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CONDORCET, ABOLITIONIST* Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat

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CONDORCET, ABOLITIONIST* Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat Ill CONDORCET, ABOLITIONIST* Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743- 1794) was not only a very important mathematician, philosopher, and social scientist, but also one of the leading humanitarians of the latter part of the eighteenth century, fighting for causes, some of which are just succeeding in our own time. Condorcet was one of the first modern advocates of women's rights and equality. He also struggled for the rights of Protestants in Catholic France (though he did not seem to be particularly concerned about the rights of Jews, which became a significant issue in the last years of Condorcet's career). He was about the only public advocate of social rights for homosexuals and prostitutes, as long as they did not engage in physical violence against unwilling persons. In addition, and what is crucial for this study, Condorcet was one of the strongest advocates of his day in France for the abolition of African slavery, first in French colonies like Saint-Domingue, and next throughout the world.1 Of all the philosophes, Condorcet alone came out unequivocally against almost all forms of discrimination. As he put it near the start of his On the Admission of Women to Voting Rights (1790), "he who votes aginst the right of another, whatever be his religion, color, or sex, has from that moment on adjured his own rights". Condorcet was the most important Enlightenment figure to live on to the Rev­ olution. He could therefore try to implement the abstract radical solutions that he had developed out of discussions with the other fa­ mous Enlightenment figures, in the new political arena that developed after 1789. Condorcet's interest in radical reform concerning slavery seems to have been greatly influenced both by British abolitionists and by events in America. He was a fellow Masonic lodge member with Ben­ jamin Franklin,2 and he knew Thomas Jefferson well. He also read the Abbé Raynal's account of the Revolution in America and the * I wish to thank Leonora Cohen Rosenfield for her assistance in this paper, especially in bringing my attention to some unpublished or little-known material concerning Condorcet's views on the abolition of slavery. See J. Salvyn Schapiro, Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism (New York, 1934). 2 Ibid., pp. 79 and 218. CONDORCET, ABOLITIONIST 51 controversy surrounding it.3 One of the strongest and'earliest state­ ments of his abolitionist views is in his "Remarques sur les pensées de Pascal", from Condorcet's edition of Pascal of 1776.4 In discussing the misery of men, Condorcet devoted four pages to the situation of the blacks. He spoke of "slavery, that horrible violation of human rights". He demanded the abolition of slavery in a letter of June 7, 1777 to the Journal de Paris. His La Vie de Af. Turgot (1786) called the slave trade "eet infame trafic". Only an entente among all the European countries could stop the slave trade, he pointed out in an unpublished manuscript now at the Bibliothèque de l'Institut. His best known statement of his position on slavery, and his proposed solution to the problems appears in his Réflexions sur Vesclavage des Nègres, dated 1785.5 He made several further statements, one in his address on election to the French Academy in 1782, another after he joined the Société des Amis des Noirs in 1788, then when he was its president and principal spokesman. A circular letter of his to all the bailiwicks of France as they were preparing to vote for delegates to the Estates General urged them to demand the destruction of the slave trade and preparations for the ultimate abolition of slavery. (Au corps électoral contre Vesclavage des nègresf 4 février, 1789). The next month, as one of the electors of the nobility from Mantes, he was able to insert in their cahier a recommendation to the Estates-General to "examine the means of destroying the slave trade amd preparing for the destruction of black slavery".6 Later, as a member of the revolu­ tionary assembly, he advocated bills to eliminate slavery in the French colonies.7 Condorcet continued his activities as a polemicist for the liberation of slaves, as a politician trying to bring that about, until he had to flee in 1793 for opposing the Jacobin proposal for a new constitution. (In the nine months that he was in hiding before he was caught and died, he wrote the final version of his most famous work, Sketch of a Historical Tableau on the Progress of the Human Mind, in 3 Ibid., pp. 219-22. Reprinted in Condorcet, Oeuvres de Condorcet, ed. Arthur C. O'Connor and Marie F. Arago, 12 vols. (Paris, 1847-49), Vol. 3, pp. 635-62. 5 Condorcet, Reflexions sur Vesclavage des Nègres, in Collection des Principaux Economistes française (Ρaris, 1847), Vol. 14, pp. 505-43. 6 Archives parlementaires, Art. 7, pp. 662, cited in Léon Cahen, Condorcet et la révolution française (Paris, 1904), p. 112. 7 See Keith M. Baker, "Condorcet's notes for a revised edition of his reception speech to the Académie française", Voltaire Studies, Vol. 169 (1977), esp. p. 23; and Léon Cahen, "La Société des Amis des Noirs et Condorcet", La Révolution française 50 (1906), pp. 481-511, where some of Condorcet's statements about slavery are included. .
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