Des Droits et Devoirs du Citoyen: Par M. l'Abbé de Mably
Contributions
- Gabriel Bonnot de Mably
- author
- François Lacombe
- publisher
Related resources
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- Dei diritti e dei doveri del cittadino dell'abate Mably. Traduzione in italiano del cittadino G.M. translation
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- Dei diritti e dei doveri del cittadino dell'abate Mably. Traduzione in italiano del cittadino G.M. translation has paratext
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- Dei diritti e dei doveri dell'uomo e del cittadino del sign. abb. di Mably translation
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- De' diritti e dei doveri del cittadino translation
- has translation
- De’ dritti, e de’ doveri del cittadino translation has paratext
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- Dei diritti e dei doveri del cittadino opera dell'abate di Mably translation has paratext
- has translation
- Dei diritti e dei doveri dell'uomo e del cittadino del sign. abb. di Mably translation
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Notes
Written in 1758 but not published until 1789, although it was already circulating in manuscript form. No publisher listed but two separate editions appeared, one "A Kell" – probably an alternate spelling of Kehl – the other "à Paris et à Lausanne". It was reissued in 1791 and 1793 'Chez Louis'.
Comprising eight letters, it records a series of conversations between an Englishman, "Milord Stanhope" (initially named Harrington in the MS) – probably the father of Charles, the third Earl Stanhope – and an anonymous French narrator, as the two stroll through the royal gardens at Marly. In this set of dialogues, Mably drew on two intellectual currents that had hitherto developed separately – the English republican or 'Commonwealth' tradition and natural rights theory. He also gestured in the direction of a third intellectual tradition, the utopianism derived from Thomas More. He then set out a remarkably clairvoyant scenario for a "revolution" in France, anticipating events that lay twenty years in the future.
In these letters, Mably discusses the rights and duties of a citizen, including political obligation and the right to insurrection, inalienable popular sovereignty, the potential benefits of civil war and an avowal that "private property is the principle source of all the misfortunes that afflict humanity". Amongst these radical notions, he also contemplates how to establish a government that could best serve the public good, the underlying causes of good and bad laws, how citizens ought to behave in a monarchy or in a free state, how the Estates-General should be constituted, and how a nascent Republic might preserve and perpetuate its liberty.
The second half was devoted to a discussion of a programme for "une révolution ménagée", given the political conditions of eighteenth century France, one that would seek to avoid bloodshed. such a course of action would involve two strategies: constitutional resistance and political contestation.
Mably's thought was a hybrid republicanism founded on an appeal to a theory of inalienable natural rights. His arguments owe much to John Locke's 'Second Treatise on Government' (French editions of which appeared repeatedly after 1749), Algernon Sidney's 'Discourses on Government' (translated in 1702 and republished in 1755), and Thomas Gordon's 'Discourses on Tacitus' (translated in 1742).
Paying tribute to him in 1790, abbé Barthélémy, author of 'Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce', recalled that Mably frequently invoked the adage of Leibniz, "the present age is pregnant with the future’".
For good accounts of Mably's thought, see:
J.K. Wright, 'A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France: The Political Thought of Mably' (Stanford University Press, 1997).
Keith Baker, 'A Script for a French Revolution: the Political Consciousness of the abbé Mably', in 'Inventing the French Revolution' (CUP, 1990), pp.86-106.
Rachel Hammersley, 'The English Republican Tradition and Eighteenth-Century France: Between the Ancients and the Moderns' (MUP, 2010), pp.86-98.
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