A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Executive Power and Modern Liberty in Jean-Louis Delolme’s Political Thought and its Reception Ployjai Pintobtang PhD Thesis in Intellectual History University of Sussex September 2020 University of Sussex I hereby submit that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted either in the same or different form to this or any other University for a degree. Signature: 2 Ployjai Pintobtang Executive Power and Modern Liberty in Jean-Louis Delolme’s Political Thought and its Reception Thesis Summary. Jean-Louis Delolme (1741-1806) is known as a theorist of balance of powers. The lack of contextualisation of his work is accompanied by contrasting interpretations of his politics as a republican, a liberal, a democrat and a monarchist. This thesis alternatively commences with his argument that the English system was the most democratic state that history ever witnessed. By locating his programme in the intellectual and historical context, it reveals his crucial account of the relationship between the executive power and the people’s power. The work unravels his claim by tracing his intellectual debt to the notion of the selfish system. The English experience, he argued, offers a glimpse into how modern free states might avoid the demise of ancient republics with institutional solutions to the selfish human nature. For him, the ideal of popular sovereignty was best preserved in England because it effectively controlled the most powerful political power in a constitution namely the legislative. Unlike in other free states, the “favourite of the people” could not usurp the constitution by claiming popular sovereignty, as the monarchical executive maintained an extra-parliamentary relationship to the subjects. Moreover, the people, instead of investing all political power in their representatives, exercised parts of their political power in the form of “public censorial power” supported liberty of the press to influence the motion of the government. The second half of the thesis is dedicated to his reception. His British reception reveals a divided legacy as an advocate for power and a champion of liberty of the press. His argument for a strong executive power was adopted by critics of “republican” constitutional reforms while his support of press freedom was praised by prominent government critics such as John Cartwright and Junius. His influence on the American founding generation saw the consolidation of his legacy as an advocate for power in the creation of the presidential office within the federal republic. Meanwhile, his notion of public censorial power became largely forgotten. By tracing the dynamism of his legacy on both sides of the Atlantic, the thesis sheds light on the dubious locus of executive power in modern representative democracy beyond the narrow framework of the state of exception by offering a historical perspective on the formation of the office. 3 Acknowledgment. This research is generously funded by Thai taxpayers who deserve a form of government that is suitable for the modern world. My sincere thanks also go to my supervisor, Dr. Iain McDaniel whose support, academic guidance, and above all, patience, made the project possible. My years at Sussex are filled with stimulating conversations, beer, and banter, thanks to the SPT class of 2015. Neal Harris, Onur Acaroglu, James Stockman, and Freddie Meade in particular, were most helpful during the final years of my PhD. I am also very grateful for the friendship, wise words, and scrumptious meals from Zon Sujaritthanaruk, Fon Udomsilpa, Ploy Eamvijit, Sonali Mohapatra, Priya Raghavan, and Dao Thunprasert. The last year of the PhD was the toughest one (with or without a global pandemic). However, the unwavering support from my family, especially my loving parents and my sister, made 2020 a bearable year. Richard and Judy Hall made England felt like home to me during my stay Beccles and I cannot thank them enough. Lastly, I would like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of Henry James Hall, who was a kind soul and was undoubtedly an irreplaceable part of this journey. 4 Table of Contents. Acknowledgement 4 List of Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 Chapter One: Science of Politics and Executive Power 21 Chapter Two: Delolme as a Historian 39 Chapter Three: Critiques of Rousseau, Hume, and Montesquieu 68 Chapter Four: Delolme’s Delineation of the English System 90 Chapter Five: Delolme in the Eighteenth-Century British Politics 109 Chapter Six: The American Reception of Delolme 134 Conclusion 157 Bibliography 167 5 List of Abbreviations. Adams, John A Defence A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787. Delolme, Jean-Louis Constitution ed., David Lieberman, The Constitution of England, Liberty Fund: Indiana Polis, 2007 Parallel A Parallel Between the Constitution of England and the Former Government of Sweden, 1772. Flagellants History of the Flagellants or Memorials of Human Superstition, 1777. A Few Strictures An Essay Containing A Few Strictures on the Union of Scotland With England and On the Present Situation of Ireland Being and Introduction to Defoe’s History of the Union, London, 1786. Viscount Bolingbroke Remarks Remarks on the History of England, from the Minutes of Humphrey Oldcastle. 2nd ed., 1747. 6 Introduction. In his The Constitution of England (1771), Jean-Louis Delolme argued that once properly understood, “we shall find England to be in reality a more Democratical [sic] State than any other we are acquainted with.”1 The constitution did so, he claimed, by maintaining a constructive tension between the strong executive power and the people. Through the institutional arrangement of its legislative bicameral parliament, this tension propels the machine of the government and effectively keeps all powers in control. This “modern” interpretation of England as a representative democracy hitherto has not been seriously examined. The negligence is partly due to early interpretations of his work as sympathising with monarchism and its associated distinctions and orders.2 This approach also regards his positive account of a strong executive power as a simple indication of conservatism. This thesis, alternatively, takes his argument that the English system was a modern representative democracy as its point of departure. By examining Delolme’s work as a part of this long and convoluted tradition, the work contributes to several issues in the history of political thought. First, through the re-examination of Delolme’s programme, the thesis confronts the conceptual problem concerning the relationship between executive power and liberty in modern representative politics. Although there have been studies on the formation of modern executive power in the formative eighteenth century, “the first practical philosophies of executive power in an age of popular sovereignty” often focus on familiar figures like Jacques Necker and François Guizot in, for example, Rosanvallon’s Good Government (2018) despite Delolme’s important contribution to the debate.3 Moreover, literature on the topic often articulates this issue through the framework of the “state of exception”. Put simply, even during the case of emergency, how can extra-legal executive acts be reconciled with political legitimacy? This is especially problematic from the perspective of liberal constitutionalism which believes that the government’s prime duty is to protect individual liberty, especially against the arbitrariness of the rulers through rule of law. This approach, however, is trapped within the legalistic framework and 1 Jean-Louis Delolme, The Constitution of England, ed., David Lieberman, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007), 280. Henceforth referred to as Constitution. 2 This line of interpretation is found in, for example, Joyce Appleby, “The Jefferson-Adams Rupture and the First French Translation of John Adams' Defence,” American Historical Review, 73, no. 4 (1968): 1084-091. 3 Pierre Rosanvallon, Good Government: Democracy Beyond Elections, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2018), 191. 7 fails to grasp the wider political implications and the historical context of the creation of modern executive power. It is unsurprising that the most prolific groups of scholars who work on this topic are from the field of American politics. The majority of the recent literature warns against the extensive interpretation of the presidential power especially after George W. Bush’s administration and the use of the executive power during the “War on Terror”.4 One of the few positive accounts of modern executive power and its extra-legal aspect is Harvey Mansfield’s Taming the Prince (1989).5 Mansfield supports his argument with a genealogical examination of the office from the absence of it in Aristotle’s work, its later revelation in Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513), and modern attempts to treat the office as an “errand