The Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France

Manuscript written by Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just during the second half-year of the year 1790.

According to the explanation of Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just this manuscript was written in order to analyze the Revolution in its “causes, its continuation and its term”.

Contents of the manuscript

In the first pages of its manuscript the spirit of the Revolution and constitution of France , Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just criticizes the throne. But these remarks lost their provocative roughnesses present in the writing of its poem Organt . “Charlot” becomes “Louis” and “Cunégonde” leaves the place to rather misled a “Marie-Antoinette” “that misleading, rather light that perjury”. One guesses even a larger sympathy to the royal couple than for the “multitude” accessory to excesses of 1789. An elite must thus lead its walk so that the Revolution is not “a war of impudent slaves who fight with their irons and walk enivrés”. But, for Louis Antoine Saint-Just, the public affairs must be managed with a broad contest: people which would be more bottom dangerous people of the streets of Paris seem him like a supreme return to the democracy. The nobility is excluded and the Church given to its true place. Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just almost showed a partisan without condition of the constitutional monarchy, chose the suspensive veto and for the active and passive citizens, it speaks in praise of the legislative Assemblée whose “the extraordinary legislative one fishes only in some details”. It wishes a peaceful France, in State having of the commiseration for the unhappy ones, of the soft laws. The capital punishment horrifies it and in spite of its admiration for Jean-Jacques Rousseau he declares to him: “I do not forgive myself, O great man, to have justified the right of death”. The notion of the virtue impregnates already this manuscript. In the first page, by four times, Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just speaks about the virtue and insists on the “new forces” which it is carrying. She answers almost all the questions that the mode in gestation is posed. The nobility is an iniquity because “the law did not proscribe the sublime virtue; she wanted that it was acquired oneself”. With regard to the divorces and the children born except marriage: “separations outragent not only nature but the virtue”. As for justice, it is necessary “to stop the injustice” because “it is inspirrer the virtue”. The message left by the Gospel was deformed, thinks Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just by the Church, but it is necessary to protect morals “it is the fundamental faith of the virtue”.

Sources of the manuscript

In its manuscript the Spirit of the Revolution and Constitution of France Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just took as a starting point various sources. philosophical works, newspapers, reflections on the daily life.

But Montesquieu (philosopher) had a prevalent influence in the writing of this work, as this reflection of thinker of proves it Brède in this short quotation: “If I could make so that everyone had new reasons to like its duties, its prince, his fatherland, his laws, that one could better feel his happiness… I would believe myself happiest of the mortals” Between the Spirit of the Revolution and of the Constitution and the Esprit of the laws , the subsidiary bond is visible at the same time in the title, the presentation, the formulation and the way of tackling the major problems, as well as the answers. Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just draws from his model the idea of the separation of the capacities, the refusal of the despotism and religious fanaticism, and the major fixing of morals in his abstract character. In the same way, like its model, he dreams with if possible contractual relations between the men and the capacities.

Montesquieu advised with the beginner who was Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just a moderated thought, behavior and a tone, unknown of its nature.

In spite of that, the reading of Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just selective, is arranged with the taste of the moment. The original formulas concerning the property, the representatives political or of the State are present in this manuscript, but do not have that little interest so much they refer and have recourse to re-sifted ideas - remainder often applied by the new mode.

When he entrusts to Beuvin, Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just has some illusions: “I treated large things and I entered new roads sometimes where the reading would not have led me”.

Finally what retains the reader of this work? theses that Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just approves well, more than the proposals which it advances.

Sources

Saint-Just of Bernard Vinot

External bond

the Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France on the Traditional ones of Social sciences

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