Content uploaded by Gilbert Faccarello
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Gilbert Faccarello on Sep 24, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People?
Charles de Coux and the Dream of a
Christian Political Economy
Gilbert Faccarello∗
∗Published in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 24 (4), 2017,
pp. 828–75. Typos have been corrected and, in the References, the items Dudon (1911) and
Lamennais (1838) completed. The other changes are purely formal.
1
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 2
Abstract. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the emergence
of “économie politique chrétienne”, with the aim of founding a new school of
political economy, marked the French intellectual landscape. The name of
J.-P. A. de Villeneuve-Bargemont is usually cited in this context. But, before
Villeneuve-Bargemont, Charles de Coux had launched this approach power-
fully. The present paper first states the circumstances of Coux’s writings and
their specific intellectual context. His project is then analysed, and his critique
of political economy, his fundamental idea for an alternative approach and his
description of the logic of an industrial economy are discussed. Finally, the
solutions he proposed to eradicate pauperism are examined. A brief statement
of the significance of his work and legacy concludes.
&
I would deeply regret it if your work for the journals induced you to stop
or even simply suspend your course of political economy, which you could,
more rightly than Vico, entitle The New Science.†
According to Zoroaster, ancient magi believed that the spirit of the seas would
severely punish the least stain on his waters; they consequently detested
navigation and, in the interest of their eternal happiness, they relinquished
the incalculable advantages they could have drawn from it. With such a
doctrine, trade could not flourish; a moral obstacle opposed its development
and . . . Say and Sismondi, had they lived among the fire worshippers, would
have been as useful to them as a dance teacher for paralysed people.‡
1Setting the stage
In France like in other European countries, the question of poverty was
often debated under the Ancien Régime. During the French Revolution, it
was thought that the problem could be more or less easily settled, but the
different policies proved to be a failure. People may have thought for a while
that the persistence of the phenomenon was due to one decade of dramatic
political events. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the fall
of the Empire, there was no more room for doubt: not only did poverty per-
sist, but the nature of the phenomenon seemed to have dramatically changed.
Poverty turned into pauperism: it was permanent, massive, and intimately
†Lamennais to Coux, 19 October 1833, in Dudon 1911: 85–6.
‡Coux 1830–31: 104.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 3
connected to economic growth and the new industrial society. Wealth and
poverty developed at the same vertiginous rate.
The development of pauperism induced, from all quarters, an indictment
of political economy. Not only were liberal economists incapable of curing the
disease, but the evil seemed to be a direct consequence of the implementation
of the policies they proposed. From that moment, debates never ceased during
the century, first on pauperism, then on the “question sociale”. This was the
occasion for many currents of thought to emerge and develop. But while some
of them, like the Phalansterians and the Saint-Simonians, are well known,
others are relatively neglected today, despite the fact that they also played an
important part in French politics. Christian political economy is one of them.
This approach emerged during the first half of the 1830s, powerfully
initiated by Jean-Paul Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont1(1784–1850) and his
three-volume book: Économie politique chrétienne ou Recherche sur la nature
et les causes du paupérisme en France et en Europe et sur les moyens de le
soulager et de le prévenir (1834), but also, and before him, by Charles de
Coux (1787–1864). Both authors called for the emergence of a new, Christian
school of political economy, in opposition to both liberal political economy and
socialism.
This current of thought developed in various directions – liberal Catholicism
and social Catholicism in particular – during the following decades. Different
associations were created, which played an important role in French economic
and political life, and new political forces emerged, like the first “Démocratie
chrétienne” in 1848. Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX and Leo XIII also intervened
in the debates, especially through the publication of encyclical letters. They
usually condemned the liberal tendencies of the movement but also retained
some of the ideas being debated. It could thus be said that the theories put
forth at the beginning of the 1830s in France later generated – through French
and European debates among Catholics – what has been called the social
doctrine of the Church, officially expressed in Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum
Novarum published in 1891.
The analysis of what happened in France during the 1830s is thus of great
interest. However, the emergence of Christian political economy2is a bit
1Also called “Monsieur de Villeneuve” in the literature of the time.
2It is to be noted that the phrase “Christian political economy” was used by the authors
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 4
more complex than usually asserted. It is mainly the outcome of two different
intellectual traditions, which, moreover, developed in different directions. So
far, only the work of Villeneuve-Bargemont has attracted the attention of
scholars.3His 1834 book, in particular, created sensation because of its tone –
a denunciation of the evil of pauperism and its supposed causes: the policies
dictated by the political economy of the “English school” – and its length and
content: three well-documented volumes. The present paper focuses instead
on the writings of Charles de Coux, who also powerfully attacked the liberal
system, and whose ambition was more theoretical. Before going deeper into the
subject, however, three important remarks are required to explain the general
religious context of the debates.
The first regards a distinction within the Christian churches in France, that
is, between Catholic worship on the one hand, and Reformed worship – the
Protestants – on the other hand, with their multiple variants. France had a
very tragic religious past. During the sixteenth century, the Wars of Religion
between Catholics and Protestants devastated the country. The 1598 Edict of
Nantes, a treaty promulgated by King Henri IV – himself a Protestant who
converted to Catholicism to accede to the throne – put an end to the wars and
created a space for Protestants in the Catholic kingdom. However, this Edict
was repealed in 1685 by Louis XIV, provoking new persecution of Protestants
and the emigration of many of them. Protestant worship was later officially
accepted in France under the 1789 Revolution. Religious liberty was, subse-
quently, redefined by Bonaparte in certain clauses he added to the Concordat
signed in 1801 with Pope Pius VII. At the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the Protestant Churches were still weak, and in the process of reconstruction.
Moreover, under the Restoration, their action was hindered by the author-
ities – especially as regards the right of association and publication. This
explains why, at that time, for the majority of the population, “Christian”
meant “Catholic”. While picking up some themes already put forth by such
Protestant authors as Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant,4Christian
themselves, with the explicit aim to define a new school of thought – also called the “charita-
ble” or “Catholic” school. For a different use of the expression “Christian political economy”
in the British context, inaugurated by Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, see
Waterman (1991: chapter 1).
3See for example Théry (1911), Festy (1919), Moon (1921, chapter 1), Ring (1935),
Duroselle (1951, part I: chapter 1), Tiano (1993) and Tanaka (2001–2).
4On these themes, see Faccarello and Steiner (2008: Section 2).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 5
political economy proper was developed by Catholic writers.
Second, one must be aware of the fact that, during the nineteenth cen-
tury, strong anti-Protestant feeling existed among many Catholic writers. The
Catholic Church, which saw its influence on the population greatly decline dur-
ing the eighteenth century with the development of atheism, deism and pan-
theism, was just starting to reconquer public opinion – with works like Génie
du Christianisme, ou Beauté de la Religion Chrétienne (Chateaubriand, 1802)
– and did not appreciate the return of Protestantism in the national religious
landscape. A strong anti-Protestant rhetoric developed, culminating at the
end of the century in a racist discourse, with arguments that were to be found
later in anti-Semitism. The important point to note is that, from the very
beginning, Christian political economy – in various ways, depending on the
authors – was part and parcel of the anti-Protestant arsenal.5
Finally, a third remark is in order. Among the many topics that might divide
Catholics, an old question returned to the agenda: the opposition between
Gallicans and Ultramontanes. The controversy was of importance because
it involved the question of the relations between the spiritual power – the
Church – and the political power – the State. Supporters of Gallicanism were
in favour of the relative autonomy of the French Church vis-à-vis the Pope,
and of a certain intervention of the State in religious affairs, for example in the
nomination of bishops. On the contrary, Ultramontanes supported the idea of
the pre-eminence of the Pope over the French Church. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the largest part of the Catholic hierarchy was Gallican, but
things changed some decades later. In addition, under the Restoration, most
practising Catholics were also in favour of a strict monarchical political regime.
The two great philosophers of the Counter-Revolution, however, Joseph de
Maistre (1753–1821) and Louis de Bonald (1754–1840), were Ultramontane,
and their ideas played a part in the intellectual formation of those who, in the
1830s, proposed a Christian political economy.
In the following pages, I first present the historical and intellectual circum-
stances of the intervention of Charles de Coux (Section 2). I then deal with his
project (Section 3) and with his critique of political economy, his fundamental
5This important point is a part of a wider debate on the respective merits of the “nations
catholiques” and the “nations protestantes”. On Protestantism and anti-Protestantism in
France during the nineteenth century, see Leroy-Beaulieu (1902), Baubérot (1985), Encrevé
(1985), Sacquin (1998) and Baubérot and Zuber (2000).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 6
idea for an alternative approach and his description of the logic of an industrial
economy (Section 4). Finally, I examine the solutions he proposes to put an
end to pauperism (Section 5). A brief statement of the significance of his work
and legacy concludes (Section 6).
2Charles de Coux’s intellectual background
In strong contrast with Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont’s legitimist and
conservative milieu scandalised by the new economic and social order, Charles
de Coux was a member of a group of Catholic activists who, at the turn of 1830,
gathered around the Abbé Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais6(1782–1854)
and who, in various fields, remained influential during the following decades.
2.1 “God and Liberty”
Lamennais was well known at that time, especially since the end of the 1810s
when he published a series of writings that won him a reputation as a formidable
theologian and polemist. He was an activist of the Ultramontane cause and a
fierce critic of Gallicanism. He was also ultra-royalist, but during the 1820s,
like François-René de Chateaubriand, he became more and more disappointed
with the Restoration. He proposed an alliance between the Church and the
liberals, called for the institution of certain fundamental rights – freedom of
conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of teaching – and for the separation
of Church and State. He had with him some young disciples, like Philippe
Gerbet (1798–1864) and Louis-Antoine de Salinis (1798–1861), both abbots
(and later bishops), with whom he published a periodical, Le Mémorial
Catholique.
At the time of the July Revolution of 1830 that put an end to the
Restoration, they were joined by a young Dominican monk, Henri-Dominique
Lacordaire (1802–1861) and by some laymen – Charles de Coux and the young
Charles Forbes de Montalembert (1810–1870). Together they founded a daily
6Robert was the family name. His father added “de Lamennais” – at that time also
spelled “de La Mennais”. I follow the (now) common spelling of “Lamennais” that the author
adopted in the 1830s, and the usage of calling the author Lamennais instead of Robert de
Lamennais.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 7
newspaper, L’Avenir – the motto of which was “God and Liberty”7– and the
Agence générale pour la défense de la liberté religieuse (General Agency for
Religious Freedom), the aim of which was to fight for the freedom of teaching
and to serve as a publishing house.
L’Avenir was first published on 16 October 1830, and the publication
stopped on 15 November 1831. Its life was short, but the ideas it campaigned
for resonated strongly, especially among the younger members of the clergy.
However, they frightened conservative Catholics and most of the Catholic
hierarchy. In the end, the progressive ideas of L’Avenir were condemned
by Pope Gregory XVI in the encyclical Mirari Vos (15 August 1832). The
Lamennais group accepted the judgment. However, Lamennais’ submission
did not last long and, after the publication of his celebrated Paroles d’un
croyant (1834), he broke with the Church and moved towards socialism.
The other members of the group went on fighting in favour of Catholicism
and progressively formed an important network of influence, with periodi-
cals like Le Correspondant,8Revue Européenne9(1831–1835) and the daily
L’Univers (1833–1919). Moreover, in 1836, Gerbet, Salinis, and Casimir de
Scorbiac (1796–1846) started an intellectually ambitious periodical,
L’Université catholique. Recueil religieux, philosophique, scientifique et lit-
téraire.10 Its aim was to foreshadow, in 20 volumes, what could have been the
7“L’Avenir was founded . . . just after a revolution, which had made evident the
falseness of the way followed by the power, for the restoration of the society. When God
strikes in this way, men’s duty is to think about their faults, and to seek an understanding
of what can save them” (Lamennais et alii 1831: i). On the approach followed by L’Avenir,
see Lamennais (1830a, 1830b, 1831a, 1831b).
8First published weekly (1829–1831), then monthly (1843–1868) after a long interruption,
and then fortnightly (1869–1937).
9Initially published with this mention: “Par les rédacteurs du Correspondant”.
10 As L’Université catholique played an important part in the emergence of Christian
political economy, it is interesting to note that, after the lively controversies over L’Avenir
and Lamennais’ ideas, the editors tried to calm things down. In 1836, the “Avertissement”
to the first volume stated: “In religion, the editors are united in the same faith, the same
and entire submission to the teaching of the Church and the judgments of the Holy See –
in particular, the most recent ones – to which they subject all their works, either religious,
or scientific: in necessariis unitas” (L’Université catholique 1836, vol. 1: Avertissement).
At the end of the same volume, a “Circulaire aux souscripteurs de L’Université catholique”
emphasised this state of mind: “Some people . . . initially had doubts about the line we
follow. Their fears soon vanished. They saw that neither the Holy See nor the Episcopate
would have cause for complaint about our works . . . They also saw that nobody was more
far removed than we are from this spirit of rivalry and quarrel that might sow dissension
among Catholic journals and disrupt their efforts for the defence of religion” (L’Université
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 8
teaching in a Catholic university in France, if only such an institution were
allowed. The lobby also had international connections: with the newly inde-
pendent Belgium of course – the attitude of the Belgian clergy and its alliance
with the liberals in order to obtain the independence had been a model for
Lamennais – but also with the Irish and Polish Catholics fighting for their
recognition.
The Lamennais group exerted a lasting influence on French intellectual
life. The positions of its members, however, were not homogeneous, and they
evolved over time in favour of, roughly speaking, either liberal political or con-
servative but social Catholicism. While the Catholic hierarchy progressively
adopted the principles of the latter, the former was always condemned.11 It
is in this ferment of ideas that the origin of Christian political economy is to
be found, four years before the publication of Villeneuve-Bargemont’s book.
This origin remained relatively unnoticed at that time, except by Villeneuve-
Bargemont himself, probably because the other theological and political ideas
of the group and the debates they generated eclipsed this topic.
2.2 Toward a Christian political economy
The economist of the group was Charles de Coux.12 His career had been
eventful. He was three years old when, at the beginning of the French Revolu-
tion, he emigrated to Great Britain with his mother and was brought up there
– his father joining the counter-revolutionary Armée des Princes in Germany
(Périn 1864, 1865; Thibeaud 1864). He came back to France in 1803, but he
resumed travelling abroad: in particular, he worked for some years as an inter-
catholique 1836, vol. 1: 571).
11 The liberal ideas expressed by Montalembert in L’Église libre dans l’État libre (1863)
were vigorously condemned in 1864 by Pope Pius IX in his restatement of the conservative
principles of the Catholic Church (encyclical letter Quanta cura and its companion Syllabus
– a list of eighty propositions condemned by the Church). The economic field was not spared
either. Pius IX condemned Coquelin and Guillaumin’s Dictionnaire de l’économie politique,
which was put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1856. The Dictionnaire was in good
company: in the same year, J. S. Mill’s Principles of political economy was also condemned.
12 “[A] writer who had since a long time meditated on the subject [pauperism and political
economy], and who can use a vast set of carefully gathered and verified facts, intends to deal
with it in L’Avenir, to the extent it deserves.” (Lamennais 1831b: 84)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 9
preter at the Legislature of Louisiana in the United States.13 He settled in Paris
in 1823 and on 20 February 1830, in a long letter to Lamennais, he proposed
some critical reflections on political economy from a Christian perspective,
for possible publication in Le Mémorial catholique (Coux 1830a). The same
year, he took part in the foundation of L’Avenir, in which he published arti-
cles,14 especially on politics, including two incisive papers entitled “Économie
politique” (Coux 1830–31), probably those he first intended to publish in Le
Mémorial catholique. In 1832, at the request of the young Antoine-Frédéric
Ozanam (1813–1853) and his group of friends, the Lamennais group organised
a series of lectures entitled “Conférences de philosophie catholique”.15 In this
context, Coux started lecturing on political economy (8 March 1832), a course
that was, it seems, appreciated by Catholic activists:
M. de Coux started his course of political economy, so profound and
interesting. I advise you to subscribe. His lessons are crowded, because
in them, there is truth and life, a great knowledge of the wound that is
eating away at society, and the only remedy that can cure it. (Ozanam
to Ernest Falconnet, 25 March 1832, in Ozanam 1873: 59)
Coux soon had to stop teaching because of sickness (cholera was raging
in Paris), but, from some allusions to be found in a letter by Lamennais (19
October 1833, quoted above as an epigraph to this paper), it seems that he
resumed teaching after he recovered. While the whole course was supposed to
be published in both Paris and Louvain (Belgium), only the first two lessons
were published in 1832 by the Agence pour la défense de la liberté religieuse,
entitled Essais d’économie politique.16 The syllabus of the course (Appendix 1
below), published by the Belgian publisher as an advertisement to subscribe,
was sent with the instalments of Gerbet’s Introduction à la philosophie de
l’histoire – also a part of the Conférences de philosophie catholique. Some
13 He sided with the Americans during the Anglo-American war of 1815, and took part
in the defence of the city of New Orleans (Thibeaud 1864: 235). He also spent some time
in Brazil.
14 In L’Avenir, many papers were not signed. Sometimes, those by Coux are indicated by
“C. de C.”. However, after the journal ceased publication, the editors re-published what they
regarded as the main articles in a series of two volumes entitled Mélanges catholiques extraits
de L’Avenir (Lamennais et alii 1831), in which the identity of the authors was disclosed (see
Coux 1830b to 1831n).
15 Eighty to a hundred people attended these lectures (Lallier 1835: 133).
16 An edition of the Essais, with the same title, only concerns the first lesson.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 10
echoes in the press brought Coux’s ideas to the attention of a broader audi-
ence than the circle close to L’Avenir, and in this respect, two reactions are
of interest. One is a critical review of the Essais, published by François de
Corcelle in Revue des Deux Mondes (Corcelle 1833). The other is a paper
by François Lallier published in Revue Européenne (Lallier 1835), which was
of course very positive – Lallier was a friend of Ozanam,17 and the Revue
Européenne belonged to the Catholic lobby.
Coux’s lectures played an important part in the formation of young intel-
lectuals like Ozanam and Lallier.18 Probably also thanks to Coux, Lamennais
was starting to take an interest in political economy.19 He encouraged Coux
to develop his ideas. Referring to the Essais, he wrote:
I cannot express how pleased I am. There is here a new thinking that
contains the seed of the sole possible way to regenerate society. The
whole set of your lectures will form one of the most beautiful books, and
one of the most useful, that can be published in our time; and all sensible
discourse on political economy in the future will only be an application
or a development of it. (Lamennais to Coux, 27 April 1832, in Dudon
1911: 80)
An opportunity presented itself when the Belgian episcopate created a
Catholic university, first located in Malines in 1834 and then, a year later,
in Louvain. The chair of political economy was offered to Coux. He accepted
it and, in his first lecture, praised “the glorious constancy of the Belgian epis-
copate who . . . opens this refuge to the Catholic science in order to preserve
us . . . against the barbarism of false knowledge” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 90).
In Malines and Louvain, Coux’s lectures on political economy – broadly
understood as “social and political economy” (Coux 1835: 7) – involved two
courses: one on social economics (“économie sociale”), and the other on
“political economy in its strict sense” (Coux 1838b: 148)20 sometimes also
17 Lallier later published papers in L’Université catholique and took an active part in the
Christian critique of political economy.
18 “In spite of the fact that we could listen to him [Coux] only during a short time, these
lessons much impressed our minds, we young Christian men, still tired and hurt by being
reproached for such a long time for failing to understand part of human nature, denying
industry and destroying . . . the worldly civilisation” (Lallier 1835: 133).
19 He himself published a paper on credit some years later (Lamennais 1838), a paper
praised by Villeneuve-Bargemont (1841, II: 375).
20 On these distinctions, see below, Section 3.3 and Appendix 2.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 11
called “économie réglementaire” (regulatory economics) (Coux 1836a: 57). But
some of his lectures reached a wider public, thanks to the above-mentioned
L’Université catholique. This periodical, produced in Paris, published lectures
in all fields, and one section, entitled “Sciences sociales”, included political
economy. From 1836 until 1840, some of Coux’s lectures – the syllabus of his
“Cours d’économie politique” (Appendix 2 below) and a great part of his “Cours
d’économie sociale” – were published there (Coux 1836a, 1836b, 1837a, 1838a,
1839b, 1840a). Their publication stopped in 1840 without any explanation.
At the same time, L’Université catholique also published another course
in economics: Gerbet and Salinis requested the collaboration of Villeneuve-
Bargemont who, from 1836 to 1838, gave to the journal a “Cours sur l’histoire
de l’économie politique”21 (Lectures on the history of political economy).
A third series of lectures in political economy was published in the journal
between 1839 and 1842:22 that of Louis Rousseau, a former Phalansterian,
certainly as a complement to Coux’s lectures. This new course23 was intro-
duced by the editors in the following way:
Some of our subscribers have complained that in our works on
political and social economy, we have not sought to inform our read-
ers about the works of renowned modern economists like the Fourierists
and the Phalansterians. They have expressed the wish that, in stating
their doctrines, we should let them know their useful and commendable
elements, and refute what is contrary to Catholic beliefs. This is pre-
cisely what M. Rousseau is going to do in the lectures we start today.
(L’Université catholique 1840, vol. 9: 95n, italics in the original)
21 Like many “lectures” published in L’Université catholique (Coux’s being an exception)
Villeneuve’s lessons (1836, 1837, 1838) had never been read in front of a public. They
were a simple series of papers, announced as being “the summary of a more extended book”
(Villeneuve-Bargemont 1836, vol. 1: 83n). They were later collected and published in
Belgium under the title Histoire de l’économie politique, par Alban de Villeneuve (Villeneuve-
Bargemont 1839) but this was done without Villeneuve-Bargemont’s consent: at that time,
he had in fact temporarily abandoned the idea of a book because of the publication in
1837 of Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui’s Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe, depuis les
anciens jusqu’à nos jours. The existence of an unauthorised edition of his own lectures
prompted him to revise and enlarge the text and to publish it in Paris through Guillaumin
(Villeneuve-Bargemont 1841).
22 It seems that after 1842, political economy was no longer of interest to the editors of
the journal.
23 The substance of Rousseau’s lectures was taken up in his book, Croisade du XIXe
siècle. Appel à la piété catholique à l’effet de reconstituer la science sociale sur une base
chrétienne. Suivi de l’exposition critique des théories phalanstériennes (Rousseau 1841).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 12
We must finally insist on an important but neglected point: during this
period, Coux also wrote four long papers published in English. Some well
known Irish Catholics (Michael Joseph Quin, Daniel O’Connell and
Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman) founded a new and successful periodical,
The Dublin Review, published from 1836 onwards. There were connections
between the French and Irish Catholic activists, and Coux immediately con-
tributed some papers,24 the most important ones, for our purpose, being
“Christian political economy” (1837b), on Villeneuve-Bargemont, and “Saint-
Simonism” (1838b), on Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians
– a paper also published in French some months later in Revue de Bruxelles
(Coux 1839d), with the addition of a short introduction (Coux 1839c).25
In Belgium, Coux stayed in office 11 years, until 1845 when he came back to
Paris as the director of the Catholic daily newspaper L’Univers (his
disciple Charles Périn (1815–1905) succeeded him in the chair). He left this
post in January 1848, disagreeing with the pro-Jesuit line of the editor, Louis
Veuillot. During the February Revolution, together with Lacordaire, Ozanam
and Henry Maret (1805–1884, a theologian and a former supporter of L’Avenir),
he participated in the foundation and editing of a new daily, L’Ère nouvelle,
the organ of the first “Démocratie chrétienne”, intended to support the new
Republican regime.26
The mission of L’Avenir, first, and then of L’Univers, was to prove in
a practical way that we could be orthodox Catholics and stop being
Legitimists. That of L’Ère nouvelle was to show in the same way . . .
that the Church is not alarmed by the most advanced political doctrines.
(Coux to Maret, 5 April 1849, in Bressolette 1977: 466, n. 36)
Coux, however, left L’Ère nouvelle in September 184827 and withdrew from
24 Coux, like Montalembert, had a mother of English origin. Montalembert was born in
London, and, as noted before, Coux spend his childhood in Great Britain during the French
Revolution. Both spoke English and had connections with the English-speaking world.
25 The other papers are “The Archbishop of Cologne” (Coux 1838c), “Belgium and Holland”
(1838d) and finally, and most probably, “Trade with France” (1839a). In The Dublin Review,
the articles were published anonymously. However, research in archives could disclose the
name of many contributors (see Russell 1893).
26 This daily newspaper was an event, even if its life was short: the prospectus was
published on 1 March 1848, the first issue on 15 April 1848, and the last on 1 April 1849.
27 Coux left in September, at the same time as Lacordaire, because he did not agree with
some of the articles published in the journal. Contemporaries explained this departure in
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 13
public life until his death in 1864.
3Coux’s project:
“To give political economy what it is lacking”
3.1 An enigma?
“M. de Coux was the first to propose a complete system of political economy
from a Christian point of view”, Charles Périn wrote when Coux died (Périn
1864: 119; 1865: 371). He was “the founder of Christian political economy”.
But are things really so straightforward? While it is true that Charles de
Coux pioneered a Christian conception of political economy before Villeneuve-
Bargemont and tried to develop a general Catholic framework in which the
principles of political economy could be embedded (see below, Sections 3.3 and
4.5), we cannot find in his writings a clear statement of a “complete system
of political economy from a Christian point of view”. In a way, Périn was
echoing Coux’s own assertions: in his letter-programme to Lamennais, Coux
had written that he “had the project to give political economy what it is
lacking, a foundation that could not be contested by anyone” (Coux 1830a:
85), and in his 1832 Essais, he had stressed that “the practical consequences
of Catholicism form the most admirable system of social economics that ever
existed on earth” (Coux 1832: 4).
Compared with other writers of the same period, Coux published relatively
little. Unlike Villeneuve-Bargemont – or, later, Charles Périn himself – he
did not write any great treatise. Yet it seems that he was preparing for such
a task. In a letter to Coux, Lamennais mentioned the “book that you are
preparing” (4 February 1835, in Dudon 1911: 87), but no such book was
various ways. According to Falloux (1856: 457), Lacordaire and Coux left because of the
democratic inclination of the journal. According to Périn, (1864: 120; 1865: 372), they
left because of the Gallican opinions expressed by the journal. Falloux is probably right for
Lacordaire, but not for Coux. “There were enough disagreements between us [the editors]
for me to go on accepting, as a founding member, the responsibility for all the articles; but,
as long as your opinion prevailed . . . I usually agreed with you”, Coux wrote to Maret
on 5 April 1849 (in Bressolette 1977: 466 n. 36) – and Maret’s democratic opinions were
well affirmed. Périn’s opinion is probably correct as regards Coux, but it seems that the
latter also left because of the less liberal, and more interventionist, economic flavour of some
papers published in the journal.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 14
published. A manuscript exists however: that of Coux’s Louvain lectures on
political economy “in its strict sense”, which many friends encouraged him to
publish. But he always rejected this prospect. According to one of these
friends, Hippolyte Thibeaud:
He had composed a full treatise of political economy. To a friend . . .
on several occasions, he read some pages of the highest interest. Joint
endeavours were made on more than one occasion to push him to publish
the manuscript. His modesty always led him to refuse. In the end, he
answered: “The person who replaced me in Louvain knows all my ideas.
He must publish a treatise on political economy. They could be stated
in a much better way than I could do it myself.” (Thibeaud 1864: 241)
Charles Périn, to whom Coux alluded here, expressed the same regrets. Yet
he was the custodian of Coux’s papers and had in his possession the manuscript
of the lectures, a 475-page document that he bequeathed to the Catholic
University of Lille, in France. But he asserted that he did not find anything
publishable in it (Périn 1881: 25). A first reason probably lies in the state
of the manuscript (Coux 1844–45) – in fact an unfinished draft, sometimes
carelessly written, some chapters being moreover merely outlined and others
not developed at all –, which would have necessitated serious rewriting and
completion for publication. But there is perhaps a more fundamental reason.
The manuscript is presented by Coux as his “last words” – “Novissima Verba!”
is the epigraph on the cover page –, and if we refer to Coux’s project, the state-
ment of some new and path-breaking principles in economics, from a Catholic
perspective, could have been expected. However, on this point, the content is
disappointing: while including many interesting historical developments, for
example on the evolution of the forms of labour from slavery to wage-labour,
and some pages on points already addressed in his published lectures on social
economics, it is basically an introductory course on political economy in the
Say tradition (see for example Appendix 3 below) – rejecting, however, the law
of markets. To understand this state of affairs, it is thus necessary to analyse
Coux’s project more precisely. What, then, was lacking in political economy,
and how could Catholicism provide it with indisputable foundations?
3.2 A moral dilemma
In his 1830 letter to Lamennais, in his 1832 Essais and in the lectures
published in L’Université catholique, Coux always told the same story. He
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 15
wrote that when he was in England and in the United States, he was struck by
– and suffered from – the contrast between these Protestant nations and many
Catholic countries, the best example of which being Spain. He saw how the
wealth of the former made such a strong contrast with the poverty of the latter,
and he was shocked by the link which apparently existed between the religion
prevailing in a country and the social and economic state of that country. All
this seemed to confirm what had been suggested since the eighteenth century:
that the Catholic faith and its institutions formed an obstacle to economic
development, while the Protestant faith favoured it.
I lived among Protestants, and you know that their financial and
industrial supremacy has always been their favourite argument. When
they compared, in my presence, England, so rich and anti-Catholic, with
Spain, so faithful and poor, I could only acknowledge that a Church, the
dogmas of which . . . had produced such disastrous results was missing
one of the essential features of truth. (Coux 1830a: 81)
Coux’s faith was shaken because he could not understand why the true
religion – Catholicism, in his eyes – could put believers at such a disadvantage.
It is true, he stressed, that the material consequences of a religion cannot be
a proof of its truth:28 it was the task of apologetics to develop this truth,
with totally different arguments. But he thought that God could not have
neglected these material aspects of worship, and that consequently the true
religion should also possess some principles to ensure the prosperity of the
community.
Of course I knew that the aim of the true religion cannot and should
not be the temporal happiness of man, but I also understood that it is
obliged to ensure it . . . like an additional reward, granted without being
promised, because otherwise the society in possession of the absolute
truth would not be what it must be: the aristocracy of mankind. (Coux
1830a: 81)
The important economic problems that first arose in England during the
first decades of the century were a kind of revelation to him, because they were
not temporary, as was first thought, but structural, permanent, and intimately
28 This point of view is restated again and again in his published lectures: see for example
1836b, vol. 1: 278, 279; 1837a, vol. 4: 82, 248, 254. See also 1837b: 188: “all [the Catholic
writers] lay down the principle, that the truth of no creed is to be tested by the effect it
produces upon the earthly happiness of its followers.”
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 16
linked to the economic regime. “Unfortunately, destitution deceived all expec-
tations and thwarted the calculations of the economists: it has grown according
to a geometric progression and will end in dreadful chaos.” (Coux 1830a: 81)
The arrogant prosperity of the Protestant countries was just a delusion, and it
became clear that the economic system at the origin of this delusion contained
seeds of self-destruction. Societies based on it were unavoidably condemned
to disintegration.
3.3 Towards a “social and political economy”
According to Coux, these events induced him to draw some conclusions. The
first was that the economists were responsible for this situation, despite the
fact that they tried to put the blame on the workers: “Philosophy itself admits
that there is no remedy to the evil because it blames the superabundance of
the population: it thus stresses a cause, the action of which cannot be changed
but by means of a permanent famine” (Coux 1830a: 81).
Malthus’s doctrine spread all the more easily as it pointed the finger
at the people, who were suffering, as the real authors of their own
destitution; and Malthus’s followers believed they did all in their power
in favour of the workers when they could tell them . . . : “you would not
be hungry, had you not been born”. (Coux 1832: 46)
But the responsibility was that of political economy itself, because this
awful economic system was its doing. It provoked “the plague of pauperism”
through the implementation of its theories (Coux 1832: 56). “The language of
the economists reveals the depth of the social scourge; their teaching made this
scourge, since they govern the world. They are the priests of money” (Coux
1832: 50). In these conditions, economic theories can only be “deceptive”
(Coux 1832: 53).
How is it possible to refuse to acknowledge that the industrial school,
the school founded by Adam Smith, took a wrong turning . . . , when
we look at the present state of England and France? In both countries,
amidst appalling distress . . . , there are huge amounts of wealth; but
all around a starving mob is rising up. (Coux 1832: 55)
Such a society cannot last and revolution is imminent (Coux 1832: 54).
This is the reason why Coux tried to identify the conditions of a stable and
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 17
lasting social relation on which the prosperity of a country could be built.
In this perspective, he compared the material consequences of different kinds
of religious and social belief – or unbelief – and came to the conclusion that
Catholicism alone was able to generate such a desirable relation.
The earthly value of the various beliefs will be . . . appreciated in money,
since we will be able to evaluate them according to their material results.
This point of view, which has nothing in common with theology, will allow
us to compare them with each other . . . , and the one generating the
greatest welfare on earth will be considered by its opponents themselves,
if not as the truest, at least as the most useful doctrine. (Coux 1836b,
vol. 1: 278, italics in the original)
Unfortunately, Catholics wrongly disregarded political economy and
abandoned this field of study to their opponents. Their behaviour, Coux
admits, can of course be explained. They acted in this way primarily because
political economy “exclusively deals with human cupidity”. Political economy
is in their eyes the “theology of material interests” (Coux 1830–31: 96): born
outside the Church, “its first words were words of blasphemy” (Coux 1836b,
vol. 1: 92). It was thus in conflict with their ethics of sacrifice and charity.
But they also neglected political economy for another, less glorious, reason:
discouraged, they started to raise doubts about their own religion. They be-
lieved in the end that its dogmas were unfavourable to any idea of material
welfare and prosperity.
Political economy has a great influence on the religious destiny of the
people. Since it shows them all the wealth produced by industry, since it
continuously invites them to the feast of fortune, they feel in the end tired
of the resistance they oppose and they curse the worship that deprives
them of all these goods. This is the part played by political economy,
since its origin, vis-à-vis the Catholic nations. It did not attack its dog-
mas directly, but it blamed these dogmas for the alleged misery of their
followers. (Coux 1830–31: 105; see also 1836b, vol. 1: 92)
It was thus high time to react. But did all this mean that the entire corpus
of political economy had to be rejected? It seems at first sight that this should
be the case, especially if we remember how very harsh Coux could be with
economists and economics.29 However, a pure and simple rejection was not
29 The theories of political economy are false and misleading. Smith, Say and Ricardo
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 18
on his agenda. In his opinion, the prevailing economic theories could also be
scientifically accepted, and express some truth: for example, they “unveiled
the causes and the effects of credit, explored the maze of circulation, showed
how capital is formed and accumulated” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 94), and Coux’s
developments in his manuscript lectures on political economy are in fact sys-
tematically based on the law of supply and demand. But these theories have to
be put in the right perspective. According to the letter to Lamennais quoted
above, one must “give political economy what it is lacking”. Coux’s idea was
to include political economy “in its strict sense” – “which almost exclusively
deals with exchangeable wealth . . . and cannot encroach on the teachings of
morals” (Coux 1844–45: 22) – within a larger set of theoretical propositions
that was supposed to give it its real meaning, and without which it would
remain partial and therefore dangerous.
The production of wealth supposes the existence of a society, and society
supposes sociability. “Social economics” studies this sociability and its object
is to determine which form of society is the most capable of securing this
sociability, that is, the most apt to favour the creation of wealth in a stable
and durable environment. It must thus come first. “Its main object is the
knowledge of the laws of society; it is . . . the necessary prelude to political
economy” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 95). It is of a higher order than political
economy because it has something to do with the Law of God.
It is difficult to believe that . . . no voice ever arose to prove to
the economists that all their most central theories . . . are implicitly
contained in Catholicism. Even a superficial study of their doctrines
could have been sufficient to realise that they are but a collection . .
. of the consequences that naturally ensue from the application of the
revealed truths. (Coux 1830–31: 106)
Despite the fluctuations in Coux’s use of the terms in his different writings,
this approach remained unchanged. Lamennais accepted it, and expressed
the idea in a striking way.30 In the first issue of L’Université catholique, it is
had “their reason polluted, first by Protestantism, and then by philosophy” (Coux 1836b,
vol. 1: 93).
30 “It seems to me that political economy gains everyday a greater importance . . .
This science leads to all others, because, in the end, there is only one science. One usually
deals with it like Medea with her father. She wanted to gather his limbs back together
and make them younger. But I do not even see the cauldron in which our scientists could
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 19
also clearly stated in Philippe Gerbet’s “Discours préliminaire”.31 And accord-
ing to Coux, it is precisely the correct division of the science between “social
economics” and “political economy” proper that the Saint-Simonians could be
credited with:
In their hands, political economy became divided into two distinct
branches. To the first they gave the name of “social economy”, because
it is the science of all these institutions by the help of which societies
subsist, beginning from the family and mounting up to the State; and
because we learn from this science what should be the nature of those
institutions, in order to secure the greatest possible quantity of general
prosperity. The second branch, moving in a humbler sphere, was the
science of Smith and Ricardo – political economy in its strict sense, – or,
in other words, the science of the elements of the wealth of nations, and
the means of increasing it, when a nation is constituted. This division,
which at first seemed imperfect and obscure, but which was in fact a
correct one, tended much to promote the birth of St Simonism. (Coux
1838b: 148)
4The mistakes of political economy
and the logic of industrialism
While the principles of political economy are thus not to be rejected, some of
them have nevertheless to be criticised, amended or dropped in the perspective
of social economics. Coux raised five major points.
proceed in this operation with this science, out of which it could become one and alive again”
(Lamennais, letter to Coux, 4 February 1835, in Dudon 1911: 87).
31 “Political economy . . . states the laws of production, distribution and consumption
of all that serves the material well-being. It deals in particular with the facts gathered by
statistical history. It thus entails in the first place calculation devices: it establishes a kind
of balance, of social equation, between needs and resources, and presents the mathematical
theory of society . . . Social science, in its more elevated part, links . . . all the facts
to something superior to the idea of usefulness . . . it starts from the law of justice and
charity, which is the soul of society, and is itself linked to the religious dogmas. Science then
does not proceed by way of calculation, as political economy does, it does not rely only on
simple experience to find out, through induction, the conditions of the political body: it
deduces from religion the fundamental and absolute laws of human society” (Gerbet 1836:
32). A similar statement was made by the first rector of the Université Catholique of
Malines/Louvain (De Ram 1840: 14).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 20
4.1 Against the principle of population
The first critique concerns Malthus’s principle of population – “Malthus the
Protestant”, the “married priest” and his “merciless” logic (Coux 1836b, vol. 1:
95) – so quickly adopted by the economists. “The existence of a superabundant
population, when compared with the quantity of provisions we can command,
is as great a fallacy as ever gained credit among mankind” (Coux 1837b: 169).
The population of a country is never in the position of a crew on a boat, lacking
food and not knowing when it will be possible to stock up again: “we deny
most absolutely that there is in Europe one single country, which, with the land
already under cultivation, and by the assistance of the means of traffic which it
derives from its industry, might not subsist a more numerous population than
that which it now contains.” (Coux 1837b: 168) Moreover, before discussing
Malthus’s views, both followers and critics should have checked whether or not
a state of overpopulation really existed, which they never did.32
Finally, the principle of population is a real attack on divine wisdom
because, were it true, it would mean that God, when he commanded “be
fruitful and multiply”, wished to punish men for a transgression they had not
yet committed:
one might be tempted to believe, that it was to punish Adam for the fault
he had not yet committed, that God imposed on him the command to
increase and multiply. Economists of both sexes combined their efforts
in this crusade against marriage, – and certainly if the propagation of
our species could be stopped by subtlety and talent, the works of Miss
Martineau would entitle her to the especial gratitude of that posterity –
whose existence she would have prevented. (Coux 1837b: 168; see also
1836b, vol. 1: 95)
Faced with their belief in an excess of population, moreover, economists
propose absurd solutions, for example when they assert that a powerful check
to procreation can come from the will of the workers themselves when they
realise that a larger family would deteriorate their welfare. This kind of asser-
tion, Coux stresses, could be adapted to those who already have some comfort
32 “Yet this was the point at which they should have commenced . . . If we are not
mistaken, the disputants followed too closely the example of the learned men of the sixteenth
century, who expended so much ink in proving on the one side, that men might be born with
teeth of gold, and on the other, that such a phenomenon was impossible; they would have
done better, in the first place, to open the mouth of the child who occasioned the dispute,
and at once ascertain the fact.” (Coux 1837b: 168)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 21
in life, and who are afraid of losing it. But it is wrong when it is supposed
to apply to poor people. They do not have anything to lose, and a family life
constitutes the sole happiness they can hope for in this world (Coux 1837b:
171–2).
No doubt this perspective is a real check upon a young man whose
personal situation would be made much worse by the necessity of
providing for a young family; but then his situation must be one which
is capable of becoming worse; that is to say, he must be in possession of
some comforts which he must give up when he gives up celibacy. If, like
the Irish peasant, he has reached the last pitch of human misery, what
has he to fear? (Coux 1837b: 171)
Finally, “Malthus hardly deals with the question of the price of labour” – a
central point for Coux (see below, Sections 4.6 and 5.2) and “this is the radical
flaw of his essay” (Coux 1844–45: 339).
4.2 The neglect of the laws of the distribution
of income and wealth
Hence a second critique. While there is no overpopulation with respect to
food, it cannot be denied that there is one with respect to available jobs: “The
superabundance of the population that eat must not be confounded with the
superabundance of the population that work” (Coux 1837b: 168). The problem
takes us back to the logic of the industrial society. But it also takes us back
to the question of the distribution of income, since pauperism also concerns,
for a great part, the population that works but whose wages are too low. It is
therefore not enough to study the laws of the production of wealth, as political
economy does, but it is also necessary to study the laws of its distribution –
Villeneuve-Bargemont subsequently stressed the same point.
Economists only dealt with the first of these two conditions . . . They
were only busy with one question: to determine the laws that most favour
the production of material wealth, and these laws . . . became the aim
. . . of the science. Exclusively devoted to this research, economists
were careful not to ask whether the distribution of public wealth does
not have at least the same importance as its increase. (Coux 1830–31:
107)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 22
4.3 A wrong concept of wealth
Hence also a third critique of political economy: economists “misunderstand”
(1830–31) the notion of wealth. Their concept is erroneous because it is unduly
restrictive. As a matter of fact, most of them, following Smith, equate the
elements of wealth with the material goods exchanged in markets and therefore
having a price. But such a restrictive notion is wrong, for two main reasons.
First of all, wealth should normally refer to the well-being of a society, to the
quantity of utility that can be derived from the goods it produces. The price
is by no means a good indication of this utility. It depends on fluctuations
in demand and supply, and varies more than proportionally to the imbalance
between them (Coux 1832: 70). When the wealth of a country is only conceived
in monetary terms, as economists do, then “a famine is a means to fortune,
and the destitution of the people a proof of opulence” (Coux 1832: 71). One
should distinguish, Coux stresses, between the price and the intrinsic utility of
a good, between its exchangeable value and its value in utility.
The latter exists by itself, it is, so to speak, the substantive of the
public wealth, while the former, a simple adjective, only indicates the
relations between two exchangeable goods in so far as they are exchange-
able. (Coux 1832: 74, italics in the original)
Secondly, limiting the elements of wealth to goods that have a price
unfortunately neglects a whole set of other elements that contribute in the
same way, and to an even greater extent, to national prosperity. These non-
tradable elements form the social wealth par excellence, the most important
being the moral ideas and the virtue33 they generate. In a given society, the
entire set of beliefs underpinning the ideas of good and evil, just and unjust,
and even its institutions, plays a decisive role in economic life and in the
prosperity of the country. It cannot be excluded from political economy:
“viewed in this way, any religion, any philosophical system falls within the
province of political economy” (Coux 1832: 62).
If the price is no longer considered as the sole measure of the prosperity of
nations, everything that contributes to increase this prosperity – whether
33 “Virtue is nothing other than the preference given to the just over the unjust, whatever
the cost of this preference may be, and this is precisely why it is the principle that generates
all human transactions.” (Coux 1832: 85)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 23
or not it is liable to have a monetary evaluation – must be viewed as an
element of wealth. Then the wealth of nations will be estimated as much
on their moral virtues as on their skills in banking activities – at least
those virtues or vices that have an influence on agriculture and industry.
(Coux 1832: 71, italics in the original)
What would be the future of the wine-growing activity, if religion were to
prohibit the consumption of alcohol? Or the future of agriculture, or sea trade,
were religion to forbid eating meat or seafaring (Coux 1832: 61)? Economic
activities could not have developed properly in such contexts. Political econ-
omy would have been a useless science, and Say and Sismondi would have been
no more useful to the population “than a dance teacher for paralysed people”
(Coux 1830–31: 104). Moral ideas and beliefs are themselves wealth, negative
or positive, and a moral system that favours trade and industry, generating re-
spect for others and a feeling of safety and liberty, would form, at the material
level, an invaluable collective wealth.34
4.4 The wage question
Charles de Coux also tackled a fourth theme that he placed at the centre of
his analysis of pauperism: the wage question. At first sight, his critique seems
odd. As he wrote in his letter-programme to Lamennais:
while I was endeavouring to discover the causes of the distress that
devastates the countries dominated by industrialism, a fact voluntar-
ily neglected by the economists struck me as the alpha and omega of
the question; the labour of the poor man is his commodity, the only one
he has to sell, and . . . the conditions that rule the value of all other
commodities also apply in this case. (Coux 1830a: 82–3)
The fact that labour, or its services, is a commodity had certainly not
been “voluntarily neglected” by the economists. The point Coux stressed is
rather the inverse relation that exists between wages and profits – an important
element of his analysis, on which the future of society depends.
[N]one of them [the economists] realised that labour is an instrument for
the person who buys it, and a commodity for the one who sells it; and
34 The liberal economist Charles Dunoyer developed similar ideas (see Faccarello 2010a:
738–41).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 24
that consequently there are here two interests that cannot be opposed
without threatening the very existence of society. (Coux 1832: 39)
Economists neglected the fact that labour is the sole source of revenue
for the workers, and focused instead on labour as a means of production,
as a cost: “economists, led by the desire to increase production indefinitely,
took sides with the merchants of labour [those who demand labour, that is,
the entrepreneurs]. All their theories . . . evidently aim to reduce the
price of wages” (Coux 1830–31: 109). Moreover, labour is also the commodity
subjected to the greatest instability: “Of all marketable commodities, that
which is least sure of a demand, most variable in its price, and which makes to
the producer the most unfavourable return, is unquestionably manual labour”
(Coux 1837b: 169–70). For all these reasons, the state of society that ensues
can be worse than slavery: while the owners of slaves had the obvious interest
and duty to feed them, the entrepreneurs, for their greatest benefit, do not
have this worry with workers (Coux 1830a: 83; 1844–45: 317–22).
4.5 Against the “outburst of all cupidities”:
how to found a Christian political economy?
Last but not least, Coux’s fifth critique is directed at the fact that politi-
cal economy essentially deals with the “outburst of all cupidities” for earthly
goods (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 93), and takes this as its central behavioural
hypothesis. Public prosperity is considered to result directly from the wealth
of each member of the community: but the outburst of the passion to grow
rich only generates calamities. “Instead of considering, with Catholicism, that
the wealth of everybody lies in the wealth of all, they saw the wealth of all in
the wealth of each of them. Instead of growing poorer to the benefit of one’s
neighbour, they wanted to grow rich at his expense” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 93).
Human beings who are solely led by their self-interest can only join together
“as wolves do when they are chasing the same prey” (Coux 1832: 84). Society
cannot but fall into a state of anarchy.
Each member of the large human family being endowed with boundless
cupidity, his desires cannot be concentrated in the finite without an in-
satiable ambition, an ambition that inflates as his possessions grow. The
uncontrollable strength of his lust will put him in a state of endless war
against all his fellows. (Coux 1836b, vol. 2: 162)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 25
It is, however, to be noted – and this is an essential point – that Coux
never questioned the fact that political economy assumes the selfish behaviour
of people as an axiom. After Original Sin and the Fall of Man, this kind of
behaviour is unfortunately normal: “cupidity . . . is a passion inherent to the
fallen man” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 96; see also 1830a: 85).
We agree on this point with the Utilitarian school, and we start from the
fact that self-interest is the strength that leads the will because, except
in some very rare and exceptional cases, necessarily unknown outside the
Catholic Church, man brings everything back to himself and only takes
decisions with a view to his welfare as he understands it. (Coux 1836b,
vol. 2: 161; see also vol. 1: 280)
As in Boisguilbert more than a century before (Faccarello 1986, 2014), this
basic behaviour is explained by theology. As it is impossible to change it, Coux
aimed at neutralising its effects. This neutralisation is the foundation of social
economics or Christian political economy, and is based on the uncovering of the
sole stable social relation capable of generating real prosperity. This relation
is indicated by religion, and only by Catholicism. It is based on a fundamen-
tal ethical value: sacrifice. It is this point “that distinguishes fundamentally
Christian political economy from anti-Christian political economy. The former
considers sacrifice as the principle which generates wealth, but for the latter it
[the principle] is cupidity.” (Coux 1836b, vol. 2: 161; see also vol. 1: 280)
How should we understand this sacrifice? It is the Christian virtue, that
is, the attitude which puts love for one’s neighbour, charity, at the centre of
action, and which makes men adopt a virtuous conduct – the respect of justice
– even if this must have a detrimental effect on them. In such a way, a lasting
social relation is created that excludes any hostility against others. Moreover,
Coux’s argument stresses the fact that this virtuous behaviour is not only
compatible with the material prosperity of a nation, but is in fact the only
way to attain it. Any sacrifice for the benefit of others – or for the general
interest – certainly at first impoverishes the person who makes it. But this
person in turn receives the benefit of the sacrifices made by others, and Coux
was convinced that this generalised attitude, far from being a zero-sum game,
ultimately increases the general welfare.
If the sacrifices of the Catholic were lost for society, if the hardships
he endures, his unselfishness, his charity, his good faith, the purity of
his mores, did not turn to the benefit of anybody, we would not have
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 26
anything to answer to the anti-Catholic economists. But is it really so?
. . . The Christian sacrifice, while finding its principle in the love for God,
always . . . turns to the benefit of others, and if it impoverishes those
who make it, it enriches others. But we are all the others of others, and,
consequently, each member of a Catholic society finds in the sacrifices
of the other members a great compensation for his own sacrifices. Nay,
he is a hundredfold rewarded since, on the one hand, there is no lasting
society without a reciprocal devotion of its members and, on the other
hand, the more vigorous the spirit of sacrifice, the greater are the social
advantages that are divided between all. (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 93)
But what obliges the members of a community to adopt such a behaviour,
so opposed to the nature of man after the Fall? It is, Coux states, not only
the belief in a God, but in a “rewarding and vengeful God” who inevitably
and infallibly rewards and punishes men during their eternal life. In a kind
of Pascal’s wager, men compare their immediate and temporal interest, which
is always uncertain, with their eternal interest, which is certain. They are
still led by cupidity, but by “the cupidity for the goods of another life, the
craving for an imperishable wealth” (1836b, vol. 1: 96). Self-interest is still
the prime mover, but “an enlarged, inflated self-interest, extended beyond the
grave” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 280). This is obviously an essential point: “the
most naive religions were never so stupid as to ask the believers for devotion
without reward” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 280; see also 1832: 57). Sociability is
based on this fact.
Sociability is nothing other than this essential association of the individ-
ual with the Divinity . . . whom he obeys at the expense, if necessary,
of his immediate interest, because his well-understood interest demands
it . . . As a result, the belief in a rewarding and vengeful God does
not unite directly men together, or in other words the association of the
believer with his like is only a consequence . . . of his association with
the Divinity. (Coux 1836b, vol. 2: 410)
There is no state of nature, and no social compact. Only religion matters,
and moreover a religion based on a Revelation, because what is just or unjust,
good or evil, must be clearly stated from the outset and independent of the
actions of men.
The lectures published by Coux in L’Université catholique develop this point
of view extensively and propose a typology of societies – “unitary”, “Catholic”
and “transactional” societies – based on the possible combinations of two
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 27
elements: what he calls the legitimate order (based on religious beliefs) and
the legal order (based on political structures). Suffice it here to stress that the
aim of these developments is to show that Catholicism is the only religion that
can generate genuine and lasting prosperity. As an example, note how Coux
denies Deists and Pantheists, on the one hand, and Protestants, on the other
hand, the notion of a “rewarding and vengeful God” which is so essential to
the social relation:
Socially speaking, there is no difference between the absolute negation
of a Supreme Being, and the affirmation of a deity indifferent to his
creatures or crushing them under the weight of a rule that they
cannot change, through either their submission or their disobedience.
Self-interest does not care about the carefree greatness of a God who
leaves man to himself, who does not ask him anything, who does not
establish any link between this life and the future life. If he accepts this
doctrine . . . he will of course look for his happiness in the sole region
where his efforts can have any success in his world, and his interest will
be exclusively temporal, destructive of all society, all safety, all work and
all wealth. (Coux 1836b, vol. 2: 162)
4.6 The logic of the industrial society: pauperism
What are the economic and social consequences of the behaviour imposed by
anti-Christian political economy, and why is the phenomenon of pauperism
unavoidable in this context?
Competition is the war of all against all. Coux describes it and stresses its
negative effects. The maximisation of profits, he writes, is damaging not only
because it is necessarily excessive, but also because it generates dishonesty
(Coux 1836b, vol. 1: 93). In his analysis, the central variable is wages – the
wages that he accuses economists of neglecting.
In the struggle for markets, Coux admits, competition can for a time be
favourable to the entire society. Any State possesses what he calls “latent
wealth”,35 and a first stage of the process of growth consists in its progressive
35 “Latent wealth is formed of the common wealth not yet made fruitful by the labour of
men, of industrial wealth that has not yet the shape of exchangeable goods, and generally of
all the improvements still possible in science and legislation, in agriculture and in industry
. . . The clumsy worker made skilful, the forces of nature harnessed to increase the produce
of his labour days, new ways will one day hasten the progress of the national wealth, and
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 28
exploitation: in this situation, the demand for labour increases with the pro-
duction, and the wage remains at a certain level or even increases. From the
context, we understand that the exploitation of latent wealth corresponds to
the realisation of the potentially most profitable investments of the moment.
However, this exploitation is limited in time. The dynamics of investments
weakens, profits erode under the effect of competition. To maintain the prof-
itability of their activities, entrepreneurs must reduce their costs, and therefore
wages. The reduction of the wage rate in turn increases the profitability of
some investments that can now be made (Coux 1832: 108). This is how pau-
perism starts, with the dangers it entails.
The Gods flee, chased away by the roaring of the worker . . . He no
longer receives his daily bread, and while hunger kills him, who can hope
that, in his agony, he will not interrupt the peace of everybody? (Coux
1832: 109)
This process is intensified by other remarkable phenomena, the first of which
is a growing exposure to risk for the entrepreneurs. To increase their profits,
they think up and realise ever more risky projects, the outcome of which is
usually highly uncertain. They are encouraged by two important factors (Coux
1832: 87–8). In the first place, there is the development of the capital market,
which allows them to finance their projects thanks to the credit – the confidence
– they inspire in lenders. In the second place, and even more important, there
is a deep modification in mentalities, in public opinion, which gradually comes
to consider failures and bankruptcies not as ignominious actions, but as normal
events in economic life. This change of opinion in turn increases the willingness
of the entrepreneur to realise risky projects, and the economy is transformed
into a casino – “trade became a gaming table. Then came the disasters” (Coux
1832: 87). In this way, badly conceived productions are explained, together
with the resulting gluts and crises, the negative consequences of which always
fall on the workers. Even bankruptcies can be profitable: “when it was no
longer shameful to suffer the reverses of fortune, some started to take advantage
of this. Profitable bankruptcies succeeded ruinous bankruptcies. People went
into liquidation in the same way as they might set up a factory” (Coux 1832:
88). The same logic also explains why a growing amount of capital leaves the
the working force needed by the development of these resources will give some affluence to
the working class, at least for a time” (Coux 1832: 108, italics in the original).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 29
sectors of production and commerce: “it concentrates in the stock exchange,
and the capitalists speculate instead of making commerce” (Coux 1832: 86).
A second remarkable phenomenon is the mechanisation of production
processes. Again with a view to reducing the costs of production under
the pressure of competition, the massive and quick introduction of machines
generates an important reduction in the level of employment, together with a
simplification of the tasks and a general deskilling of labour. Hence an increase
in the jobless, a reduction in the wages of those who are still employed, and
an extension of pauperism.
These wonderful machines . . . provoked a complete revolution in society,
a revolution which could have been happy, had their introduction been
slow and progressive: the wages of the poor would not have been taken
away . . . When, with the aid of machines, it became possible to obtain
from a single man the quantity of product that was formerly made by
one hundred and fifty craftsmen, the least interruption in the sale of
the products caused a fall in the price of wages. From this moment the
worker lost all security in life. (Coux 1832: 44–5)
The other negative consequences of the introduction of machines make the
situation even worse. In the first place, because of the simplification of the
tasks performed, entrepreneurs could resort to the massive employment of
women and children: the supply of labour was considerably increased, wages
decreased, and the number of paupers increased (Coux 1837b: 172–3). In the
second place, the working conditions considerably deteriorated, exhausting the
workers and damaging their health.
The employment of very young children, the vast workshops where men
and women live together during sixteen hours per day, the lack of air,
a temperature similar to that of the torrid regions, the corruption of
the mores provoked by all these causes, the destitution which ensues, all
concurs to destroy the body and deaden the mind of the worker. (Coux
1832: 80–1)
Finally, two other points should be noted. First, greediness everywhere
generates dishonesty, which destroys the confidence that is so necessary to
economic activities – either the confidence of the entrepreneur in his collabo-
rators (Coux 1832: 85–6) or the confidence of the customers in the quality of
the products they buy (Coux 1832: 89–90) – and reduces profits: “the genius
of the engineer does not produce enough to cover the embezzlements of the
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 30
administrator” (Coux 1832: 86). Second, foreign competition intensifies the
downward pressure on wages. In their struggle for markets, countries can only
efficiently deal with costs, that is, with wages, since technology is disseminated
more or less quickly among competitors. The country which gets the upper
hand is the one where the workers can most tolerate a reduction in wages and
endure hunger. “Competition between countries that have an equal abundance
of capital and equally skilful workers is only competition between the stomachs
of these workers” (Coux 1832: 72).36
The situation of the workers is thus desperate. They endure a double
penalty: not only can they no longer satisfy their essential needs, but because
of the industrial society, their needs increase in number – “what all others pos-
sess is lacking for each of us, and therefore each of us is just as poor because
of the wealth of others as because of his own destitution” (Coux 1836b, vol. 1:
528).
[T]hanks to the decay of religious feeling, and to the desire for the
comforts of life . . . , the workman has contracted habits and acquired
tastes which were formerly unknown to him. And thus he is doubly a
sufferer, since his condition is worse, and his anxiety for its improvement
greater. This is the wound which is so deeply seated in commercial coun-
tries, and which, if not healed, must in the end prove mortal. (Coux
1837b: 170)
Poor people must give up all prospect of improvement. The owners of
capital form a new aristocracy, and it is impossible for anyone to grow rich
solely with his or her labour. Hence the widening gap between the rich and
poor, and the hate of the latter for the former (Coux 1832: 88–9).
5How to eradicate pauperism?
5.1 The wrong solutions
Once pauperism has been explained in this way, the main question remains:
is it possible to eradicate it? How to put an end to the logic of industrialism,
36 “In the struggle that would then take place in every market in the world between her
merchants and ours, supposing all else to be equal, success must depend upon the low price
of labour ; or, in other words, that country whose workmen could longest and most patiently
endure hunger must in the end carry off the victory.” (Coux 1837b: 181)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 31
Coux asks, without adopting one of the many solutions proposed by various
socialist writers, which all lead more or less directly to the abolition of private
property and liberty?37 The authors who belong, to one degree or another,
to the Christian approach reject these solutions, and Coux is no exception.
Private property takes its origin in present or past labour, it is a natural
right that secures liberty. No law can justify confiscation – even a modest
one, even through a simple tax – because any confiscation is simply bondage,
“a retroactive bondage” (Coux 1832: 96).
Neither is the solution proposed by certain economists acceptable. From
the writings of Say and Sismondi, Coux only retains a single idea: production
must be “accelerated”, one must always produce more in order to increase the
demand for labour, and thus reduce unemployment or increase wages.
According to Say and his immediate followers, the glut of manufactured
produce which so frequently took place, and the almost periodical sus-
pensions of the labours of the mechanics, were occasioned by there being
still not a sufficiency produced. According to Sismondi and many others,
the increase of population was the real cause of a distress which could no
longer be disputed. All demanded fresh markets. (Coux 1837b: 174)
But, according to Coux, it is evident that this headlong rush into production
cannot but worsen the situation in the long run, insofar as the search for new
markets inevitably leads to downward pressure on wages in order to reduce
costs. “This remedy . . . has until now only provoked new disasters” (Coux
1832: 48).
Some proposals were also made by Villeneuve-Bargemont. Most of them
were probably acceptable to Coux, but he did not say anything about them
in his published lectures. However, in The Dublin Review, he criticised one of
them, central to Villeneuve’s approach: that which considers agriculture as a
priority sector, that is to say, which subordinates the development of industry
and trade to a growth process centred on land. This solution was obviously
linked, in Villeneuve-Bargemont, to his proposal for the limitation and reori-
entation of human needs. Coux was certainly not against this limitation, but
he thought that the model of development proposed by Villeneuve-Bargemont
37 In his manuscript lectures, Coux criticised the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierists and
presented the communists as a kind of synthesis between the two (Coux 1844–45: 112–17,
344–7).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 32
was not feasible and could not, therefore, solve the question of pauperism.
He opposed the “blind antipathy to the factory system” (Coux 1837b: 179)
developed in the 1834 book: “the preference which the Catholic school gives
to agriculture, . . . to say the least, is carried greatly too far.” (Coux 1837b:
187)38
One reason for Villeneuve-Bargemont’s proposal was his acceptance of what
I have called the Montesquieu/Herrenschwand approach (Faccarello 2010b) –
later also developed by Alexis de Tocqueville –, that is to say, the idea that
the development of manufacturing makes the economy more vulnerable be-
cause the demand for manufactured products is subject to sudden and violent
variations, and those who work in this sector are disconnected from agriculture
and thus from food. Coux did not reject this hypothesis.39 However, it was his
opinion that a country cannot avoid autonomous industrial development. His
ideas were extensively developed in his 1837 paper published in The Dublin
Review. An excess supply of labour can perfectly exist in agriculture as in
manufacturing, and the problem would remain unsolved. “Unhappy Ireland is
a living proof of the utility, nay more, of the necessity of commercial industry.”
(Coux 1837b: 166) The Montesquieu/Herrenschwand model of development is
here implicitly referred to:
Whether . . . the superabundance of labour exists in the fields, or in the
factories, the effects is the same as respects the profits of the labourers
. . . M. de Villeneuve admits this fact, and wishes to encourage . . .
what he calls national manufactories; that is to say, manufactories that
are chiefly employed in working up the indigenous raw material. But
. . . that nation which has more hands and more capital than it can
employ in agriculture or in national manufactures, must, upon pain of
being exposed to a redundancy of labour, extend the sphere of its indus-
try, so as to take in the raw material of foreign countries. Undoubtedly
it will then find, that the only means of keeping up the rate of wages is
by an immense exportation; and machinery will become indispensable:
38 However, at the end of his syllabus (Coux 1836a: 57), he noted rather elliptically that,
thanks to progress in industry, “the permanent decrease in the prices of . . . [industrial]
products will soon deprive industry of the main part of its influence on the wealth of peoples,
and agriculture will regain its own”.
39 “There is some difference between the wealth of a people which only produces what is
necessary and that of a people whose industry mainly produces what is superfluous. The
revenue of the former possesses a fixity unknown by the latter, and while the agricultural
nation will last through centuries without fearing anything other than bad weather, the
manufacturing nation is exposed to all the dangers of competition.” (Coux 1832: 102–3)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 33
and then follow those giant factories where millions of workmen are con-
gregated. In fact, it is impossible to command foreign markets, and to
sell in them, under the form of merchandise, their superabundant labour
of the country, without possessing the advantage of cheapness. Now, the
factory system, superior machinery, and unbounded capital, can alone
insure the necessary degree of cheapness to encounter the accumulated
difficulties of freight, high duties, and foreign competition. (Coux 1837b:
182–3)
A problem of coherence arises here because it seems that Coux is criticising
Villeneuve-Bargemont for his rejection of the solution proposed by economists,
which Coux had himself rejected. The context shows, however, that this con-
tradiction is only apparent: Coux seems to isolate the idea of an agriculture-
centred process of growth from the other proposals stated in Économie politique
chrétienne. It therefore comes as no surprise that, in a market economy based
on private property and competition, the idea he criticises is unrealistic and
cannot suppress pauperism.
5.2 Is there a remedy?
This apparent contradiction in Coux’s reasoning, however, shows the existence
of a dilemma in his own thought. For what are the solutions he himself pro-
posed to eradicate pauperism? While his analysis eloquently states the evil
that undermines modern societies, it seems that the remedies proposed prove
in the end to be either derisory or unattainable. That being the case, his
analysis petered out and this is perhaps an additional reason why Charles
Périn did not discover anything publishable in the manuscript, of which he
was the custodian.
For Coux, the problem of the distribution of income is undoubtedly cen-
tral. It is possible, of course, to invoke charity. However, even if charity is
abundant and well-managed, “it will never be sufficient to cover the ordinary
needs of the worker” (1844–45: 321). A high enough wage is needed, at least
to allow those who have a job not to fall into destitution. But in a free market
society, the level of wages depends on the supply and demand of labour, and
the development of competition, machinery and modern industry structurally
produces an excess supply of labour. Some historical examples, Coux noted,
confirm this. During the Empire, wages were high because labour was in short
supply, owing to the needs for the army, conscription and high mortality on
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 34
the battlefields. During the Restoration and the July Monarchy, on the other
hand, war and conscription ceased, and the supply of labour became abundant:
wages decreased continuously in spite of the economic development of the time
(Coux 1837b: 173–4). Is there a remedy? How should we understand Coux’s
statement that “these machines, which at the same time have so prodigiously
enriched and impoverished society, would have produced entirely different re-
sults, had Catholicism retained its ancient social power” (Coux 1844–45: 343)?
Coux believed that the solution consisted in acting on the labour supply to
reduce it and thus, all things being equal, increase wages. In this perspective,
he found nothing better than to refer to the institutions of the Catholic Church,
including the celibacy of the clergy (which avoids an increase in the population)
and the religious feast-days (which are public holidays), supplemented by an
ethics that holds luxury tastes and goods in contempt – thus reducing the
needs of the workers (Coux 1830–31: 106).40
Nor did the Church act less wisely with respect to the rate of wages.
The old Dutch East Indian Company, in order to keep up the price of
their spices, burned a part of those which they gathered in abundant
years. The Church did the same; she consumed a part of the labour of
the workmen by the multitude of her religious festivals; and the labourer
then sold his remaining working days more dearly than he would have sold
the whole year of labour, if he had consented to work all the year: and in
the pomp of these festivals were held out to him unexpensive enjoyments,
which turned his mind from more costly pleasures. The Church had nicely
calculated that the labourer should gain the most and expend the least
that was possible. The Catholic economists assert, that the Reformation,
by suppressing ecclesiastical celibacy, has rendered powerless the different
clergy which it has created; and that, by suppressing festivals, it has
brought into the market that superabundance of labour which is now
mistaken for a redundancy of population. (Coux 1837b: 197, italics in
the original)
These points are developed in the manuscript lectures (Coux 1844–45, part
III: chapter 3), where Coux also made a case for the creation of workers’
associations: they would have been led by devoted non-workers, for example
priests, whose role would have been to discuss the level of wages with the
masters (Coux 1841845: 347). During the 1848 Revolution, in some papers
40 Coux neglected the fact that contempt for luxury reduces the demand for this kind of
good, thereby reducing their production and hence the demand for labour.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 35
published in L’Ère nouvelle, this same approach led Coux to propose a reduc-
tion in the length of the working day, again with a view to diminishing the
supply of labour and increasing wages.
A similar approach can be found in a paper Coux published in 1844 in
Le Correspondant, “De l’économie politique nationale au point de vue de la
France”. There he supported a protectionist policy in favour of “national
labour”, avoiding the ordinary downward pressure on wages due to interna-
tional competition. There is of course nothing original in this proposal, except
for the ethical justification developed by the author, who refers to the values
of Catholicism as opposed to those of “philosophy” and “Protestantism”. In
substance, the Catholic ethic of charity – helping one’s neighbour – favours
personal relationships with those who are helped, and thus the immediate
neighbourhood of the believers. It is primarily an interpersonal relationship,
and a feeling that grows weaker with the distance between human beings.
It is the opposite of the ethic of philanthropy – the ethic of philosophy and
Protestantism. The latter promotes a love for humankind, an abstract and
intellectualised love which favours the masses and creates institutions that
help human beings indiscriminately and automatically – like the English Poor
Laws – and which can be counter-productive. It is Coux’s opinion that true
and efficient help comes from Catholic charity and its local institutions. It
is this same charity that obliges us to prefer our fellow citizens to foreign-
ers: “in the political sphere, one’s neighbour is evidently one’s country” (Coux
1844: 32). “I am far . . . from having any hostile feelings towards foreigners
. . . ; I do not hate them, I simply prefer our fellow citizens. Let the
foreigners be happy and prosperous, as long as my fellow citizens do not suffer
in consequence” (Coux 1844: 32). Hence the justification for the protection of
“national labour”.
Considered as a pure theory, that is, disregarding the national constraints
and the faits accomplis, the prohibitive system is eminently bad . . . But
prohibitions and protective duties are henceforth . . . a necessary evil;
an evil however that entails some compensations because, on the one
hand, it places it [France] in the first rank among those peoples who
want freedom for national labour and, on the other hand, it ensures the
daily bread of its workers. (Coux 1844: 58)
“You see once more”, Coux told his students, “that absolute solutions are
impossible in political economy”: all depends on the circumstances (1844–45:
157). In his unpublished lectures, the opposition between the ethic of
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 36
philosophy and Protestantism and that of charity and the justification for a
protectionist policy are expressed, in a more neutral way, through the
distinction between a “humanitarian political economy”, which deals with the
interests of humanity as a whole, and a “national political economy”, which
focuses on the wealth of the country (Coux 1844–45: 10–11, 422–6). Ideally,
the interests of humanity benefit from an unlimited domestic and international
competition, but with the emergence of machinery and modern industry “the
negative effects of industrial competition start to be felt” (1844–45: 423), the
economies and peoples of many countries suffer and their interests no longer
converge: in these circumstances, economic policy must protect the nation,
and “national political economy” is just “the science adapted to the needs of
the fatherland” (1844–45: 426).
5.3 From hope to pessimism
Are these remedies efficient? Coux’s answer is not so clear-cut, and he proved
in the end to be rather pessimistic. For example, in the case of protectionism,
while noting its necessity, in his unpublished lectures he also stressed that
this policy, when (unavoidably) implemented by many countries, results in
increased domestic competition between the national producers no longer able
to sell on foreign markets, and ultimately increases pauperism. This is, he
admitted helplessly, “a very serious question”: “modern civilisation depends
on its solution, but this is an enigma, whose answer is known by Providence
only – as for me, I do not know it” (1844–45: 426). The same is true for a
possible reinstitution of the Catholic festivals. This would be helpful if all the
countries did the same: but this is now unfortunately impossible, because a
unity of belief among nations no longer exists (1844–45: 324).
Coux must have felt that his emphasis on the strategic character of the level
of wages, while accepting at the same time private property and free trade,
was a derisory statement in the face of such huge a problem as pauperism. In
a way, and in spite of the fact that he never abandoned this approach, he must
have been aware of this from the beginning:
As my ideas developed, political economy acquired, to my eyes, a new
nature . . . : linked with God, it became Catholic; it borrowed some-
thing from the infinity of the religion that had just subjected it, and the
question of the wages, to which I first decided to stick exclusively, seemed
to me too narrow in the end. (Coux 1830a: 84)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 37
This “something from the infinity” is what Coux developed later in his
“social economics” and his apologetic attempt to prove that only a social
relation based on Catholicism can be lasting and advantageous. However,
in real life, this relation became looser and looser and the society ruled by
Catholicism – an idealisation of the Middle Ages – evolved under the attacks
of philosophy and Protestantism. Unbelief dominated and temporal interests
gained the upper hand over eternal interests, provoking the situation that Coux
had before his eyes. In this perspective, the only way to eradicate pauperism
would be to restore the strength of the Catholic relation, that is, to provoke
an authentic cultural and social revolution. Villeneuve-Bargemont did not
hesitate to propose such a programme.41 But was this restoration feasible?
On this point, Coux’s writings are ambiguous. Like Villeneuve, he sometimes
dreamed of a reform in people’s behaviour. As the problems are the result of
the avidity for earthly happiness, is not a limitation on human needs to be
hoped for?
Happy those who know how to content themselves with exchangeable
goods that suit their position! Nations live the last days of their material
happiness when a senseless self-love presses them to want more. The
worker only suffers distress when he seeks after goods that are not for
him, and a reckless desire for luxuries lead the middle classes to their
ruin. But how to repel the invasion of these artificial needs that arise
from our pride? Has philosophy some of these magical words that charm
the human heart and stop its aberrations? Religion alone speaks the
language where these words can be found, and here again . . . the
usefulness of Catholicism reveals itself in all its splendour. (Coux 1832:
106–7, italics in the original)
41 “How to make labour, industry, the production of wealth, the progress of the civilisation,
be in harmony with the welfare of the most numerous classes of society? The way exists
. . . but it requires . . . a complete change in social doctrines. Instead of . . . being
only guided by cupidity and the morals of material interests, one should consider all human
beings – whose destiny is not limited to a short passage on this earth – as brothers destined
to share the same legacy; one should demonstrate moderation, justice and charity in all
enterprises; one should love and seek progress in everything, but with wisdom, . . . without
greed; one should not neglect the acquisition of the commodities of life, but not get them at
the expense of the happiness of others; one should regulate needs, desires, profits, so that
labour, wages and the moral and physical betterment of the lower classes can go pari passu
with the increase in wealth . . . One should thus protect agriculture because it leads more
certainly to this goal, encourage the machines which are useful to all but proscribe, by means
of prohibitive rights, those [that are] harmful to the working class: such is the solution to
our problem. Industrial selfishness will, no doubt, answer: Master, your words are harsh!
. . . To you, they may seem so. But they are clear and soft to hearts that are not closed to
justice and truth.” (Villeneuve-Bargemont 1834, I: 385–6, italics in the original)
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 38
But in the end, Coux’s discourse was pessimistic. He rarely broached the
subject in his publications and, on these occasions, the tone is negative. Ulti-
mately, the present state of society cannot be changed and must therefore be
accepted:
This form of society, however, in spite of all the disadvantages it entails
. . . , is the only possible one today. This is the reason why our duty,
as Catholics, is to frankly accept it because we owe it the remnants of a
more perfect sociability. (Coux 1839b, vol. 8: 171)
As for the “social economics” that was supposed to place political economy
in the right perspective, Coux twice played down its importance, as if its virtue
could only be negative – in other words critical, but unfit for reconstruction.
We should not delude ourselves, Messieurs, qua the importance of social
or political economics. Dying societies can learn from its teaching the
real cause of their fears, but there stops its power. The disease that kills
them comes from above, and above lies the remedy. (Coux 1836b, vol.
1: 97)
They [the Catholic writers] acknowledge frankly that the remedies they
propose can scarcely by possibility be adopted in the present state of the
world; and they hardly attempt to conceal the sadness of their forebod-
ings as to the future destiny of society. (Coux 1837b: 198)
Coux felt powerless. That being the case, it is tempting to turn against
him the judgment he expressed on Say and Sismondi. He probably felt that
he himself was a “dance teacher for paralysed people”.
6Conclusion.
A new school in political economy?
It would have been interesting to compare systematically Coux’s developments
with those of the main critical writers of his time, including Malthus, Sismondi,
the Saint-Simonians, the Phalansterians, and even Tocqueville. But this would
go beyond the scope of the present study, that is, a clear statement of his
approach and analysis of his doctrine. To conclude, then, we must address
a pending question: to what extent, at that time, was Christian political
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 39
economy a new school of thought – Coux’s dream – based on a corpus of
specific theoretical propositions?
At the turn of the 1830s, in reaction to the mass pauperism created by the
new industrial system and to the first modern economic crises, the project
of a Christian political economy emerged in France from different branches
of Catholicism, either politically liberal or conservative Legitimist. Charles
de Coux belonged to the former, Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont to the lat-
ter. Their critiques of the prevailing economic system were similar, but they
did not necessarily agree on the remedies, except for the reaffirmation of
Christian values, the role of charity and sacrifice, and the need to raise wages.
Villeneuve is by far the more famous of the two nowadays: but Coux, whose
intention was certainly more theoretical and ambitious, could claim priority. In
Économie politique chrétienne, Villeneuve referred to him, acknowledging that
he (Villeneuve) had “benefited from many of his observations” (1834, I: 83n).42
Towards the end of his Histoire de l’économie politique, he stated again the
convergence between his own preoccupations and those of Gerbet and Coux.
The similarity between our ideas and those of the authors whose
lectures today confer such great interest to L’Université catholique was
for us an important encouragement, and also a source of hope. We are
pleased to think that, thanks to the conscientious work of these Catholic
philosophers and many political economists who go in the same direction
. . . science will, sooner or later, become Christian and Catholic, and will
lead the human race towards a better destiny. (Villeneuve-Bargemont
1838, vol. 5: 335; see also 1841, II: 360–1)
Both authors aimed explicitly at the creation of a new school in politi-
cal economy – Villeneuve had probably been inspired by Coux on this point.
Characterising such a school in his 1837 paper of The Dublin Review, Coux
wrote:
Catholic in its faith, and catholic in its manner of conceiving science,
this school, little known in England, begins to develop its principles
in France; and its existence is the necessary consequence of the entire
42 In January 1829, when he was still the prefect of the Department of Nord, Villeneuve
sent an administrative report to the Minister of the Interior Jean-Baptiste Sylvère Gaye de
Martignac. In it, he stressed the permanent state of destitution of part of the population and
the necessity to find remedies, but without any notable developments (Villeneuve-Bargemont
1829).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 40
contradiction which facts have given to the doctrines and to the promises
of Protestantism and of philosophy. (Coux 1837b: 175)
Villeneuve dreamt of some new theoretical developments on a Christian
basis – enrolling in the Christian school the “writers whose efforts tend to
restore the moral and religious element of the economic science” (1844: 240).
In a sense, Coux’s and Villeneuve’s attempts proved to be rather success-
ful, because, despite the fact that Villeneuve was sometimes seen more as
an “apostle” than “an economist or a statesman” (Blanqui 1837, II: 172),
contemporaries who did not necessarily belong to this movement considered
that the new school was now part of the theoretical landscape. François-Félix
de Lafarelle-Rebourguil (1839, I: 21–72), for example, counted three schools of
thought in political economy: the “English or positive school” (Smith, Ricardo,
Say, Destutt de Tracy), the “moral school” (Malthus, Sismondi, Droz) and the
“charitable or Christian school”. Charles Louandre wrote along the same lines,
but proposing a slightly different classification:
Like philosophy, political economy is divided into three schools: the
Catholic school, the administrative school [the liberal economists], and
the revolutionary school [the associationists and socialists]. The lead-
ers of the Catholic school . . . are MM. de Coux and de Villeneuve-
Bargemont. (Louandre 1847: 278)
But listing the members of the school precisely was not an easy task. From
the start, the delimitation of this current of thought was all the more vague
because, for some authors, it still lacked doctrinal unity. François Lallier, for
example, who had been greatly impressed by Coux’s lectures in Paris in 1832,
and whose paper in Revue Européenne was a eulogy of Villeneuve’s 1834 book,
recognised that the new school was, “if not de facto and really united, then at
least united in spirit, hope and heart” (Lallier 1835: 135). Lafarelle-Rebourguil
(1839) just mentioned a few names, and other writers could not clearly state
who belonged to the school – Villeneuve, rather arbitrarily, tried to include in
the movement certain authors who had written before him or approximately
at the same time. Obviously, in the 1830s and at the beginning of the 1840s,
the “école charitable ou chrétienne” was only a hope for those who felt close to
this sensibility.43 For Villeneuve himself, the constitution of a new current of
43 The topography of this sensibility remained vague for a long time. In the 1850s, the
names put forth by Alfred Nettement – a Conservative and Legitimist – in his Histoire de
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 41
thought was, in the end, a simple wish (1834, I: 83 n. 1, 89 n. 1; 1841, I: 360).
It is with this hope that, in L’Université catholique, he closed his lectures on
the history of political economy:
It is enough for our ambition to have shown in advance the extent of their
mission to the writers who would like to enter a noble and new career:
we would be happy if our works . . . could contribute to the emergence
. . . of new and Catholic Adam Smiths who could realise what we have
just foreseen and indicated. (Villeneuve-Bargemont 1838, vol. 6: 17)
Coux also stressed the vague boundaries of the group44 and the embryonic
state of the theories.
But, like all things in their beginning, the Catholic school has as yet
not got beyond the first rudiments of its theories; and up to this time
has done little besides pointing out the fatal consequences, that, with or
without reason, it attributed to the prevailing doctrines, and seeking out
means to ameliorate the fate of those poor who are unable to work or to
live on the fruits of their labour. (Coux 1837b: 176)
The school only formed slightly later,45 but not according to Coux’s hopes.
While the dissemination of Catholic ideas on political economy benefited from
Coux’s teaching and publications, he did not have any faithful disciples. It is
true, in a sense, that his action was continued by one of his students, Charles
Périn, who succeeded him to the chair of political economy in Louvain in
1845. Périn started publishing a bit later, especially in reaction to the 1848
Revolution, and was quite prolific for decades. His importance can hardly
be overestimated: through his many writings – some of them translated in
la littérature française sous le gouvernement de Juillet (1854, II: 515 et seq.) still differs
from those mentioned by Félix Martin-Doisy in his voluminous Dictionnaire d’économie
charitable (1855–57, IV: col. 294 & sq.) where the list of the “économistes charitables” is
excessively long. In the recent literature (see for example Almodovar and Teixeira 2012),
the boundaries are again different.
44 Coux also admits that certain authors sometimes included in the group do not have
a specific religious attitude. “Nay, they are not all Catholics; and, if MM. de Villeneuve,
Rubichon and Rainneville, profess the same faith with ourselves, MM. de Morogues, Huerne
[de] Pommeuse, and many other French economists, who agree with them in all respects,
and whose works have lately appeared, have no pretention to the title of orthodox believers.
Their agreement is, therefore, remarkable” (Coux 1837b: 188).
45For a detailed history of the post-1840 debates, Moon (1921) remains an unavoidable
reference.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 42
German, Italian, and Spanish – he systematically developed a Christian ap-
proach and was one of the founders of what was to be called “social Catholi-
cism”. But social Catholicism was no longer Coux’s Christian economics.
Fundamentally, Coux remained a liberal and a theorist, and could not pre-
vent himself from thinking in terms of competition in markets – even if he was
highly critical of the economic and social outcomes of competition. For him,
for example, wages remained a price, determined by the supply and demand
for labour: hence his disappointing and derisory solutions to pauperism, noted
above, and the blind alley in which he must have felt trapped. After Coux, any
theoretical ambition to found an alternative political economy was practically
abandoned. Moreover, wages, most authors insisted, were not to be consid-
ered as the price of a commodity, labour. Social Catholicism mainly focused
on important but practical goals – hence the quasi-disappearance of the phrase
“Christian political economy”. Authors aimed, for example, at changing the
legislation in favour of the working classes (limitation of child labour and the
working day, improvement of working conditions, decent housing, education,
insurance, charity and the role of religion, etc.), and, among other actions,
at the promotion of new forms of cooperation between workers, and between
capitalists and their employees (invention of new forms of guilds or corpora-
tions). In a sense, the pragmatic and policy-oriented line of Armand de Melun
(1807–1877), a friend of Villeneuve-Bargemont, and after him of Albert de
Mun (1841–1914) prevailed. Périn belonged to this approach.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Justin Fèvre (1829–1907), a prelate46
who constantly fought against liberal Catholicism, but was in favour of
social Catholicism, published a book with the title Charles Périn, créateur
de l’économie politique chrétienne (1903).47 This was of course neither fair nor
exact. But the fact is that Coux was deliberately forgotten – probably because
of the liberal and democratic aspects of his thought – and his theoretical ambi-
tion was no longer on the agenda. The dream of a Christian political economy
was over.
46 He was the editor of Revue du monde catholique.
47 Fèvre even tried to dismiss Coux’s person and integrity, writing (1903: 10) that Coux’s
papers in L’Avenir have some merits, but that, “having married a rich woman, he was lost
to science” (see also 1903: 224). It is true that, in his foreword to the book (1903: x),
he admitted that his judgment was a bit too harsh, but he nevertheless left the main text
unchanged.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 43
Appendices
Appendix 1
Syllabus of the 1832 Paris Lectures on political economy
This syllabus is to be found in Gerbet (1832), on an advertisement by
the publisher, inserted between pp. 122 and 123. It shows how, at that
time, Coux’s system was not entirely formed.
First part
1st Lecture. Introduction.
2d — Of moral and material wealth.
3rd — Of Catholicism and philosophy as generators of wealth.
4th and 5th — Of legitimate and legal orders.
6th — Of property and inheritance.
7th — Of the Blessed Virgin as the type of the Christian woman.
8th — Of parties-priests (“Des Partis-Prêtres”).48
9th — Of religious and philosophical beliefs in relation with population.
Second part
10th lecture. Of exchange.
11th — Of domestic and foreign trades.
12th — Of real value and artificial values.
13th — Of credit and public debts.
14th — Of wages, machines and religious holidays.
15th — Of taxes in their relation with national wealth.
16th — Of luxury and alms considered in the same perspective.
17th — Of Catholicism as the only possible protection against a universal
bankruptcy.
48 The phrase “parti prêtre” was coined by François-Dominique de Montlosier in the 1820s
to refer to the propensity of the Catholic hierarchy to control everything in a state, including
the political power (see for example Montlosier 1826a, 1826b, 1827). Coux used it again
later in a paper on public instruction in Belgium (Coux 1840b).
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 44
Third part
18th lecture. Of the ancient era and the new era in political economy.
19th, 20th and 21st — Of the causes of the actual disease.
22d — Of Spain and Great Britain.
23rd, 24th and 26th — Of Catholic regeneration, as the only permanent
means of salvation for the society.
26th — Of a transitory system.
Appendix 2
Syllabus of the Malines and Louvain Lectures on political
economy
This syllabus (Coux 1836a) is in fact essentially a general presentation
of Coux’s lectures on social economics, which were to be published in
L’Université catholique. The table of contents of his unpublished lectures
on political economy proper is given below, in Appendix 3.
Political economy is the science of the laws that govern the formation,
distribution and increase of the wealth of peoples. It was at first imperfect, and
considered only one part of its vast field, because it dealt exclusively with the
interests of the class of large industrialists. Wealth developed in consequence,
but it was wrongly distributed and the fundamental conditions of its existence
were disregarded. Thus, the wealth of some was made out of the destitution
of others, and society, awoken from its dreams of prosperity by the cries of
the poor, discovered that it had lost more in security than it had gained in
opulence.
Science was thus obliged to find a new route, and the distribution of wealth,
that is, the wage question, became the main subject of its study. As this
question can only be solved through profound investigations into the initial
conditions of human sociability, political economy was split into two distinct
– while inseparable – parts, so that in the future, it will form a whole and
be a science only in so far as it brings together, in the same teaching, social
economics and this regulatory economics that was until recently treated as the
whole of political economy. The lessons offered to the readers of L’Université
catholique will thus entail a course of social economics and a course of regula-
tory economics. The first will deal with the causes of wealth and the general
laws, which govern its distribution and increase. The following propositions
will be developed and proved:
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 45
1°The existence of wealth implies the pre-existence of any particular
society, and the faith in a rewarding and vengeful God is the necessary
condition of human sociability.
2°As this faith draws from each religion a special form, each religion
generates a distinct society, a society, in which the development of wealth
is limited by the nature of the religion on which it lies.
3°The philosophy of the non-believer – whatever the degree of perfection
it reached – cannot create a society, nor keep to the society it takes
possession of, the life it received from its primitive beliefs.
4°As social beliefs weaken, public prosperity loses its stability; and while
a seeming progress can be brought by the invasion of incredulity, this
progress necessarily ends with the destruction of the entire wealth.
5°The most favourable society to the development of wealth will be that
which establishes the most clear-cut distinction between the spiritual
and temporal powers, which ensures the greatest security of property,
the greatest liberty to the individual, the greatest stability to the family,
the greatest protection to the woman, the greatest welfare to the poor –
a society, finally, in which men will have the greatest love for their fellow
human beings and the greatest confidence in their love.
6°Each society will fulfil these various conditions to the degree allowed
by its religion, and this degree will always depend on the analogies that
exist between this religion and Catholicism.
7°Catholicism alone, and in an absolute way, fulfils the conditions proper
to a cult of a perfect society. Alone, it liberates the worker by means
of the miraculous intervention of charity, and the woman, the son, the
citizen through the notion of duty – a notion grounded on love and by
the help of which, in his family and in the society, he always strengthens
the order through liberty, and liberty through order.
8°All the institutions, all the discipline of Catholicism, from the eccle-
siastical celibacy to the celebrations, result on the human level in the
increase of the wages and wellbeing of the poor.
9°The first cause of the prosperity of the Protestant peoples was the
reduction of wages: hence the industrial and even agricultural inferiority
of the Catholic nations – an inferiority that the latter will not deplore
for a long time.
10°The Catholic society being the one that entails the greatest number
of elements of wealth, these elements develop in their own proper form,
with the help of agriculture, industry and commerce.
11°Agriculture produce raw products; industry gives them a shape, and
commerce make them exchangeable. Thus, agriculture and industry cre-
ate direct and real values, and commerce creates indirect and market
values [valeurs vénales].
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 46
12°There is a fundamental difference between these two kinds of values.
It comes mainly from the changes that the issuing of paper-money, on
the one hand, and the progresses in industry on the other hand, bring to
the market value [valeurs vénales] of industrial products. The permanent
decrease in the prices of these products will soon deprive industry of the
main part of its influence on the wealth of peoples, and agriculture will
regain its own.
When this first part of our lessons will be finished, we shall give the
programme of our course of regulatory economics.
Appendix 3
Table of contents of the unpublished Lectures on political
economy (Coux 1844–45)
Part I. On production, considered independently from consumption
Chapter I. On the various kind of wealth.
Chapter II. On direct value and indirect value.
Chapter III. On exchange and sale.
Chapter IV. On the sign of value and credit.
Chapter V. On the different modes of production.
Chapter VI. On the different kinds of capitals.
Chapter VII. On workers.
Chapter VIII. On general income and its distribution.
Part II. On consumption, considered independently from production
Chapter I. On productive consumptions.
Chapter II. On unproductive consumption.
Part III. On the mutual relations between production and consump-
tion49
Chapter I. On the law of demand and supply in relation with the price.
49 There are some discrepancies between this table of contents, at the beginning of Part
III, and the chapters that follow. This part is unfinished.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 47
Chapter II. On the law of demand and supply in relation with the dis-
tribution of the primitive and secondary incomes.
Chapter III. On population and its laws.
Chapter IV. On taxation.
Chapter V. On home trade and foreign trade.
Chapter VI. On corn trade.
Chapter VII. On industrial competition.
Chapter VIII. On colonies and emigration.
Chapter IX. On banks.
Chapter X. On public debts.
Chapter XI. On foreign exchange.
Chapter XII. On industrial companies.
Chapter XIII. On the mercantile system, the prohibitive system and free
trade.
Chapter XIV. On the progress of political economy.
References
Almodovar, António, and Pedro Teixeira (2012). “‘Catholic in its faith, Catholic
in its manner of conceiving science’: French Catholic political economy in
the 1830s”. The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought,
19(2), 197–225.
Baubérot, Jean (1985). Le retour des huguenots. La vitalité protestante,
XIXe–XXe siècle. Paris/Geneva: Éditions du Cerf/Labor et Fides.
Baubérot, Jean, and Valentine Zuber (2000). Une haine oubliée: L’Anti-
protestantisme français avant le “pacte laïque”, 1870–1905. Paris: Albin
Michel.
Blanqui, Jérôme-Adolphe (1837). Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe,
depuis les Anciens jusqu’à nos jours. Paris : Guillaumin.
Bressolette, Claude (1977). L’abbé Maret. Le combat d’un théologien pour une
démocratie chrétienne, 1830–1851. Paris: Beauchesne.
Chateaubriand, François-René de (1802). Génie du christianisme, ou Beauté
de la religion chrétienne. Paris: Migneret.
Corcelle, François Tircuy de (1833). “Essais d’économie politique par M. de
Coux”. Revue des deux mondes, vol. 2, May, 372–80.
Coux, Charles de (1830a). Letter to Félicité de Lamennais, 20 February. In Le
portefeuille de Lamennais. Published and annotated by Georges Goyau.
Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1930, 80–7.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 48
——— (1830b). “De la seule majorité possible”. L’Avenir, 29 October and 17
November, as in Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence
générale pour la défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 1, 328–33;
334–41.
——— (1830c). “De la position des catholiques”. L’Avenir, 23 October, as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 1, 307–14.
——— (1830–31). “Économie politique”. L’Avenir, 29 December 1830 and
10 January 1831, as in Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris:
Agence générale pour la défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 1,
96–102; 103–10.
——— (1831a). “De l’année 1830”. L’Avenir, 2 January., as in Mélanges
catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la défense de
la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 183–9.
——— (1831b). “Le 21 janvier”. L’Avenir, 22 January, as in Mélanges catho-
liques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la défense de la
liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 1, 349–51.
——— (1831c). “De la souscription pour les Polonais”. L’Avenir, 29 January,
as in Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale
pour la défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 45–51.
——— (1831d). “Du crédit des deux cents millions et de la vente des bois
de l’État”. L’Avenir, 15 March, as in Mélanges catholiques extraits de
l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la défense de la liberté religieuse,
1831, vol. 1, 391–8.
——— (1831e). “Des associations patriotiques”. L’Avenir, 21 March, as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 197–203.
——— (1831f). “Du cens électoral dans l’intérêt des classes ouvrières”.
L’Avenir, 3 April, as in Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris:
Agence générale pour la défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 1, 284–9.
——— (1831g). “La Belgique”. L’Avenir, 17 April., as in Mélanges catholiques
extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la défense de la liberté
religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 130–6.
——— (1831h). “De l’état moral de l’Europe”. L’Avenir, 21 April, as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 7–12.
——— (1831i). “Des sociétés secrètes en Italie”. L’Avenir, 23 April, as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 30–40.
——— (1831j). “De la Pologne et de la Russie”. L’Avenir, 10 May., as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 65–70.
A Dance Teacher for Paralysed People? 49
——— (1831k). “De la mission du général Bonnet”. L’Avenir, 27 May., as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 211–17.
——— (1831l). “De l’état des pauvres en Irlande”. L’Avenir, 25 June, as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 117–24.
——— (1831m). “Du projet d’une Église nationale”. L’Avenir, 1 July., as in
Mélanges catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 2, 295–300.
——— (1831n). “Troubles de Marseille”. L’Avenir, 25 August, as in Mélanges
catholiques extraits de l’Avenir. Paris: Agence générale pour la défense de
la liberté religieuse, 1831, vol. 1, 448–56.
——— (1832). Essais d’économie politique. Paris: Agence générale pour la
défense de la liberté religieuse.
———