Abstract
Born in Switzerland in 1767, Benjamin Constant's inauguration into the political and literary world began in earnest in 1794 after he entered into a personal and intellectual relationship with Germaine de Staël, the widely published author and daughter of the French minister of finance Jacques Necker. With de Stael's encouragement and the patronage of the great revolutionary political theorist, Joseph Emmanuel Sieyès, Constant set out to craft a defense of liberal principles that could accommodate the new republican impulse while avoiding the usurpations of a Robespierre or a Bonaparte.