Classical Receptions Journal Vol 6. Iss. 2 (2014) pp.

177–197

A revolutionary doctrine? Cicero’s natural

right teaching in Mably and Burke
Jed W. Atkins*

Why and how did (and do) political thinkers with radically different political agendas
invest in Cicero’s conservative political philosophy? What is it about Cicero’s political
thought that inspires radicals and conservatives alike? This essay explores these
questions through a case study of the reception of the central Ciceronian political

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doctrine of natural right in the revolutionary writings of Gabriel Bonnot de Mably and
Edmund Burke. The former’s Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen was an important
revolutionary work that anticipated key elements of the French Revolution; the latter’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France constituted the major conservative critique of
the French Revolution. Despite their ostensibly different aims, I argue that these works
reveal remarkably similar interpretations of Cicero’s doctrine of natural right: it was
flexible enough that a prudent statesman could adapt it to different circumstances, but
it still contained revolutionary potential. Burke, the consummate rhetorician,
attempted to domesticate Cicero’s teaching by obscuring its revolutionary potential
while utilizing aspects that are friendlier to the established political order. The case
study suggests that the apparent bivalency of the reception of Cicero’s political
thought may result from the amplification of a bivalency within his thought itself.

Introduction
In her conclusion to a decade-old review of Anthony Everitt’s biography of Cicero,
Mary Beard asks why (and under what terms) so many modern men of letters —
from Ben Johnson to Voltaire to Henrik Ibsen — have made such substantial in-
vestments in ‘a thundering conservative of the first century BC’.1 Beard’s question,
which is still awaiting an answer, was particularly concerned with the reception of
Cicero’s biography; but it could equally be posed of his political thought. Why and
how did (and do)2 philosophers and political thinkers with radically different

*Correspondence: Assistant Professor, Classical Studies Department, Duke University, 233

Allen Building, Box 90103, Durham, NC 27708-0103. jed.atkins@duke.edu
1 Beard (2001: 6).
2 To select only two contemporary examples: Philosopher Qwame Anthony Appiah (2006:
34) mentions that Cicero’s works along with the Bible constituted the bedside reading of
his father, who in turn was a prominent Ghanaian statesman. Another philosopher,
Martha Nussbaum (2000: 178), judges Cicero’s De officiis as ‘perhaps the most influential
book in the Western tradition of political philosophy’.

ß The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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 JED W. ATKINS

agendas invest in Cicero’s relatively conservative political philosophy, which largely

sought to uphold Republican Rome’s customs and institutions?
Indeed, one does not have to investigate the reception of Cicero’s political thought
long before one encounters an apparent bivalency: thinkers both radical and con-
servative profitably turn to Cicero’s philosophica in support of very different, even
diametrically opposed, projects. Consider only eighteenth-century England and
France, where, as David Hume reports, ‘the fame of CICERO flourishes’.3 John
Locke, defender of the right of revolution, declared in Some Thoughts Concerning
Education (§185) that his students could not make further progress in ethics until
they had become thoroughly familiar with ‘Tully’s Offices’.4 The moderate
Montesquieu, whose unfulfilled lifelong ambition was to write a work imitating
Cicero’s De officiis,5 made it his hobby to collect the fragments of Cicero’s then-

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lost De republica, a work written by ‘one of the great minds that has ever existed’.6
The radical Irish philosopher John Toland’s admiration for Cicero was made clear in
his Cicero Illustratus, which fashions from a range of Cicero’s rhetorical and ethical
works ‘a paradigm for the politically engaged philosopher’.7 Gabriel Bonnot de
Mably, who provided important intellectual ammunition for the French revolution-
aries of 1789,8 suggested that two of his most influential works were nothing but
commentaries on Cicero’s doctrine of natural right.9 Mably’s later writings para-
phrase at length arguments from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, De finibus, and De
officiis.10 The iconoclast Voltaire once estimated that Cicero ‘alone is perhaps worth
all the philosophers of Greece’.11 And yet with regard to the conservative Edmund
Burke, subsequent scholarship has done little to invalidate Woodrow Wilson’s ob-
servation that in Cicero Burke ‘met a man after his own heart . . . Cicero he conned as

3 Hume (1999: 6).

4 Locke (1996: 139).
5 See Letter of Montesquieu to Monseigneur de Fitz-James, 8 October 1750, cited in
Moore (2002: 367).
6 Montesquieu (1950: 229). The translation is mine.
7 Fox (2007: 275).
8 See Maffey (1963: 248–57). As Baker (1990: 105) notes: ‘In 1790 the representative who
argued before the National Assembly that the nobility was older than the feudal system
was silenced with the reply, ‘‘Read Mably.’’’
9 See the advertissement of Mably’s Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen (1972: 1) and Mably
(1794–95: 47–48). Subsequent references to Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen follow the
French text of Mably (1972) and will hereafter be indicated parenthetically in the text
with the abbreviation DD followed by the appropriate page number. Translations follow
that of Simon de Vries in Mably (2008).
10 Wright (1992: 410).
11 Voltaire (1765: 304). The translation is mine.

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 A REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE?

his master and model’.12 Thus, just as the nineteenth century offers us left and right
Hegelians, so the eighteenth century apparently provides left and right Ciceronians.
The bivalency of Cicero’s reception comes into clearer focus if we limit ourselves
to the reception of a single, crucial Ciceronian teaching by two of the philosophers
mentioned above. The doctrine I have in mind is natural right; the philosophers are
Burke and Mably.
Prominently featured in Cicero’s works De republica, De legibus, and De officiis, the
concept of natural right was a central component of his political theory.13 Like
Aristotle and the Stoics, Cicero understood right in the sense of the just or fair
portion due to each person (Leg. 1.19). Following the Stoics, Cicero held that right
or justice (ius) exists by nature and is determined by natural law (ius naturale, ius

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naturae), which serves as ‘the rule for justice and injustice’ (iuris atque iniuriae regula;
Leg. 1.19).14 Following Plato, Cicero understood that right should be flexible
enough to accommodate different peoples, customs, and circumstances.15
A couple of important conceptual distinctions follow. First, though Cicero closely
links right and law — like other philosophers writing in Latin,16 he often uses the
word ius for both — conceptually natural right is a different and broader concept
than natural law; it is possible to hold a theory of natural right or natural justice that
is not grounded in natural law. Unlike the natural right theories of Plato and
Aristotle (at least as many commentators understand them), Cicero’s account of
natural right is a natural law theory.17 Second, we must distinguish between natural
right construed as that which is due to someone according to an objective right order
existing by nature and natural right understood as the individual natural rights that
one holds as a subject independent of any such order.18 While some of his early

12 Wilson (1896: 113–14). Later scholars who particularly emphasize Cicero’s influence on
Burke include Stanlis (1958: 36); Browning (1984); Carnall (1989); Bullard (2011: 16–17).
13 See Wood (1988: 70–89).
14 Unless otherwise stated, this and all subsequent translations from Cicero’s texts follow
the relevant OCT edition and are my own. For the texts of De republica and De legibus, I
have used Cicero (2006); for the text of De officiis, Cicero (1994); and for the text of Ad
Atticum, Cicero (1903).
15 See Stem (2006) and Atkins (2013).
16 See Brett (1997: xi).
17 For the distinction between natural justice or natural right and natural law, see Striker
(1996: 209–20). On Striker’s account, Plato and Aristotle count as theorists of natural
justice but not of natural law.
18 Natural rights are sometimes referred to in the extensive rights literature as ‘subjective
right’ and natural right conceived in terms of right order, as ‘objective right’. Scholars
disagree over when the concept of natural rights first emerged in the history of political
thought. The most influential accounts include Strauss (1953); Villey (1962); Tuck
(1979); and Tierney (1997). The first pair more greatly stresses the break between the
earlier concept of natural right and the later development of right theory in terms of
individual natural rights than the second pair does.

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 JED W. ATKINS

modern admirers leveraged Cicero’s natural law teaching to support individual

natural rights,19 the Roman’s own conception of natural right clearly is to be con-
strued in terms of right order based on natural law.20 In contrast to modern theories
of natural right, Cicero’s conception of natural right focuses on obligations and
duties rather than on individual rights.
Cicero deployed natural right for ostensibly conservative purposes — an obser-
vation which led to Moses Finley’s dismissal of natural right in Cicero as a ‘term of
‘‘approval for whatever idea [one] wanted to recommend at any particular time,’’ in
his case the Roman constitution of the good old days’.21 Given this observation, it is
perhaps unsurprising that Edmund Burke incorporated principles gleaned from his
reading of Cicero’s writings on natural right into his famous critique of the French
Revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France.22 At the same time, however,

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Mably’s Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen equally reveals marks of a deep engage-
ment with Cicero’s natural right teaching, as its advertissement openly announces.
After reproducing the famous account of natural right from the fragmentary third
book of Cicero’s De republica, Mably adds: ‘The book you are about to read is purely
an extended commentary on this admirable extract from Cicero that authors who
write on natural right and the principles of government should always bear in mind’
(DD 2). Mably’s work, most likely composed in 1758, argues from natural right to
sketch what one scholar calls ‘a script for a French revolution’, a blueprint that to a
remarkable degree anticipated thirty years beforehand the successive stages of the
French Revolution.23
Of course, Burke and Mably were preceded by the rich and complex reception of
Cicero’s key texts on natural right by seventeenth and early eighteenth century
thinkers such as Suárez, Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, Wolff, and Vattel.24
Pufendorf, for instance, had utilized Cicero in his attempt to rebut Hobbes,25
whereas Emmerich de Vattel, also drawing upon Cicero, took Hobbes as providing

19 See Bederman (2008: 154–55) for examples in the eighteenth-century American recep-
tion of Cicero.
20 See Atkins (2013: 138–39, 152–54, 169–76).
21 Finley (1983: 128). Finley in turn is quoting Watson (1971: 235).
22 Even though Burke’s own treatment of natural right has long been a subject of scholarly
interest and his debt to Cicero generally acknowledged, little effort has been made to
delineate Burke’s Ciceronian treatment of natural right in more than general terms. For
Burke as a natural right thinker, see Stanlis (1958); Canavan (1960); Stanlis (1991). For a
dissenting view, see Dinwiddy (1974). For Burke’s debt to Cicero in his discussion of
natural right, see Stanlis (1958: 36) and Browning (1984: 60–62).
23 Baker (1990: 105).
24 For these thinkers’ conceptions of natural right, see Haakonssen (1996: 15–62) and
Hochstrasser (2000). Locke’s reception of Cicero on the topic is perhaps best seen in
his Questions concerning the Law of Nature: see the notes by the editors in Locke (1990).
25 See Hochstrasser (2000: 62–65).

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a valuable starting point for a more satisfactory account of natural right.26 The
complex reception of Cicero in these prior treatments of natural right undoubtedly
conditioned the manner in which Mably and Burke saw Cicero as contributing to
their own conceptions of natural right. For example, Burke, in at least one crucial
place, construes Cicero’s teaching on natural right in light of Vattel’s prior reading,
though, as we shall see, Burke finds in Vattel’s reading more a note of caution than a
model to emulate (see Reflections 145–46).27 As for Mably, his reading of Ciceronian
natural right is leavened by the commonwealth tradition, whose most famous rep-
resentative was Locke. Thus, Mably draws on Cicero to critique the natural right
theories of Grotius, Pufendorf, and Wolff, who ironically are now criticized along
with Hobbes for being too conservative. He is also influenced by Locke’s emphasis

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on individual natural rights, as we will see later.
Even allowing for the influence of the earlier reception of Cicero’s writings on the
topic, the fact that Burke and Mably incorporated accounts of Cicero’s doctrine of
natural right into works designed to accomplish seemingly opposed objectives is
noteworthy.28 But what is truly remarkable is that both men’s works reveal virtually
identical understandings of Cicero’s basic teaching on the matter. As I will argue,
each read Cicero as teaching the following doctrine: natural law regulates human
behaviour and political institutions, but both human nature and circumstances keep
this law from being fulfilled completely. Thus, the prudent statesman will make
concessions to circumstances rather than completely implement the natural law.
Mably’s Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen and Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution
in France, then, present the following puzzle: How can it be that an important work

26 See Hochstrasser (2000: 177). Pangle and Ahrensdorf (1999: 278 n. 33) suggest that
Vattel holds to a ‘modernized version of Ciceronian principles’.
27 References to Reflections are to Burke (2001) and follow the pagination of the work’s first
edition, which the editor has supplied in brackets within Burke’s text. Citations of
Reflections will hereafter be given parenthetically in the text.
28 While there is no firm evidence that Burke interacted directly with Mably’s thought, he
did critique the views of Marquis de Montalembert and Jean-Louis Favier — both
proponents of popular overthrow of the monarchy who based their views on Mably:
see Sonenscher (2002: 278). What is more, the main character, the teacher of natural right
and advocate of revolution in Mably’s Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen, was one Milord
Stanhope, whom Wright (1997: 71) argues is based on Earl Philip Stanhope. If this is
correct, then it is his son, Earl Charles Stanhope, who was one of Burke’s earliest political
adversaries and who, as the chairman of the Revolution Society, had opposed Burke’s
speech of 9 February 1790 against the French Revolution. Earl Stanhope responded to
this speech with a letter to Burke, and the latter’s Reflections, published later that year,
can be seen as a response to Stanhope and in particular to Richard Price, the man whom
Burke took to have inspired Stanhope’s protest. Stanhope’s political views were shared
by his father: see Clark’s introduction in Burke (2001: 123–24, 144 n. 6). Thus, in his
Reflections Burke sets out to criticize the very views held by the hero of Mably’s Des droits
et des devoirs du citoyen.

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 JED W. ATKINS

anticipating the principles of the French Revolution and the most important work
criticizing the French Revolution base their doctrines of natural right on similar
readings of Cicero? The answer, I suggest, is found by identifying a tension in
Cicero’s own natural right teaching in which nature is always a threat to destabilize
the conventional institutions and laws on whose behalf it is being employed.
Although Cicero emphasizes the flexibility found in the Platonic and Aristotelian
natural right teachings, the critical force of the Stoic natural law theory that he
incorporated into his own theory of natural right remains.29 Nature’s revolutionary
potential is enhanced even more when early modern readers of Cicero use his
writings to support the modern notion of individual natural rights. These natural
rights admit of little flexibility and thus prove resistant to the sort of prudential

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accommodation of right to changing circumstances that Cicero stresses. Now even
more acute, the tension between nature’s capacities to preserve and destroy con-
ventional institutions works its way into the philosophical projects of both Mably
and Burke. It is especially problematic for the latter’s desire to use nature both as a
prop for traditional institutions and as a critical standard for moderate reform. It is
Burke’s sensitivity to this problem above all that guides his rhetorical and indirect
treatment of natural right in Reflections.

Mably, Cicero, and prudential natural right

As previously mentioned, Mably begins Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen by repro-
ducing the Latin text of the famous fragment on natural right from the third book of
Cicero’s De republica (3.33).

There in fact exists a true law, right reason, in harmony with nature and spread through all
human beings. It is constant and eternal. It calls to duty by its commands and deters from
wickedness by its prohibitions. Nevertheless, it does not command or forbid upright people
in vain, and the wicked it does not move by its commands or prohibitions. It is not lawful for
this law to be abrogated. It is not permissible to modify it in any part, and it cannot be
repealed in its entirety. We are not able to be released from this law by either the senate or the
people. It is not necessary to seek out an exegete or another interpreter for it. There will not
be one law at Rome, another at Athens, one law now, another after this; but a single, eternal,
immutable law will hold all peoples at all times. And there will be, as it were, one common
teacher and ruler of all—God. He is the inventor, judge, and proposer of this law. He who
does not obey it will be in exile from himself and spurn human nature. And in this he will pay
the greatest penalty, even if he flees the other things which are supposed to be punishments
(DD 1).30

29 For the critical orientation of early Stoic political thought, see Schofield (1999).
30 The translation is mine and follows the Latin as produced in Mably (1972). This frag-
ment is traditionally identified in Latin editions of De republica as 3.33 (see e.g. the
Teubner and Loeb editions), but as 3.27 in the recent OCT edition, Cicero (2006).
For convenience, I refer to it by the traditional reference.

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Mably concludes the advertissement by claiming that the work to follow is ‘purely
an extended commentary’ on this Ciceronian passage (DD 2). Given this straight-
forward announcement of his debt to Cicero’s De republica, it is surprising that the
relationship between Mably’s own project in Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen and
his reading of Cicero’s teaching on natural right has not yet been explored, even
among scholars who emphasize Mably’s debt to the classical republican tradition.31
And in fact, such aspects of the De republica fragment as the prescriptions of right
reason, the characteristics of human nature, and utopian natural law are central
features of Mably’s work. Moreover, Mably’s literary model turns out to be De
republica’s companion dialogue — Cicero’s De legibus — which elaborates on the
natural right teaching of its predecessor. In addition to the themes found in the

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fragment from De republica 3, De legibus also emphasizes the limits of reason, irra-
tionality and prudential attention to what is practicable.32 Mably incorporates them
all into Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen.
Even a cursory first reading of Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen reveals its debt to
De legibus. First, both works are dialogues: Cicero’s features a conversation between
Cicero himself, his brother Quintus, and friend Atticus; Mably’s is comprised of
letters in which a Frenchman records six conversations that he held with a
Commonwealthman named Milord Stanhope. Both dialogues are genuine dialogues
with an exchange of different views. Just as Quintus becomes more aggressive as the
dialogue progresses and resists several of his brother’s proposals in the final extant
book of De legibus (cf. Leg. 3.19–26, 33–37), so the Frenchman gradually becomes
more resistant and challenges two of the three steps of Stanhope’s plan for political
reform in France.33 Similarities also extend to the dialogues’ respective settings. Just
as the conversation in the first two books of De legibus gradually transitions to politics
from a discussion of natural scenery, so too the first and sixth conversations of Des
droits et des devoirs du citoyen only turn to politics after describing the beautiful estate
at the Chateau de Marly. Indeed, the beginning of the sixth conversation makes the
debt to Cicero’s De legibus explicit. The Frenchman says:

In accompanying him in the woods at Marly, I thought I had been transported to Tusculum
and that I was walking with Cicero on the banks of the Liris. It was like entering into
the inner sanctum of morality and politics and it seemed to me that this philosopher, full
to the brim with the doctrines of Socrates and Plato who had saved his native land from
the wicked designs of Catalina, had taught me something which would help me serve mine
(DD 213–14).

31 For studies of Mably that emphasize his debt to classical republicanism, see Baker (1990);
Wright (1992); and, above all, Wright (1997).
32 Dyck (2004: 36) observes that ‘the influence of Leg. reaches it apogee’ in Des droit et des
devoirs du citoyen, but he offers little analysis.
33 For the dialogical nature of Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen as evinced by the
Frenchman’s resistance to Stanhope’s proposals, see Wright (1997: 138–40).

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 JED W. ATKINS

As Lecercle points out, the reference here is clearly to De legibus, where Cicero
and his interlocutors walk along the banks of the Liris on his estate at Arpinum
(cf. Leg. 1.15, 2.1-6).34 Moreover, this passage suggests that Cicero was an important
source of the teaching of the previous five conversations: it was Cicero, the
Frenchman points out, who ‘had taught me something which would help me
serve’ my native land. De legibus is responsible for content no less than form.
A brief sketch of Mably’s treatment of natural right reveals how.
From the dialogue’s Ciceronian-inspired opening remarks about the estate’s nat-
ural scenery, the conversation turns to the main subject of the dialogue. Stanhope
heavily criticizes such modern natural right thinkers as Grotius, Hobbes, Wolff, and
Pufendorf. What troubles him about these four thinkers is that in their attempts to

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uphold the authority of laws and promote a stable political order they divest citizens
of any way to identify, let alone challenge, unjust laws.35 Though Stanhope begins to
set out his challenge to these philosophers by once again quoting Cicero’s De
republica 3.33 (DD 21), this reference is usually overlooked or dismissed as an
empty appeal to authority; John Locke and his followers are the main source of
the arguments to come.36 It is certainly true that Stanhope admires Locke (DD 17)
and employs Lockean ideas of the social contract and government by consent (cf. DD
73–76). However, as the dialogue unfolds, it becomes apparent that the discussion of
natural right is indebted above all to Cicero.
Like Cicero’s character in De legibus (cf. Leg. 1.17), Stanhope suggests that they
must begin by examining human nature (la nature de l’homme) with care (DD 21).
Stanhope points out that human beings are rational (cf. Leg. 1.22–26). Both indi-
vidual human beings and states must be governed by reason, which regulates and
tempers passions (DD 21–23). Nevertheless, yet again recalling Cicero (cf. Leg.
1.30–31), Stanhope admits that human beings are also characterized by irrationality;
reason is sometimes slow in developing among nations (DD 23–24). Thus, human
nature is a mix of both passion and reason — a mixture that may vary greatly among
both individual human beings and nations. This insight is important for politics.
While reason always directs human beings ‘to strive for’ their rights, accommoda-
tions and concessions must be made to circumstances, including the irrationality
that characterizes human nature. ‘Reason is guided by time and circumstance and
never allows itself to chase after a pipe dream (chimere)’ (DD 37). This last point is
evocative of Cicero’s argument at De officiis 1.31 (cf. Off. 1.115) that human duties

34 Mably (1972: 213 n. 2). As Lecercle notes, the Frenchman is wrong to suppose that De
legibus is set at Tusculum.
35 Mably is of course here painting with broad strokes. For a general overview of modern
natural right theories, see Tuck (1979). A comparison of the approaches of Pufendorf,
Grotius, and Hobbes can be found in Haakonssen (1996: 26–42). For the thought of
Wolff, see Hochstrasser (2000: 150–86).
36 So Wright (1997: 78).

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alter with time and circumstance, but as we will soon see, Mably also finds this anti-
utopian principle in Cicero’s De legibus.
Even with Stanhope’s concessions, the Frenchman is still uncomfortable with the
revolutionary nature of the doctrine of natural right expounded by the
Commonwealthman. He is further troubled by his own reading of Cicero’s De legibus
the evening before their third conversation. The next day the Frenchman quotes
from the dialogue at length. The first passage comes from Leg. 1.42, where Cicero
argues against contractarian accounts of political justice (the Frenchman attributes
them to Epicureans). Surely, Cicero contends, unjust laws do not become just
simply because tyrants decree them or a popular assembly adopts them. Rather,
‘there is only one law which establishes a right, and that law is right reasoning which
teaches what must be decreed and what must be forbidden’ (DD 90; cf. Leg. 1.42,

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Rep. 3.33). The Frenchman then refers to a passage at the beginning of De legibus 2
where Cicero and his interlocutors appear to suggest that any human law that does
not measure up to the standard of natural law is invalid and not worthy to be called a
law at all (DD 90; cf. Leg. 2.13). As Cicero’s brother concludes in De legibus: ‘I now
think that no other law should be accepted or even granted the name law’ (Leg. 2.13).
The Frenchman has an immense respect for Cicero; in fact, he goes so far as to
apply Cicero’s quip about Plato at Tusculans 1.39 to Cicero himself: ‘I prefer to
wander along behind him than finding truth through the other philosophers’ (DD
90). However, he is concerned over the threats to the established political order
posed by Cicero’s natural right teaching, which he believes is potentially more
radical than Stanhope’s arguments allow. If right reason alone is the standard,
what authority is left for the magistrate? Does not the acceptance of natural right
as the only standard for law constitute a dangerous threat to all human governments
(DD 91)?
Stanhope responds by himself turning to the text of De legibus. He begins by
enumerating the different types of law according to the classification and order
provided by De legibus (DD 91–101): natural law (Leg. 1), religious law (Leg. 2),
and constitutional law (Leg. 3). It is in Cicero’s treatment of constitutional law that
Stanhope finds material to begin to answer the Frenchman’s objections. The first of
Cicero’s constitutional laws reads as follows: ‘Let the commands (imperia) be just,
and let the citizens obey them discreetly and without protest’ (Leg. 3.6). This law is
prefaced by the following discussion of the power of a magistrate: ‘For you see that
this is the essence of the magistrate, namely, to be in charge and to prescribe what is
right and advantageous and in agreement with the laws. For as the laws are in charge
of magistrates, so the magistrates are in charge of the people’ (Leg. 3.2). Stanhope
agrees: ‘Cicero was right! We have acknowledged as an incontrovertible truth that
the citizen must obey the magistrate and the magistrate must obey the law’ (DD 97).
Those rare republics that follow this formula are the happiest and most stable.
However, given the irrationality that characterizes human nature, lawgivers in
most republics pass at least some ‘unjust and absurd laws’, and magistrates some-
times fail to uphold the law (DD 97). In such non-ideal circumstances, it is the duty

185
 JED W. ATKINS

of the citizen who loves law and order to resist, even if his resistance causes trouble in
the short term.
Stanhope further argues his case by turning to a later passage in De legibus 3,
where Cicero and his brother dispute over whether to include the office of tribune
in the constitution given that in the past this institution instigated revolution
(DD 98–100; cf. Leg. 3.19–26). Cicero agrees with Quintus over the disadvantages
of the institution. His brother goes wrong, however, because he ‘does not sufficiently
pay attention’ to what is necessary (necessarium) as well as to what is best (optimum;
Leg. 3.26). Stanhope agrees: ‘Everybody reasons like Quintus in politics, and just
like Cicero, I tell you that these little troubles which so alarm you, are, it is true, an
inconvenience, but they are accompanied by one advantage, that which ensures the

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security and safety of the state’ (DD 99). He continues: ‘We would like the benefits
just as they are and it is therefore a huge folly to hope for such since society is made
up but of men, that is to say, of very imperfect materials. Let us content ourselves
with the kind of perfection that nature has allowed us to attain and the means
whereby we can achieve it’ (DD 99). Thus, from Cicero, Stanhope derives the
principle that in politics one must make accommodations to human weakness.
The best, while serving as a reference point, must nevertheless still often yield to
the possible.
Stanhope’s Ciceronian principle guides the révolution ménagée developed in the
second half of the dialogue: a planned, systematic-yet-moderate attempt to trans-
form the French regime given constraints imposed by the characteristics of eight-
eenth-century French political culture.37 Just as Cicero in De legibus first established
‘a utopian natural law’38 before taking into account how this law must be adapted
and modified to fit Roman society,39 so Stanhope and the Frenchman continually
move from utopian considerations to what is possible. Consider two examples.
The first concerns property. Natural law specifies that property be held in
common under arrangements such as Lycurgus instituted in Sparta or Socrates
described in Plato’s Republic. And the institution of private property has in fact
led to ‘infinite evils’ (DD 108). However, political arrangements that involve the
community of property are ‘no longer able to exist, but are a chimera in this world’
(DD 109). Stanhope further elaborates on the point when he allows himself to sketch
an island utopia (DD 111–13). As much as one might wish to wipe the slate clean and
start over with citizens free from passions and bad education, Stanhope emphasizes

37 For discussion of Mably’s use of the term révolution ménagée and for discussion of its
characteristic features, see Baker (1990: 95–106).
38 Inwood and Miller (2007: 144).
39 In addition to the discussion of the tribunate at Leg. 3.19–26, another good example of
accommodation to time and circumstance is illustrated by the debate between Cicero and
Quintus over the secret ballot at Leg. 3.33–39. Ballots must be secret rather than open in
order to accommodate (contra Quintus’ opinion) ‘what can be (possit) achieved by the
present political community’ (Leg. 3.37).

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that this is impossible; the legislator must make concessions to the passions of the
citizens for whom he is legislating. He illustrates this teaching by once again refer-
ring to Cicero, this time to a famous passage in the orator’s Letters to Atticus: ‘Cicero
blames Cato somewhere for speaking to the Romans of his day as if he had been in
Plato’s republic.’ According to Cicero, Cato’s stringent idealism prohibited him
from making necessary concessions to political circumstances, a failure that actually
ended up harming the republic. Political prudence is needed.40 Stanhope
concludes: ‘Let us no longer merit the same reproach and let us be wiser than
Cato’ (DD 113).
The second example concerns whether to retain the monarchy towards the end of
their reforms. To the Frenchman’s suggestion that they, like the Romans, abolish

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the very word ‘king’, the Commonwealthman responds with the following:

‘How you are being carried away!’ said Milord to me jestingly, ‘There you see, you are a
Republican who is every bit as proud and zealous as ever I saw in England! Nevertheless, let
us respect thrones and try not to chase after pipe-dreams (bien chimerique) as we did a couple
of days ago when you wanted to embark on the voyage to our desert isle. There is no doubt
that royalty is a vice in government but this vice be what it may, it is necessary in a nation as
soon as it has lost its primitive ideas about simplicity and equality which men had in the times
past and which it is unable to regain’ (DD 212).

Referring back to the earlier discussion of private property that ended with the
reference to Cicero’s views of Cato, Stanhope once again urges a Ciceronian pru-
dence that takes account of circumstances.41 And in fact, this principle guides all of
the other proposed reforms as well. As Stanhope puts it, quoting this time from
Plutarch’s Life of Solon 23: ‘The laws that I have put to you are not the most perfect
that you could think of but you are incapable of adopting any wiser ones’ (DD 208).
Already, then, Mably’s Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen demonstrates the deep
debt to Cicero that would characterize his later works. Indeed, it is not an over-
statement to argue that the work’s central argument is framed by the Ciceronian
natural right teaching that takes its bearings from the dictates of right reason while
recognizing that prudence requires making concessions to ‘time and circumstance’.
However, in line with Locke and the Commonwealth tradition, Mably speaks of
natural law as establishing individual natural rights (see e.g. DD 37, 90),42 whereas
Cicero does not. Ultimately, Mably’s teaching, like Cicero’s before him, eludes
simple classification. Not surprisingly, scholarly accounts of De legibus and Des

40 See Cicero, Ad Atticum 2.1. For Cicero’s criticisms of Cato here and at Pro Murena 60-66
as a means of stressing the importance of prudence in politics, see Stem (2006).
41 As Baker (1990: 104) observes: ‘With this conclusion, the limits of Mably’s proposed
revolution becomes clear.’
42 For the influence of Locke and the Commonwealth tradition on Mably’s conception of
natural right, see Edelstein (2009: 71–73).

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 JED W. ATKINS

droits et des devoirs du citoyen alike have frequently alternated between describing
these works as realistic and utopian.43

Burke, Cicero, and prudential natural right

Scholars have found it equally difficult to characterize Burke’s philosophical project
in Reflections. For some, he is a classic natural right thinker.44 For others, he is a
utilitarian.45 And for still others, Burke’s thought is shaped not so much by phil-
osophy as by ideology — the desire to defend the interests of the aristocratic
Rockingham Whigs.46 Much of this disagreement comes from the fact that
Burke’s discussion of natural right is often indirect, oblique, muted, and rhetorical.
However, as we shall see, Burke’s ‘rhetorical use of the ideas of natural law’ does not

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simply parrot mere Whig ‘truisms’.47 Instead, it reflects his efforts to respond to a
central problem of natural right theory inherited from Cicero, whom, according to
one reckoning, Burke cites more frequently in Reflections than any other classical
source.48 In order to grasp how this is so, we must first see how Burke’s natural right
teaching is indebted to Cicero. Like Mably before him, Burke finds in Cicero a
prudential natural right that accommodates circumstances, necessity, and human
nature.
Like Mably, Burke discerns in Cicero’s De republica and De legibus an articulation
of natural right. From the conclusion of the former work — the so-called Dream of
Scipio — Burke reproduces the Latin, which I have translated into English as
follows: ‘Nothing that happens on earth is more pleasing to that chief god who
rules this entire world than the councils and assemblies of men associated by
right, which are called cities’ (Reflections 145; Rep. 6.13). Significantly, a version
of this passage appeared on the title page of Emmerich de Vattel’s influential The
Law of Nations, a work that belonged to Burke’s library. After this quotation Vattel
had written that ‘Cicero . . . did not content himself with rejecting the vulgar maxim,
that the republic could not be happily governed without committing injustice; he
went so far as to establish the contrary as an invariable truth, and maintain that no-
one could administer the public affairs in a salutary manner, if he did not attach

43 With respect to Cicero’s De legibus, Rawson (1973), an important article, characterizes

the work as utopian. On the other hand, Girardet (1983), an influential treatment of
natural law in De legibus, characterizes the dialogue as a practical blueprint for reform. As
for Mably, the following scholars emphasize the utopianism and communism of Des droits
et des devoirs du citoyen: Lecercle (1963); Coste (1975: esp. 107-130); Thamer (1973); and
Lehmann (1975). Mably’s political realism in Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen is empha-
sized by Maffey (1968: 161–70).
44 See Stanlis (1958); Canavan (1960); Stanlis (1991).
45 See Dinwiddy (1974).
46 See O’Gorman (1973).
47 Clark in Burke (2001: 85–86).
48 See Clark in Burke (2001: 93).

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 A REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE?

himself to the most exact justice’.49 For his part, Burke adds that people derive the
basic principle expressed in the quotation not from Scipio or Cicero but rather from
‘the common nature and relation of men’. The state is governed by nature and thus is
connected ‘with the source and original achetype of all perfection’ (Reflections 146).
Burke makes the relationship between state and nature even more explicit in a
passage evocative of De legibus 3.3–4: ‘Our political system is placed in a just cor-
respondence and symmetry with the order of the world . . .’ (Reflections 48). Given
his use of this passage from De legibus 3 to establish a connection between nature and
England’s constitution, Burke appropriately cites De legibus 2.15–16 to support his
contention that ‘religion is the basis of civil society’ (Reflections 134). The two
Ciceronian passages are parallel.50 Just as De legibus 3.3 establishes the ‘right (ius)

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and structure of nature’ before moving to the human constitutions that instantiate it,
so De legibus 2.15 moves from the divine administration of the world to the human
phenomenon of piety. Finally, once more echoing Cicero’s adoption of nature as a
standard, Burke suggests that any ruling power — even power possessed directly by
the people — ‘to be legitimate must be according to that eternal immutable law’
(Reflections 140; cf. Leg. 2.9–14).
Although, like Mably before him, Burke locates in Cicero’s De republica and De
legibus the teaching that nature should serve as a standard for constitutions, it is
noteworthy that in Reflections he never cites two passages from these works that were
particularly central to Mably’s account: De republica 3.33 and De legibus 1.41–42.
Burke’s omission of these passages from Reflections is striking because, like Mably,
he knew them well; in fact, he made use of them in other contexts. In his speech of 16
February 1788, opening the trial of Warren Hastings that occurred less than three
years prior to the publication of Reflections, Burke adapts the account of ideal natural
law from De republica 3.33.51 In his much earlier Tracts on the Popery Laws drafted in
the early 1760’s, Burke summarizes extensively Cicero’s argument from De legibus
1.41–42 to oppose the Hobbesian position that ‘laws can derive any authority from
their institution merely’.52 Referring to the same Ciceronian passage that had pro-
voked the Frenchman in Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen (DD 89–90), Burke
explains:

Cicero exclaims with the utmost indignation and contempt against such a notion; he con-
siders it not only as unworthy of a philosopher, but of an illiterate peasant; that of all things
this was the most truly absurd, to fancy that the rule of justice was to be taken from the
Constitutions of Commonwealths, or that Laws derived their authority from the Statutes of
the People, the edicts of Princes or the decrees of Judges.53

49 Cited by Clark in Burke (2001: 262 n. 364).

50 See Rüpke (2012: 188–91).
51 Burke (1822: 166).
52 Burke (1812: 350). He provides the Latin from Leg. 1.41–42 in a note in the published
version.
53 Burke (1812: 350–51).

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 JED W. ATKINS

The reasons for Burke’s omission of De republica 3.33 and De legibus 1.41–42 from
his attempt in Reflections to present nature as a standard will have to wait for the
article’s next section. For now, it is enough to note that Burke follows Cicero and
Mably not only in establishing nature as a standard but also in his teaching that
human nature makes it difficult to follow unadapted natural law. Following Cicero,
Burke points out that human nature is complex (Reflections 91; cf. Leg. 1.22). If one
wants to understand human nature, one must realize that human beings are char-
acterized by passions and interests as much as by reason (Reflections 265; cf. Leg.
1.30). Moreover, according to Burke, one must understand that when speaking of
human nature, ‘nature’ can be taken in multiple senses. On one hand, nature may be
understood as those characteristics and qualities common to all human beings. On

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the other hand, students of human nature must also recognize that individual human
beings are shaped by their birth, education, professions, and ‘habits which are
communicated by the circumstances of civil life’ (Reflections 273). Consequently,
Burke argues that human beings also have a ‘second nature’ that they will most likely
not share with the vast majority of human beings with whom they share a nature in
the first sense (Reflections 273). As Browning has pointed out,54 Burke’s discussion
of two natures is indebted to Cicero’s distinction between our universal and par-
ticular natures at De officiis 1.107–114. According to Cicero, our universal nature is
common to all human beings as rational creatures. However, our individual natures
can vary widely, with the result that ‘though the other dissimilarities of nature and
dispositions are innumerable, nevertheless they do not in the least deserve censure’
(Off. 1.109). Closely related to this individual nature are the influences of chance,
circumstance, and career (Off. 1.115). And in fact Burke treats them in tandem with
his discussion of one’s individual nature (Reflections 273; cf. Mably DD 37).
Not surprisingly, Burke’s adoption of Ciceronian anthropology, like Mably’s
before him, leads to a Ciceronian emphasis on prudential accommodation to cir-
cumstances and necessity. Like Mably, Burke finds in Cicero’s censure of Cato’s
idealism a warning against utopian calculations (Reflections 251).55 Constitutional
design requires ‘a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities’. The
plasticity of human nature and the necessity that constrains the legislator leads
Burke to make the Ciceronian point that ‘the liberties and the restrictions vary
with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications’ (Reflections 89;
cf. Off. 1.31). The heart of statecraft lies ‘in balances between differences of good; in
compromises between good and evil, and sometimes, between evil and evil’
(Reflections 92). What is needed above all is prudence — a virtue stressed by
Cicero and Mably as well (cf. Reflections 247-48). And this is precisely the virtue
that the revolutionaries lack. Rather than prudentially to ‘wrestle with difficulty’,
they sought simply to implement their ideals and in the process destroyed more ‘in

54 Browning (1984: 62).

55 See Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum 1 and Ad Atticum 2.1. The latter passage Burke also
quotes in a 1791 letter to Richard Burke, as Carnall (1989: 86) points out.

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 A REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE?

half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred
years’ (Reflections 247).
Burke’s prudential approach to politics is perhaps best captured by the following
passage, which is also indebted to Cicero:

But in this, as in most questions of state, there is a middle. There is something else than the
mere alternative of absolute destruction, or unreformed existence. Spartam nactus es; hanc
exorna. This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart from the
mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that
pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he
may scribble whatever he pleased. A man full of warm speculative benevolence may wish his
society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always

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considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to
preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution (Reflections 231).

The Latin quotation, literally translated ‘You have been allotted Sparta; adorn
her’, is a reference to a line from Euripides’ Telephus, which Cicero cites twice in his
Letters to Atticus.56 In context, Cicero used this line to indicate his commitment to
the good of Republican Rome, ‘even if I am deserted by her’ (Att. 1.20.3). Burke
parlays Cicero’s point about his personal devotion to Rome despite his worries about
deteriorating political conditions into a more general one about the nature of pol-
itical reform: the statesman’s reforms must always be adapted to and limited by the
particular political society that he is reforming. Like Mably (cf. DD 99), Burke finds
in Cicero the teaching that the reformer will be limited by his human materials. For
both Mably and Burke, Cicero points the way to a prudential and flexible natural
right that bends to the constraints of circumstance.

Burke and the domestication of natural right

At this point we can fruitfully address the puzzle posed at the outset of this article:
How do we account for the fact that Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen — a work
establishing a framework for revolution similar to that adopted by the proponents of
the French Revolution — and Reflections — a work criticizing this revolution —
reveal similar interpretations of Cicero’s doctrine of natural right? How can Burke
use the same teaching to oppose revolution that Mably used to advocate revolution?
First, it must be recognized that the philosophical orientations of Mably and
Burke in their respective works are not as different as one might suppose. Burke’s
intentions are not to defend the established political order against all attempts at
reform. He wishes to defend some reform, in particular the so-called Glorious

56 See Cicero, Ad Atticum 1.20.3; 4.6.2. In the latter passage, Cicero quotes the line in
Greek: Sp0rtan e!lac"”, ta0tan k0sm"i.

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 JED W. ATKINS

Revolution of 1688 (Reflections 31).57 As Burke points out in the passage reproduced
above: ‘A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be
my standard of a statesman’ (Reflections 231). At another point he contrasts his
project with that of the revolutionaries by simply stating: ‘At once to preserve
and to reform is quite another thing’ (Reflections 247). Thus, Burke no less than
Mably leaves room in his account of natural right for reform. The gap between a
reformer who recognizes the need to conserve (Mably) and the conservative who
leaves open room for reform (Burke) can indeed at times be quite narrow.
What is more, both Mably and Burke encounter a similar problem inasmuch as
they wish to use a conception of natural right as a standard that allows for both
reform and preservation. The problem, simply put, is that once one posits nature as

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the standard for political institutions, one always runs the danger that it might be
used to threaten any given set of institutions, including those one may want to
preserve. This problem is acutely raised by Cicero’s account of natural right in
De legibus. Though Cicero wishes to use nature as a standard to ‘preserve and
protect’ the laws of his law code (Leg. 1.20), the account of natural law that he
sketches in the first book threatens to do the opposite. As one scholar observes:

Are any of these laws which he [Cicero] gives in those books the sort of permanent, invariant,
unamendable, and irrevocable laws which he claims any law must be, on pain of not being any
sort of law at all (Leg. II.13-14), antedating any written or even conventional instantiation in
society (Leg. II.8, 10-11, I.19)? No one reading the ‘laws’ of Cicero will claim that these
provisions for the idealized republic of Cicero’s historical imagination meet this standard.58

As it turns out, the Frenchman in Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen was right to be
concerned that Cicero’s doctrine of natural right might have the potential to lead to
radical results — perhaps more radical than Stanhope was prepared to countenance
(cf. DD 91). While Mably himself ‘insists on the need for good positive laws,
dictated by human lawgivers’, his doctrine of natural right opens the way for criti-
cisms of all such laws inasmuch as they are the results of artifice and hence deviate
from the strict decrees of nature.59
Like some modern commentators on Cicero’s De legibus and like the Frenchman
of Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen, Burke also recognizes that Cicero’s account of
natural right presents potential difficulties for established political orders. For ex-
ample, Burke draws out the implications of natural right expressed by Vattel’s gloss
on the passage from the Dream of Scipio, which, echoing De republica 3.33, requires
adherence to ‘an invariable truth’ and ‘the most exact justice’. Burke notes: ‘Justice is
itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it,

57 See also Freeman (1980: 184).

58 Inwood and Miller (2007: 145).
59 For discussion of such criticisms of positive law in the context of the French Revolution,
see Edelstein (2009). The quotation is at p. 72.

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 A REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE?

under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all’
(Reflections 230).
Further strengthening nature’s challenge to political institutions was the
increased emphasis in the eighteenth century on individual ‘natural rights’ or ‘the
rights of man’ in the place of natural right in the sense Cicero had used it, i.e. as right
order. Whether these individual natural rights are held to have been established by
and derived from natural right (conceived in terms of right order established by
natural law), as Mably suggests at one point (cf. DD 90), or whether they have been
stripped of any explicit link to this older notion of natural right,60 Burke identified in
this more recent conception of right an insurmountable obstacle to the prudential
approach to natural right that he (and Cicero and Mably) advocated. Of modern

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proponents of natural rights, Burke writes:

They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have
wrought under-ground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of
antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men’.
Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding: these
admit no temperament, and no compromise: anything withheld from their full demand is so
much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for
security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The
objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid
against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny, or the
greenest usurpation (Reflections 86).

According to Burke, then, natural right poses a problem (which the more recent
concept of individual natural rights intensifies) for a project that seeks to provide
some sort of philosophical grasp of nature as a support for political institutions while
avoiding nature’s potential to undermine these same institutions. Burke’s recogni-
tion of this problem explains a difference between his presentation of Ciceronian
natural right and Mably’s as well as a feature of Reflections that has troubled com-
mentators — Burke’s rhetorical, indirect, and somewhat muted discussion of nat-
ural right. Let’s begin by returning to an observation from the last section: Burke’s
omission of any reference in Reflections to two passages emphasized by Mably —
Cicero’s De republica 3.33 and De legibus 1.41-42 — while putting these passages to
important work in other contexts. As Burke understood, such a powerful expression
of invariant natural right as Rep. 3.33 can cast doubt on any political order; Leg. 1.42
does in fact explicitly challenge the validity of various laws passed by legislators.
Such forceful statements of nature’s critical capacity can make it difficult to leverage
nature to support political institutions. Both times Burke explicitly appealed to these
Ciceronian passages he was going on the offensive — against the Protestants in
Ireland and against Hastings in India. In both instances Burke was able to deploy the
full force of nature as a critical standard against his opponents without

60 For these alternatives, see Haakonssen (1996: 5–6).

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 JED W. ATKINS

simultaneously having to leverage the concept in defence of the established political

order. Yet this is precisely the balancing act that Burke must pull off in Reflections.
As Paddy Bullard has recently shown, Reflections marries Burke’s rhetorical abil-
ities with his views of good — that is, prudential — political deliberation.61 Burke
modelled himself after Cicero with respect to the former no less than the latter. At
several places Burke’s dismissal of his opponents in Reflections mirrors Cicero’s
dismissal of his opponents in De legibus. For example, as Cicero bid the
Epicureans to ‘talk in their gardens’ and ‘take a brief holiday’ from politics, and
exhorted the Sceptics to keep silent lest they do excessive damage (Leg. 1.39), so
Burke dismissed the revolutionary proponents of natural right by telling them to ‘be
their amusement in the schools’, but not to ‘break up the foundations of the great

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deep to overwhelm us’ (Reflections 86). And Burke, like Cicero, painted in vivid
pictures what he saw as the logical consequences of his opponents’ position which
destroys ‘all natural sense of wrong and right’ (Reflections 121).62
Cicero had argued that effective rhetoric no less than politics ‘is a matter of
prudence’ that requires adaptation to circumstance (De oratore 3.212). And perhaps
in crafting a rhetorically effective and prudential approach to politics in Reflections
Burke did his master one better. In a work where he, like Cicero in De legibus, had a
vested interest in defending and preserving political institutions against their critics,
he opted for a more muted and indirect version of Ciceronian natural right, rarely
alluding to the passages that most explicitly established nature as a transcendent
standard while nevertheless extensively employing the part of Cicero’s doctrine that
focuses on a prudential accommodation of governmental institutions to the con-
straints of human nature. By employing this strategy, Burke’s presentation of nat-
ural right makes less obvious than either Cicero’s or Mably’s the gap between a
human being’s rational or universal nature and that ‘second nature’ that accommo-
dates customs, habits, passions, and interests. It is precisely this gap that makes
Cicero’s natural right teaching a potentially revolutionary doctrine, even when
wielded by conservatives or moderate reformers. And it is by effectively obscuring
this gap that Burke attempted to domesticate natural right, drawing upon the con-
cept to preserve existing institutions while downplaying the difficulties with such a
project that are more readily apparent in De legibus and Des droits et des devoirs du
citoyen.63 Thus, while Burke conceives of Ciceronian natural right along the same

61 Bullard (2011: 140–73).

62 Compare Burke’s rhetoric at Reflections, pp. 120–21 and Cicero’s at De legibus 1.42–52.
63 By pointing out that the philosophical project of De legibus faces apparent difficulties, I
am not necessarily also claiming that Cicero’s dialogue is a failure, as is sometimes
suggested (so e.g. Inwood and Miller (2007: 147)). After all, Cicero might have had a
perfectly good reason for showcasing these difficulties, namely, to help the reader better
understand the tensions between nature and custom that attend attempts to use nature as
a standard for positive law. For different readings of Cicero’s account of natural right in
De legibus that allow for productive tensions, see Benardete (1987) and Atkins (2013).

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 A REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE?

lines as Mably, he is more circumspect than the French philosopher in his presen-
tation of this doctrine.

Conclusion
Analysis of their writings on revolution reveal that Mably and Burke similarly in-
herited from Cicero a somewhat domesticated doctrine of natural right — it was
flexible enough that a prudent statesman could adapt it to accommodate various
circumstances and thus could somewhat blunt its destabilizing force. Taking a page
from Cicero’s teaching on the prudential use of rhetoric in political argument, Burke
further domesticated the doctrine of natural right by attempting to conceal the more
‘revolutionary’ aspects of Cicero’s doctrine. Mably was less discreet in his presen-

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tation of the same doctrine. Consequently, though he aimed at moderate reform, his
work provided ammunition for later revolutionaries. In the end, Mably’s and
Burke’s handlings of Cicero’s doctrine of natural right suggest that, despite the
conservative ends to which Cicero employed the concept, the doctrine that he
transmitted contained within itself revolutionary potential.
The revolutionary potential of Ciceronian natural right clung to later treatments
of natural right; indeed, natural right only increased in its power to disrupt the
established order as Cicero’s readers began to use his writings to support the modern
concept of individual natural rights, thereby making it increasingly difficult for
modern Ciceronians like Mably and Burke to recover the prudential element that
they found in Cicero’s natural right teaching. In order to compensate for this amp-
lification of the critical component of natural right, a conservative or moderate
reformer like Burke found that prudence required a corresponding amplification
of the flexible and prudential component of Ciceronian natural right. The result is
the pronounced bivalency of the reception of Cicero’s political thought by eight-
eenth-century philosophers. Perhaps, then, the bivalency of the reception of
Cicero’s political thought results from the amplification of a bivalency within his
thought itself.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Keegan Callanan, Joel Schlosser, and two anonymous referees for
reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this essay.

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