AM | @agumack
There is in America a "near-religious" veneration for The Federalist, writes Bernard Bailyn. Historians and political scientists regularly delve into Federalist #10 in search for clues regarding its possible sources. According to Joseph Ellis, James Madison wrote it "with the mentality of a lawyer defending a client" (*). But what if #10 was in fact a re-working of some of Denis Diderot's texts in Book XVIII of Histoire des deux Indes? I explore this possibility in chapter 6 ("Contrapesos") of El 'best-seller' que cambió el mundo. The similarities are indeed striking. But while Diderot remained trapped in a small-republic mindset, Madison's breakthrough allowed him to think in terms of an "extended republic".
Now look at Madison's 1792 article on "Property". Once again, there are striking similarities with Diderot.
- "[A man] has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person" (Madison).
- "La premiére propriété est la personnelle" (Diderot - Nakaz).
- "La liberté, est la propriété de soi" (HDI 1780, xi.24).
- "...a man has a property in his opinions. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them" (Madison).
- "Sans liberté, ou la propriété de son corps & la jouissance de son esprit, on n’est ni époux, ni père, ni parent, ni ami. On n’a ni patrie, ni concitoyen, ni dieu" (HDI 1780, xi.24)
- "Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected" (Madison).
- "Où la puissance souveraine est illimitée, il n'y a point de propriété" (Diderot - Mélanges pour Catherine II).
- "La souveraineté illimitée ne peut avoir des sujets, parce qu’elle ne peut avoir des propriétaires" (HDI 1780, xix.2).
(*) Joseph J. Ellis. American Creation. Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. New York: Knopf, 2007.
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