Rousseau in England

On January 15, 1766, the London Chronicle announced: “On Monday last arrived in town the celebrated Jean-Jacques Rousseau . . . [who] has been brought into much trouble and vexation, both in Switzerland and in France, for having ventured to publish, in many works, his sentiments with a spirit and freedom which cannot be done with impunity in any kingdom or state except this blessed island.”1

Two days later the Westminster Journal recorded his arrival “in this city, to shelter himself from the persecution of the numberless bigots of the Continent.”2  Shortly after, another contributor to the London Chronicle praised his Discours sur l’inégalité, expressed some reservation about La Nouvelle Héloïse (which “did more honour to his genius than his philosophy”), and observed that “his native city thought proper . . . to banish him, and, after wandering from state to state, exclaiming at the prejudice and malice of mankind, half a philosopher and half a humorist, dressed in an Armenian habit, and mistaking novelty of opinion for justness of thinking, he has at length thought proper to end his days . . . in this land of boasted liberty.”3  England’s liberty was “boasted,” because unlike France (and elsewhere) its monarchy was not absolute, its press was free, and its degree of religious toleration was comparatively high.

Rousseau had had a reputation in Europe since the publication (in 1760) of La Nouvelle Héloïse (soon translated into English), and then (two years later) of Emile. The latter, however, contained an account of “natural religion” that praised the teaching of the Gospels,4  but attacked the idea of divine revelation5 and described the life and death of Jesus as those not of “God” but of “a god.”6  This led to its immediate condemnation by both the Sorbonne and the Paris Parlement, and the latter issued a warrant for his arrest. The obvious refuge for him was Geneva, where he had citizenship; but the city-republic was no more amenable to the “Profession de foi” in Emile than were the authorities in Paris. In addition, the Contrat social, his tract on republican government, published almost simultaneously in Amsterdam, contained a chapter on civil religion in which Rousseau attacked Christianity for having become in practice a “violent despotism,”7  which only preached “servitude and dependence”;8  in other words, it was incompatible with republican freedom and participation. The Genevan authorities announced that he would be arrested if he set foot in the city. (This proclamation had a political dimension, since Rousseau was allied with those citizens who were resisting their exclusion from office by the prevailing oligarchy.)

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Endnotes

• 1Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Correspondance complète, ed. R. A. Leigh (Geneva: Institut et musée Voltaire, 1965–1998), xxix, 296.
• 2Ibid., xxix, 295.
• 3Ibid., xxviii, 352.
• 4Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, ed. B. Gagnebin et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 1959– 1995), iv.629.
• 5Ibid., iv.607–608.
• 6Ibid., iv.626.
• 7Ibid., iii.462.
• 8Ibid., iii.467.