French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville : Liberty in a Levelled Society?

Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 Political thought in eighteenth-century France: the invention of aristocratic liberalism 11 2 Liberty and inequality: the royalist discourse 40 3 A society of equals: the liberal response 68 4 Liberty in a levelled society: Charles Dunoyer, Benjamin Constant, and Prosper de Barante 89 5 The new aristocracy: a theme in Restoration liberalism 6 The danger of democracy: Orleanist liberalism and Alexis de Tocqueville 129 7 The French predicament: aristocratic liberalism in the Second Empire 155 Epilogue 185 Bibliography 195 Index 210