Closing the Commentaire [sur l'ouvrage de Filangier], at a distance, by then, of a hundred and forty years, we can no longer accept, as Constant's generation did, the validity of his verdicts and his critiques. How poorly Constant knew the world of eighteenth-century Naples! He did not understand that many of the contradictions he noted were nothing but attempts to understand the reality which surrounded Filangieri… And how can one not see that Constant did not fully understand that desire for justice and equality which so deeply underlies the eighteenth century, and which the nascent liberalism of the new century would evade in a thousand ways and perhaps hide with a thousand sophisms? Why not feel Filangieri's fear of war, rather than be overcome by Constant's optimism, which saw war excluded and impossible in modern economies and societies?