This volume makes accessible Benjamin Constant¿s major political treatise, which was the basis for his political actions and the development of his political writings. His Principes de politique became one of the decisive starting points of European liberalism. The book contains 1906 tenets of Constant¿s political philosophy, which evolved over a lengthy period. Principes de politique remained unpublished for a long time. The critical apparatus elucidates the genesis of the work and also its reception in the political theory of the 19th and 20th centuries.