his “The Central Themes of the American Revolution: An Interpretation,” in S. Kurtz and J. Hudson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973).

The ideological war against the British empire and the monarchy was continued by the radicals Thomas Paine and Richard Price. Paine is best remembered for his popular tract, Common Sense (1776), which attacked monarchical government and urged an immediate declaration of independence from the crown and the formation of a Republic, as well as for his passionate defense of the French Revolution, Rights of Man (1791, 1792). The dissenting clergyman, Richard Price, a self-styled “Honest Whig,” defended natural rights, justice, and the right of a people to rebel against oppression, in his Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty . . . and the Justice of the War in America, also published in 1776. Paine’s rousing pamphlets can be found in the sometimes inaccurate edition of Philip S. Foner, Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1974). The two best biographies are these by Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959) and David Freeman Hawke, Paine (N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1974). Eric Foner’s Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1976) and C. C. Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977) are also useful studies. For a very useful critical survey of the literature on Paine see A. O. Aldridge’s “Thomas Paine: A Survey of Research and Criticism since 1945,” The British Studies Monitor 5, 1975, pp. 3–29. Selections from Price’s works can be found in B. Peach (ed.), Richard Price and the Ethical Foundations of the American Revolution (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1980). See also Carl B. Cone, Torchbearer of Freedom: The Influence of Richard Price on 18th Century Thought (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, KY, 1952) and D. O. Thomas, The Honest Mind: The Thought and Work of Richard Price (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).

The so-called Anti-Federalists (really “True Republicans” or radical Jeffersonian democrats) fought against the creation of a strong national government, as embodied in the Constitution. Men such as Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, and John Taylor opposed the ratification of the Constitution which created a Federal government with the powers to impose taxes at will and to create a standing army (which would consume taxes and could be used to create a new tyranny). It also provided a financial apparatus capable of dispensing privilege (thus creating a new aristocracy), and granted the office of the president such power that the office-holder could in effect, become a monarch. Although the Anti-Federalists lost the battle of Constitutional ratification to the Federalists, they were successful in creating the Bill of Rights (their attempt to undo the gains of the nationalists and to protect the rights of the individual against the inevitable encroachment by the State). The best collection of Anti-Federalist tracts is found in Cecilia Kenyon, The Anti-Federalists (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966).

Kenyon’s “Introduction” is useful, along with her “Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government,” William and Mary Quarterly, Vol 12 (1955), pp. 3–43. (Her use of the label “Men of Little Faith” refers to the typically libertarian, Commonwealthman lack of faith in the ability of a constitution to contain State power.) See also the collection by John D. Lewis, Anti-Federalists versus Federalists: Selected Documents (San Francisco: Chandler Publ. Co., 1962). For a sympathetic neo-Beardian analysis see Jackson Turner Main, The Anti-Federalist: Critics of the Constitution 1781–1788 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), and Robert A. Rutland’s The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Anti-Federalists and the Ratification Struggle (University of Oklahoma Press, 1966). On the Bill of Rights as the legacy of the Anti-Federalists, see Herbert J. Storing, What the Federalists Were For: The Political Thought of the Opponents of the Constitution (University of Chicago Press, 1981). (Storing’s definitive seven-volume edition of The Complete Anti-Federalist has recently been published by the University of Chicago Press.)

One of the most uncompromising and radical Anti-Federalists was John Taylor, whose Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (1814), ed. Loren Baritz (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969) offers penetrating insights into the misuse of government power inevitable under the Constitution. His comment on the role of the State in creating a privileged class via national banking and funding are particularly acute and prophetic. John Taylor and George Mason were among the Radical Republicans (including John Breckenridge, Richard Henry Lee, Nathanien Macon, George Logan, and John Randolph of Roanoke) who opposed Jefferson’s movement away from the radical Whig position. On John Taylor see Robert E. Shalhope, John Taylor of Caroline, Pastoral Republican (University of South Carolina Press, 1980).

The radical views of George Mason can best be enjoyed by reading his papers, edited by Robert A. Rutland, The Papers of George Mason 1725–1792 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970). On his life, see Rutland’s George Mason: Reluctant Statesman (Williamsburg, Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg, 1961).

Finally, on the Radical Republicans, one should consult the uneven but often brilliant work by Charles A. Beard on a slightly later period, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1965), especially Chapter XII, “The Politics of Agrarianism.”

On the American Revolution in general see the extensive bibliographies compiled by Murray N. Rothbard in his Conceived in Liberty, 4 vols. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 195), and his “Modern Historians Confront the American Revolution,” Literature of Liberty, vol. 1, no. 1 (1978), pp. 16–41.

V. The French Enlightenment

Key Introductory Readings

Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 2, the Science of Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1977). Chapter 7, “The Science of Society,” pp. 319–96, for a discussion of the philosophes’ insights into sociology and the humane sciences; Chapter 8, “The Politics of Decency,” pp. 397–447, on the powerful sense of natural right and justice of so many enlightenment thinkers.

Keith Michael Baker (ed.), Condorcet: Selected Writings, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978). Baker’s introduction is a good guide to Condorcet’s thought and his historical setting.

Eli Heckscher, “Mercantilism,” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1933), vol. 10, pp. 333–39. A short statement of Heckscher’s classic views on the mercantilist system.

If the 17th century witnessed the failure of the liberal Leveller revolution, then the 18th century can be said to embody its partial victory in the form of the American Revolution, and the Radical Enlightenment in France, England, Scotland, and Germany.

Across the Atlantic, the Enlightenment’s influence in America is sympathetically traced by Henry F. May in The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), especially in the section “the Revolutionary Enlightenment 1776–1800.” Peter Gay, in his excellent two-volume history of Enlightenment thought, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, volume one: The Rise of Modern Paganism; volume two: The Science of Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1977), has called the Enlightenment “the revolution of reason.” Central to his interpretation is the vital connection between the rise of critical intelligence and reason on the one hand, and the autonomy and liberty of the individual on the other. Gay even goes as far as to claim, with some justification, that the idea of the free market and laissez faire was basic to Enlightenment thought; that Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) should be considered the “cardinal document of the Enlightenment.” A useful essay on Gay’s view of the Enlightenment is Chris Tame’s “The Revolution of Reason: Peter Gay, the Enlightenment, and the Ambiguities of Classical Liberalism,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, (1977), pp. 217–27.

On the continent of Europe, the Enlightenment had a profound influence in France. In the thought of the Physiocrats it produced what some have called the first theoretical awareness of the role of natural law in economics, and thus of the severe limitations on policy-makers in the economic sphere. See in particular the essay by O. H. Taylor, “Economics and the idea of ‘Jus Naturale’,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 44, no. 2 (1930), pp. 205–41, reprinted in his book Economics and Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1955), pp. 70–99. For the English case, see W. D. Grampp, “The Liberal Elements in English Mercantilism,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 66 (1952), pp. 465–501, and Alfred F. Chalk, “Natural Law and the Rise of Economic Liberalism in England,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 59, no. 4, (1951) pp. 332–47.

One of the most important economists in France during this period was Richard Cantillon. His major contributions to economic thought include the doctrine of the harmony of interests, the important role of the entrepreneur in economic activity, an awareness of the macro-economic effects of State-monetary policy, opposition to the State privileged banking system, and an early formulation of Say’s Law. Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature de commerce en général (1755) was translated and edited by Henry Higgs for the Royal Economic Society (London: Macmillan 1931, reprinted 1959). On Cantillon, see Joseph J. Spengler, “Richard Cantillon: First of the Moderns,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 62 (1954), pp. 281–95, 406–24; W. Stanley Jevons, “Richard Cantillon and the Nationality of Political Economy,” Contemporary Review, vol. 39 (1881), pp. 61–80 and the important introduction by Hayek to the German translation of Cantillon’s Essai (Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1931).

Drawing upon Cantillon’s insights, the Physiocrats François Quesnay and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot advocated a policy of laissez faire, the reduction and more equitable distribution of the tax burden, and the elimination of the crippling mercantilist restrictions on trade and commerce (see especially Turgot’s “Mémoire sur les prêts d’argent,” pp. 154–202 and “Lettres sur la liberté du commerce des grains,” pp. 393–398, in Oeuvres de Turgot et documents le concernant, vol. 3 (Paris: Alcan 1913–23). On the Physiocrats in general, see Ronald L. Meek, The Economics of Physiocracy: Essays and Translations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976). The leading French authority on Physiocracy is Georges Weulersse; see Les Physiocrates (Paris: C. Doin et Cie., 1931). (Interested readers may also consult his four-volume history of Physiocracy.) Although the priority the Physiocrats gave agricultural over industrial or mercantile production now seems quaint and without theoretical foundation, the Physiocratic school should be remembered for their opposition to economic privilege, restrictions on trade, and their hard-core defense of laissez faire economic policy.

One of the most consistent and radical of the Physiocrats was the mathematician, philosopher, and politician Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet. A radical supporter of Turgot’s laissez faire economic policies, Condorcet was in some ways even more radical than Turgot. For example, Condorcet demanded the elimination of forced labor; he was suspicious of reform carried out by the bureaucrats themselves; and he advocated the suppression of all seigneurial dues (he weakened in advocating compensation). See A. Condorcet-O’Connor and F. Arago, eds., Oeuvres de Condorcet, 12 vols. (Paris, 1847–49), vol. 11, pp. 59–86. In many pamphlets and essays, Condorcet advocated the extension of the franchise (eventually adopting universal suffrage); the recognition of equal rights for women (“On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship” (1790), in Keith Michael Baker Condorcet: Selected Writings (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), pp. 97– 104); the spread of trade, free markets, and the industrial system to all parts of the world; the concomitant recognition of each individual’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property; and the elimination of all prejudice, intolerance, and privilege. His inspiring essay, written in hiding during the Terror, addresses these issues: “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind” (1793), reprinted in part in Selected Writings pp. 209–282, and in its entirety by Noonday Press (New York: 1955), translated by June Barraclough.

Unfortunately, Condorcet was not completely consistent. His radical liberalism was diluted by his advocacy of compulsory state education (which he felt was the only way to produce “virtuous” and educated citizens), state finance of public works, such as canals, and state provision of other public goods, such as a unified, reformed system of weights and measures, and a national currency. However compromised, his defense of the market and his optimistic view of human progress are worthy of serious attention by modern liberals. Useful discussions of his thought can be found in Keith Michael Baker’s introduction to the Selected Writings, and Baker’s much longer Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

In order to understand what the Physiocrats were struggling against, one must appreciate the extent to which French society had been tied up by mercantilist restrictions. The classic work on the mercantilist system is still Eli Heckscher’s Mercantilism, the revised edition by E. D. Söderland in two volumes (New York: Macmillan, 1955). An abbreviated version of Heckscher’s thesis appears in the article “Mercantilism” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, (New York: Macmillan, 1933), vol. 10, pp. 333–39. A useful collection of essays discussing the Heckscher thesis has been edited by D. C. Coleman, Revisions in Mercantilism (London: Methuen, 1969). The restrictions and injustices of the mercantilist system inevitably provoked opposition. The development of this opposition during the reign of Louis XIV has been described by L. Rothkrug in his Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 1965).

VI. The German Enlightenment

Key Introductory Readings

Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1980). Reiss’s introduction is a useful discussion of Kant’s political views.

Paul Sweet, “Young Wilhelm von Humbolt’s Writings (1789–93) Reconsidered,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 34, no. 3, (1973).

Marianne Cowan (ed.), Humanist without Portfolio: an Anthology of the Writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963). The organization of the translations is very confusing. The section “Political Principles,” pp. 29–64, is the most useful and contains selections from most of Humboldt’s important works.

There was also a German component to the European-wide phenomenon of Enlightenment. Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte, and Wilhelm von Humboldt all contributed considerably to the Enlightenment in general, and to classical liberalism in particular. Friedrich Schiller was especially concerned with the problem of authority and State power. The relationship between the individual and authority is a dominant theme in his many plays, especially in his earlier and more radical ‘Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua,’ (“Fiesko’s Conspiracy in Genoa”). “Fiesko” was translated by Henry G. Bohn in The Works of Friedrich Schiller: Early Dramas and Romances (London: Bell and Daldy: 1873). A useful introduction to Schiller’s ideas on power is Gordon A. Craig’s “Friedrich Schiller and the Problems of Power” in The Responsibility of Power: Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn (New York: Doubleday, 1967), edited by Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern.

An intellectual giant of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant, deserves to be read by modern libertarians. As the “philosopher of the French Revolution” he sympathized with the aims of both the American and French revolutionaries, and sought to defend the independence and dignity of the individual in the face of authority. Kant is perhaps best known for his attempt to derive philosophical principles upon which a lasting, morally just, and peaceful world order could be based. His essay, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” (any edition, although Kant’s Political Writings Cambridge University Press, 1980, ed. Hans Reiss, translated by H. B. Nisbet, pp. 93–130, is a very useful collection) is an attempt to view peace as “the quest of justice between men through justice between states.” (See the intelligent and careful chapter on Kant in W. B. Gallie, Philosophers of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy (Cambridge University Press, 1979.)

Kant made important contributions to classical liberal thought, not least of which was his use of natural law concepts, first to oppose Frederick the Great’s doctrine of enlightened autocracy, and then to help shape the idea of the rule of law (Rechtsstaat). Kant’s other contributions to liberal thought include: the view that man’s inner life must not be subject to coercion, that all individuals have a fundamental right to acquire property, that individuals have inalienable and equal rights, and that no individual should ever involuntarily serve as the means to someone else’s ends. Kant expressed this last principle in the following way: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time and as an end.” See Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), edited and translated by H. J. Paton, p. 96.

The most important German liberal of the period is Wilhelm von Humboldt. His 1792 essay, Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen (“The Limits of State Action”), is a passionate defense of individual liberty and an exposition of the need to protect the individual from the state, so that one’s potential may be fully developed. The essay is also important for the effect it exerted on more influential, but less consistent, classical liberals such as John Stuart Mill. The relationship between Mill and Humboldt is discussed in Robert Leroux, “Guillaume de Humboldt et J. Stuart Mill,” Etudes Germaniques, vol. 6, nos. 3–4 (1951), pp. 262–274 and vol. 7, nos. 2–3 (1952) pp. 83–87. Unfortunately, few of Humboldt’s writings have been translated into English. His 1792 essay was first translated by Joseph Coulthard as The Sphere and Duties of Government (London, 1854); this translation was recently reprinted (with a more accurate title) as The Limits of State Action (Cambridge University Press, 1969), edited by J. W. Burrow.

To investigate Humboldt’s life and thought, one would do well to begin with any one of the following sources: Burrow’s introduction to The Limits of State Action; the recent article by Paul R. Sweet, “Young Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Writings (1789–93) Reconsidered,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 34, no. 3 (1973), pp. 469–482; Sweet’s Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978) especially Chapter 3, pp. 83–120 and the appendix on “The Publication, Reception and Influence of The Limits of State Action pp. 303–307; or the article by Ralph Raico, “Wilhelm von Humboldt,”

The New Individualist Review, vol. 1, no. 1. (1961), pp. 18–22. (Incidentally, The New Individualist Review has been reprinted in toto in a handsome edition by Liberty Press: Indianapolis, 1981.) The best biography remains the old and still valuable work by R. Haym, Wilhelm von Humboldt: Lebensbild und Charakteristic (Berlin: 1856; reprinted, Osnarbrück: 1965). On Humboldt’s political thought, the study by Robert Leroux, Guillaume de Humboldt: La formation de sa pensée jusqu’en 1794 (Paris: Société Edition: les Belles lettres, 1932) is important. Also see Siegfried A. Kaehler’s Wilhelm v. Humboldt und der Staat (Munich: 1927; reprinted Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 1963), especially Chapter 5, “Die Abkehr vom Staate” (“The Renunciation of the State”), which stresses Humboldt’s hostility to the State.

Although Humboldt compromised his early radical liberalism by his later support of the Prussian state, (he became Minister for Public Worship and Education), his earlier writings are valuable contributions to the corpus of classical liberal thought. Apart from his major work, The Limits of State Action, Humboldt’s letter to his friend Gentz (the basis of his later work), is well worth reading. It has been reprinted and edited by Albert Leitzman in “Politische Jugendbriefe Wilhelm von Humboldt an Gentz,” Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 152 (1935), pp. 48–89. Humboldt’s other essays worth reading include “Ideen über Staatsverfassung, durch die neue französische Constitution veranlasst” (“Ideas on government, occasioned by the new French Constitution”) (1791), “Über die Gesetze der Entwicklung der menschlichen Kräfte” (“On the Laws concerning the Development of Human Powers”) (1791), “Das achzehnte Jahrhundert” (“The Eighteenth Century”) (1796–97), and “Betrachtungen über die Weltgeschichte” (“Observations on World History”) (1814).

Some of these essays have been translated in extract form in the curious and badly organized collection, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the Writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), edited by Marianne Cowan. Humboldt’s theory of history is put forward in the essay, “Über die Aufgabe des Geschichtschreibers” (“On the Historian’s Task”) (1812), which has been translated into English as the appendix to The Theory and Practice of History (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), ed. G. G. Iggers and K. Moltke. For readers fluent in German, all of these essays can be found in Wilhelm von Humboldt, Werke in fünf Bände, vol. 1, Schriften zur Anthropologie und Geschichte (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1960), ed. A. Flitner and K. Giel.

Before leaving the German enlightenment, the liberal phase of Johan Gottlieb Fichte must be briefly mentioned. Fichte is more commonly regarded as a socialist thinker than as a classical liberal forebear. In Der geschlossene Handelstaat (“The Closed Commercial State,” 1800), Fichte advocated the organization of society and production in such a way as give near-total control over property, and hence power, to legally-privileged guilds. Earlier, when the influence of the French Revolution on his thought was at its height, Fichte had been a radical, individualistic liberal. He began with a spirited defense of the freedom of expression, “Zurückforderung der Denkfreiheit von der Fürsten Europas, die bisher unterdrückten” (“Demanding Freedom of Thought back from the Princes of Europe, Who Have Suppressed It up til Now”) (1793), and then moved on to write one of the best and most radical liberal defenses of the French Revolution ever written, later in the same year.

A much more theoretical and generalized defense of individual rights, “Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französiche Revolution” (“Contribution to Correcting the Public’s Opinion of the French Revolution”) was an extreme development of the Lockean notion of natural rights and the autonomy of the individual. Fichte saw the earlier phase of the French Revolution as the embodiment of the right of the individual to his or her life, liberty and property and went so far as to push the theory of “contract” to its logical end: the right of each individual to withdraw their consent from the State and to form a separate political community within the confines of the old State and without being molested by it. Unfortunately, these two important essays have never been translated into English. They are readily accessible, for those who read German, in two books; the first is Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution, edited by Richard Schottky (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1973). Schottky’s “Introduction” stresses the Lockean radicalism of Fichte’s pamphlets as well as what he calls “The anarchistic radicalization of the rationalistic-liberal theory of the State.” The second, edited by Bernard Willms, is Schriften zur Revolution (“Writings on the Revolution”) (Köln und upladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1967). Both books have useful bibliographies.

Key Introductory Readings

Part II. From the Radical Whigs to the German Enlightenment

IV. The Radical Whigs and the American Revolution

David L. Jacobson (ed.), The English Libertarian Heritage. From the Writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). Introduction.

Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Harvard University Press, 1967). Especially Part II, “Sources and Tradition” and Part III, “Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics.”

Cecilia Kenyon (ed.), The Anti-Federalists (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). The Introduction.

V. The French Enlightenment

Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 2, The Science of Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1977). Chapter 7, “The Science of Society,” pp. 319–96, for a discussion of the philosophes’ insights into sociology and the humane sciences; Chapter 8, “The Politics of Decency,” pp. 397–447, on the powerful sense of natural right and justice of so many enlightenment thinkers.

Keith Michael Baker (ed.), Condorcet: Selected Writings, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978). Baker’s introduction is a good guide to Condorcet’s thought and his historical setting.

Eli Heckscher, “Mercantilism,” in th Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1933), vol. 10, pp. 333–39. A short statement of Heckscher’s classic views on the mercantilist system.

VI. The German Enlightenment

Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1980). Reiss’s introduction is a useful discussion of Kant’s political views.

Paul Sweet, “Young Wilhelm von Humbolt’s Writings (1789–93) Reconsidered,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 34, no. 3, (1973).

Marianne Cowan (ed.), Humanist without Portfolio: an Anthology of the Writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963). The organization of the translations is very confusing. The section “Political Principles,” pp. 29–64, is the most useful and contains selections from most of Humboldt’s important works.