Constant Benjamin, in full, Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (1767–1830), Swiss-born defender of liberalism and passionate analyst of French and European politics. He welcomed the French Revolution but not the Reign of Terror, the violence of which he avoided by accepting a lowly diplomatic post in Braunschweig (1787– 94). In 1795 he returned to Paris with Madame de Staël and intervened in parliamentary debates. His pamphlets opposed both extremes, the Jacobin and the Bonapartist. Impressed by Rousseau’s Social Contract, he came to fear that like Napoleon’s dictatorship, the ‘general will’ could threaten civil rights. He had first welcomed Napoleon, but turned against his autocracy. He favored parliamentary democracy, separation of church and state, and a bill of rights. The high point of his political career came with membership in the Tribunat (1800–02), a consultative chamber appointed by the Senate. His centrist position is evident in the Principes de politique (1806–10). Had not republican terror been as destructive as the Empire? In chapters 16–17, Constant opposes the liberty of the ancients and that of the moderns. He assumes that the Greek world was given to war, and therefore strengthened ‘political liberty’ that favors the state over the individual (the liberty of the ancients). Fundamentally optimistic, he believed that war was a thing of the past, and that the modern world needs to protect ‘civil liberty,’ i.e. the liberty of the individual (the liberty of the moderns). The great merit of Constant’s comparison is the analysis of historical forces, the theory that governments must support current needs and do not depend on deterministic factors such as the size of the state, its form of government, geography, climate, and race. Here he contradicts Montesquieu. The opposition between ancient and modern liberty expresses a radical liberalism that did not seem to fit French politics. However, it was the beginning of the liberal tradition, contrasting political liberty in the service of the state with the civil liberty of the citizen (cf. Mill’s On Liberty, 1859, and Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958). Principes remained in manuscript until 1861; the scholarly editions of Étienne Hofmann (1980) are far more recent. Hofmann calls Principes the essential text between Montesquieu and Tocqueville. It was translated into English as Constant, Political Writings (ed. Biancamaria Fontana, 1988 and 1997). Forced into retirement by Napoleon, Constant wrote his literary masterpieces, Adolphe and the diaries. He completed the Principes, then turned to De la religion (6 vols.), which he considered his supreme achievement. See also MONTESQUIEU , POLITICAL PHILOS- OPHY, POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE FREEDO. O.A.H.