In this chapter, the author suggests that French republicanism involves a particular temptation to empire: insofar as it is a tradition that celebrates political virtue and the political health of the republic, republicanism has at least since Machiavelli had a kind of affinity for militarism and territorial expansion when these are seen to contribute to the glory of the republic. This aspect of the tradition is certainly visible among self-declared liberal republicans in nineteenth-century France. It led to an embrace of imperial expansion even among those like Alexis de Tocqueville. The first decade of the subjugation of Algeria marked a critical moment in French liberalism's evolving relation to empire. In On the Spirit of Conquest, Constant provided the classic articulation of a liberal republican critique of empire and a powerful indictment of the peculiarly dangerous interplay between populist politics and imperial adventurism.