Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu, was
born near Bordeaux, in France, Jan. 18, 1689. For ten years he was
president of the Bordeaux court of justice, but it was the
philosophy of laws that interested him rather than the
administration of them. He travelled over Europe and studied the
political systems of the various countries, and found at last in
England the form of free government which, it seemed to him, ought
to be introduced into France. For twenty years he worked at his
masterpiece, "The Spirit of Laws" ("De l'Esprit des Lois"), which
was published anonymously in 1748, and in which he surveys every
political system, ancient and modern, and after examining their
principles and defects, proposes the English constitution as a
model for the universe. It may be doubted if any book has produced
such far-reaching effects. Not only did it help on the movement
that ended in the French Revolution, but it induced those nations
who sought for some mean between despotism and mob-rule to adopt
the English system of parliamentary government. "The Spirit of
Laws" is rather hard reading, but it still remains the finest and
the soundest introduction to the philosophical study of history.
Montesquieu died on February 10, 1755.
_I.--On a Republic_
There are three kinds of governments: the republican, the monarchical,
and the despotic. Under a republic, the people, or a part of the people,
has the sovereign power; under a monarchy, one man alone rules, but by
fixed and established laws; under a despotism, a single man, without law
or regulation, impels everything according to his will or his caprice.
When, in a republic, the whole people possesses sovereign power, it is a
democracy. When this power is in the hands of only a part of the people
it is an aristocracy. In a democracy the people is in certain respects
the monarch, in others it is the subject. It cannot reign except by its
votes, and the laws which establish the right of voting are thus
fundamental in this form of government. A people possessing sovereign
power ought to do itself everything that it can do well; what it cannot
do well it must leave to its ministers. Its ministers, however, are not
its own unless it nominates them; it is, therefore, a fundamental maxim
of this government that the people should nominate its ministers. The
people is admirably fitted to choose those whom it must entrust with
some part of its authority. It knows very well that a man has often been
to war, and that he has gained such and such victories, and it is
therefore very capable of electing a general. It knows if a judge is
hardworking and if the generality of suitors are content with his
decisions, and it knows if he has not been condemned for corruption;
this is sufficient to enable a people to elect its praetors.
All these things are facts about which a people can learn more in a
market-place than a monarch can in a palace. But does a people know how
to conduct an affair of state, to study situations, opportunities, and
profit by them? No. The generality of citizens have sufficient ability
to be electors, but not enough to be elected, and the people, though it
is capable of forming a judgment on the administration of others, is not
competent to undertake the administration itself. The people have always
too much action or too little. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms it
overtakes everything; sometimes with a hundred thousand feet it moves as
slowly as a centipede.
In a popular state the people are divided into certain classes, and on
the way in which this division is carried out depend the duration of a
democracy and its prosperity. Election by lot is the democratic method;
election by choice the aristocratic method. Determination by lot allows
every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country; but it is a
defective measure, and it is by regulating and correcting it that great
legislators have distinguished themselves. Solon, for instance,
established at Athens the method of nominating by choice all the
military posts, and of electing by lot the senators and the judges;
moreover, he ordained that the candidates for election by lot should
first be examined, and that those who were adjudged unworthy should be
excluded; in that manner he combined the method of chance and the method
of choice.
It does not require much probity for a monarchy or a despotism to
maintain itself. The force of the laws in one, and the uplifted sword of
the tyrant in the other, regulates and curbs everything. In a democracy,
however, everything depends upon the political virtues of the people.
When a democracy loses its patriotism, its frugality, and its passion
for equality, it is soon destroyed by avarice and ambition.
The principle of democracy grows corrupt, not only when a people loses
its spirit of equality, but when this spirit of equality becomes
excessive, and each man wishes to be the equal of those whom he has
chosen to rule over him. Great successes, and especially those to which
the people have largely contributed, give it so much pride that it is no
longer possible to direct it. Thus it was that the victory over the
Persians corrupted the republic of Athens; thus it was that the victory
over the Athenians ruined the republic of Syracuse. There are two
excesses which a democracy must avoid: the spirit of inequality, which
leads to an aristocracy or to the government by one man; and the spirit
of excessive equality, which ends in despotism.
_II.--On an Aristocracy_
In an aristocracy the sovereign power is in the hands of a group of
persons. It is they who make the laws and see that they are carried out,
and the rest of the people are the subjects of the nobility. When there
is a great number of nobles, a senate is necessary to regulate the
affairs which the nobles themselves are too numerous to deal with, and
to prepare those which they are able to decide on. In this case the
aristocracy exists in the senate, the democracy in the noble class, and
the people count for nothing.
The best aristocracy is that in which the popular party, which has no
share of the power, is so small and so poor that the governing class has
no reason for oppressing it. Thus when Antipater made a law at Athens
that those who had not two thousand drachmas should be excluded from
voting, he formed the best aristocracy possible--for this qualification
was so slight that it excluded very few people, and no one who had any
consideration in the city. Aristocratic families should belong to the
people as much as possible. The more an aristocracy resembles a
democracy, the more perfect it is. The most imperfect of all is that in
which the lower classes are ground down by the upper classes.
An aristocracy has by itself more force than a democracy. The nobles
form a corporation which, by its prerogative and for its particular
interest, restrains the people; but it is very difficult for this
corporation to restrain its own members as easily as it restrains the
populace. Public crimes can, no doubt, be punished, as it is in the
general interests of an aristocracy that this should be done; but, as a
rule, private misdeeds in the nobility will be overlooked. A corporation
of this sort can only curb itself in two ways--either by a great
political virtue, which leads the nobles to regard the people as their
equals and makes for the formation of large republic, or by the lesser
virtue of moderation, which enables them to conserve their power.
An aristocracy grows corrupt when the power of the nobles becomes
arbitrary. When the governing families observe the laws they form a
monarchy which has several monarchies; this is a very good thing in its
nature, because all these monarchies are bound together by the laws.
But when they no longer observe them, they form a despotic state which
has many despots.
The extreme corruption comes about when the nobility becomes hereditary;
it can no longer be moderate in the exercise of its powers. If the
nobles are small in number their power increases, but their surety
diminishes; if they are great in number, their power is less, but their
surety more certain, for power goes on increasing, and surety goes on
diminishing up to the despot whose power is as excessive as his peril. A
multitude of nobles in an hereditary aristocracy thus makes the
government less violent; but as they will have but little political
virtue, they will grow nonchalant, idle, and irresponsible, so that the
state at last will have no longer any force or resilience.
An aristocracy is able to maintain its force if its laws are such that
they make the nobility feel more the dangers and fatigues of government
than the pleasures of it, and if the state is in such a situation that
it has something to dread, and that its surety comes from within, and
its danger threatens from without. A certain confidence forms the glory
and the safety of a monarchy, but a republic lives on its perils. The
fear of the Persians kept the Greek states in strict obedience to
republican laws. Carthage and Rome intimidated and strengthened each
other. It is a strange thing, but democracies and aristocracies are like
water, which grows corrupt only when it is too long unmoved and
untroubled.
_III.--On the Monarchy_
Intermediary, subordinate, and dependent powers constitute the nature of
a monarchical government, in which a single man governs by means of
fundamental laws. The most natural of intermediary, subordinate powers
is that of a nobility. This is indeed an essential part of a monarchy,
of which the maxim is: "No king, no nobility; no nobility, no king."
There are some persons in certain countries of Europe who wish to
abolish all the rights of the nobility. They do not see that they want
to do what the English parliament did in the seventeenth century.
Abolish in a monarchy the prerogatives of the lords, of the clergy, of
the gentry, and of the towns, and you will soon have either a purely
popular government or a despotism.
I am not greatly prepossessed in favour of the privileges of the clergy,
but I should like to see their jurisdiction clearly fixed once for all.
It is not a question of discussing if it be right to establish it, but
of seeing if it is established, and if it forms part of the laws of the
country, and of deciding if a loyal subject is not within his rights in
upholding both the powers of his king and the limits which have from
time immemorial been set to that power. The power of the clergy is
dangerous in a republic, but convenient in a monarchy, and especially in
a monarchy tending to despotism. Where would Spain and Portugal be,
since they have lost their laws, without this power which alone arrests
the arbitrary force of their kings?
In order to advance liberty, the English have destroyed all the
intermediary powers that form their monarchy. They have good reason to
guard and cherish this liberty. If ever they lose it, they will be one
of the most enslaved races on earth.
It is not sufficient that there should be intermediary ranks in the
monarchy; there must also be a depository of laws. This depository
cannot be found anywhere save in political corporations, which announce
laws when they are made, and recall them when they are forgotten. The
ignorance natural to nobility, its inattention, its contempt for civil
government, require that there should be a corporation which unceasingly
recovers laws from the dust in which they are buried.
As democracies are ruined by the populace stripping the senate, the
magistrates, and the judges of their functions, so monarchies decay when
the prerogatives of the higher classes and the privileges of towns are
little by little destroyed. In the first case, things end in a despotism
of the multitude; in the other, in the despotism of a single man.
The people of the ancient world had no knowledge of a monarchy founded
on a nobility, and still less knowledge of a monarchy founded on a
legislative corporation formed, as in England, by the representatives of
the people. On reading the admirable work of Tacitus on the ancient
Germans, one sees that it is from them that the English have derived the
idea of their political system. This fine form of government was
discovered in the forests. It is based on a separation of the three
powers found in every state--the legislative power, the executive power,
and the judicial power. The first is in the hands of the parliament, the
second is in the hands of the monarch, and the third in the hands of the
magistracy. The English people would lose their liberty if the same man,
or the same corporation, or the lords, or the people themselves, were
possessed of these three powers.
By their representative system the English have avoided the great defect
of the ancient republics, in which the populace were allowed to take an
active part in the government.
There is in every state a number of persons distinguished by birth,
wealth, or honour. If they were confounded among the people, and had
there only one vote like the rest, the common liberty would be to them a
slavery, and they would have no interest in defending it, because most
of the laws would be directed against them. The part they play in
legislation should, therefore, be proportionate to the other advantages
which they have in the state. In England they rightly form a legislative
body, which has the power of arresting the enterprises of the people,
in the same way as the people have the power of arresting theirs. A
house of lords must be hereditary. It is so naturally, and, besides,
this gives it a very great interest in the preservation of its
prerogatives, which, in a free country, must always be in danger. But as
an hereditary power might be tempted to follow its private interests to
the neglect of the public welfare, it is necessary that in matters in
which corruption can easily arise, such as matters relating to money
bills, the House of Lords should have neither any initiating nor any
correcting faculty; it should have only a power of veto and a power of
approving, like the tribunes of ancient Rome.
The cabinet should not wield the executive power as well as the
legislative power. Unless the monarch himself retains the executive
power, there is no liberty, for liberty depends upon each of the three
powers being kept entirely separate. It is in this way that the balance
of the constitution is preserved. As all human things have an end,
England will one day lose its liberty, and perish. Rome, Sparta, and
Carthage have not been able to last. England will perish when the
legislative power grows more corrupt than the executive power.
_IV.--On Despotism_
From the nature of despotism it follows that a despot gives the
government into the hands of another man. A creature whose five senses
are always telling him that he is everything and that other men are
nothing is naturally idle, ignorant, and pleasure-seeking. He therefore
abandons the control of affairs. But if he entrusted them to several
persons there would be disputes among them, and the despot would be put
to the trouble of interfering in their intrigues. The easier way,
therefore, is for him to surrender all administration to a vizier, and
give him full power. The establishment of a vizier is a fundamental law
of despotism. The more people a despot has to govern, the less he thinks
of governing them; the greater the business of the state becomes, the
less trouble he takes to deliberate upon it.
A despotic state continually grows corrupt because it is corrupt in its
nature. Other forms of government perish through particular accidents; a
despotism perishes inwardly, even when several accidental causes seem to
support it.
It is only maintained when certain circumstances derived from the
climate, the religion, the situation, or the genius of a people compel
it to observe some order and submit to some regulation. These things
compel it, but do not change its nature; its ferocity remains, though
for a time it is tamed.