Christopher Blum, under the auspices of Cluny Books, has compiled a collection of writings by once prominent authors spanning the years from 1797 to 1883. The common thread uniting these essays is a critique of the events and regime of 1789, i.e., the French Revolution. For the most part there is not a theoretical critique of enlightenment liberalism, and the focus of all the writers is particularly on well-being and lack thereof of the regimes that emerged from the Revolution.

Each author seems to have been selected based on the specific analysis and recommendations for reviving a healthy French society and providing a way forward that frequently looks to revive past traditions as the basis for a way forward.

The authors presented here are a mix of writers who were prominent in their day and still recognizable to students of political theory, particularly Joseph De Maistre and Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand. De Maistre's contributions include the earliest of these essays, written during the ascendence of the Directory, "Considerations on France" published in 1797 and "On the Pope" published in 1819. De Maistre's account of the Revolution claims to some extent that it was a purification of the evils afflicting France and thus carried out the plan of divine Providence. Before you connect the dots and see De Maistre and paying his respects to Robespierre as a prophet / agent of the Lord, reflect on this passage concerning the execution of Lous XVI.

"We must now make an important observation: every assault on sovereignty in the name of the nation is always a national crime, for it always the crime of the nation if any number of men of faction is placed in a position to commit the crime in her name. We cannot say that all the French willed the death of Louis XVI. But the immense majority of the people did will, for more than ten years, all the follies, injustices, and trespasses that led to catastrophe of January 21st."

In his essay On the Pope (1819), De Maistre comes to the defense of the Papacy and role of Christianity in general. He begins by succinctly declaring the goals of the Papacy in their struggle with the regimes midwifed by liberalism that lasted into the 20th century and most prominently in the subsequent history of France. He lists the goals of the Papacy as "first, to maintain unshaken the laws of marriage against the attacks of an ever-dangerous liberalism; second, to preserve the rights of the Church and the morals of her priests; third, to secure the liberty of Italy"

This essay also includes a brief critique by name of Rousseau and Machiavelli, and a defense of Aristotle's famous and much criticized statements regarding natural slavery. De Maistre asserts that prior to the establishment of Christianity the existence of slavery was thought to be a natural state of affairs. "Wherever a religion reigns other than our own, slavery exists by right, and wherever our religion is weakened, the nation becomes proportionally less able to support the general liberty. We have just seen the social order shaken to its very foundations, because there was too much liberty in Europe and not enough religion. There will be other commotions, and the good order will be solidly affirmed when either slavery or religion is reestablished." ( )