CONSTANT DE REBECQUE, kON'stiix' dc rA'bele. HENRI BENJAMIN (1767-1830). A dis tinguished French politician and novelist, born at Lausanne. October 23, 1767. His family was Protestant, and had taken refuge in Switzerland from religious persecution. Till thirteen, Con stant studied at Lausanne, then successively at Oxford, Erlangen, and Edinburgh, laying the foundations of a cosmopolitan culture that ex plains his affinity for Madame de Stael. He was a moderate Republiean during the Revolution, and after 1795 settled in Paris. where his politi cal writings, especially his pamphlet, De In force du gourernement aetuel de la France, attracted great attention. In 1799 Bonaparte called him to the tribunate, but he opposed the First Consul's attack upon constitutional rights, and was exiled in 1802. His political career thus checked, he turned to literature, and accompanied Madame de Stael, like him an exile, on her travels. At Weimar he learned to know Goethe and Schiller. He translated, or rather adapted, the latter's Wancnstein. He also wrote Adolphe (1816), a literary result of his relations to Madame de Staid, who had put her experience with him into Dclphine: This sole novel of the versatile poli tician is a clear. keen, relentless analysis of the mutual degradation resulting from ill-assorted matings. It is brief, almost cruelly simple, and told in a style as precise and dry as that of a mathematical demonstration. Chivalrous toward Madame de Stael, he is pitiless to himself, to his father, to his former love, Madame de Charriere, and to their officious friend. Madame Rkamier. Constant's Correspondence, his Journals, all that we know of his life, show him, as he reveals him seU here, always seeking emotion, never attaining to passion. With this novel still unpublished, be returned to France after Napoleon's first abdication (1814), with the prestige of his stirring pamphlet De ]'esprit de conguete et de rusurpation (1813). He hoped to find the
Restoration more favorable to constitutional liberty than Napoleon's 'government of mame lukes,' but he was soon undeceived. During the Hundred Days, he cooperated with the returned Emperor. and assisted in drawing up the acts additionel to the Constitution. After Waterloo he retired to England, but was permitted to return to France in 1816. He joined the liberal writers of the day, and was elected Deputy in 1819. He became the acknowledged leader of the opposi tion to Charles N., and the most brilliant cham pion of a constitutional monarchy. He deplored the violence of the Revolution of July, which oc curred while he was convalescent in the coun try. At the request of Lafayette he returned, and for the few months that remained to him of life supported the Government of Louis Phi lippe and the principles to which his political life had been dedicated. He died at Pau. December 8, 1830. Constant was not a graceful speaker. but a singularly effective writer. His speeches are collected as Diseours (2 wQ1ss. 1828) : his essays on representative government as Cours de politique constitutionell•? (4 vols., 1817-20).
He wrote also Jlemoires sac les Cent Jours (1820), and De la religion conside'rea dans so source, sex formes, et sees dereloppements (1824 31), in which lie undertook to show that the re ligious instinct remained essentially unaffeeted through all changes of dogma and forms. In teaching that Christianity bad "introduced mor al and political liberty into the world." he widened the breach with the thought of the eighteenth century shown and in part caused by the Genic dW Christianisme of Chateaubriand. "Lucian was incapable of understanding Ho mer," he said: "Voltaire has never understood the Bible." Consult: Faguet, Politiques ct mor alistcs (Paris, 1898), and Sainte-Beuve. Nou veaux Lundis, vol. i. (Paris, 1863). and Por traits litteraires, vol. iii. (Paris, 1864).