MONTESQUIEU 
 
 Great French Writers 
 
 Edited by J. J. Jusserand
 
 M X T K S Q U I E U 
 
 CKI) FROM THE M F.DAI. I!Y J. A. DASSIER
 
 Great French Writers 
 
 MONTESQUIEU 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT SOREL 
 
 Cranslateir ig 
 GUSTAVE MASSON, B.A. UNIV. GALLIC., 
 
 OFFICIER D'ACADMIE, 
 ASSISTANT MASTER AND LIBRARIAN, HARROW SCHOOL 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS 
 
 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL 
 
 GLASGOW AND NEW YORK 
 
 1887
 
 GREAT FRENCH WRITERS. 
 
 ORDER OF PUBLICATION : 
 
 i. MADAME DE SEVIGNE (with Portrait) By GASTON BOISSIER 
 (French Academy). Translated by H. L. WILLIAMS. 
 
 a. MONTESQUIEU. By ALBERT SOREL. Translated by GUSTAVE 
 MASSON. 
 
 3. VICTOR COUSIN. By JULBS SIMON (French Academy). 
 
 4. GEORGE SAND. By Professor E. CARO (French Academy). 
 
 5. VOLTAIRE. By FKRD. BRUNBTIERE. 
 
 6. RACINE. By ANATOLE FRANCE. 
 
 T.TURGOT THE FINANCIER. By M. LEON SAY (French Academy). 
 
 8. BALZAC. By M. PINE BOURGET. 
 
 g. VILLON. By Professor GASTON PARIS (French Institute). 
 10 D'A UBIGNE. By Professor G. GUIZOT (College of France). 
 H.BOILEAU. By FERD. BRUNETIERE. 
 12.ROUSSEA U. By M. CHERBULIEZ (French Academy). 
 13. JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. By Viscount F. M. DE VOGUE. 
 14. LA MARTI NE By M. DE POMAIROLE. 
 15 MUSSET. By JULES LEMAITRE. 
 if>.SAINTE.BEUVE. By M. TAINS (French Academy). 
 ij. GUIZOT. By G. MONOD.
 
 GREAT FRENCH WRITERS. 
 
 STUDIES BY THE PRINCIPAL FRENCH AUTHORS 
 
 OF THE DAY ON THE LIFE, WORKS, AND 
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE PRINCIPAL FRENCH 
 
 AUTHORS OF THE PAST. 
 
 OUR nineteenth century, now drawing to a close, has shown from the first, and will 
 bequeath to the next age, a vivid taste for historical research, to which it has brought 
 an ardour, a method, crowned by a success unprecedented in former times. The 
 story of the World and its inhabitants has been entirely re-written. The pickaxe 
 of the archaeologist has restored to light the bones of the heroes of Mycenae and the 
 very features of Sesostris. Ruins explained, hieroglyphs translated, have led to recon- 
 stituting the life of the illustrious dead, sometimes to penetrating into their thoughts. 
 
 With a still more intense passion, because it was blended with affection, our cen- 
 tury has applied itself to reviving the great writers of all literatures, those depo- 
 sitaries of national genius and interpreters of national thought. France has not 
 lacked scholars to undertake this task ; they have published the works, and cleared 
 up the biography of those illustrious men we cherish as our ancestors, and who con- 
 tributed, even more efficiently than princes and captains, to the formation of modern 
 France, not to say of the modern world. 
 
 For it is one of our glories that the sway of France has prevailed less by the 
 power of arms than by the power of thought; and the action of our country 
 upon the world has ever been independent of her military triumphs ; indeed, 
 she has been seen to predominate in the most distressing hours of her national 
 history. Hence the great thinkers of our literature have an interest not only for 
 their direct descendants, but also for a large European posterity scattered beyond 
 our frontiers. 
 
 Initiators first, then popularisers, the French were the foremost, in the turmoil 
 prevalent at the opening of the Middle Ages, to begin a new literature; the first 
 songs heard by modern society in its cradle were French songs. Like Gothic art 
 and the institution of universities, mediaeval literature commences in our country, 
 thence expands throughout Europe. Here was the beginning. 
 
 But this literature was ignorant of the value of form, moderation, and reserve ; it 
 was too spontaneous, not sufficiently reflective, too heedless of questions of Art. 
 The France of Louis the Fourteenth gave due honour to form, and was in the mean- 
 wh le the age of the revival of philosophy, of which Voltaire and Rousseau were 
 to be the European apostles in the eighteenth century, awaiting the eclectic and 
 scientific era in which we live ; it was the period of the diffusion of literary doc- 
 trines. Had not this task been carried out as it was, the destiny of literatures 
 would have been changed ; Ariosto, Tasso, Camoens, Shakespeare, or Spenser, all 
 the foreign writers together, those of the Renaissance and those subsequent, would 
 not have sufficed to bring about this reform ; and our age would perhaps never have 
 known those impassioned poets, who have been at the same time perfect artists, freer 
 than their precursors of old, purer in form than Boileau had ever dreamed : the 
 Cheniers, Keats, Goethes, Lamartines, Le"opardis. 
 
 Many works, the publication of which is amply justified by all these reasons, 
 have therefore been devoted in our days to the great French writers. And yet, do 
 these mighty and charming geniuses occupy in the present literature of the world 
 the place which is due to them? In no wise, not even in France; and for sundry 
 reasons. 
 
 In the first place, after having tardily received in the last century the revelations 
 of Northern literature, feeling ashamed of our ignorance, we became impassioned for
 
 foreign works, not without profit, but perhaps to excess, to the great prejudice at all 
 events of our national ancestors. These ancestors, moreover, it has not been possible 
 as yet to associate with our lives as we should have wished, and to mingle them in the 
 current of our daily ideas ; and this, precisely on account of the nature of the works 
 that have been devoted to them, it has been no easy thing to do. For where do these 
 dead revive? In their works, or in treatises on literature? That is a great deal, 
 no doubt ; and the beautiful and scholarly editions and the well-ordered treatises 
 have rendtred in our days this communion of souls less difficult. But that is not 
 yet sufficient ; we are accustomed nowadays to have everything made easy for us : 
 grammars and sciences, like travelling, have been simplified ; yesterday's impossi- 
 bilities have become to-day's matters of course. This is why the old treatises on 
 literature often repel us and complete editions do not attract. They are suitable for 
 those studious hours, too few in the lives of busy men, but not for the leisure 
 moments, which are more frequent. Thus the book to which all turn, and which 
 opens of itself, is the latest novel ; while the works of great men, complete and fault- 
 les., motionless like family portraits, venerated^ but seldom contemplated, stand in 
 their fine array on the high shelves of our libraries. 
 
 They are loved, yet neglected. Those great men seem too distant, too different, 
 too learned, too inaccessible. The idea of an edition in many volumes, of the notes 
 which divert our attention, of the scientific display which surrounds them, perhaps 
 the vague recollection of school and classic studies, the juvenile task, oppress the 
 mind ; the idle hour we had to dispose of, has already flown away, and thus we 
 acquire the habit of laying aside our old authors, like silent kings, careless of familiar 
 converse with them. 
 
 The object of the present collection is to recall to pur firesides those great 
 men, whosr temples are too rarely visited, and to revive between descendants 
 and forefathers that union of ideas and purposes which alone can secure, notwith- 
 standing the changes wrought by time, the unalloyed preservation of our national 
 genius. In the volumes that are being published wi'l be found precise informa- 
 tion on the life, works, and influence of each of the writers conspicuous in universal 
 literature, or representing an original side of French intellect. These books will be 
 short, their price moderate ; they will thus be ao essible to everyone- They will 
 be uniform in size, paper, print, with the specimen now before the reader. They 
 will sup ply on doubtful points the latest results of literary research, and thereby 
 may be useful even to the well read ; they will contain no notes, as the name of the 
 authors for each work will be a sufficient guarantee, the co-operation of the most 
 able contemporary writers having been secured for the series. Finally, an accurate 
 reproduction of an authentic portrait will enable readers to make in some degree the 
 acquaintance by sight of our great writers. 
 
 In s-hort, to recall the part they played, now better known, thanks to erudite 
 researches ; to strengthen their action on the present time ; to tighten the bonds and 
 revive the affection uniting us to the past ages of our literature ; by contemplating 
 the past, to inspire confidence in the future, and silence, if it be possible, the doleful 
 voices of the disheartened, such are our chief objects. We also believe that this series 
 will have several other advantages. It is right that every generation should reckon 
 up the riches bequeathed to it by its ancestors, learning thus to make a better use of 
 them. Finally, there is no better test of the quality, power, and limitations of an age, 
 than the verdict which it passes on the productions of the past. It judges itself while 
 giving judgment on others. It is hoped that tiis series maybe at once useful iu 
 facilitating the comprehension of former periods, and helpful to a knowledge of the 
 present, if the scheme, favourably received by the public, should be carried on to 
 final completeness. 
 
 J. J. JUSSERAND.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 FEW modern French philosophers were better qualified 
 than M. Albert Sorel to discuss the merits of Montesquieu, 
 and assign to him his place in Messieurs Hachette's collec- 
 tion : Les Grands Ecrivains Franqais. By his admiration 
 of England, its constitution and its government, the illus- 
 trious author of VEsprit des Lois was, on the other hand, 
 specially entitled to the notice of the English public ; and it 
 is, therefore, with the fullest confidence and the sincerest 
 pleasure, that we introduce to our readers the biography of 
 one of the greatest thinkers of the last century, written by 
 the gentleman to whom we are indebted for a most valu- 
 able work : P Europe et la Revolution Fran^aise. No one, 
 assuredly, could appreciate more accurately the share which 
 Montesquieu had in inspiring, directing, and modifying the 
 progress of the great political crisis begun in 1789, and 
 destined to influence, more or less, all the countries in the 
 world. 
 
 We have added to this translation a few notes on points 
 less familiar to ourselves than to French readers, and 
 an alphabetical index. 
 
 November 1887.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 SYNCHRONISMS. 
 1689 (January i8th) Birth of Montesquieu . j R ^^ tt !(^? 1>W ' P erformed 
 
 1700 Studies at Juilly under the Oratorians . -| ^j^- P roclaimed Kin 8 of 
 
 1711 Leaves Juilly Death of the Dauphin. 
 
 1714 (February 24) Councillor at the Bordeaux ) B n Unife , litus 
 
 Parliament . . . . . ) 
 
 1715 Marries Jeanne de Lartigue (April 3) . Death of Louis XIV. 
 
 1716 (July 13) Named President a Mortiei ) Law proposes his Financial 
 
 member of the Academic of Bordeaux ) System. 
 
 719 Sends to Ae press his " Histoire physique ) D h f Madarae de Ma i ntenon . 
 de la Terre ancienne et moderne . ) 
 
 1721 " Les Lettres Persanes" .... Plague at Marseilles. 
 
 1725 "Le Temple de Gnide." Pronounces at :) Dea(h of the Czar p eter the 
 
 Bordeaux an address on the duties of ) Q rea t 
 barristers ) 
 
 1726 Leaves the magistracy .... Voltaire in England. 
 
 lected a member of the ., 
 Francaise. Goes to Italy . 
 
 1729-31 Resides in England 
 
 1728 Elected a member of the Acadtmie\ Dean Swift publishes his "Gul- 
 
 . } liver." 
 
 ''' '"" *"" 
 
 1745 " Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate" . . Battle of Fontenoy. 
 
 f Treaty of Aix - la - Chapelle. 
 
 ( Treaty of Aix - la - Chapelle 
 
 1748 " L'Esprit des Lois" < Richardson publishes hi 
 
 \ " Clarissa Harlowe." 
 
 L'Esprit des Lois" attacked both by the } Buffon b- 
 Jesuits (Journal de Trevoux) and the > of his gr 
 Jansenists (Nouvelles Ecctesiastiques)} History. 
 
 " L'Esprit des Lois" attacked both by the') Bnffon b-gins the publication 
 
 reat work on Natural 
 
 1750 "Defense de TEsprit des Lois.'" . . Death of Marshal Saxe. 
 1755 (February loth) Death of Montesquieu . Earthquake at Lisbon.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 9, line 10, for " dying away in oblivion," read " crumbling 
 into ruins." 
 
 P. 10, 1. 13, for "its modus operandi" read "how it manifested 
 itself." 
 
 P. ii, 1. 2. for " Charles's birth," read " the birth of Charles Louis." 
 
 P. ii, 1. 13, for "of which he ever," etc., read "which still 
 reminds us of him." 
 
 P. n, 11. 14-17, for " was . . . towered," read "is ... towers." 
 
 P. 12, 1. 17, for ". denunciation," read "censure." 
 
 P. 12, 1. 19, /or " Montesquieu of La Brede," read " Montesquieu, 
 La Brede." 
 
 P. 13, I- Si/or "aptitude," read "taste." 
 
 P. 13, 1. 16, for "special reports," read "reports made for dis- 
 play."
 
 MONTESQUIEU. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF MONTESQUIEU. 
 
 Lettres Persanes appeared in 1721. This book 
 JL created a marvellous sensation. Never was writer 
 more in touch with his time never were the secrets of 
 society more delicately unveiled, its confused aspirations 
 and hidden desires expressed with more trenchant clear- 
 ness. Around him the author saw decay and ruin : social 
 institutions venerable with the age of centuries, tottering 
 to their fall; beliefs, customs, and manners, which 
 had established and strengthened the monarchy in 
 France, dying away in oblivion. He desired to analyse 
 these growing evils and seek a remedy for them, not per- 
 ceiving that in thus describing he was really helping to 
 spread them ; that his work, far from averting the dreaded 
 crisis, was actually its gravest symptom. It was in no 
 wise a warning or an appeal for reform, but rather the 
 signal of a revolution for which each soul was already 
 longing, as every passing event seemed to indicate more 
 plainly the causes producing the threatened destruction. 
 
 B
 
 io Montesquieu. 
 
 In the Lettres Persanes is contained the germ of the 
 Esprit des Lois. Montesquieu published them at the 
 age of thirty-two. By birth, education, and earlier cast of 
 thought, he belongs to the seventeenth century, and he 
 shows in his life and works, as none has shown more clearly, 
 how a democratic revolution sprang, while even its 
 authors were unconscious of it, from the reign of Louis 
 XIV, that reign which seemed to have established the 
 throne in France on indestructible bases. Let us, there- 
 fore, briefly consider the character and circumstances of 
 the man at the time of the production of his first work, 
 and try to define the nature of his genius, before we 
 study its modus operandi, 
 
 Montesquieu was of gentle blood, of the noblesse tfepee 
 et de robe, being born of a family distinguished by its 
 soldiers and its lawyers. His house had in its time first 
 embraced the Reformation and abjured it under Henry IV. 
 Jacques de Secondat, the second son of the Baron de 
 Montesquieu, president & mortier in the parliament of 
 Guyenne, married in 1686 Franchise de Penel, who 
 brought him the castle and estates of La Brede, near Bor- 
 deaux. Here, on the i8th January 1689, was born their 
 son Charles Louis, the future author of Esprit des Lois. 
 His father had the rare high-bred austereness charac- 
 teristic of Vauban and Catinat ; his mother was devout ; 
 both were of the autocratic type which seeks, as well from 
 a fine sense of the duties and responsibilities of rank as 
 from a feeling of religious obligation, to identify itself 
 with the people and popular interests. A beggar chanced
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 1 1 
 
 to present himself at the Castle at the moment of 
 Charles's birth : he was requested to become the god- 
 father of the child, who was thus to be through life 
 reminded that "the poor are his brothers." So had 
 formerly reasoned and acted Montaigne's father, a com- 
 patriot of the father of Montesquieu. 
 
 Charles bore at first the name of his patrimony, La 
 Brede. His infancy was passed in the country, under the 
 charge of some peasants to whom he was entrusted, and 
 with whom he spent three years, gaining by their care 
 strength of body and a practical knowledge of the patois 
 of the district. He then returned to the castle of La 
 Brede, of which he ever held a tender remembrance. 
 This home of his childhood was a great thirteenth-century 
 manor-house, absolutely without architectural ornament, 
 consisting of a donjon, of which the massive, frowning, 
 battlemented walls towered above a deep moat filled with 
 water, and crossed by a drawbridge. Charles lived here 
 until the age of seven years, when his mother died : he 
 was then sent to the Oratorians at Juilly, where he re- 
 mained from 1700 to 1711. The educational system to 
 which he was now subjected, involving, as it necessarily 
 did, a complete detachment from family life, was by no 
 means conducive to the development of the affections. 
 And, indeed, this nature with which the Oratorians had 
 to deal was in no wise one sensitive or susceptible, but 
 was rather characterised by a contented reflective humour, 
 untinctured by the least melancholy. We might natu- 
 rally suppose that a mind, exposed during its earlier 
 
 B 2
 
 1 2 Montesquieu. 
 
 development to ecclesiastical influence, would be strongly 
 drawn to religion, or at least inclined in the direction of 
 spiritual thought. In the present instance, this was not 
 so. Notwithstanding a predisposition to a respectful 
 mental attitude towards religion, induced by the early 
 teaching of his mother, the education in Letters and in 
 the Classics which Montesquieu received at the Oratory 
 led the way to indifference and scepticism. At the age 
 of twenty he produced a work in refutation of the view 
 that the philosophers of the heathen world merit eternal 
 damnation. The leaning to Stoicism apparent in Mon- 
 tesquieu throughout his life, forming the substratum of 
 his philosophy, was the direct result of his studies in 
 the Latin authors ; and once emancipated from control, he 
 added thereto a strong commixture of Pyrrhonism, of 
 which a tradition still lingered in the society of the 
 Temple, in defiance of denunciation, the Sorbonne, and 
 the lieutenant of police. 
 
 Montesquieu of La Brede as he ought still to be called 
 at this period of his life went through a course of legal 
 study, and was entered as Counsellor in the parliament 
 of Bordeaux in 1714. In the following year he married 
 Mademoiselle Jeanne de Lartigue, whose family, with its 
 military traditions, was of Calvinistic origin. This young 
 lady was more distinguished by her goodness than by her 
 beauty, and was too timid and retiring in disposition and 
 manner to be attractive. Of this marriage three children 
 were born a boy and two girls. In the year of his son's 
 birth (1716) La Brede became president a mortier ; his
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 13 
 
 uncle, the head of the family, who held this office, having 
 bequeathed it to him, together with all his property, con- 
 ditionally on his taking the title of Montesquieu. Never 
 was legacy more fitly devised, at least as regards the title : 
 for the official post Montesquieu showed little aptitude. 
 His family and profession occupied but little place in his 
 life, and while duly discharging the duties required of 
 him in his relations to each, he dismissed them from his 
 mind as speedily as was compatible with decorum. 
 Society and its attractions were very pleasant to him, and 
 he liked to be lured by their charms. To legal suits and 
 actions he showed an absolute indifference, detested the 
 Basoche^ and held all advocates and petitioners in high dis- 
 dain alike. Possessing no gift of oratory, he felt himself 
 equal neither to the delivery of solemn addresses, nor even 
 to the special reports so dear to the pride of the magis- 
 tracy. In the quest of knowledge and the joy of 
 thought, his mental activity was absorbed, and he found 
 a congenial atmosphere in the social life of Bordeaux, in 
 which, by virtue of his rank and position, he held a fore- 
 most place. 
 
 "The profession of the law, holding, as it did, a 
 middle place between the Grande noblesse and the peo- 
 ple," opened out the widest sphere to the keen political 
 observer. In the provinces it formed a centre for the 
 enlightened community, and Bordeaux was a town in 
 which intellectual culture was peculiarly honoured. It 
 possessed an Academy for " polishing and bringing to 
 perfection the admirable talents that nature so freely
 
 1 4 Montesquieu. 
 
 bestows upon the men born in this climate." So run the 
 words of the founder of the society. Montesquieu was, 
 in some sort by right, received therein : he produced an 
 essay entitled La Politique des Romains dans la Religion^ 
 and another treating of Le Sys&me des Idees, and then 
 threw himself into the study of science. Through the 
 impetus given by Newton, the observations on and study 
 of nature were in process of emancipation from the 
 trammels of confused compilations and mythical idea. 
 Montesquieu devoted himself for a time to researches in 
 anatomy, botany, and natural philosophy : applying him- 
 self to the study of the renal glands, and investigating the 
 causes productive of echo, and the rationale of trans- 
 parency in bodies. But the weakness of sight, from 
 which he always suffered, made all experiments difficult 
 to him, and his impatient spirit led him to be intolerant 
 of their laboriousness and sterility. 
 
 He was incapable of the minuteness of attention which 
 forms so essential a part of the genius of scientific dis- 
 covery, and which Goethe associates with creative 
 imagination. Montesquieu would at once deduce an in- 
 ference. He delights in broad sketch and boldness of out- 
 line. Of him was the conception prior to that of Buffon 
 of a physical history of the ancient and modern globe ; 
 and in 1719 he sent forth circulars throughout the 
 scientific world inviting observations on the subject. In 
 the course of his explorations in the past of the universe 
 he encountered Man, and paused to make him the object 
 of his contemplation : here, becoming conscious of the
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 15 
 
 true bent of his genius, he then and henceforth set 
 himself to the accomplishment of its destiny. But 
 from his scientific excursions and experiments he 
 reaped the benefit in a conception of science, a 
 method of work, and an instinct in experiment, of 
 which the traces are perceptible in his political and 
 historical works. 
 
 Thus did he form himself. The mental individuality 
 of the man at the age of thirty was that which, with but 
 slight modification, distinguished him at the end of his 
 life. Few writers so profoundly influencing their century 
 have associated themselves so little with the course of 
 events in that century. The private life of Montesquieu 
 is void of interest : in no sense is it illustrative of his 
 works. Both as gentleman and thinker he would have 
 considered as an impertinence all speculation concerning 
 his personality : he would have felt guilty of a like im- 
 pertinence in seeking to occupy the attention of others 
 with the subject. By his works he desired to be known, 
 and by his works only can we form an idea of his opinions 
 and of his life. 
 
 Of middle height, of slight and nervous frame, his face 
 was refined and somewhat long, with a strongly marked 
 profile the profile of a medal ; the nose was large, the 
 mouth delicate, satirical, and sensual ; the forehead tend- 
 ing slightly to recede, the eyes widely opened, and, though 
 prematurely dimmed and weakened, always full of fire 
 and genius, and hungering for light. " I look at the light," 
 he says, " with a kind of rapture." His was a French
 
 1 6 Montesquieu. 
 
 physiognomy with distinctively Gascon modifications : he 
 possessed the characteristics of each type. 
 
 The radix is Gascon, and the Gascon nature pre- 
 dominates. Of his origin Montesquieu retains not only 
 the accent, which he much affects, but the manner, the 
 gasconnade, using the term in a favourable sense ; wit is, 
 as it were, a point of honour with him. His conversation 
 was rich in surprise, in sally, and in brilliant repartee; 
 much of his conversational verve is traceable in his style : 
 the somewhat abrupt ellipses, the numberless digressions, 
 the flashes of simple eloquence and sparkle of frolic and 
 raillery, in a word, the carelessness of familiar talk. A 
 freedom occasionally bordering on licence is observable : 
 it is the effect of a redundant memory and an exuberant 
 spirit. Montesquieu finds in Montaigne a perpetual 
 charm : he delights in him, feeds on his spirit, and at times 
 almost reproduces him. Like Montaigne, he has the in- 
 satiable curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, which give to 
 the mind a perennial youth. " I spend my life in examin- 
 ing; everything interests, everything surprises me; I am like 
 a child whose organs, still tender, are vividly struck by 
 the most insignificant objects." Possessed by the passion 
 of reading, he travels through his library ; he walks in it, 
 hunts in it, and in it gathers spoil ; his books are defaced 
 with notes. This battue constantly animates and fertilises 
 his thought. He is charmed with all significant anecdote, 
 with the idiosyncrasies of a man or a country, even with 
 the slight and merely amusing story illustrative of the 
 folly and good-nature of man in every age. These he
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 1 7 
 
 collects and treasures up, and when opportunity occurs, 
 cannot resist the pleasure of retailing them. Many of 
 the oddities, allegations, and strange citations with which 
 we are so unexpectedly confronted in the profoundest 
 chapters of the Esprit des Lois proceed solely from the 
 natural sense of humour so strong in Montesquieu. 
 
 Thus with respect to the laws " which form political 
 liberty in its relation to the constitution," he cites 
 Arribas, king of Epirus, and the laws of the Molossi. 
 What business have Arribas and the Molossi here ? asks 
 a critic. They show us that our author has read Mon- 
 taigne and is of his country. But Montesquieu is at the 
 same time French of France in earnest and reflecting. 
 Montaigne's thought is discursive : Montesquieu's thought 
 is, as it were, impelled to concentration. He has a 
 passion for order, method, and continuity ; with him there 
 must be deliberation in all things, and a grasp of the 
 correspondence and correlation of causes. The most 
 wonderful collection of rarities does not content him; nor 
 is he satisfied with conducting amateurs through his 
 gallery, and maliciously enjoying their astonishment at 
 the variety of form and infinite renewal of contrast pre- 
 sented to their view. He must perforce explain to them 
 and to himself the prodigious diversity of nature, discover 
 laws in the apparent confusion of facts, and surprise by 
 similitudes even more than by oppositions. " Our soul 
 is formed for thought, that is to say, for perception : now 
 such a being ought to possess curiosity ; for, as all things 
 are linked together, forming a chain in which each idea
 
 1 8 Montesquieu. 
 
 is preceded and followed by another, one cannot wish to 
 see one thing without desiring to see another." This is 
 the curiosity of the scholar and historian. 
 
 But such curiosity implies complete independence of 
 judgment : this Montesquieu essentially possessed. It is 
 impossible to conceive a more truly liberal and un- 
 prejudiced mind. Still, though exempt from superstitious 
 errors, he was at one time influenced by those of scep- 
 ticism. During his youth, in the reaction resultant on the 
 orthodoxy of the latter years of Louis XIV, he announced 
 himself a freethinker, carrying liberty of thought and 
 independence in matters of faith to the verge of irrever- 
 ence, if not to hostility. But this disposition of mind 
 was not a lasting one. The mere contemplation of the 
 inherent order in facts and ideas shook his scepticism, 
 and the closer study of social institutions inspired him 
 with respect for religion. Nevertheless, as Sainte-Beuve 
 has remarked, it was chiefly as a political thinker and 
 historian that he paid homage to "the elevation and 
 idealisation of human nature"; he received and accepted 
 the ideas of justice and religion in their positive and 
 practical sense, rather than by virtue of their essence. 
 For metaphysics he had positively no aptitude ; primary 
 causes seemed to him inaccessible, and he did not seek to 
 apprehend them, but confined his attention to secondary 
 causes, which produce effects plainly visible, being, 
 indeed, matters of experience. He restricted his specu- 
 lations to the earth, not extending them beyond the 
 earthly life of man ; and, in regard of all that lies outside
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 19 
 
 the world and its history, was content to leave it to in- 
 tuition the instinct of a sentient and accountable being, 
 clinging, as a last resource, to the beautiful visions which 
 nourish human hope, and which, in their very mystery, 
 seemed to him the most satisfactory solution of the 
 problem of his destiny that man has yet discovered. 
 
 " What is the need of so much philosophy ? God is 
 so high that we do not perceive even the clouds which 
 surround Him. We know Him well, only through the 
 precepts which He has given us. These precepts are 
 engraved in us, and social instinct develops them in our 
 souls in proportion as it leads us to make up a society. 
 Supposing there was no God, we should still cherish 
 justice, that is to say, do our best to resemble that Being 
 of whom we have so grand an idea, and who, if He 
 existed, would be continually just. Free from the yoke 
 of religion, we ought not to be free from that of equity. 
 Supposing the immortality of the soul were an error, I 
 should be sorry not to believe in it. I acknowledge 
 that I have not reached the humility of atheists. I know 
 not how they think ; but, for my part, I will not barter the 
 idea of my immortality for that of a happiness which lasts 
 one day. I am delighted at believing myself immortal as 
 God Himself. Independently of revealed ideas, meta- 
 physical ones give me a very strong hope of my eternal 
 happiness a hope which I would not renounce." 
 
 Thus we find Montesquieu almost in virtual agreement 
 with Pascal from a practical point of view, led thither 
 not by anguish of mind and despairing reason, but by
 
 2O Montesquieu. 
 
 the direction of wisdom and a scorn of the hypotheses of 
 schoolmen and of arbitrary systems, by the good-sense of 
 the citizen, and, above all, by the perception of the legis- 
 lator : by a recognition of social needs, and by the esteem 
 in which he holds the human species. He had a marked 
 leaning to the spirit of the ancients ; of Marcus Aure- 
 lius and the Antonines " the greatest subject in nature" 
 he says : " Born for society, they believed it to be their 
 destiny to work for it." In all his works one finds this 
 vein of Stoicism, modified by French urbanity, and im - 
 pregnated with the modern feeling for humanity, but 
 hardly with charity. Montesquieu, who never entirely 
 understood the nature of the mission of Christianity to 
 the civilised world, appears to have never been influenced 
 by Christian loving-kindness. His disposition was kindly, 
 and he was much inclined to generosity. " I have never," 
 he says, "seen tears shed by anyone without being touched. 
 I feel compassion I have a feeling of humanity for 
 those who are unhappy, as if mankind was composed of 
 such alone." But he dreaded the manifestation of 
 emotion : he thought that " a fine action must of necessity 
 be a good one, and one that calls forth effort in the per- 
 formance." Still, his self-imposed constraint amounted to 
 affectation; his contempt of false sentiment expressed 
 itself practically in coldness ; and the exaggerated fear of 
 seeming to be the dupe of feeling, and appearing to seek 
 a reputation for benevolence, deprived him of the grateful 
 thanks of those whom he served. 
 A certain shyness and much timidity formed part of this
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 2 1 
 
 reserve. Montesquieu himself tells us that this shyness 
 was the scourge of his life, and that he suffered from it 
 especially in the presence of such as were of dull under- 
 standing. One can fancy that he sometimes suffered from 
 it also when in the society of women, in which at all times 
 he found pleasure. He delighted in feeling the power of 
 a woman's charm, and sometimes made his own fascination 
 acknowledged; though he loved without fire, without fear 
 in a word, without romance his love was full of brightness 
 and radiant with wit, seeking rather to be amused than 
 to expend itself in tenderness. More intense in study than 
 in love, he displayed in the matter of feeling the same 
 curiosity, tempered however by society ; if he had love- 
 affairs, they troubled him little ; if deceived, he speedily 
 found consolation ; and if he often yielded to fascination, 
 he never abandoned himself to its sway. He says : " I was 
 happy enough in my youth to be possessed of an attach- 
 ment for women, and I thought they returned my affec- 
 tion ; as soon as I ceased to believe this, I immediately 
 broke off all intercourse with them." Montesquieu was 
 inclined to libertinism, and as his writings bear traces of it 
 this notice of the fact was necessary here. It is the sign 
 and the special vice of his time. Our knowledge of him 
 would be but imperfect did we not glance, in passing by, 
 at this new aspect in which he is presented to us as the 
 leading spirit of the boudoir and the gallant president, 
 the rival, so far as merry-making parties were concerned, 
 of his brother presidents Henault and de Brosses.
 
 2 2 Montesquieu. 
 
 He has somewhere remarked, that "the society of 
 women injures the moral sense and forms the taste"; but 
 in his own case it would seem that such society, though 
 it did not deaden the moral sense, did vitiate the taste. 
 It was for the pleasure of the women he found so attrac- 
 tive that certain pamphlets, unworthy of his reputation, 
 were written, and that his finest work is sullied by a 
 licentious touch. This blemish, indeed, was the cause of 
 his being read by the fashionables of that time ; and though 
 at the present day it is the obstacle to the knowledge of 
 Montesquieu in the fashionable world, the reason is not to 
 be sought in its graver thought and purer taste ; it is simply 
 change of fashion, and fashion in such an atmosphere and 
 in like matters is the most intolerant of critics. The tone 
 of libertinism studied and affected in Fontenelle, ironical 
 and deliberate in Montesquieu, cynical and degrading in 
 Voltaire, gross in Rousseau, and shamelessly coarse in 
 Diderot became ceremonious and pompous in Chateau- 
 briand, theatrical in the Romanticists, and pedantic, 
 pathological, and melancholy in the school which followed. 
 There is infinite distance between the hysterical jargon 
 of this school and the freedom in which Montesquieu 
 indulges ; both he and his contemporaries would have 
 been overpowered by the noxious vapours engendered by 
 that literature, and would have turned in unutterable dis- 
 gust from the insufferable dulness which would have pro- 
 duced in them, what of all things they dreaded boredom. 
 Of this unpardonable offence Montesquieu is never 
 guilty. This is because he is amusing in such interludes,
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 23 
 
 never wearying by monotonous reiteration, and heedful not 
 to confound the motive of the vignette with the subject 
 of which he is treating. He is frivolous as he is curious, 
 purely by way of diversion, and in the frolic of his Gascon 
 vivacity; but the thinker always recalls the vagrant 
 to the highway the philosopher always has the last 
 word. 
 
 Montesquieu's pride in the dignity of his name was 
 great. This well-born gentleman gloried in his birth, and 
 his descent from a conquering race. " Our ancestors the 
 Germans, warriors and freemen " this thought, recurring 
 so often and in so many forms in his writing, is with him 
 a fundamental idea, the expression of a primordial preju- 
 dice or prepossession in which he delights, not seeking 
 to make it a subject of self-remonstrance, but on the con- 
 trary strengthening it by study. He says complacently : 
 " My lands, my vassals"; and the dry subject of fiefs, 
 which disconcerts and alarms his contemporaries, is to 
 him full of a personal and genealogical charm. 
 
 But the feudalist is allied to the legist : if he has no 
 pleasure in his office, he has a passionate belief in the 
 prerogatives pertaining to the body of which he is a mem- 
 ber ; and the spirit of antiquity on which he was nourished 
 infuses into his revendication of feudal liberties a certain 
 republican pride directly proceeding from Rome : " I have 
 seen, from afar, in Plutarch's works, what constituted 
 great men." His communing with the ancients had 
 developed in him the intuitive perception of what is great 
 also a vigour of soul, and an ardent admiration for
 
 24 Montesquieu. 
 
 political virtues of which the tradition had almost died out, 
 but which he contributed not a little to revive in France. 
 He has a hatred for depreciation and the faculty of ad- 
 miration ; he forms for himself a gallery of national heroes 
 " the exceptional men who would have been acknow- 
 ledged by the Romans" those of whom one can say, 
 as has been said of Turenne, that their life has been 
 a "hymn in praise of humanity." Montesquieu's 
 grandest pages are portraits of the founders of empires. 
 He is above all, and before all things, a citizen. " Is 
 it not," says he, " a noble design to do our best to leave 
 after us men happier than we have been ourselves?" 
 " I have naturally felt anxious for the welfare and the 
 honour of my native country ; I have always felt a secret 
 joy whenever some rule was laid down tending to the 
 common weal." 
 
 To have been an instrument in that direction would 
 have brought sweetness into his soul, and at one time he 
 eagerly desired to give himself to this service, esteeming 
 it the highest honour. But he was contemned at court : 
 the slight wounded him not a little ; and the bitterness 
 which this treatment produced in him is manifest in 
 many a touch, recalling La Bruyere in feeling and ex- 
 pression : " I began by entertaining a childish dread of 
 all persons of high social rank ; as soon as I became 
 acquainted with them, I went on without transition to 
 contempt." " I said to one man : ' For shame ! your 
 sentiments are as base as those of a man of quality.' " 
 The affront coming from Versailles must have wounded
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 25 
 
 Montesquieu the more deeply inasmuch as his nature was 
 essentially modest. All affectation of superiority offended 
 his taste ; "authors," he remarked, "are theatrical 
 characters." 
 
 He could not comprehend the feeling of hatred, which 
 seemed to him a really painful one : " Wherever I find 
 envy, I take a delight in driving it to despair." Only 
 with such as were on intimate terms with him did he 
 unbend ; in those families where he could get on with 
 " his every-day humour." His humour was marvellously 
 quick, supple, and sparkling, completely fascinating and 
 even dazzling his friends ; but his indifferent acquaintance, 
 to whom only the echo of his conversation was allowed 
 to reach, were wont to accuse him of economising this 
 brilliancy. It pleased him often to abstract himself, thus 
 avoiding the trouble of listening to, and the still greater 
 trouble of contradicting, obtrusive persons; he therefore 
 appeared singularly tolerant of them. Keenly observant 
 from his higher level, he shunned discussion and sat 
 " composing his work in society," as was somewhat 
 resentfully remarked by a lady of rank, in whose company, 
 so the story runs, he indulged too much in meditation. 
 
 Montesquieu was the best of friends the kindest, the 
 most lovable, and the most beloved ; but he knew the 
 value of retirement, and sought it, whenever he felt it 
 necessary to him in his vocation of thinker. With a 
 placid temperament, he had uniformly good health ; the 
 current of his thought was clear and rapid, and he pos- 
 sessed, in an unlimited degree, the faculty of absorbing 
 
 c
 
 26 Montesquieu. 
 
 himself in study, " for I have never had any sorrow 
 which an hour's reading did not dissipate. . . ." " If we 
 merely wished to be happy, the problem would be soon 
 solved ; but we aim at being happier than others, and 
 there is the difficulty, because we fancy others happier 
 than they really are." This may be a theory of profound 
 wisdom, possibly too profound to be applied where the 
 imagination and the heart, so apt to disconcert theory, 
 are concerned. But, though benevolent and humane, 
 Montesquieu had no sensitive temperament, and never 
 allowed an attachment to bring grief to his soul or pierce 
 his heart with anguish : we can always perceive the foun- 
 dation of stoicism partly hidden, or, as it were, sprinkled 
 with the lightness of the Gascon nature. Plants which 
 grow in such a soil overflow indeed with sap, and bear 
 fruit of richest juiciness, but they neither put forth ver- 
 dure nor give shade. 
 
 Though profound and brilliant, Montesquieu might have 
 been dry, had not his genius comprehended the artist as well 
 as the observer, the inquirer, and the thinker. He has the 
 cult of the poetry of antiquity as he has the cult of its 
 polity. " Antiquity delights me, and I always feel ready 
 to exclaim, with Pliny : ' You are going to Athens ; 
 well, respect the gods.'" He enjoys that "smiling 
 air spread throughout mythology." Telemaque he con- 
 siders " the divine work of this century." With the ex- 
 ception of Manon Lescaut, which must have pleased him, 
 but which he could only have read in his maturer years, 
 the much-spun-out romances published in his lifetime,
 
 The Character of Montesquieu. 27 
 
 devoid, as they were, of either observation or style, de- 
 terred him from seeking to know the contemporary 
 imaginative literature : the dreary, cold, and mechanical 
 versification of the period indisposed him for the study 
 of its poetry : in Montaigne and the ancients only, he 
 thought, is poetry to be found. He piques himself on 
 writing as a gentleman and not as a pedant : his 
 thought rushes forth as it arose spontaneously, glowing 
 in sally and imagery ; but he reviews it deliberately and 
 often, he revises, alters, corrects, till in the end he writes 
 as an author who has criticised his task and determined his 
 style. " The quality which, as a rule, characterises a 
 great thought, is when a thing is said which reveals to us 
 a number of other things, and when some one causes us 
 to discover at once what we could not hope to find out 
 except after long reading." 
 
 Thus does Montesquieu appear to us in his maturity, 
 towards the year 1720. In soul, mind, and character 
 reigned an admirable moderation, balancing one by the 
 other an extraordinary diversity of gifts rarely bestowed 
 by nature on one man ; and if this combination of quali- 
 ties falls somewhat short of supreme French genius, it 
 embraces at least the deepest thought and intelligence of 
 France. And France may have had sublimer philoso- 
 phers, bolder thinkers ; writers of more eloquence, more 
 pathos, and more painful vividness; art-creators, with 
 greater wealth of imaginative power and more redundancy 
 of ornament ; but she has had no more judicious ob- 
 server of human society, no wiser counsellor in great 
 
 c 2
 
 28 Montesquieu. 
 
 matters of public import ; and no son of hers has united 
 so subtle a sense of individual passions with such a vast 
 comprehension of the institutions of a state, finally giving 
 to the service of his perfect good-sense such pre-eminent 
 literary talent. " My mind," said Montesquieu, " is as a 
 mould ; there is no variety in the portraits you get out 
 of it." These portraits have been preceded by their 
 respective studies and sketches, and many of the great 
 historical figures which compose Montesquieu's gallery 
 are drawn from the life. Let us consider the first sub- 
 jects that present themselves for his portrayal : they are 
 the foremost men and events of the Regency, than which 
 no society more readily discloses its secrets, and more 
 audaciously provokes satire.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE "LETTRES PERSANES." 
 
 LOUIS XIV has just passed away. His sun has set in 
 lurid and majestic splendour, but his contemporaries 
 pause not to admire the twilight of a great reign, for 
 they are glad with the joy of a great deliverance. No one 
 regrets the king; he has too pitilessly enforced "that 
 dependence which has reduced all to subjection." 
 Saint-Simon tells us that "the provinces, given up to 
 despair in their utter ruin and annihilation, breathed once 
 more freely, and trembled with gladness ; the parliaments 
 and the judicature in general, crushed by edicts and 
 evocations, rose with renewed hope of life and power ; 
 the people, heart-stricken, suffering, and hopeless, gave 
 thanks to God, amid ungovernable rejoicing, for a deliver- 
 ance no longer pictured in their wildest dreams." But 
 in Montesquieu's world, among the wits and free- 
 thinkers, no one thought of thanking God ; there, on the 
 contrary, the prevailing sense of liberation expressed 
 itself in an unbridled libertinism which overleaped every 
 barrier in its career. 
 
 Indeed, the career of libertinism had never been inter- 
 rupted ; the tradition of it, as Sainte-Beuve remarks, came
 
 3O Montesquieu. 
 
 " directly and uninterruptedly" from the Renaissance to 
 the Fronde, from the Fronde to the Regency, through 
 Retz, Saint-vremond, Vendome, Bayle the Epicureans 
 and Pyrrhonists. " The reign of Louis XIV is, so to 
 speak, undermined by it." This prince and his eccle- 
 siastical counsellors thought their extermination of 
 heterodoxy a grand and wonderful work : Huguenots, 
 Jansenists, all who claimed, in matters of faith, the right 
 of following the dictates of conscience and the leading of 
 heavenly grace, were persecuted, proscribed, and ruined ; 
 but the foe who made every soul his fastness was un- 
 heeded : the spirit of incredulity, of all enemies that had 
 threatened the Church since the day of Leo X, the most 
 formidable ; for it was calm, deliberate, and imperturbable 
 as the Zeit-geist. The atheists in their negation pro- 
 fessed an assurance absolute and magnificent as that of a 
 Bossuet in his faith. " The great heresy of the world," 
 wrote Nicole, " is no longer Calvinism or Lutheranism 
 it is Atheism." 
 
 By the suppression of the spirit of Christianity as mani- 
 fested in Reform and Jansenism, freer play was given 
 to the spirit of the Renaissance, which was, after all, that 
 of pagan antiquity. The king had introduced the 
 manners of Olympus, and the effect of his example was 
 of course more powerful than any number of edicts. 
 Bossuet's Scriptural polity could not prevail against the 
 code of morals borrowed from mythology by Louis. And 
 though in the conversion of his old age the king sought 
 by penance to atone for the evil he had caused, he could
 
 The "Lettres Persanes" 31 
 
 compel his subjects to no mote than an odious mockery 
 of amendment. Profligacy went forth masked, or lay hid- 
 den at home. But under the Regency all need for dis- 
 simulation ceased. The triumph of Vice succeeded the 
 parade of devotion, and the disciples of Tartuffe had 
 promptly to make way for the followers of Don Juan. 
 And now, everything is called in question, discussed, 
 shaken to the very foundation. The faithful, absorbed 
 in the overwhelming interest called forth by the Bull 
 Unigenitus, leave their mother the Church exposed, by 
 the breaches in her defences caused by her children's 
 quarrels, to attacks from the unfriendly. Politics are 
 being utterly corrupted by Dubois, while the Social 
 economy is recklessly endangered by Law. The vices of 
 the nobility only have been hitherto promoted, but now 
 the hideous encouragement of evil is extended to all 
 classes. And yet no one suspects, no one foresees, that 
 this mad tumult of thought and passion threatens the 
 very existence of France. Hope dawns brightly on the 
 new reign, and in the sense of infinite possibility which 
 it brings, no peril is seen, or, if seen, is not feared. 
 
 Montesquieu, carried away by the general movement, 
 shares the prevailing spirit. A noble, and an adminis- 
 trator of the law ; zfrondeur to boot, and crafty but generous 
 withal ; ardent for reform, and given to the indulging of 
 illusion ; eager for glory, anxious to please, his most 
 cherished dreams the enlightenment of his country and 
 the creation of a brilliant reputation in society, this 
 Montesquieu is attacked with "the disease of making
 
 32 Montesquieu. 
 
 books " a fate, indeed, to which he was born ; but, 
 careful of his person, and fearful of sinning against the 
 bienseances of his order, wishful, moreover, to avoid 
 scandal, and still more wishful to avoid any risk, he seeks 
 for the expression of his thoughts a medium sufficiently 
 transparent to stimulate curiosity, yet subtle enough to 
 lull the suspicions of censors. So he supposes that two 
 Persians Usbek, the blithe and sarcastic, and Rica, the 
 sedate and contemplative come to visit Europe, naturally 
 communicate their impressions thereof, enlighten their 
 Persian friends on European affairs, being by them 
 apprised of Persian news. The conceit was not original, 
 but it signifies little to us whether or no Montesquieu 
 borrowed from Dufresny : he was doubtless equal to the 
 conception, and, at all events, he made it his own. 
 Chardin suggested Persia to him. He found a special 
 charm in this traveller's pleasant chronicles, from whence 
 he derived his theory of despotism and his ideas on 
 climate. The species of story or romance interwoven 
 with the letters, and the choice of its surroundings, may 
 also be traced to the same source, and this portion of the 
 work is the most controvertible : it was then all the 
 fashion, but now is quite out of date. 
 
 In the Thousand and One Nights, in which Montesquieu 
 delighted, he would have found the essential components 
 of a charming picture of Eastern legend ; but this thought 
 did not occur to him. His novel reminds us, though it 
 has less voluptuous grace, of the writings of Crdbillon^/f / 
 to a certain extent, but with less ease and agreeable
 
 The "Lettres Persanes" 33 
 
 improbability, of Hamilton's style. There is a wholly 
 unnecessary attempt at precision in this doubtful and 
 rather unpleasing narrative. Had Montesquieu simply 
 reproduced the details of Chardin's information on 
 manners and customs, such minutice would perhaps have 
 been admissible as supplying local colouring ; but he did 
 nothing of the kind. Retouching the traveller's sketches, 
 he extravagantly colours them in libertine fashion. 
 " Modesty," Chardin somewhere observes, " forbids us 
 even to remember what we have heard on such a subject." 
 But Montesquieu has not this personal knowledge ; he 
 merely indulges in flights of fancy, and his descriptions 
 are not always seemly. The gaudily-coloured harem- 
 pictures have about them more of the Gascon than of the 
 Persian elements, and the illustrations of polygamy are 
 more European than Oriental; the result of his work 
 is a caricature so weak, extravagant, and, if one may say 
 so, stale, that it irritates and disgusts. Montesquieu 
 evolves tragedy as well as licentiousness from Chardin's 
 ill-used chronicle : his Persians are the victims of a dark 
 and corroding jealousy. " Unhappy man that I am !" cries 
 Usbek, " I long again to see my country ; and there, 
 perhaps, I shall be more unhappy still ! Ah, what should 
 I do there !....! shall enter the Seraglio, then must 
 I hear of that fatal period of my absence. . . . Woe is me, 
 should Destiny will that the condemnation pronounced 
 by myself be the eternal sign of my confusion and despair !" 
 He speaks in an awful voice of " those fatal doors that 
 open but to him." They who guard them are not " the
 
 34 Montesquieu. 
 
 aged slaves, fantastic and deformed," to whom Chardin 
 alludes, but the ranting victims of a remorseless Fate : 
 verily they suggest to us the idea of posthumous Abelards 
 and of anticipated Triboulets ! These eunuchs, we find, 
 were profoundly learned, and acted as tutors to the high- 
 born youth of Persia : one of them, indeed, must have 
 travelled as far as the Valais, and there undertaken the 
 education of Saint-Preux. 
 
 Such are the weaknesses of the book, and they con- 
 tributed at the time to its success ; but the fashion has 
 changed, as ours will presently do. Let us now consider 
 the excellences of the work which have made it live. 
 And, first, we must note the style. How wonderfully 
 vigorous, crisp, and suggestive it is ! well-weighed, and 
 singularly exact, with an admirable propriety of tone 
 and expression : it is more lively, easy, and vehe- 
 ment than Saint-vremond's prose, and less stiff and 
 laboured than that of La Bruyere. Montesquieu does 
 not indulge in flowers of speech and metaphor, as he will 
 do later on, when treating of graver subjects ; he thinks, 
 and justly, that here the infinite variety of thought and 
 idea is sufficient for the amusement of the reader. Here 
 we see the French spirit at its purest : the stream flows 
 on a rocky bed, but how crystalline-clear are its waters, as 
 they play in sparkling eddies, and in sheer gladness fall 
 in cascades of radiant brightness ! It is flowing towards 
 Voltaire and Beaumarchais : Stendhal and Me'rime'e will 
 meet it in our century, and turn its course towards us ; 
 but there will be many windings in it, and the stream will 
 flow less free and full.
 
 The "Lettres Persanes" 35 
 
 In the Lettres Persanes there are numberless sketches 
 of character and manners. Montesquieu, who eventually 
 proved himself so deeply versed in the study of social 
 man, here appears in the light of a keen and ironical 
 observer of the man of the world. Tradition would have 
 us believe that in Usbek he drew himself. Now, Usbek 
 is unsurpassed in exhaustive analysis of causes, unap- 
 proachable in disputation, he commends divorce, extols 
 suicide, and chants the praises of the Stoics; but his 
 loves are agitated, his jealousies desperate, and he is 
 splenetic to ferocity when pleasure palls. This is hardly the 
 portrait of a light-hearted Gascon, who would carelessly 
 give his affections and as carelessly and secretly withdraw 
 them, one whose most poignant grief could be soothed by 
 a few pages of Plutarch or Montaigne. Rica bears quite 
 as much resemblance to Montesquieu, but he is, in point 
 of fact, merely another representation of the same per- 
 sonage : these two Persians are twin brothers, Usbek 
 holds the pen when Montesquieu moralises, Rica takes 
 it when he treats his contemporaries to a little mockery ; 
 and how delicate is his satire ! 
 
 His studies of ridiculous people deserve a place in the 
 most celebrated galleries. One is never weary of the 
 grand seigneur " one of the men in this kingdom who 
 make the best show, who takes his pinch of snuff 
 with so much hauteur, blows his nose so mercilessly, 
 spits so unconcernedly, and caresses his dog in a way so 
 obnoxious to others, that one cannot help admiring him ; 
 the spiritual director, the literary coxcomb, who more
 
 36 Montesquieu. 
 
 willingly suffers chastisement of his body than criticism 
 of his mental productions ; and the decisionnaire, the dog- 
 matist, who supplies the subject for one of the most vivid 
 sketches in the work : " I found myself the other day in 
 company with a man whose self-satisfaction was supreme. 
 In a quarter of an hour he had decided three ethical 
 points, had solved four problems in history and five 
 in physics. Till then I had never met with so absolute 
 a dogmatist; he was not troubled with the smallest 
 doubt. The subject of science being presently aban- 
 doned, the conversation turned upon the news of the day ; 
 his opinion on these topics was equally infallible. I 
 wanted to catch him, so I took refuge in my own country, 
 thinking that there I must surely be at home, and there- 
 fore I spoke to him of Persia : but scarcely had I 
 uttered three words, when he twice gave me the lie 
 direct, on the authority of MM. Tavernier and Chardin. 
 ' Great Heaven ! ' said I to myself, ' what manner of 
 man is this ? He will soon know the streets of Ispahan 
 better than I do myself.' So I thought I would even 
 hold my tongue, and let him lay down the law at his 
 pleasure, and he is doing it still." 
 
 Montesquieu's Persians are severe upon women the 
 women in particular, be it understood, with whom Mon- 
 tesquieu was most familiar ; consequently, the descriptions 
 of their foibles are probably the result of his own obser- 
 vation. He accuses them of being addicted to the 
 passion of gaming, in order, he says, as long as they are 
 young, to "encourage a passion still more dear," and,
 
 The "Lettres Persanes" 37 
 
 when youth is past, to fill the void created by that passion. 
 There is more severity in his remarks upon the craving 
 for success by any means. " Every one," he says, " makes 
 use of their gifts and passions to advance his fortunes." 
 Furthermore, he holds up to execration the spadassin 
 d' alcove, prototypes of Lovelace and Valmont profligates 
 who lie in wait to commit deeds of shameful violence, and 
 make a profession of vice, insolently boasting of their 
 infamy. "What will you say of a 'country where such 
 atrocity is tolerated, where a man practising such a trade 
 is suffered to exist, where faithlessness, treachery, foul 
 outrage, hypocrisy, and injustice lead to distinction?" 
 This is no longer the frivolity of the world of fashion, we 
 are confronted with the majesty of the Law, and one is 
 irresistibly reminded of Don Louis's harangue to Don 
 Juan, and the solemn remonstrance of the father of the 
 Menteur. 
 
 The same spirit, savouring more of Saint-Simon than 
 of Voltaire, is manifested in the persistent satire of the 
 king, the court, and the great in general. Montesquieu 
 abhorred Louis XIV, whom he saw in his decrepitude, 
 intoxicated with power and adulation, and envying the 
 Sultan the extremely simplified form of government in 
 Turkey. He denies that Louis was either just, devout, 
 or even a politician, save in appearance ; that he was a 
 great monarch, save in aspect. But if he is unjust to the 
 master, he is not so to the servants. There is no severer 
 touch to be found in La Bruyere than this : " The body 
 of lackeys is more worthy of respect in France than
 
 38 Montesquieu. 
 
 it is elsewhere ; it is, in fact, a seminary of very exalted 
 personages, and helps to fill the vacancies in other pro- 
 fessions. Those who form part of it take the place of 
 the illustrious and unhappy, of ruined magistrates, and 
 of noble gentlemen who have fallen on the battle-field. 
 When unable to supply its own vacancies, it raises up 
 great families by means of their daughters, who are thus 
 treated as a kind of dressing for their native mountain- 
 soil, making that fertile which was before dry and barren." 
 Montesquieu shows us a despotic king, a disorganised 
 ministry, and uncertain government, the fall of the par- 
 liament, the loosening of family ties, the ruin of the 
 religious orders, and the bitter jealousies among the 
 privileged classes in a word, all the signs in the existing 
 monarchy of its approaching dissolution. What a striking 
 contrast between Versailles, where "all is small and 
 trivial," and Paris, " where all is great and momentous"; 
 where "liberty and equality," "the passion for work," and 
 economy reign ; and where the " lust of gain permeates 
 the whole community, from the artisan to him of high 
 degree !" Such rivalry cannot be without envy, but it is, 
 none the less, one of the exciting causes of the national 
 activity. " Even the lowest workman maintains, in face 
 of all opposition, the pre-eminence of his particular craft; 
 and each, in proportion as his idea of the superiority of his 
 profession is lofty, esteems himself in that degree better 
 than his fellow." Now Paris is the correct representation, 
 in miniature, of the whole country ; nothing but " work 
 and industry" is to be seen in France. No wonder that
 
 The "Lettres Persanes" 39 
 
 Usbek, in writing to his friend, asks " where to find this 
 effeminate people of whom he has heard so much !" 
 
 They are indeed Frenchmen ; they combine an eager 
 desire for predominance with a passion for equality. 
 Montesquieu did not perceive in them the elements of a 
 democracy which was, even then, growing and developing 
 under the shadow of the throne a democracy wholly 
 dissimilar to those of antiquity. His ideas on liberty and 
 political virtue came directly from Rome and Greece, 
 and they remained unaltered. It is true that, by way of 
 antithesis, and with rather satirical word-play, he treats of 
 republicanism as opposed to monarchy from the repub- 
 lican stand-point ; but then, his is the republicanism of 
 antiquity : he knows no other. As soon as he approaches 
 the great problem, he is lost in dreams ; and among the 
 fantastic visions of the Lettres Persanes we can trace the 
 gradual formation of the bonds which so strangely con- 
 nected this would-be reformer of the old monarchy with 
 the apostles of the Revolution. "Monarchy," says 
 Usbek, " is a violent form of government, which always 
 
 degenerates into despotism The sanctuary of 
 
 honour, reputation, and virtue is to be found in repub- 
 lican states, and in countries where the word patrie is to 
 be heard." 
 
 " I have often heard you say," writes one of Usbek's 
 friends, " that man's life is only given him that he may 
 be virtuous, and that justice is as inherent in his being as 
 is its existence. I beg that you will explain to me what 
 you mean by this." Montesquieu never explained him-
 
 4O Montesquieu, 
 
 self clearly on this question ; his expositions on the origin 
 and foundation of Law were always embarrassed, evasive, 
 and obscure. Here, failing a better expedient, he avoids 
 the difficulty by the introduction of a fable the history of 
 the Troglodytes which undertakes to prove " that happi- 
 ness is attainable only in the practice of virtue." But 
 his Salentum is very different from the Salentum of 
 Fe"nelon's creation. Fenelon's vision was of the future 
 government of the Due de Bourgogne with Beauvilliers' 
 ministry : Montesquieu's dreams are akin to those of 
 Rousseau and Mably. 
 
 A Jrondeur, and paradoxical as a political thinker, 
 Montesquieu, in the Lettres Persanes, shows himself a 
 latitudinarian in religion. He is young, has implicit con- 
 fidence in his mental and bodily powers, and is wholly 
 satisfied with that which life has to offer : of decided nature 
 and keen perception, compromise with the world and 
 death-bed conversion arouse in him a pitiless scorn ; and 
 though the hand that wields the weapon is so light and 
 swift that it almost seems to glance aside, the wound it 
 inflicts is deep indeed. In the letters on change in the 
 Universe, and on Islamism, we have the germ of the entire 
 " Voltairian" controversy; but though the style savours of 
 Voltaire, it is more succinct and powerful. Montesquieu 
 speaks with irony of the Church, with disdain of theolo- 
 gians, and with contempt of monks ; even missionaries 
 find no grace in his sight. " It is a fine project, this, of 
 sending two Capuchin monks to enjoy the air of 
 Casbin !"
 
 The lt Let ires Persanes" 41 
 
 Although he considers that the propagation of new 
 religious belief is good neither for the state nor for 
 society, Montesquieu is of opinion that, where different 
 forms of faith already exist together, they ought to be un- 
 molested. This indirect and imperfect tolerance is still 
 far from real freedom of conscience ; still, Montesquieu's 
 contemporaries would have welcomed it readily. There 
 was courage in suggesting, and still greater courage in 
 defending it publicly, and his defence is eloquent. His 
 letters on the autodafes, his views on the persecution 
 of the Jews, and his allusions to the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes, redound most truly to his honour, they 
 announce the author of the Esprit des Lois. 
 
 He reveals himself still more clearly as the correspon- 
 dence between the two Persians continues. The conven- 
 tionalism, the oriental frippery, the gaudy colouring, and 
 the story gradually disappear, and the views of the historian 
 and reflections of the moralist replace the disconnected 
 observations and sneering touches of the satirist. In 
 those concluding letters we arrest the thought of the 
 writer, as it rises refreshed from study, and is even yet on 
 the wing. Here, too, we gain the best and completest 
 idea of the notes taken by him in the course of the work : 
 some of them are still, it is said, in existence, and are 
 preserved at La Brede. Most of the questions of which 
 the classification and investigation were hereafter the 
 objects of his deepest study, are touched upon in passing: 
 he pours forth his ideas as he conceives, and while he 
 conceives them. His views on the rights of nations and 
 
 D
 
 42 Montesquieu. 
 
 on conquest, his opinions on the advancement of science, 
 the classification of governments, and the sources, 
 feudal and Teutonic, of liberty discover themselves con- 
 tinually, and give strength and solidity to the fragile 
 fabric of the Lettres. Montesquieu's reflections on the 
 dissolution of the Turkish Empire, and the decadence of 
 Spain, which his penetrating glance so plainly discerned, 
 have often been quoted. And here the temptation of 
 giving a few lines of the letters on the Spaniards is too 
 strong to be resisted ; they fully account for Stendhal's 
 admiration of the Lettres Persanes. Certainly Montes- 
 quieu's rivals in this country have not yet surpassed 
 him in breadth and force of style. 
 
 " Never was there in the seraglio of the grand Sultan 
 a Sultana as proud of her beauty as the ugliest and 
 most pitiable old man in a Mexican town can be of the 
 olive whiteness of his complexion, as he sits with folded 
 arms at his door. A being of such consequence, a 
 creature so perfect, would not work for all the treasures 
 of the world ; nor could he ever resolve to sully the glory 
 and honour of his skin by vile and mechanical labour .... 
 But though these implacable enemies of work boast of 
 their philosophical tranquillity, it finds no abode in their 
 hearts, for they are always in love. Distinguished are 
 they above all other men in languishing under the win- 
 dows of their mistresses : no Spaniard who has not a cold 
 could be mistaken for a ladies'-man. They are devout 
 above all, and after that jealous .... They say that the 
 sun rises and sets in their country ; but it is necessary
 
 The "Lettres Persanes" 43 
 
 to add, that he sees naught on his way but ruined habita- 
 tions and desert lands." 
 
 One point remains to be noticed, and it is the special 
 characteristic of the book and of the man also. It is the 
 supreme moderation of judgment and wisdom of aspiration. 
 In Montesquieu we see the caution of the legislator per- 
 petually tempering the severity of the judge, and sobering 
 the golden dreams of the utopist ; of this spirit is the 
 celebrated precept which we receive from the mouth of 
 Usbek : " It is sometimes necessary to alter certain laws, 
 but the necessity rarely occurs. If, however, it should 
 arise, the change must be made with a fearful and trem- 
 bling hand." The same calm, far-seeing judgment also 
 dictates the following maxims, which seem to foreshadow, 
 and in some sort foreshow, the future work : " I have 
 often tried to discover what form of government is most 
 in accordance with reason, and it has seemed to me 
 that the perfect government is that which attains its object 
 with the least outlay : therefore, the perfect government 
 is that which guides men in the way most suited to their 
 habits and inclinations." Thus we have, in the Lettres 
 Persanes, the sum of the polity of the Esprit des Lois. 
 Here also we have its philosophy : " Nature always acts 
 slowly, and, so to speak, sparingly. Her operations are 
 never violent, and she is moderate even in production. 
 She never moves save by rule and measure, and, if hurried, 
 she soon becomes exhausted." 
 
 D 2
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WORLD. THE "TEMPLE DE GNIDE." THE 
 ACADEMY. TRAVELS. 
 
 IT was impossible that the Lettres Persanes should be 
 published in France, or appear otherwise than 
 anonymously. Printed at Rouen, like their illustrious 
 predecessors the Provinciates, they were published at 
 Amsterdam, and, though the stratagem deceived no one, 
 they thus escaped proscription. 
 
 Montesquieu not only himself practised, but disposed 
 those around him to practise, the tolerance which he 
 preached. A certain Abbe Duval, who had both intelli- 
 gence and capacity, acted as his secretary, and his chief 
 friend was a priest of the Oratory Father Desmolets 
 a man incapable of playing the inquisitor. The abbe 
 corrected the proofs of the Lettres Persanes: Father 
 Desmolets tried to dissuade him from publishing them, 
 but, being possessed of a quick wit and much sagacity, 
 in voluntarily added : "they will sell like bread." This is 
 precisely what did take place. The Lettres Persanes 
 expressed, in a manner peculiarly seductive to the current 
 taste, thoughts peculiarly in harmony with the current
 
 The World. 45 
 
 humour. They appeared in 1721, and within a year 
 four editions and four pirated reprints were sold. 
 
 This brilliant success did not fail to attract much cen- 
 sure, and not a little jealousy. The author's name was 
 speedily in everybody's mouth, and society, while keenly 
 relishing the book, was certainly wroth that it had been 
 composed by one of its votaries. Strictures on the state 
 politics, religion, and morals were the business of a satirist; 
 they were manifestly out of the province of a president a 
 mortier: men of letters pen them ; men of the world enjoy 
 them ; men in power condemn them ; the author finds 
 himself in prison, and his readers rejoice. "Such sketches,'"' 
 observed d'Argenson, " are easily dashed off by a skilful 
 hand, but no man of sense would dream of giving them 
 to the world." " One should be careful in the use of one's 
 wit," wrote Marivaux in his Spectateur Fran$ais. And envy 
 was more pitiless than criticism, as Montesquieu tells us 
 " No sooner did I obtain some encouragement from the 
 general public, than officialism turned against me ; I had 
 to bear a thousand mortifications." His talents were 
 suddenly found to be of a dangerous order ; he was not 
 merely treated as z.frondeur y but as a very firebrand. So 
 much did he undergo, that all idea of publicly acknow- 
 ledging the authorship of the brilliant work was renounced 
 by him : "I am afflicted with the passion of writing books, 
 and with the weakness of being ashamed of them when 
 they are finished." 
 
 This was the bitterness of success, but Montesquieu 
 freely tasted of its sweetness. He went to Paris still
 
 46 Montesquieu. 
 
 young and susceptible to love, as he is careful to tell us 
 and was received into that exquisitely polished and cul- 
 tivated society which will ever be accounted as the chief 
 and special charm of the last century. Here he became 
 acquainted with Maurepas, the Comte de Caylus, and 
 the Chevalier d'Aydie, of whom he probably thought 
 for he honoured him greatly in his graceful idea that 
 he was " in love with friendship." A welcomed guest of 
 Madame de Tencin, Madame de Lambert, and Madame 
 du Deffand, he was also received by the Duke de Bour- 
 bon at Chantilly, where Madame du Prie reigned supreme, 
 and he speedily won her favour. It was whispered that 
 he would rain have attracted the notice of the duke's 
 sister, Marie Anne de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Cler- 
 mont. This lady had reached her twenty-eighth year, 
 was brilliant, beautiful, and full of vivacity : Nattier has 
 represented her as a water-nymph, with wonderful glow 
 of colour and charm. Montesquieu was certainly dazzled 
 by her beauty, and tradition says that, in token of homage, 
 he composed the Temple de Gnide. 
 
 This is a little prose-poem supposed to be translated 
 from the Greek. Montesquieu says that "its merits can 
 be thoroughly appreciated only by curled and powdered 
 heads"; in these words indicating the artificiality and 
 anachronism of the work, including it among the trifles 
 which the frivolity of his century has bequeathed to ours. 
 Of this bouquet which shed its languid sweetness to 
 ravish Chantilly, naught remains but the faint and subtle 
 perfume of a sachet long hidden in a rococo cabinet.
 
 The World. 47 
 
 Leonard and Colardeau have versified the dainty ma- 
 drigals, and the phraseology of gallantry is possibly more 
 pleasing as treated by them, although this is doubtful 
 praise of Montesquieu's work. 
 
 But the apparent defect is really a proof of superiority. 
 Montesquieu is too crisp and terse in style, too rich in 
 thought, to lend himself readily to these allegorical con- 
 ceits. Only now and then, as the powdered curls are 
 forgotten for a time, does he betray himself, and, taking 
 \i\s pastiche seriously in hand, gives in his beautiful prose 
 the translation of some fragment of an ancient poem 
 which once inspired him and still sings in his memory. 
 His great familiarity with the ancients, and his wonder- 
 fully sympathetic perception of their genius, reveal to him, 
 in transient gleams, their poetry and its freshness. His 
 hand only touched this chord neither Leonard nor 
 Colardeau were thrilled by its power, and their instru- 
 ment was too frail to render it depth and fulness. 
 Nearly a century elapsed ere its sound was heard 
 again in the literature which its influence invigorated 
 and reinspired. 
 
 " Often would she say while embracing me, ' Thou art 
 sad.' ' It is true,' I said ; ' but the sadness of lovers is 
 delightful : I feel that my tears are falling, and I know not 
 why, for thou lovest me, and I have no cause for self-pity, 
 yet I pity myself. Seek not to deliver me from the de- 
 licious languor; let me sigh out my pain and my pleasure. 
 In the transports of love my soul is restless the very in- 
 tensity of happiness stays her gladness, and now even my
 
 48 Montesquieu. 
 
 sadness is pleasant to me. Dry not these tears : what 
 matter if I weep, since I am happy?'" 
 
 Is not this like a prose rendering of one of Andre* 
 Che"nier's elegies ? The bacchanalian strains of Chant II 
 remind one of the eclogue-fragments of the author of 
 the Mendiant. Che"nier had drunk of the same stream : 
 he had, besides, as his prose shows us, a thorough and 
 appreciative knowledge of Montesquieu. And here we 
 find the point of union between the greatest prose writer 
 and the supreme poet of the eighteenth century. Montes- 
 quieu could not, indeed, " soupirerun vers plein d' amour 
 et de larmes" but he had been touched by a reflection of 
 the pure light of Greece. His is an initiative mind an 
 esprit precurseur; and we discern his special charac- 
 teristic even in the slight work under notice, where one can 
 see that the author is merely at play. Genius flashes 
 from its pages, but there is also much of the tawdry and 
 theatrical; and this will doubtless be considered by 
 clumsy imitators as a faithful study from antiquity, a joy 
 and innocence, "coming no one knows whence," ap- 
 propriate to the nymphs of Venus ; an " honest citizen- 
 nature" un cceur citoyen still more strangely incon- 
 gruous; and a questionable description which might 
 have been sketched by a comic draughtsman at some 
 fete of the Directory of the "girls of proud Lacede- 
 mon." 
 
 The Temple de Gnide appeared in Paris in 1725, 
 receiving the privilege du rot. Montesquieu was too wise 
 to let his name appear, and he had every reason to
 
 The " Temple de Guide" 49 
 
 congratulate himself on his prudence. The Abbe de 
 Voisenon says that the pastiche " brought him many love- 
 affairs, with the caution, however, that he must keep silence 
 thereupon." Emboldened by his success, Montesquieu 
 presented himself to the Academy, and though he had 
 formerly dared to ridicule that illustrious body, he was of 
 the circle whence its members were recruited, and was 
 therefore elected. But the reputed author of the Lettres 
 Persanes could not be suffered thus to triumph : the king 
 refused to confirm the choice of the Academy, on the 
 ground that Montesquieu did not live in Paris. He 
 accordingly returned to Bordeaux, where he devoted him- 
 self to the ordering of his affairs. In the same year (1725) 
 he read before the Academy of that town some fragments 
 of a treatise des Devoirs, and some Reflexions sur la conside- 
 ration et la reputation ; he also delivered a Discours sur 
 les motifs qui doivent nous encourager aux sciences, which is 
 rich in noble thought. Then disposing of his president- 
 . ship, he went to settle in Paris. To this period we may 
 assign his first rough sketches of the masterpiece the 
 Esprit des Lois : the crown of honour came to him before 
 his chef d'ceuvre was given to the world. 
 
 In 1727 he again presented himself to the Academy, 
 and though Cardinal Fleury yet wavered, Montesquieu 
 and his friends succeeded in lulling the ministerial 
 scruples, and the distinguished candidate was at length 
 elected on the 5th January 1728, and admitted on the 
 24th of the same month. The address at his reception 
 was not especially remarkable ; yet its brevity is com-
 
 50 Montesquieu. 
 
 mendable, together with some fine reflections on Peace, 
 and a phrase on the blood of mankind " that blood 
 which always stains the earth." For the sake of decorum, 
 and in order to conform to established usage, he pane- 
 gyrised Richelieu, whom he detested, and Louis XIV, 
 whom he had held up to reprobation. Montesquieu 
 was admitted by Mallet, who invited him to justify his 
 election by immediately acknowledging his works, mali- 
 ciously adding : " Unless you do so, the world will an- 
 ticipate your avowal, and, perceiving your genius, will 
 attribute to you all the anonymous works which possess 
 the least life, animation, or vigour, thus thinking to honour 
 your ability ; and you will find all precautions suggested 
 by your prudence to be utterly useless." Mallet himself 
 had only produced an ode when, in 1715, he took the 
 place of the Chevalier de Tourreil. This discreet ver- 
 sifier would probably have been unknown to fame, had 
 not chance afforded him an opportunity of distinguishing 
 himself by taunting Montesquieu on the insufficiency of 
 his title to distinction. 
 
 Montesquieu was weak enough to take offence at this 
 petty and unworthy spite. He rarely appeared at the 
 Academy : it was said that he did not feel at ease there, 
 and that he was, further, inclined to resent the coldness 
 of his welcome. Desiring to travel, that he might him- 
 self examine the customs and institutions of different 
 nationalities, he started on a journey through Europe, 
 going first to Germany and Austria. He was accom- 
 panied by an English diplomatist, the Earl of Walde-
 
 Travels. 5 1 
 
 grave, nephew of Marshal Berwick, whom Montesquieu 
 had known at Bordeaux, and profoundly admired. 
 
 At Vienna, where he saw Prince Eugene, his recep- 
 tion was eminently flattering. The charm and ease of 
 Viennese society, the pleasure of exercising his powers of 
 observation, the brilliancy of court-life, and the prestige 
 attached to the profession of diplomacy, completely fasci- 
 nated him. He went so far as to seek a diplomatic 
 appointment, but his capability for such a post was ques- 
 tioned by the home-government, and he was refused. 
 We have every cause to rejoice in this ultra-fastidiousness : 
 had Montesquieu been accepted, he would have wasted 
 his splendid genius in the hard and absorbing game of 
 politics that game which the play is all on one side, 
 and mankind is the dummy. The world would have 
 lost the Esprit des Lois, and it is by no means certain that 
 France would have gained a diplomatist. 
 
 Montesquieu had the stuff of the political observer, 
 but this is merely the raw material from which statesmen 
 are made. He lacked the incessant activity, the ready 
 judgment, the pride of power and national egoism, without 
 which no man can be a successful negotiator, still less a 
 skilful strategist ; he had too much sympathy with hu- 
 manity to drive it as one of its taskmasters. "When 
 travelling in foreign countries," he says, " I have felt that 
 I cared for them as for my own ; I have rejoiced in their 
 prosperity, and have wished that they should continue in 
 a flourishing condition." The legislator speaks here, but 
 not the politician ; certainly not the politician of that day,
 
 5 2 Montesquieu. 
 
 who considered all foreigners as his lawful prey, to be 
 taken at a disadvantage, if possible lured into the snare 
 laid for them, and there complacently despoiled. " If I 
 knew of anything that I considered would benefit my 
 family, but would be prejudicial to the good of my 
 country," he says again, " I would strive to forget it : if I 
 knew of anything that would benefit my country, though 
 it would cause evil to Europe and to mankind in general, 
 I should consider that, in acting on that knowledge, I 
 committed a crime." These opinions are utterly irre- 
 concilable with Machiavelisrn, and equally impossible 
 to diplomacy, as understood and practised both in 
 Montesquieu's time and since. All who held such views 
 could never have been successful in the traffic of men, 
 then carried on universally : he would have been a feeble 
 antagonist to so consummate a player as Frederick. 
 Indeed, while travelling in Germany, Montesquieu had 
 sought to discover the causes of its weaknesses, and to 
 seek for them a remedy : he desired that this country 
 should reform its constitution, concentrate its strength, 
 and earnestly attempt confederation : this course of pro- 
 cedure would have destroyed the Treaty of Westphalia, 
 and have utterly subverted the policy of France : the 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs would have had small 
 sympathy with such universal benevolence, and Mon- 
 tesquieu would have been sent back to the Temple 
 de Gnide. Let us allow .that he was in no wise 
 fitted for the career of politics : too often duped at 
 the expense of his country, he would have found too
 
 Travels. 53 
 
 few occasions in which he could employ his talents for 
 her service. 
 
 Montesquieu visited Hungary, where he was able to 
 study feudal life and serfdom : he contemplated, from a 
 distance, the republic of Poland, and investigated the 
 causes of the anarchy that was bringing her to destruc- 
 tion ; and then went to Italy. Venice was at that time a 
 pleasant rendezvous the auberge joyeuse of Europe a 
 refuge for all fallen Powers. Montesquieu, who mean- 
 while lost no opportunity of amusing himself, there en- 
 countered Law, who was engaged in teaching or rather 
 in perverting political economy ; Bonneval, who was 
 preparing to put into practice the Letires Persanes ; 
 and Lord Chesterfield, who contracted a warm friendship 
 with the French traveller. Montesquieu scrutinised the 
 aristocracy, the Council of Ten, the sbirri, and the state 
 inquisitors ; his scrutiny was somewhat marked, and he 
 felt that he was himself the object of some attention: this 
 offended him, and he suddenly left Venice, throwing his 
 notes into the sea. Italy enchanted him, and taught him 
 to love Art. He prided himself on eclecticism in matters 
 of friendship, associating at the same time, and on equally 
 cordial terms, with Cardinal de Polignac, the French Am- 
 bassador and the author of the Anti-Lucrhe, the Calvinist 
 pasteur Jacob Vernet, and several Monsignors. He had 
 long known the Abbe Comte de Guasco, a Piedmontese, 
 who, though he did not aspire to the reputation of a 
 " grave doctor," was widely and deservedly popular as 
 the most admirable of churchmen.
 
 54 Montesquieu. 
 
 Early in 1729, Montesquieu left Italy, and spent some 
 months in Switzerland, the Rhine-country, and Holland. 
 There he rejoined Lord Chesterfield, and accompanied 
 him to England, where he stayed from October 1729 until 
 August 1731. During this visit he lost no opportunity 
 of hearing debates in Parliament, and acquainted 
 himself also with the political writings of Locke. By 
 these means he discovered the principles of liberal govern- 
 ment, and conceived the idea of making them known to 
 the European world. The existence of this new political 
 region had hitherto been scarcely suspected, save by 
 a few French refugees, though Rapin de Thoyras had, in 
 1717 and 1724, attempted its description in a highly 
 ingenious study, of which Montesquieu knew : he made, 
 indeed, so good a use of it, that it is now wholly forgotten. 
 Observing all, and observing keenly, with the penetrating 
 glance of a scholar, he was untiring in the close examin- 
 ation of detail and the investigation of cause and effect. 
 His notes, taken as he observed exact, concise, and 
 vigorous are models of their kind : the style is of a 
 political La Rochefoucauld. 
 
 "One should travel in Germany, sojourn in Italy, 
 think in England, and live in France." This aphorism is 
 attributed to Montesquieu, and would seem to epitomise 
 the experiences of his pilgrimage. He returned to 
 France after three years' absence, and joined his family 
 at La Brede, where he resumed his usual employments, 
 cultivated his vines, directed the drawing up of his 
 pedigree, and transformed his grounds into an English
 
 Travels. 5 5 
 
 garden. Henceforward his chief occupation was the 
 elaboration of his great work, of which the thought had 
 been ever present with him through all his wanderings in 
 Europe : this could only be achieved in the leisure 
 of a country life, and in solitude. His purpose was to 
 write the history of man as a social being his history as 
 illustrated by politics and law, and much of the subject- 
 matter had been already handled in an Essai sur les 
 finances de I'Esfagne, in some Reflexions sur la monarchic 
 universelle en Europe, and in a History of Louis XI. 
 From that which survives of this last work, one may say 
 of it as Montesquieu said of Michael Angelo : " Even in 
 his rough sketches as in fragments of Virgil there is 
 sublimity." 
 
 Montesquieu was completely penetrated with the spirit 
 of Rome. " The ruins of so terrible a machine" did not 
 impress his imagination as they did that of Montaigne 
 by their picturesque appearance and sepulchral cha- 
 racter : beneath the wreck and desolation he sought rather 
 to obtain a glimpse of the former city, and to reconstruct 
 from the scattered skeleton-fragments that great existence 
 of the past. An historian and philosopher, rather than a 
 painter or chronicler, he strove to discover the secrets of 
 the life and depth of this magnificent organism. This 
 was probably, for him, only a part a principal argument 
 in the original plan of the Esprit des Lois ; but as it 
 threatened to overpower the main subject, Montesquieu 
 detached it from the work ; then, as writing was pleasant 
 to him, and from the love of his theme the finest the
 
 56 Montesquieu. 
 
 world affords he set himself to beautify and bring it to 
 perfection, resolving, as Florus expresses it, to attempt 
 to give, in miniature, a faithful portrait of the Roman 
 "people." Thus appeared (in 1734) the Considerations 
 sur les causes de la grandeur et de la decadence des 
 Remains, and a few years later (in 1745) the Dialogue de 
 Sylla et d'Eucrate. This dialogue forms an excellent 
 appendix to the Considerations, and should not be sepa- 
 rated from it.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE "CONSIDERATIONS SUR LES CAUSES DE LA 
 GRANDEUR ET LA DECADENCE DES ROMAINS." 
 THE "DIALOGUE DE SYLLA ET D'EUCRATE." 
 
 THE secret of Montesquieu's attraction to Rome is 
 the opportunity there to be found of studying the 
 most wonderful political phenomenon which history pre- 
 sents to our view. The observations of several like 
 phenomena would give a clue to the explanation of all 
 others. There are laws in politics : experience discovers 
 and history defines them. History is a science only in 
 so far as it collects phenomena, classes them, connects 
 and ascertains the conditions of their connexion. " As 
 men," observes Montesquieu, "have in all ages been 
 subject to the same passions, the occasions which produce 
 great changes may be different, but the causes are always 
 the same." The pursuit of these causes in Roman his- 
 tory is the primary object of his books. 
 
 In this study of Rome Montesquieu had had distin- 
 guished predecessors : Polybius, with whom he was in- 
 timately acquainted ; Tacitus, whose spirit rested on, and 
 raised him even to his level; Florus, his master in rhetoric, 
 his beloved teacher, all had shown, indeed, the order 
 

 
 58 Montesquieu. 
 
 and connexion of events in Roman history : they had not 
 even suspected the existence of a general and superior 
 law regulating those events. Machiavelli, in his Dis- 
 courses upon Livy, holds the same superh'cial view. He 
 is an empiric, and occupies himself less with the grouping 
 of events than in drawing lessons from them. " Chance," 
 says he, "does not so entirely govern the world as to 
 leave no part for prudence to play therein" ; and his design 
 is to learn in the school of the ancients how, by means 
 of skill and calculation, that part may be accentuated. 
 Concerning himself little with causes, less with existing 
 institutions, and disregardingthe changes wrought by time, 
 he confines himself simply to the analysis of facts as 
 they are, seeking to obtain from them receipts for the 
 guidance of men. History is to him but a " political 
 pharmacy," as Mirabeau said, after a too prolonged 
 meditation on the Prince. 
 
 Montesquieu was a politician, and had had, besides, a 
 profound experience of revolutions; Saint-fivremond's 
 knowledge of them was rather that of an inquirer and an 
 adventurer. In his Reflexions sur les divers genies dupeuple 
 Romain, he deals chiefly with men and their characteristics : 
 the main point escapes him. Bossuet seized it at once. 
 The connexion, the harmony, the steady and regular 
 course of events in Roman history, was congenial to the 
 majestic logic of his genius. No one has equalled 
 Bossuet in his exposition of the greatness of Rome ; its 
 breadth and fulness correspond to the grandeur of the 
 subject. Men and their passions are not ignored, but
 
 " Grandeur et Decadence" 59 
 
 he assigns to them merely the detail of events, the variable 
 and transitory accident of history. His great desire is 
 that his readers should perceive the " thread that runs 
 through all," showing its endless convolutions, and how, 
 though men may twist and wind, they cannot direct it. 
 God controls and orders its course; it begins and ends in 
 Him. Howsoever great the influence that Bossuet allows 
 to " the individual genius of those who have caused great 
 movements," and though the historian in him constantly 
 dominates the theologian, the theologian always has the 
 first and last word. He is ever the most humble servant 
 and adorer of that Providence whose Councillor of 
 State, as has been felicitously remarked, he considered 
 himself. "God has willed," he concludes, "that the 
 course of human affairs should be directed and defined "- 
 the end of this direction being the triumph of the Church. 
 In this light we are to read the " Divine judgment on the 
 Roman empire: a mystery revealed by the Holy Spirit 
 to St. John, and explained by this great man Apostle, 
 Evangelist, and Prophet in the Apocalypse." The Dis- 
 cours sur F histoire universelle is, in fine, a pious and solemn 
 application of the system of final causes to history. 
 
 Montesquieu did not pretend to be a theologian, and 
 knew nothing of final causes. He allows, as does 
 Bossuet, wide scope to the liberty of man, to his power 
 of choice, and to the action of individuals in the conduct 
 of affairs ; he sees, as does Bossuet also, that matters go 
 in politics as in " a game where the most skilful wins in 
 the long run"; but he believes that the game has its rules, 
 
 E 2
 
 60 Montesquieu. 
 
 that it must be played at a table, and that it admits of 
 plan and combination ; he also believes that there are 
 conditions to the exercise of the players' skill, and that 
 chance has no part whatever in the game. The inter- 
 section of cause and effect forms the historical plot the 
 reciprocal attraction of men and of ideas the universal 
 gravitation of events to decide its tendency. " It is not 
 Fortune who governs the world," says Montesquieu; 
 " this is proved in the history of the Romans, who had an 
 unbroken succession of triumphs as long as their govern- 
 ment was conducted upon a certain principle, and an 
 uninterrupted series of reverses when the principle of 
 government was changed. There are general causes at 
 work in every monarchy, raising and maintaining, or 
 producing its downfall : accidents are entirely subject 
 to these causes. If the accident of a battle that is, 
 a particular cause ruins a state, it is because of the 
 existence of a general cause which makes the ruin of 
 that state by a single battle inevitable : it is, in a word, 
 to a general cause that particular accidents are to be 
 attributed." 
 
 It is by these just and logical views that Montes- 
 quieu is entitled to rank among the great masters of 
 modern history. The perfection of his style makes him 
 one of the classic writers of French literature, and his 
 individuality is nowhere more strongly marked he is 
 nowhere more thoroughly Latin yet more unaffectedly 
 French than in the Considerations. 
 
 This work is admired for the animation and vigour of
 
 "Grandeur et Decadence" 61 
 
 its style, the force and grandeur of movement, the com- 
 prehensive exposition, and the clear and stately imagery 
 in the illustration of the subject ; for a conciseness which 
 suggests Sallust and Tacitus ; for an art in the " revival of 
 expressions, restoring to them all their primitive strength," 
 boldly dashing them into a sentence endowed with all 
 their original freshness and power, and enhancing the 
 effect thus produced by the unexpected use, in the treat- 
 ment of a lofty subject, of a simple homely word a word 
 of the people of which the meaning has been obscured 
 and half-destroyed by use and the rust of time. " Nothing 
 was of greater service to Rome than the respect with 
 which she inspired the earth. Kings were silenced and 
 made stupid by their awe." One discovers similar traits 
 in every page of the Considerations. 
 
 The ensemble of Montesquieu's conclusions remains un- 
 impeachable as his method and his style. A commentary 
 on the Considerations answering the requirements of 
 modern erudition would completely overpower the text ; 
 it would be the same with the Epoques de la Nature, were 
 this work to be adapted to the progress of science from 
 Cuvier's day to that of Darwin. And where would be 
 the good ? The modern historians are never so intelli- 
 gible to us as after the study of Montesquieu, and they, in 
 their turn, throw fresh light upon his meaning. His 
 book might be compared to an ancient temple of which 
 the threshold is partly destroyed ; the partition-walls have 
 crumbled away, and the interior is open to the sky, but 
 the marble columns that encircle it are standing, the
 
 62 Montesquieu. 
 
 capitals have not suffered, the pediment endures, the 
 frieze is intact, and, viewed from the necessary distance, 
 the grand outline is perfect as ever. An attempted re- 
 storation from museum-fragments and models would 
 endanger the monument, without in any way adding to its 
 beauty. 
 
 Montesquieu was not nice in his scrutiny of authori- 
 ties : he was ignorant of the science of archaeology, which 
 enables us faithfully to reproduce what tradition has per- 
 verted and criticism has annihilated. It is a singular 
 thing, that he who so pleasantly speculates upon, and 
 treats of the effects of climate, should have been as de- 
 void of curiosity respecting the climate of Rome as he 
 was about the nature of the founders of the city. 
 Michelet, and following him Duruy and Mommsen, have 
 drawn important conclusions from the consideration of 
 soil and race ; and M. Fustel de Coulanges has shown 
 the intimate connexion existing between the history of 
 Rome and that of religion. But in Montesquieu's time 
 such ideas were yet almost unheard of, nor was he in 
 such speculations in advance of his contemporaries. He 
 entirely ignores the social state, and what may be called 
 the political economy of Rome in the first period of the 
 republic. The essential element of induction was lacking : 
 the opportunity of observing revolution of the kind. He 
 utilises all that the history of England in general and of 
 Cromwell in particular has taught him ; but even in 
 English history he overlooks the fanatical and (in the 
 modern sense of the word) revolutionary element. Only
 
 " Grandeur et Decadence" 63 
 
 political crises arrest his attention, and such emergencies 
 suggest to him many striking thoughts ; for example : 
 " A state is never more to be feared in a threatened 
 invasion than when itself is suffering from the horrors of 
 civil war .... England has never been more respected 
 than under Cromwell." 
 
 Montesquieu does not seem to dominate his subject 
 till after chapter v, where he gives a graphic account 
 of the state of the world at the time of the Roman con- 
 quest. The next chapter is devoted to a study of the 
 process of conquest a masterly study, which has immor- 
 talised the work. He analyses the Roman genius and 
 the cause of Roman greatness : the attachment of each 
 citizen to the city ; the love of the whole community for 
 the country ; their constant exercise in the art of war ; 
 their discipline; the constitution of their government, 
 arbitrary in time of war, but in time of peace taking 
 cognisance of and punishing all abuse of power; the 
 order and proportion of their schemes ; their talent in 
 dividing their enemies ; their skill in applying to their 
 own needs the useful inventions of other nations ; their 
 art unique among the ancients of absorbing the people 
 whom they subjugated, and of improving the countries 
 under their sway ; their marvellous resolution in adverse 
 fortune ; the firmness of their senate ; that happy con- 
 course of circumstances the " allure principale" which 
 turned all to their advantage, even their mistakes, be- 
 cause they were capable of recognising and correcting 
 them ; the perpetual application of the principles, to
 
 64 Montesquieu. 
 
 which everything gave way the public weal within, con- 
 quest without the empire ; everywhere and always, in a 
 word, the raison d'etat. " It is here," Montesquieu 
 finely says, "that humanity should be viewed and 
 judged "; and he, better than any other, has cleared the 
 way to that view. 
 
 Montesquieu here is supreme. He may perhaps ap- 
 pear to have too strong an admiration for the terrible 
 working of a dry and reasoned power ; for those political 
 virtues " destined to prove so fatal to the world." The 
 historian may temporarily triumph over the philosopher ; 
 but, as he sets forth in the Considerations the implaca- 
 bility and barbarity of conquest, so in the Esprit des 
 Lois he brings into notice the numberless benefits which 
 it produces. Treating now of its darker side, he says : 
 "As they never made peace in good sooth, and that, 
 as their design was universal conquest, a treaty was 
 merely, in their view, a suspension of hostilities, they 
 always imposed conditions which they knew must ine- 
 vitably bring about the ruin of any state desiring to make 
 terms with them. . . . Occasionally they would make 
 peace with some nation on reasonable terms ; but imme- 
 diately the required conditions were fulfilled, additional 
 ones of such severity were imposed that a renewed appeal to 
 arms was unavoidable. . . . Rome was continually adding 
 to her wealth; each war in which she engaged supplied 
 her with the means of undertaking others. She ruled 
 Africa, Asia, and Greece, though hardly possessing any 
 cities in those countries. The Romans seemed to con-
 
 "Dialogue de Sylla." 65 
 
 quer but for the purpose of giving; but their power was, 
 in reality, so world-wide and absolute, that any prince 
 with whom they were at war was crushed, as it were, with 
 the weight of the universe." 
 
 Not contented with analysing the genius of Rome, 
 Montesquieu attempted its illustration. In the course of 
 his study of the Roman people he had recognised and been 
 impressed by the depth and intensity of their passions, 
 and could not resist his desire of giving, in some way, ex- 
 pression to the result of his consideration : this is done 
 in the Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate. It has been said 
 that this dialogue is intended as an apology a para- 
 doxical and ironical apology for the Roman state policy 
 and boldness in crime. We shall judge of it more cor- 
 rectly if we consider it as a flash of genius the concep- 
 tion of a great historian upon whom the fire of poetry has 
 descended for the time, inspiring him with dramatic art. 
 Montesquieu improvises as his taste and the fashion of the 
 time direct. Had Mommsen been thus borne aloft on 
 the wings of imagination, he would no doubt have sought 
 the spirit of Shakespeare : his Sylla " of ardent tempera- 
 ment, of a fair complexion which the lightest emotion 
 flushed, blue-eyed and beautiful-featured generous, ironi- 
 cal, spirituel now given up to the passionate intoxication 
 of action, now yielding himself to repose," is a very hero 
 of romance. Montesquieu's Sylla is essentially French 
 of the classic period : he is a disciple of Machiavelli, and 
 talks like the bold adventurers who suggested Moliere's 
 Don Juan.
 
 66 Montesquieu. 
 
 " Eucrate, if I am no longer a spectacle for the universe, 
 the fault is not mine : rather is it that human nature 
 is finite. ... I was not formed for the tranquil govern- 
 ment of an enslaved people. I was destined to conquer 
 to found and destroy nations. ... I have never 
 boasted of being a slave to, and idolising the society of 
 my equals : such feeling, though so highly extolled, is 
 too ignoble for a soul lofty as mine. I have been 
 guided solely by my own reflections, and, above all, by the 
 contempt which I have felt for mankind." 
 
 And how weary he is, notwithstanding his pride ! SoM 
 des hommes as will be said towards the end of the 
 century he is satiated, not satisfied. Corneille has mag- 
 nificently expressed the unmeasurable disgust produced 
 by unlimited power : 
 
 " L'ambition deplait quand elle est assouvie . . . 
 J'ai souhaite 1'empire et j'y suis parvenu, 
 Mais en le souhaitant, je ne 1'ai pas connu. . . ." 
 
 " And I," says Montesquieu's Sylla, still more bitter and 
 morose, "and I, Eucrate, was never less content than 
 when I beheld myself the absolute master of Rome ; when, 
 looking around me, I saw neither rivals nor enemies. I 
 thought that one day it would be said that I had only 
 chastised slaves." This unbearable thought stimulates 
 him to his most surprising resolution the resignation of 
 the Dictatorship at a time when that seemed to be his 
 sole remaining refuge. Yet Rome is still mute before 
 him, and he perceives that he is solitary, impatient, and
 
 " Dialogue de Sylla." 67 
 
 unsatisfied as heretofore. He concludes with these 
 words : " I have astonished mankind, and that is much." 
 He may have astonished the world; he cannot bring 
 content to his soul. 
 
 Montesquieu might have pursued and developed his 
 study of Sylla in Caesar, but he does not appear to have 
 thought of this. Now that we have known Danton and 
 Robespierre, we have seen the resuscitation of the 
 Gracchi first in all Roman revolution ; now that we 
 have seen Bonaparte, Caesar's place in Roman history 
 seems supreme. The great revolution of modern times 
 has modified all received ideas, even as regards the 
 ancient world. Montesquieu, despite his keen and ap- 
 preciative perception of the genius of Alexander and 
 Charlemagne, seems disposed to underrate that of Caesar ; 
 instead of treating him as one apart, he seeks rather to 
 replace him among the ordinary run of men, and to judge 
 him by ordinary standards. Like Shakespeare's Cassius, 
 he would say 
 
 " What should there be in that Caesar ? 
 
 Why should that name be sounded more than yours? . . . 
 Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, 
 That he is grown so great ?" 
 
 Montesquieu recognises in Caesar, indeed, the general 
 and politician who would have attained to the supreme 
 government of any republic under which he lived, but he 
 refuses to consider him as more than an instrument of 
 destiny, one of those men who, though they may be
 
 68 Montesquieu. 
 
 instrumental in the accomplishment of the inevitable, in 
 no way decide the fate of empires or alter the course of 
 history. " Had Caesar or Pompey thought as did Cato, 
 others would have thought as did Caesar and Pompey, 
 and the republic, which was destined to perish, would 
 have been drawn to the precipice by another hand." 
 
 Caesar is ever thus associated with Pompey; Mon- 
 tesquieu makes no great difference between the two. 
 He had on this subject the kind of historical prejudice 
 which blinded Corneille, and in some degree influenced 
 Bossuet. " Pompey had," says he, " a slower and gentler 
 ambition than Caesar's. . . . He aspired to the Dicta- 
 torship, but he could only reach it through the suffrages 
 of the people : he could not consent to the usurpation of 
 power, though he might have wished that power should 
 be placed in his hands." Thus does Moreau appear to 
 us in his rivalry with Bonaparte. 
 
 Montesquieu extols Brutus, even going so far as to 
 consider the political assassination as a necessary, though 
 criminal, remedy to the coup d'etat. He condemns the 
 Empire even while showing that it was unavoidable, and 
 judges Augustus and his reign from the point of view 
 of a senator who would have persistently lamented 
 the ancient republic, while acknowledging that it could 
 not nave survived. These are the finest pages of the 
 Considerations. 
 
 Symptoms of the decadence of Rome are everywhere 
 to be seen. Order is now but a " continual servitude," 
 destined "to show the happiness produced by autocratic
 
 " Dialogue de Sylla" 69 
 
 government." Tyranny creeps in, wearing the mask of 
 Liberty, and the idea of liberty is falsified and perverted. 
 The principles which made the strength of Rome are, by 
 extravagant application, corrupted ; the Romans have 
 fought and conquered to excess, "they were being 
 destroyed by the never-ceasing strain of action and of 
 violence, as a weapon is destroyed by the strain of con- 
 stant use." The civil disturbances which occupied and 
 entertained the body politic develops into open strife 
 which leads to its perversion ; private morality is deteriorated 
 by wealth. Tyranny triumphs in the corruption of the 
 people, and oppression finishes the work of ruin; the vital 
 organs are diseased, and now the mischief begins to 
 spread. Rome is weakened by her vast dominions ; the 
 conquered nations rebel against the armies disposed 
 along the frontiers ; and the armies, in concentrating their 
 strength, overrun and overpower the state : their loyalty 
 declines from the moment they assume the government 
 of the city. 
 
 The motive-power is impaired : Rome had strengthened 
 herself by annexing the nations she had conquered ; but 
 what was once a source of strength is now a cause of 
 weakness. Therefore, she falls back upon her internal 
 resources, crushed by the overwhelming weight of her 
 own power that power which formerly crushed her 
 enemies ; and the empire gradually contracts, until Italy 
 is once more its frontier. 
 
 Montesquieu, who seems to have had no perception 
 of the important action of Christianity on early Roman
 
 70 Montesquieu. 
 
 history, does not in the latter part of his work lay sufficient 
 stress upon it. Given up to admiration of the Antonines, 
 he fails to note the approach of that revolution which 
 transformed the ancient world. Indeed, as he advances 
 in the history of the empire, questions of economy are 
 dwelt upon with more insistence, for he is studying the 
 Digest, and has drawn from it not only a comprehension 
 of the laws of Imperial Rome, but also an understanding 
 of Roman social life. His views on revolution, on com- 
 merce, on financial crises, the abuse of taxation, together 
 with the neglect of agriculture which results from that 
 abuse, and the ruin of provincial administrations, are so 
 many novelties brought forward by him, and of signal 
 importance to history. The chapters on Byzantium are 
 scarcely more than an aperfu and summary, but they are 
 unmistakably the work of genius. In order to appre- 
 ciate their value and originality, they ought to be com- 
 pared with the corresponding chapters of the Essai sur les 
 Mxurs : Voltaire's slight treatment brings into relief the 
 vigorous handling of Montesquieu. It is impossible not 
 to suspect some allusion to the theological quarrels of 
 the eighteenth century in the ironical mention of the 
 dissensions in the Byzantine Church. Justinian, with 
 his pretensions to unity of law, unity in reign, and unity 
 in faith, in more than one respect resembles Louis XIV : 
 " He thought to increase the number of the faithful; he 
 diminished the number of men." There is a still more 
 pointed comparison between the struggles of Mussulman 
 and Greek, and those of Cromwell's adherents and the
 
 "Grandeur et Decadence" 71 
 
 Irish. Montesquieu merely glances at the later period, 
 and concludes by showing how the Turks inherited the 
 causes of the decay of the Byzantine empire, even while 
 they conquered the capital of that empire. 
 
 So he reaches the modern time, and in this, the study 
 of his choice, he persists during the remainder of his 
 life.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PLAN AND COMPOSITION OF THE 
 " ESPRIT DES LOIS." 
 
 MONTESQUIEU had reached the age of forty when 
 he began the working out of his great conception. 
 He had long been collecting the necessary materials. " I 
 may say that I have been engaged upon it all my life," 
 he writes. " As soon as my college life was ended, legal 
 books were put into my hands : I strove to discover the 
 spirit of law.'' This expression, so well known in con- 
 nexion with Montesquieu's work, was not entirely his 
 own. We meet with it first in Domat's Traite des Lois, 
 where a chapter is devoted to the nature and to the 
 esprit des lois ; but Domat understands thereby the true 
 sense, the real significance, of legislation, " that which is 
 in the law of nature, equity, and in law arbitrary, the in- 
 tention of the legislator." Taken in this sense the spirit 
 of law is intelligible enough, and Domat had already 
 dealt with it ; but Montesquieu looked further he sought 
 to determine the raison d'etre of law and of its efficacy. 
 The subject thus viewed was no longer juridical, but 
 historical; for its thorough elucidation, the scrutiny of 
 the conscience, the interrogation of the reason, and the
 
 The "Esprit des Lois'' 73 
 
 analysis of various tests did not suffice ; it was necessary to 
 sound the depths of history, and discover the great secret 
 of civilisation. 
 
 Montesquieu was for some time bewildered in his 
 quest. " I pursued my object without plan or design ; I 
 had neither rules nor exceptionstoguideme." Byreferring 
 to the chapter de la Coutume in Montaigne we could form 
 some idea of the notes gathered from all sides and accu- 
 mulated by Montesquieu. Montaigne shuffled his, cast 
 them hap-hazard to the winds, and then maliciously chose 
 to print them in the confusion which is, in his eyes, an 
 inherent law in nature. He glories in this medley of men 
 and things, of times, of countries, of governments, of 
 anecdotes, of legends, of witticisms, and of fine maxims ; 
 and it is not difficult to extract from this hotch-potch 
 some means of defaming humanity and tearing its 
 frippery to pieces : the impotence of our reason, the 
 miserable inconsistency of our judgment, are exposed in 
 every line of the chapter. In this strange armoury, con- 
 structed by Montaigne to disquiet man and shake his 
 confidence in any certainty or security, Pascal finds 
 wherewith to reconduct him to the faith ; in an incom- 
 parable reductio ad absurdum he confounds the human 
 reason and proves its nothingness before God. But 
 Montesquieu cannot be satisfied with Montaigne's erratic 
 and wayward reason, nor will he resign himself to the 
 prostrate and humiliated reason of Pascal : the pro- 
 blem must be solved, and its solution must be found in 
 humanity.
 
 74 Montesquieu. 
 
 " In the first place, I proceeded to a careful scrutiny 
 of men ; and I formed the opinion that, in this infinite 
 diversity of laws and customs, they were not only guided 
 by caprice." To seek the principle that guides them is 
 not the mere pastime of an idler : it is the work of a 
 legislator and of a benefactor of the human species ; for 
 Montesquieu does not distinguish the two. He considers 
 that men are " rogues individually, but honest in the 
 mass," and that it is in life as on the stage, where only 
 noble actions and fine sentiments are applauded. Pro- 
 fessing to work in the interest of mankind in general, 
 he would seek citizenship in every state, that he may 
 study and explain the bearings of its customs and maxims ; 
 that he may inspire each individual with a stronger love 
 for his country and government, and teach all nations 
 both how a state is endangered and how its well-being 
 may be secured. He writes for a typical being, whom 
 he represents to himself as the " homme de bien politique" 
 the man politically just and upright, and he conceives 
 that the "political, as the moral good, is to be found 
 within two limits." 
 
 But if Montesquieu's general object is the common- 
 weal, his special object is the weal of France. He sees 
 her tendency towards despotism, and fears that despotism 
 will lead to anarchy the most ominous form of decline ; 
 therefore would he warn his countrymen, revive their 
 love of liberty, and restore to them the title of citizen. 
 Bossuet, after a demonstration of the purposes of God 
 as manifested in the world, draws from these very pur-
 
 The "Esprit des Lois." 75 
 
 poses the doctrine which should serve as a foundation to 
 Christian monarchy, and as a lesson to the most Christian 
 king. Montesquieu, who has shown the process of 
 organisation in a great social institution how it grows 
 and prospers, decays and perishes, seeks in his own 
 turn to read a lesson to all human legislators. He 
 dreams of a purely scientific work a work which shall 
 be to the Considerations sur les Romains as the Politique 
 tiree de I'Ecriture sainte is to the Discours sur Thistoire 
 universelle. No legislator has conceived a nobler or a 
 more daring and difficult design, and Montesquieu, 
 when he had accomplished it, proudly distinguished his 
 work with the epigraph Prolem sine matre creatam. 
 
 He finds no lack of subject-matter, but rather a super- 
 abundance 'of material, such as almost precludes investiga- 
 tion : he needs the implements of work the sieve and 
 the balance to sift and to weigh the component parts. 
 He loses no time in analysing these elements and trac- 
 ing their origin. " He does not speak of causes, nor does 
 he compare causes," says he, later on, of himself; " but 
 he speaks of effects, and compares effects." The religious 
 foundation of Domat's Traite des Lois blinds Montes- 
 quieu to the depth and soundness of the author's prin- 
 ' ciples. Domat brings his observations to bear upon his 
 faith : with the alteration of a few terms his book, in 
 reality naturally human, would lose its theological tinc- 
 ture. But though he rebels against Domat's mysticism, 
 Montesquieu is equally opposed to Hobbes' materialism ; 
 he acknowledges " an eternal justice," wholly independent 
 
 F 2
 
 76 Montesquieu. 
 
 of human conditions. " Relations of justice existed be- 
 fore the making of laws. To say that there is no right or 
 wrong but that which is commanded or forbidden by 
 positive laws, is as contrary to reason as it would be to 
 say that before the drawing of the circle all radii were 
 not equal." 
 
 Montesquieu's inquiries into the origin of society 
 would have been as much aided by a knowledge of the 
 science of man as would have been his study of the early 
 history of Rome by some acquaintance with archaeology 
 and some exercise of textual criticism. If he could have 
 read Buffon, the Septtime epoque de la nature would have 
 given him a clearer perception of the state of primitive 
 man and of the genesis of custom. "The first of our race, 
 witnessing the yet recent and very frequent convulsions 
 of the earth, driven by floods to take refuge in the moun- 
 tains the only place of safety, and often driven away 
 from thence by volcanic fire, trembling upon the earth 
 that itself trembled beneath them, naked and helpless 
 in body and mind, defenceless against the fury of the 
 elements and the rage of wild beasts, all equally over- 
 whelmed by a feeling of awful terror, all equally pressed by 
 necessity, did they not speedily seek to join themselves 
 together, at first for mutual defence, and, as time went 
 on, for mutual help, in the construction of dwellings and 
 fashioning of weapons ? " 
 
 But in the absence of definite knowledge, Montesquieu 
 allows himself to be carried away by imagination. So he 
 is pleased to suppose conditions of nature in which a
 
 The "Esprit des Lois." 77 
 
 race of men weak, timid, and affectionate enjoyed a 
 kind of animal happiness. He considers that a ten- 
 dency to peace is inherent in man, but that on the union 
 of individuals in societies, and the consequent struggle for 
 existence, warfare between such societies followed as an 
 immediate and necessary result ; as if the social instinct 
 which attracts man to his fellow were not as fundamental 
 a law in his nature as the selfish instinct which prompts 
 him to hate and destroy his kind. Montesquieu is un- 
 certain and perplexed as regards this great question. The 
 following extract from a Lettre Persane may, perhaps, 
 more clearly show his point of view. "I have never 
 heard a discussion on public rights when the subject was 
 not complicated by inquiries into the foundations of 
 society. This seems to me ridiculous. If men, instead of 
 associating themselves in communities, fled from each 
 other, such desire for mutual separation would need 
 explanation ; but they are joined together from birth. A 
 son is born near his father, and abides with him : here we 
 have society, and the cause of society." 
 
 Still, as he must of necessity give an opinion and adopt 
 a formula, he shelters himself behind the vaguest and 
 most obscure definition: "Laws are, in the widest sense, 
 the necessary relations which proceed from the nature of 
 things." Truly is this the widest sense, a sense so wide 
 hat it defies analysis, and loses itself in the infinite. It is 
 an algebraical formula, which can be applied to all cases, 
 but exactly expresses none. Strictly true of mathematical 
 Jaws and the physical laws of nature, it is only remotely
 
 78 Montesquieu. 
 
 and relatively so of civil and political laws ; and even 
 then its correct application would involve the going back 
 to the original meaning of the word law through all the 
 transmutations and degradations which it has undergone. 
 Montesquieu is not arrested by this difficulty. He states 
 his formula, passes over all intermediate ideas, and goes 
 straight to legislation, properly so called his real object. 
 
 Here he is overwhelmed with facts completely em- 
 barrassed and overcome. We see him toiling at his work, 
 losing himself, then returning harassed to the right way, 
 recovering breath and starting again, only to lose himself 
 once more. " Many times did I begin this work, many 
 times did I abandon it, and a thousand times did I 
 
 scatter to the winds the pages I had written I 
 
 found the truth, but to lose it again." At last the polar- 
 star appeared : he found his way, and henceforth had but 
 to walk to the light. 
 
 The year 1729 marks this important era in Montes- 
 quieu's career. What he has called " the majesty of his 
 subject" was then revealed to him, and he felt that from 
 the standpoint to which he had attained he should (as he 
 expresses it) see "laws flowing as from their source." 
 " When I had discovered my principles, all that I sought 
 came to me. ... I found that particular cases adapted 
 themselves, as it were, spontaneously to these established 
 principles." Let us consider them, for they give the key 
 to the work. 
 
 " Men are governed by many things : climate, religion, 
 law, the maxims of government, the example of past
 
 The "Esprit des Lois." 79 
 
 things, customs, manners; and from the union of such 
 influences a general spirit is produced. These elements, 
 which enter into the composition of every human society, 
 and the spirit which animates that society, are connected and 
 correlative : it is not a fortuitous concourse of atoms, but 
 a living organism. Laws are the nerves of this social body, 
 and must be suited to the nature and functions of the 
 organs which they animate. They are subject to certain 
 causes, of which some are insusceptible of change, while 
 others are modifiable, though the process of modification 
 is slow and very difficult. 
 
 " They ought to be fitted to the physical conditions of a 
 country, to its climate, whether hot, cold, or temperate; to 
 the nature of its soil, to its situation and extent, and to the 
 way of life of its people ; they ought to respond to the degree 
 of liberty which the constitution can bear, to the religion of 
 the inhabitants, to their idiosyncrasies, their wealth, their 
 commerce, their number, and to their habits and manners. 
 Finally, they have relations with each other, with their 
 origin, with the design of the lawgiver, and with the 
 order of things on which they are established. From all 
 these points of view must they be considered, and I 
 shall so consider them in this work, examining them in 
 all the relations which form collectively what is called 
 the ' spirit of the laws.' " 
 
 The social institution thus regarded is, in Montesquieu's 
 eyes, the soul of human societies. If it is healthy and 
 vigorous, the community prospers ; if feeble and corrupted, 
 it decays. The reforms that regenerate and the revolu-
 
 8o Montesquieu. 
 
 tions that destroy societies are dependent on the degree 
 of knowledge which is possessed concerning the social 
 institution. Furthermore, no institution is, in itself, su- 
 perior to another: there are conditions of existence, public 
 and private usages, a national spirit, and, so to speak, a 
 general tendency, to all of which a particular institution 
 must adapt itself ; and each nation will find that the best 
 and most reasonable which is most in harmony with the 
 character and traditions of its inhabitants. 
 
 From this point of view Montesquieu examines the 
 different species of government, in each case distinguishing 
 the nature from the principle. The nature of a govern- 
 ment is that which gives it being ; its principle is that 
 which causes action. To define the nature of a govern- 
 ment is to determine its structure ; to define its principle 
 is to analyse the nature and passions of the men who 
 conduct it. 
 
 First, as regards the nature of governments. Mon- 
 tesquieu divides them into three classes : republican, 
 monarchic, and aristocratic. If the whole body politic, 
 or a portion of it, has the power, the government is 
 democratic or aristocratic ; if the power is exercised by 
 one only, according to fixed and permanent laws, the 
 government is monarchic ; if it is exercised arbitrarily, by 
 the individual will or caprice of the sovereign, the 
 government is despotic. This classification has been 
 criticised : Montesquieu confuses the constitution of a 
 state which may be autocratic, oligarchic, aristocratic, or 
 democratic, with the government of a state which is
 
 The "Esprit des Lois" 81 
 
 necessarily monarchic or republican. The fundamental 
 types of constitution and government amalgamate and 
 produce mixed systems. But it is unnecessary to insist 
 on these distinctions : Montesquieu considered them as 
 merely the frame to his picture, and the essential thing 
 is to ascertain the disposition of the picture. 
 
 It contains two principal groups : the laws which result 
 from the nature of the government these are political 
 laws ; and those which result from the principle of the 
 government these are more particularly civil and social 
 laws. Montesquieu shows the causes of stability and 
 decay in both kinds. " The corruption of a government," 
 says he, " nearly always begins by the corruption of its 
 principles." Here he is very grand, giving forth the very 
 essence of his thought, the great and beneficent counsel 
 of his work. "Custom," said Pascal, after a study of 
 Montaigne, " makes equity, simply because it is received ; 
 this is the mystic cause of its authority. He who brings 
 it back to its principle destroys it." " Law proceeds from 
 the nature of things," answers Montesquieu ; " its raison 
 d'etre is the cause of its authority. He who brings it 
 back to its principle strengthens it." Montesquieu's judg- 
 ment is truer and more profound. 
 
 The study of the nature of governments fills the first 
 eight books of the Esprit des Lois. Montesquieu pro- 
 ceeds from these fundamental laws to secondary laws, and 
 he considers them successively in their relation to the 
 defence of the state, to the political liberty of its citizens, 
 to the taxes, the climate, the soil, the morals, manners,
 
 82 Montesquieu. 
 
 civil liberty, the population, and religion. This is the 
 subject of Books ix xxvi. Books xxvi xxxi, im- 
 portant as they are in themselves, are scarcely more 
 than a supplement to an essay on the Roman laws of 
 inheritance, and to an unfinished history of feudal laws in 
 France. And there is a pause in the work at the end 
 of chapter xxvi. The wonderful cohesion which has 
 hitherto given it so majestic an air is lessened in the 
 further development of the subject, and there are nume- 
 rous digressions in the later books. 
 
 For though the author's mind is vast indeed, it cannot 
 comprehend within its limits the enormous mass of notes 
 collected during thirty years of study. The frame is not 
 large enough for the picture, large though it be ; we see 
 that the canvas is distended here and there, and stretched 
 beyond it. Montesquieu felt this himself. As long as he 
 was engaged upon the earlier books he was full of joyful 
 ardour. "My great work advances with giant strides," he 
 tells the Abbe de Guasco in a letter written in 1744 : this 
 was the time when " all that he sought came to him." 
 But little by little the accumulation of facts' obstructs the 
 issues he forces them to his purposes. " I see that all 
 adapts itself to my principles," he writes towards the 
 conclusion of the work : but he can no longer say, as 
 formerly, that he sees " individual cases adapting them- 
 selves as if spontaneously." So his efforts are redoubled : 
 he consults and compares texts, and amasses, but no 
 longer succeeds in welding his materials, and he becomes 
 tired and excited. " My life is advancing, and my work
 
 The "Esprit des Lois" 83 
 
 is receding because of its immensity," he writes in 1745 : 
 and in 1747: "My work becomes heavier. ... I am 
 overcome with weariness." The feudal books the final 
 ones exhaust him entirely. " It will take perhaps 
 three hours to read them, but I assure you that they 
 have cost me so much toil that my hair has turned 
 white." " This work has nearly killed me," he concludes, 
 after revising the last proofs, " now I must rest ; I shall 
 work no more." 
 
 This fatigue was chiefly caused by Montesquieu's 
 anxiety that his work should be perfect ; and an invoca- 
 tion to the Muses, which he intended to insert at the 
 beginning of the second volume, and before Book xx, 
 expresses this feeling in exquisite phraseology, in form 
 antique and fresh in spirit, a foretaste of Andre Chenier's 
 prose : " Virgins of Pieria, hear ye the name that 
 I give you? Inspire me. The race I am running is 
 long : I am bowed down with sadness and weariness. 
 Pour into my soul the delight and sweetness which it 
 knew once, though they flee from it now. If ye will 
 not that the severity of my toil be lightened, yet let not 
 the toil itself be visible ; let it be that the world learn, but 
 that I teach not ; that I think while I seem but to feel. . . . 
 When the waters of your fountain gush from the rock 
 that ye love, they rise not into the air to fall to the earth 
 again ; they flow through the mead. . . ." 
 
 The artist in Montesquieu is as exacting as the thinker ; 
 he gives as much anxious thought to the literary com- 
 position of his work as to the method and the search for
 
 84 Montesquieu. 
 
 principle. He desires that perfect order should reign in 
 his book, but would have no obtrusion of order it must 
 only be felt ; he contrives perpetual variety to refresh the 
 reader during his monotonous journey, and to divert his 
 attention from the heavy load he has to carry. Wishing 
 " to induce thought rather than to be read," he always 
 leaves something for his reader to divine, and by this 
 means flatters his keenness. "We remember," he says 
 somewhere, " what we have seen, and we begin to imagine 
 what we shall see ; our soul rejoices in its greatness and 
 penetration." Montesquieu is unrivalled in the skill 
 which he shows in designing alleys and opening avenues, 
 in providing for rest in shady groves by the way, in sud- 
 denly pointing to a fine prospect when the road is level 
 and easy, and in causing delightful anticipations of such 
 when it is steep and difficult. Having a thorough know- 
 ledge of the men of the world for whom he writes, he is 
 well aware of their impatient curiosity, the desultoriness 
 of their reading, their horror of being wearied, their desire 
 to reach the end, their haste to start again ; he knows, too, 
 that with them reflection is ever impromptu. Hence the 
 numerous divisions in the book, the chapters, which in 
 three lines state a great problem, the multiplication of 
 titles and sub-titles a constant memento to the fugitive 
 memory, a stimulus to surfeited curiosity, a perpetual 
 admonition to frivolity. He interrupts himself, calls his 
 reader's attention, apologises, so to speak, for keeping him 
 so long, and beseeches him to come still further : " I am 
 obliged to wander to the right and left to find my way to
 
 The "'Esprit des Lois." 85 
 
 the light ... I should like to glide down a peaceful river : 
 I am carried away by a torrent." 
 
 Montesquieu was absent-minded, he was short-breathed, 
 and his sight was weak. He therefore dictated, and 
 could talk while dictating. " I see," he remarked once, 
 " that some people take fright at digressions; now, I think 
 that they who know how to make use of them are like 
 people with long arms they can reach farther." Mon- 
 tesquieu certainly abuses his power in this direction ; but 
 we ought neither to depreciate his skill nor the value of 
 digression. Compare the Esprit des Lois with the 
 Democratic en Amerique : there is the same harmony in 
 organisation, the same loftiness of thought, the same 
 breadth of view in both. Whence comes it, then, that 
 an indescribable stiffness and austerity, a kind of Jan- 
 senist melancholy, pervade Tocqueville's work, while 
 Montesquieu's is so graceful in its careless manner and 
 joyous, pleasant air ? It is because Tocqueville is of 
 Normandy, that land of clouded sky and humid valleys 
 opening to an ever-troubled sea. Besides, he is a man 
 of one task and one object ; he has neither dissipated his 
 thought in reading nor wasted his life in amusement : he 
 lacks the wandering curiosity, the chance anecdote, the 
 flash of wit, springing from one knows not where ; he lacks 
 colour and, in a word, wit. He is not of the race of 
 Montaigne. 
 
 The division one might almost say the dismember- 
 ment of the books and chapters in Montesquieu's work 
 is even carried out in his phraseology, which is brisk, and
 
 86 Montesquieu. 
 
 at times almost too concise. He delights in flinging a dart, 
 but he is soon out of breath, and as the darts multiply 
 the pauses multiply also. Buffon who was deep-chested 
 and long-winded, who could never resolve to punctuate 
 his paragraphs or divide his sentences, and to whom every- 
 thing appeared in grand, periodic movement with the ma- 
 jestic ebb and flow of the sea has reproached Montesquieu 
 with his abrupt transitions of thought and style. " The 
 book," he says, in his famous speech before the Academy, 
 "appears clearer thereby, but the author's meaning remains 
 obscure." This is an exaggerated criticism : it is not for 
 obscurity that Montesquieu can be criticised, but rather 
 is it for an excessive concentration of light a continued 
 reflection from converging lenses. Madame du DefTand, 
 by way of a bon mot, and Voltaire from jealousy, have 
 accused him of putting too much wit in his book. He 
 has certainly furnished a supply of wit for all the authors 
 who wrote on the subject of law before his time, and for 
 most of those who have treated of it since. If it were 
 necessary to find an excuse for him, this one would doubt- 
 less be accepted by posterity. 
 
 Still, let us recognise this fact : if there is infinite and 
 exquisite art in the Esprit des Lois, there is also some 
 artifice. Montesquieu thought thereby to propitiate cen- 
 sorship, baffle the Sorbonne, and obtain a free circulation 
 for his book in France, without detriment to himself. 
 He did not wish, if it could be otherwise ordained, to be 
 obliged not to acknowledge it, as he had formerly been 
 obliged not to acknowledge the Lettres Persanes ; for,
 
 The "Esprit des Lois" 87 
 
 writing now as a moralist, not as a satirist, he distinctly 
 desired the meed of praise. The licentiousness and 
 irreverence of his youth had given place to the respect- 
 ful tone of a man who takes life seriously, and sets him- 
 self to instruct humanity ; and though a touch of liber- 
 tinism is still perceptible notably in the digressions and 
 when in the development of his subject the author goes 
 back to the East and treats of polygamy, still these are 
 but few episodes in the work, and if he pauses some- 
 what complacently to consider them, the pause is a brief 
 one. But profanity has not been followed by exclusive 
 veneration. Montesquieu treats of religion, as he treats 
 of all human institutions, with gravity. In his Considera- 
 tions sur les Remains he had, as it were, eliminated Provi- 
 dence from history : he does not eliminate religion from 
 society, but counts it as one of the many elements that 
 compose the life of a state : he assigns to it a place after 
 the army, after the political constitution, after the climate, 
 the soil, and the manners, and between the commerce, the 
 population, and the police. This is not a just historical 
 proportion or a true measure of society, still more is it at 
 variance with the teaching of the Church; but it is 
 thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of the book a 
 spirit the reverse of orthodox. Montesquieu was well 
 aware of this : he knew that he was in bad odour with 
 Rome and the Sorbonne, and was disturbed that such 
 should be the case. 
 
 He therefore proceeded to seek a remedy the only 
 available one the expedient which Montaigne had em-
 
 88 Montesquieu. 
 
 ployed (as did Buffon subsequently): scattering here and 
 there throughout his work prudent limitations, wise reser- 
 vations, and fine professions of faith. These were abso- 
 lutely irreconcilable with its spirit, but judged separately, 
 as extracts, were calculated to lull any suspicion of the 
 author's doctrines. Montaigne had brought to this 
 literary subterfuge an ironical and sceptical bonhomie. 
 Buffon enacted his part therein with an ease and haughti- 
 ness intended to mystify the simple ; but Montesquieu is 
 neither so careless as Montaigne as to what he pledges 
 himself, nor so bold as Buffon in affronting the powers 
 that be ; he proceeds with an awkward timidity which 
 instantly betrays him, and which could and did deceive 
 no one. He declares that he considers the "true religion" 
 as quite apart from all others; but this is only parenthe- 
 tically : in the body of the work he speaks of it, as he does 
 of other forms of faith that is, in the secular and impartial 
 tone of a legislator. He admits that some religions are 
 in themselves less good than others, and that the 
 "revealed religion" the most perfect of all "that of 
 which the root is in Heaven" does produce more or less 
 happy results, which vary according to the nature of the 
 countries in which it is propagated and that of the men 
 who practise it. "When Montezuma asserted that the 
 religion of the Spaniards was the best for their country, 
 and the religion of Mexico the best for his, he 
 uttered no absurdity," but he uttered a heresy ; and 
 though he could not know this, Montesquieu was per- 
 fectly aware of it.
 
 The "Esprit des Lois" 89 
 
 He hoped, however, that as regarded religion he 
 might escape censure by means of these verbal reser- 
 vations. In political matters he felt that there would 
 be more difficulty, so he suppressed, as being quite too 
 dangerous, a chapter on the lettres de cachet, and skil- 
 fully veiled any observations which might be considered 
 seditious, and any comparisons which might offend a 
 foolish patriotism. This may be one of the reasons that 
 induced him to describe the very local phenomenon of 
 the constitution of England in a general, or as it were a 
 cosmopolitan manner, without the use of technical terms 
 or proper names appearing to present the result of his 
 observations in different countries, and to reduce to a 
 common type a number of analogous institutions. This 
 generalisation, though not quite allowable, has been often 
 cited as an act of prudence. In some other cases he 
 deals in veiled allusion. The chapter entitled, Fatale 
 conscience du luxe a la Chine, is simply a Chinese letter : 
 he alludes to Frenchmen only. 
 
 The chapter one of the most profound in the book 
 in which Montesquieu explains Comment les lots peuvent 
 contribuer a former les mxurs, les manieres et le caractere 
 d'une nation, affords a striking instance of these rhetorical 
 precautions. England is in question, but is not men- 
 tioned : Montesquieu proceeds by way of hypothesis, and 
 is thereby obliged to strange circumlocutions : 
 
 " If this nation inhabited an island it would not be a 
 conquering nation, as the conquest of distant countries 
 would weaken it. ... If this nation were situated 
 
 G
 
 90 Montesquieu. 
 
 towards the north, and possessed superfluous staple com- 
 modities, needing, at the same time, much that its internal 
 resources could not supply, it would carry on a vast and 
 necessary commerce with the people of the South. . . . 
 It might be that this nation, envying the situation and 
 the excellent ports of a neighbouring country, together 
 with the special nature of its wealth, had subjugated that 
 country : while it conceded to the vanquished country its 
 own laws, it would keep it in a state of complete depend- 
 ence. . . ." 
 
 Here we feel the effort, and see the exaggeration and 
 abuse of the method. This striving after ultra-refinement, 
 these covert allusions intended for the wise, lead to the 
 worst result a heaviness and awkwardness in the midst 
 of the subtlety. How much grander is Montesquieu when 
 he dares to be himself, and to call things by their right 
 name ! Why did he not give to this profound study of the 
 English political system the style of the masterly disquisi- 
 tion on the Esprit de PAngleterre sur le commerce, which 
 is to be found a little farther on in the following book ? 
 "Other nations have made commercial interests subser- 
 vient to political interests : this nation has always made its 
 political interests yield to the interests of its commerce. 
 This people, of all others, has best known how to enlist 
 in its service these three great things religion, commerce, 
 and liberty." Had Montesquieu uniformly written thus, 
 instead of a picture after the manner of Paul Veronese 
 as Voltaire felicitously said a picture of " brilliant 
 colours, facile treatment, and some defects of costume,"
 
 The "Esprit des Lois." 91 
 
 we should have had a painting after Rembrandt a lumin- 
 ous and vivid representation of reality. 
 
 But if Montesquieu adopts this method sometimes by 
 way of prudence, it is more frequently the taste and 
 humour of the wit which dictate it. A certain mystery 
 of language and expression is in good style, and, be- 
 sides, sets off a dry and thankless subject. The gene- 
 ralisation which sometimes discreetly veils his thought 
 is more often an ostentatious drapery, the drapery in 
 fashion, and Montesquieu naturally clothes his ideas 
 therewith, being influenced by the current taste, and by 
 a secret desire of flattering the caprice of his contempo- 
 raries. He has his own vocabulary and rhetoric, and to 
 understand him thoroughly it is necessary to familiarise 
 oneself with his expressions and figures of speech. As 
 regards the expressions the task is an easy one. Mon- 
 tesquieu is an excellent writer, and knows well what he 
 is about : when his method is once grasped, one always 
 knows what he means. It is otherwise with his imagery. 
 Sometimes it is necessary to transpose and write again, 
 to guess the allusion and give distinctive names to the 
 grand general proposition ; but this must be done with 
 excessive circumspection. 
 
 We should depreciate Montesquieu, and entirely mistake 
 his design, running, besides, the risk of grievous mistake, 
 were we to apply to his work as a whole a system of interpre- 
 tation which is only reasonable in a few individual cases. 
 Montesquieu has a genius for generalisation : in that lies 
 both his greatness and his weakness. Let us take him as 
 
 G 2
 
 92 Montesquieu. 
 
 he presents himself to us ; let us read his book as it is 
 written, without commentary, almost without notes. It is 
 not without some motive that Montesquieu, who had col- 
 ected so vast an amount of notes, has published so few. If, 
 in several places, he wished that the reader should say to 
 himself: "This is England, or this is Versailles," he has 
 also wished him to think in the same passages : " This is 
 what will happen everywhere if the same course of action 
 is pursued, under the same conditions, as in England or 
 at Versailles." He wished that everyone should be able 
 to apply the instances he has presented in a different 
 way : that one should not know whether one is at Rome, 
 Athens, or Sparta, but only that one is under the in- 
 fluence of a democracy, and in the midst of a republic ; 
 that the features of Spain should be recognised side by 
 side with those of France in the painting of monarchy, 
 yet that the representation should not be of Spain her- 
 self, or of France herself, but of the features common to 
 both. He hoped that it would be with the whole of his 
 work as with a chapter in Book xin, entitled, Comment 
 on pent rem'edier a la depopulation. Read it while turn- 
 ing towards the south, and, lifting your eyes, you will 
 recognise Spain ; turn towards the east, and you will 
 think that Poland is intended. The fact is that the ex- 
 ample was drawn from several countries, that the conclu- 
 sion is general, and that the lesson may be as well applied to 
 these nations as to any others in the same circumstances. 
 Montesquieu had, in a word, produced a classic work. 
 He does not follow the different governments through all
 
 The ''Esprit des Lois" 93 
 
 the stages of their historical development and through 
 their successive revolutions, but he shows them in 
 a finished state and well-defined an illustration, so to 
 speak, of all the epochs in their history. There is neither 
 chronology nor perspective all is on the same scene 
 a unity of time, place, and action, as one can see it on the 
 stage. Montesquieu considers the laws only, their object, 
 their influence, and their destiny ; all other matter is the 
 groundwork not the edifice itself. He has constructed 
 the basement as solidly, and driven in the piles as deeply 
 as he had to toil anxiously to find terra firma but he dis- 
 guises this labour. He has studied and painted the mon- 
 archy and the republic, as Moliere studied and painted the 
 Avare,\ho. Misanthrope, or Tartuffe; as La Bruyere studied 
 his Grands, his Politiques, and Esprits forts. We honour 
 him, as we do his masters, the classic authors, in showing 
 how his gallery is preserved to history, and how one could 
 attach name and date to each of his pictures : we should 
 force his thought in particularising further. 
 
 But we should pervert it by considering it as only ab- 
 stract. Montesquieu strives to form general ideas by 
 means of the facts which he has observed ; he does not 
 pretend to evolve by pure speculation absolute and uni- 
 versal ideas. He tries to exhibit a general type from the 
 monarchies and republics which he has known, and 
 deduces no a priori ideal, the monarchy in itself or the 
 republic in itself; whence it follows that the principles 
 laid down and the laws flowing from them can only be 
 understood and appreciated fully in their relation to facts.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE " ESPRIT DES LOIS." POLITICAL LAWS 
 AND GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 THE book on governments begins by the Demo- 
 cratic one, that is to say, by the government where 
 the people, as a body, enjoys sovereignty. Montesquieu 
 appreciates it from Rome, in the times when the republic 
 was still identified with the city ; from Athens and Sparta, 
 " at a time when the Greek people was a world in itself, 
 and when the Greek towns were nations." The republic, 
 thus constituted, implies a limited territory ; the citizens, 
 few in numbers, and subdivided into classes ; they possess 
 slaves ; their only occupation is politics and war ; they are 
 at liberty, in the leisure which their private life allows 
 them, and thanks to the small extent of the city, to apply 
 themselves, directly and constantly, to the numerous and 
 engrossing functions of a citizen's life. No commercial 
 pursuits, or very little of them, and those only which 
 imply the spirit of " frugality, economy, moderation, wis- 
 dom, quiet, order, and rule." The land is equally divided 
 amongst them ; if the properties were too large and trade 
 too developed, the result would be the increase of private 
 wealth, and, consequently, the ruin of equality. Hier-
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 95 
 
 archy is strictly maintained between the classes ; " only 
 in the corruption of certain democracies was it possible 
 for the handicraftsmen to become citizens." 
 
 The people, as a body we mean the assembly of the 
 citizens makes laws and exercises sovereign power. "Its 
 suffrages are the expression of its will." The magis- 
 trates are selected from men whose opinions are known, 
 and whose transactions are subjected to a continual su- 
 pervision. The people act according to the spirit of 
 true equality, which consists in both " obeying and 
 commanding their equals." They enjoy that kind of 
 freedom which Bossuet had admirably defined before 
 Montesquieu, " a state where no one is subject except 
 to the law, and where law is more powerful than man." 
 This is a very singular condition, to which cannot be 
 applied the ideas we, in our modern times, have of liberty. 
 Our liberty is essentially civil and individual ; that of the 
 ancients is exclusively civic, and depending upon the 
 state. Freedom of conscience is according to us the 
 foremost and most essential of all ; the ancients did not 
 even conceive it. Liberty, for them, consisted solely in 
 the exercise of sovereignty. The individual had no other 
 right but his suffrage, and his suffrage exhausted all his 
 right ; in other respects he was bound to acknowledge as 
 a rule in all things the plurality of suffrages, in his 
 creed, his family, his property, his work, and his every 
 act, the plurality of the suffrages being the law of the 
 state. Such, if we believe Montesquieu, are the charac- 
 teristics of the republican government under a democracy.
 
 96 Montesquieu. 
 
 A government of that kind could be established only 
 in a society of men where the deep-seated sense of 
 social solidarity, the common view as to the interests and 
 needs of society, the equal devotedness of all to the com- 
 monwealth, have allowed the establishment of institutions 
 so antagonistic to the instinct of rebellion, selfishness, and 
 concupiscence which is innate in us all. These moral 
 conditions of democratic government are its raison d'etre- 
 This explains Montesquieu's final summing up, \hati. virtue 
 is the principle of such a government ; hence also his defini- 
 tion of democratic virtue : "The love of the republic . . . 
 the love of the laws and of the fatherland . . . the love of 
 the fatherland, that is to say, the love of equality." 
 
 The virtue of which we speak, after having created the 
 institutions, is alone capable of carrying them on. The 
 laws, therefore, should train the citizens to virtue, and 
 oblige them to practise it. The omnipotence of the 
 state over the family, the compulsory education of 
 children, the division of property, the limitation of inherit- 
 ances, the sumptuary laws such is the spirit of these 
 crushing legislations. Everything in them is the corol- 
 lary of the maxim, "The safety of the people is the 
 supreme law." 
 
 And yet, despite these terrible remedies, whether it is 
 that they have not been applied in time, or that a bad use 
 has been made of them, a democracy can become corrupt. 
 This occurs when the spirit of equality takes a wrong 
 direction, when a man's ambition is no longer limited to 
 the " sole happiness of rendering to his native country
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 97 
 
 greater service than the rest of his fellow-citizens"; per- 
 sonal covetousness taints ambition and pride perverts it ; 
 private riches increase, and, with them, indifference as to 
 the public good ; the sense of individual liberty takes the 
 place of that which the liberty of the state carries along 
 with it ; solidarity is lost ; jealousy creeps in ; no more 
 discipline ; equality dwindles into anarchy ; morals have 
 got rid of that austerity which cut at the root of so many 
 selfish passions, only with the view of strengthening the 
 social ones which it allowed to subsist ; the citizens, in 
 one word, have not that feeling of " self-abnegation," the 
 spirit of all republican virtues. Then it is all over, and 
 even the remedies become fatal, because the artificial 
 strength which they give to the state only benefits tyranny, 
 and completes the ruin of the republic. 
 
 "When the principles of the government are once cor- 
 rupted, the best laws become bad and turn against the 
 state ; when, on the other hand, these principles are 
 sound, bad laws produce the effect of good ones ; every- 
 thing is affected by the strength of the leading principle." 
 . . . . " The principle of democracy becomes tainted, not 
 only when the spirit of equality is lost, but when it is 
 carried to extremes, and when everyone aims at being on 
 a level with those whom he selects as his rulers. ... In 
 such a republic virtue is impossible." 
 
 Montesquieu's conception of democracy seems widely 
 different from the spirit of our modern civilisation. If we 
 compare the two together, the democracy of the ancient 
 world seems a paradox and a Utopia. The fact is that
 
 98 Montesquieu. 
 
 Montesquieu, in his endeavour to find around him some 
 surviving specimens of these societies which have long 
 ago disappeared, can discover nothing similar to them 
 but convents or the political world of Paraguay. If, in- 
 deed, we think for a moment of our modern views of the 
 fatherland, religion, labour ; if we reflect upon the inces- 
 sant transformation of institutions, creeds, fortunes, even 
 of manners, can we imagine anything more opposed to 
 the doctrine of progress, and to the Declaration of the 
 Rights of Man, than the spirit of those old democracies, 
 with their hierarchy, their slaves, and their official despot- 
 ism ? Montesquieu did not foresee the rapid advent and 
 wonderful development of modern democracy, still less 
 did he believe in the establishment of democratic 
 republics in extensive countries. Alluding to the institu- 
 tions of the Greeks, " We cannot look for this," said he, 
 " in the confusion, the turmoil, the multiplying of busi- 
 ness which belong to a thickly populated country." " The 
 Greek politicians, who lived under the government of the 
 people, acknowledged no other sustaining force but that 
 of virtue. Those of the present day speak to us only of 
 manufactures, trade, riches, even luxury." 
 
 Montesquieu little suspected that those manufactures, 
 this trade, these riches, the very luxury which he deems 
 incompatible with democracies, would become in course 
 of time their fundamental element ; that this revolution, 
 after having permeated his own country, would spread 
 throughout Europe. There may, nevertheless, be found in 
 every democracy organic and permanent characteristics
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 99 
 
 which subsist, notwithstanding the external difference. 
 Montesquieu has considered his subject from so lofty a 
 standpoint, and with so deep a search, that he has dis- 
 cerned the most essential of those characteristics. Many 
 of the advices drawn by him from the sight of ancient 
 democracies apply with equal force to those of the 
 present day. The same excesses threaten to corrupt 
 the government now as they did then. The state rests 
 upon plurality; now plurality consist of individuals who 
 are constantly being blinded by their selfish passions as 
 to what constitutes public interest. These individuals 
 are always inclined to confound liberty with the right of 
 enjoying a share in authority, the public exchequer with 
 the common patrimony of private citizens, progress with 
 continual innovations, and right with number, that is to 
 say with force. Thus, under the regime of a constitution 
 founded upon equality and individual liberty, the majority 
 aims at enslaving the minority, and the state at absorbing 
 the nation. We must therefore never be tired of re- 
 peating to ourselves that the worth of liberty is in the 
 same proportion as the character of those who exercise 
 it, and that the same relation exists between the law and 
 those who make it, the government and those who are 
 at its head, the state, finally, and the nation, that is to 
 say, the individuals who compose it. Each one is respon- 
 sible for the common good, and accountable for the 
 interests of all. If the majority of the citizens is greedy, 
 jealous, insubordinate, equality produces spoliation, os- 
 tracism, and anarchy ; hence, as a necessary result, the
 
 i oo Montesquieu. 
 
 decay of the state. The more extensively spread are the 
 rights of each individual, the more exacting do his pas- 
 sions become. In proportion as the implacable law of 
 struggle for existence stretches its empire over societies, 
 it becomes more necessary that democracies should seek 
 fresh strength in their fundamental principle : national 
 solidarity, the real love of the country, social union for 
 the furtherance of the common good. Now what is all 
 this but virtue, according to Montesquieu's definition ? 
 
 The virtue we have thus described would not be less 
 necessary to aristocracies, to the republics, we mean, 
 where the sovereignty is in the hands of a few. Montes- 
 quieu discusses at considerable length this subject, but 
 it possesses no interest for us, oligarchies having dis- 
 appeared from Europe. They still existed in Montes- 
 quieu's time ; he had observed the working of that form 
 of government at Venice, and studied it as it appeared 
 in Poland. It is, says he, the most imperfect of aristo- 
 cracies, "for the part of the nation which obeys is in 
 a position of civil slavery to that which rules. The 
 republic subsists in Poland for the benefit of the nobles, 
 and they ruin it. If it must be kept up, the aristocratic 
 families should as much as possible identify themselves 
 with the common people." Their privileges must be 
 perpetually renewed and justified by fresh services, 
 otherwise the republic is nothing else but "a despotic 
 state subject to a number of despots." The indepen- 
 dence of each one of them becomes the object of the 
 laws, and the oppression of all is the final result. The
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 101 
 
 nobles being very numerous, if they are tainted by cor- 
 ruption, every spring is broken in the state. " Anarchy 
 degenerates into annihilation." An aristocracy thus 
 constituted needs some motive of fear to keep it con- 
 stantly on the watch. "The greater security of these 
 states, the more liable are they to be corrupted, like 
 stagnant waters." 
 
 Causes for anxiety abounded both at Venice and in 
 Poland, but in the blindness resulting from their weak 
 condition, they trusted to a deceitful public right which 
 no one respected. The division prevailing amongst their 
 enemies was also for them a motive of security. The 
 Venetians abdicated, if we may so say ; the Poles sur- 
 rendered, being more divided in their factions than the 
 neighbouring states in their rivalries. An agreement 
 was more easily come to between Russia, Prussia, and 
 Austria for the dismemberment of Poland, than be- 
 tween the Poles for the defence of their country. We 
 find a ready comment of Montesquieu's principles in the 
 appeal of the Doge Renier(i78o) and the attempt made 
 in 1790 by the Polish patriots for the regeneration of 
 their country. The downfall of both these aristocracies 
 justifies his opinion. "If a republic is small," said he, "it 
 is destroyed by a foreign power ; if it is extensive, it falls 
 the victim to an internal disease." Venice and Poland 
 got into danger by the internal disease, and were de- 
 stroyed by foreign might. 
 
 Democracy was only for Montesquieu a kind of his- 
 torical phenomenon : it reigns now in some of the greatest
 
 iO2 Montesquieu. 
 
 nations of the world, and aims at invading all the others ; 
 the monarchy he describes was in his days the prevailing 
 form of government in Europe : it has now almost entirely 
 disappeared. Our author studies it out of a spirit of pre- 
 dilection, devoting a chapter to point out its excellence. 
 We cannot doubt that, whilst composing that part of his 
 book, he was constantly thinking of the French monarchy 
 and of the decay by which he believed it to be threatened. 
 France was on the road to despotism, and nothing was 
 more contrary to despotism than monarchy such as he 
 conceived it. Bossuet had drawn a line between absolute 
 monarchy where the prince governs in agreement with 
 the laws, and arbitrary monarchy where he follows no 
 dictates but those of his caprice. This latter form 
 Montesquieu calls despotism, and he applies the epithet 
 monarchy to the state where "one person alone rules 
 according to fixed and established laws." 
 
 It is in the nature of a monarchy to have fundamental 
 laws. The monarch is the source of all political and 
 civil power, but he exercises his authority "through canals, 
 so to say, which transmit that power." The intermediate 
 agents, subordinate and dependent, moderate and tem- 
 per the "capricious and momentary will of the king." 
 The nobility and the clergy are the first two of these 
 powers ; the third is a body of magistrates who have com- 
 mitted to their care the fundamental laws, and remind 
 the prince of them whenever he seems inclined to forget 
 what they are. This hierarchy is the necessary condition 
 of monarchical government.
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 103 
 
 Honour forms the principle of a monarchy, in the 
 same way as virtue is the basis of a republic ; honour is 
 not opposed to virtue ; it is par excellence the political 
 virtue of a monarchy. In the opinion of a republican, 
 political virtue consists in the love of the country, and in 
 that of equality. Devotedness to the king and love of 
 privilege are the political virtue of a monarchist ; thus he 
 serves the king, and whilst serving him keeps him up to 
 his duty. If monarchy was formed, the reason is that 
 the nation was not capable of self-government ; the power 
 was thus delegated to a chief and to his descendants. 
 As obedience is the substratum of that government, in 
 order to maintain it, it was imperative that obedience 
 should be glorious, and that it should not degenerate 
 into subjection. For want of independence, light-minded- 
 ness was a necessary requisite. Such is the effect of 
 honour. If we wish to understand this chapter, we must 
 read its comment in the Memoirs of Saint- Simon. 
 
 The laws which flow from that principle, and which 
 are, consequently, the spring of monarchical institutions, 
 are those which form the sense of honour and the prero- 
 gatives upon which honour remains established. These 
 are privileges, the rights belonging to the eldest son of 
 the family, substitutions, and the exclusion of the aristo- 
 cracy from commercial pursuits. 
 
 As a monarchy subsists by the very opposition of the 
 intermediate powers, its essence is moderation. If it 
 ceases to be moderate, it runs a serious danger, and it 
 perishes from the corruption of its principle. Honour
 
 IO4 Montesquieu. 
 
 becomes vanity, obedience dwindles into servitude ; in- 
 stead of being a virtue, it is a means of getting on. The 
 voice of the court absorbs that of the state. " If the prince 
 likes the souls of free men," says Montesquieu, " he will 
 have subjects ; if he is fond of depraved souls, he will 
 have slaves. These he is sure to have, and he degrades 
 them by subjecting them to his caprices ; he reduces the 
 magistrates to silence, suppresses the fundamental laws, 
 governs arbitrarily ; thus absolutism corrupts the court, 
 and by its example the court in its turn corrupts the 
 people. The manners which had made the monarchy 
 disappear \ the corporate bodies lose their dignity ; 
 privileges have no further raison d'etre, the privileged 
 classes are shorn of their authority, and thus the nation is 
 carried on, as it would have been by the suppression of 
 privileges, to one or the other of those inevitable goals of 
 decrepit monarchies : the popular state, or despotism." 
 Montesquieu detests despotism; he makes of it a fright- 
 ful picture, but it is a picture which lacks life. He has 
 not observed facts, and has been unable to consult trust- 
 worthy documents. The only despotism with which he is 
 acquainted is that of Eastern countries, of Ispahan or Con- 
 stantinople, the despotism of the Lettres Persanes, with 
 its mysterious seraglios, its formidable harems, its jealous 
 sultans, and its melancholy eunuchs. He should have 
 known Russia: it would have revealed to him the nature 
 of despotism tempered by religion, a form much more 
 accessible to Europeans. Montesquieu has had only a 
 distant and confused glimpse of the autocracy of the Tzars.
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 105 
 
 The condition of Russia then, and its state since, weakens 
 many of his maxims, and destroys some. 
 
 " In despotic governments," he remarks, " no one is 
 attached to either the state or the prince." Now, here is 
 an empire where the prince is the living and arbitrary law, 
 and where the affection which he inspires in the people con- 
 stitutes all the strength of the state. Montesquieu does not 
 believe that such a government implies magnanimity; but 
 Catherine II and her grandson Alexander have proved the 
 contrary. He thinks that the right which the Czar enjoys 
 of appointing his successor gives unsteadiness to the 
 throne, " the order of succession being one of those things 
 which it is most important that the people should know." 
 During the whole of the eighteenth century the order of 
 succession to the throne of Russia has been subjected to the 
 greatest anomaly, and yet this throne has constantly gained 
 in strength ; and if the Russian people have inquired what 
 the name of their new master was, it is for the purpose of 
 changing in their prayers the name of the saint they were 
 in the habit of invoking. Asa withering conclusion of his 
 views of despotism, let us note that famous chapter which 
 has only three lines, and presents so grand an image : 
 " Whenever the savages of Louisiana want to get some 
 fruit, they cut down the tree at the root, and gather the 
 fruit. Such is despotic government." Yes, it is the 
 despotism of the Sultan ; but it is not that of the Czar 
 Peter or of Catherine the Great. 
 
 We ask ourselves why, discussing hardly any despotic 
 governments besides the monstrous one of the East, 
 
 H
 
 1 06 Montesquieu. 
 
 Montesquieu has so dwelt upon them, why he examined 
 with such interest their nature, their principle, and the 
 corruption of that principle. We must, no doubt, allow 
 something for symmetry ; nor must we forget to take into 
 account the impression resulting from the perusal of 
 the works of Tavernier and Chardin. It is likewise natural 
 to believe that Montesquieu was looking out for an effect 
 of contrast; he wished to show thus the excellence of 
 monarchy, the danger of its degenerating ; and thus, by 
 a natural transition, he prepared his readers the better to 
 grasp his views on political liberty. 
 
 This special subject has been discussed by him in a 
 separate book ; for political liberty is compatible with 
 several forms of government, without being necessarily 
 bound to any of them. Montesquieu distinguishes it 
 from national independence, which means the freedom of 
 the nation with reference to foreigners, and from civil 
 freedom, that is to say, from liberty as it affects both per- 
 sons and property in the nation itself. He defines politi- 
 cal liberty " the right of doing all that is permitted by the 
 laws "; " liberty can consist only in the ability of doing 
 what we wish to do, and of not being compelled to do 
 what we should not wish to do." This definition is vague 
 and insufficient. The law may be, and has been, an 
 instrument of despotism : it might order me to do what 
 I ought not to wish to do, and vice versd. The Acts 
 against Roman Catholics and Dissenters in England were 
 laws. Freedom of conscience reigned in the dominions 
 of Frederick the Great, where the king's power was uncon-
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 107 
 
 trolled ; it did not reign in England, despite a responsible 
 parliament and responsible ministers. 
 
 Where, then, is liberty? "Political liberty can be 
 found only under moderate governments ; but it is not 
 always there : its presence requires that power should not 
 be abusetj, and in order to this, it is necessary that 
 power should, if necessary, keep power in check. Such 
 is the famous theory of the separation of powers. 
 Montesquieu sums it up as follows : " When, in the same 
 person, or in the same body of magistrates, the legislative 
 and executive power are combined, no liberty is possible, 
 because it may be dreaded lest the same king and the 
 same senate should make tyrannical laws with the view of 
 executing them tyrannically." This circumstance has 
 been seen in France, both under the regime of absolute 
 monarchy, and under that of political assemblies, witness 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Loi des suspects^ 
 the Loi des otages. There must be, then, a separation of 
 the executive from the legislative powers, as a guarantee 
 of liberty, but an insufficient one. "There is still no 
 liberty if the judicial power, too, is not a distinct one." 
 For if it was united to the legislative power, the life and 
 freedom of the citizens could be arbitrarily disposed of, 
 the judge being also a legislator. If it was associated 
 with the executive, the judge might turn oppressor. Such, 
 in fact, was the case in many of the governments of 
 Europe, the French one, for instance, and that is why 
 Montesquieu called them moderate governments. 
 
 He had not invented that system; Aristotle had 
 
 H 2
 
 io8 Montesquieu. 
 
 expressed it before him, but no one had done so in so 
 simple and evident a manner. Montesquieu caused it 
 to pass from theory to practice, and rendered it popular. 
 It is only in England that he saw the application of these 
 rules, and it is England which he describes when he pre- 
 sents to his readers the example of a nation " the direct 
 aim of whose constitution is political freedom." 
 
 Montesquieu does not write the history of that consti- 
 tution, and if he glances at the problem of origins, it is 
 merely for the purpose of repeating in the Esprit des 
 Lois a paradox which he was very fond of, and which had 
 already appeared in the Lettres Persanes. " If you will take 
 the trouble of reading the admirable work of Tacitus, de 
 Moribus Germanorum, you will see that the English 
 borrowed from the Germans the idea of their political 
 government. That splendid system has been discovered 
 in the woods." Montesquieu boasted of being descended 
 from the Goths, who, " conquering the Roman Empire, 
 founded everywhere monarchy and liberty." He had 
 special reasons for seeking in Tacitus the elements of the 
 English constitution, and special privileges for discovering 
 them. Learned men have made the same search, with the 
 same results, after him, and have shown these elements to 
 a number of very clever persons, who are convinced that 
 they have seen them. It would be impertinent to jeer 
 Montesquieu on hisflrejuge about his birth, and we must 
 be obliged to him for having stated it with so much good- 
 humour and so little pedantry. Let us imitate him, and, 
 without dwelling upon the problem, let us refer the
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 109 
 
 reader to Messrs. Gneist and Freeman, the one a Ger- 
 man, the other an English historian, who stand up for 
 Tacitus and the forests ; to M. Guizot, and to his most 
 recent disciple and continuator, M. Boutmy these seem 
 to me to have refuted Montesquieu by making use of his 
 own method : they apply this method more widely than 
 Montesquieu did himself, when they show that the 
 origins of the English constitution are much more 
 historical than ethnical, and that they sprang, not from 
 the woods or the meadows, but from "necessities created 
 by circumstances." 
 
 Montesquieu examines that constitution when it has 
 reached its maturity, and in the degree of transformation 
 when it can be compared to other states. He assumes 
 that it is definitive ; he collects and generalises its 
 elements, as he did for the republics of antiquity. He 
 insists specially upon that part of the institutions which 
 can be transferred elsewhere. The English constitution, 
 indeed, has found its way, notr only in monarchies, but 
 also, with a few outward changes, in the republics, where, 
 owing to the extent of the territory, the people cannot 
 govern directly. 
 
 Montesquieu describes as follows "the fundamental 
 constitution" of the English government : a legislative body 
 composed of the representatives of the people, selected 
 according to a very wide system of suffrage, for it should 
 " include all the citizens except those who have sunk to 
 such a state of degradation that they are deemed 
 irresponsible" ; to this legislative body belongs the right
 
 i io Montesquieu. 
 
 of making the laws and seeing that they are duly carried 
 out : there is an upper house, consisting of hereditary 
 members ; it helps with the legislative body to make the 
 laws, except in the matter of taxes, lest it should be 
 corrupted by the court ; here they only enjoy the right 
 of veto ; finally we have an executive power placed in 
 the hands of a monarch; for if legislation requires 
 deliberation, and accordingly the co-operation of several 
 persons, the carrying out of the laws implies one will. The 
 executive power does not necessarily take the initiative ; 
 it does not enter into the details of business, but enjoys 
 the right of veto. Supposing there is no monarch, the 
 executive power cannot be entrusted to members of 
 the legislature, for there would be then a confusion of 
 powers ; for the same reason the legislative body can 
 judge neither the conduct nor the person of the king ; but 
 if the monarch is inviolable and sacred, his ministers are 
 liable to be prosecuted and punished. Both houses 
 meet periodically, and vote every year the amount of the 
 taxes and the number of soldiers required for the public 
 service. 
 
 The very general character given by Montesquieu to 
 this theory has helped to propagate it, but at the same 
 time it imparts to the chapter a literary dryness ; it con- 
 sists of nothing but maxims : a capital sketch, but lacking 
 both colour and life. It should be completed by the 
 perusal of the nineteenth chapter, where our author de- 
 scribes the political habits of the English, and analyses 
 that public spirit which is the real author, interpreter, and
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 1 1 1 
 
 guardian of their constitution. He points out the vigour 
 and constancy of their love for political freedom, without 
 forgetting the defects which that love implies. The state 
 is in a continual turmoil; want of consistency characterises 
 the government ; corruption prevails in the elections and 
 in business ; authority is impatiently borne ; jealousy and 
 sharpness interfere with commercial pursuits ; social inter- 
 course is marred by that hauteur, that pride, which make 
 it seem as if, even in times of peace, the English " were 
 negotiating only with enemies." No doubt he carries too 
 far the spirit of generalisation when he says the English 
 are not conquerors by nature, and they are free from "de- 
 structive propensities." Why ! have not the English con- 
 quered one of the largest empires in the world, and made 
 on the largest scale the destruction of native populations ? 
 Montesquieu speaks too leniently of Ireland and of the 
 despotism which reigns there ; but, after all, he has well 
 caught the ensemble of the picture. 
 
 He has brought out and exhibited that terrible nationa 
 spring of the English which the Europeans of the con- 
 tinent had failed to see. With a stroke of the pen he has 
 refuted the prejudice which, after having so long deceived 
 the French, made the Conventionnels blunder, and ended 
 by driving Napoleon to his ruin. In one word, he anti- 
 cipated Pitt, and found out the formidable character of 
 the twenty-three years' war, when he expressed the follow- 
 ing opinion, which, deduced from facts and confirmed by 
 history, deserves to be placed on the same level as the 
 strongest scientific hypotheses.
 
 U2 Montesquieu. 
 
 "If some foreign power were to threaten the state, 
 and imperil both its fortune and its glory, all minor 
 interests giving way to the superior ones, there would be 
 a general union to support the executive power. . . . 
 That nation would be enthusiastically attached to its 
 liberty, because liberty for the citizens would be the 
 true one ; and it might happen that, in order to defend 
 their liberty, the nation would not hesitate to sacrifice 
 property, comforts, interests. They would suffer the 
 heaviest taxes, such as the most absolute sovereign would 
 not venture to impose. . . . Their credit would be 
 unshaken, because they would borrow from their own 
 resources, and be their own creditors. It might happen 
 that such a people would go beyond their natural strength, 
 and employ against their enemies immense riches existing 
 only in fiction, but becoming real through the strength 
 and the character of the government." 
 
 We should like to dwell before this vast prospect, but 
 then we should have only an incomplete idea of Montes- 
 quieu's views on the nature and principle of political 
 constitutions. He further examines these laws in their 
 relation with crimes and penalties, the raising of the 
 taxes, and the national income. We have just seen what 
 close bonds connect the question of public finances with 
 that of political freedom. Montesquieu's definition of 
 the taxes has become classical. " The revenues of the 
 state consist of the portion which each citizen gives of 
 his fortune in order to enjoy securely the rest." He 
 proves the advantage of indirect taxes, and seems to
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 113 
 
 incline towards a progressive system of taxation. His 
 illusions respecting the republics of antiquity perhaps 
 led him in that direction ; but he was chiefly influenced 
 by the example of the capitation such as it was applied, 
 in his time, to the privileged classes ; that capitation was 
 settled, not according to the fortune, but according to 
 dignity and the social rank of the taxpayers. Montes- 
 quieu condemns the regie, and protests vigorously against 
 the gabelle and the maltote. " Everything is lost," says 
 he, " when the lucrative profession of a trailant becomes 
 an honoured one from the riches it implies." 
 
 Montesquieu's studies on criminal laws are justly 
 considered amongst his proudest titles to the gratitude 
 of mankind. Nowhere has he manifested greater 
 strength of thought and a more delicate touch than in his 
 chapter on the nature of penal enactments. Here his 
 affinity to Montaigne appears very vividly. " We must 
 not lead men on by extreme ways; we should be 
 chary as to the means given to us by nature to conduct 
 them. Let us examine the causes of all disorders, and 
 we shall see that they arise from the impunity of crimes, 
 and not from moderation in the inflicting of punishments." 
 The next chapter, bearing the startling title, Inefficiency of 
 the Japanese Laws, and forming the comment on the above 
 maxim, embodies the real spirit of the eighteenth century. 
 " Exaggerated penalties can corrupt even despotism itself." 
 "A wise legislator should endeavour to lead people in 
 the right path by a just admixture of penalties and rewards, 
 by maxims of philosophy, ethics, and religion .... by the
 
 1 14 Montesquieu. 
 
 due application of the rules of honour ; by the torture 
 which shame inflicts." Critics will say, no doubt, that is 
 the philosophic idyll and the maudlin sentimentality of 
 our fathers ; well, the politicians of our age had not 
 discovered a more efficacious means of dealing with 
 criminals ; and, towards the end of the last century, after the 
 Reign of Terror and the Directoire, the result of excessive 
 repressions was clearly seen. Montesquieu had foretold 
 it : " There remains in the state a vice which such 
 relentlessness has produced ; the minds are corrupted, 
 and have accustomed themselves to despotism." 
 
 We all know that Montesquieu had the honour of 
 contributing to the abolition of torture, but readers have 
 less noticed his irrefutable arguments against confiscations. 
 It was an act of boldness to put forth these arguments 
 then. Confiscation was the universal law in criminal 
 courts; suppressed in 1790, it was re-established a short 
 time after, and enforced with far greater excesses than 
 during the worst period of the old monarchy. As for the 
 lettres de cachet, Montesquieu condemns them indirectly 
 when he praises the Habeas Corpus Act. 
 
 He lays down the true laws about freedom of thought 
 and freedom of the press, "Only outward acts are 
 amenable to the laws. . ." " It is not words that are 
 punished, but deeds in the performance of which the 
 words are uttered. Words become crimes when they 
 prepare, accompany, or follow a criminal action." The 
 old monarchy knew nothing of that ; it was loudly pro- 
 claimed during the Revolution, and shamefully violated
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 115 
 
 by the Revolution itself. Montesquieu only considered 
 the abuses of monarchical legislation, but he condemned 
 by anticipation the abuses of the Revolutionary lawgivers 
 when he said : " Nothing renders the crime of high 
 treason more arbitrary than when it is grounded upon 
 indiscreet words." "It is another evident abuse to 
 denounce as high treason an action which has nothing 
 to do with it." He denies the application of the word 
 to intrigues against cabinet ministers, as under Richelieu, 
 or to coining, as under Valentinian, Theodosius, and 
 Arcadius. He quotes Arcadius, as a declaration of 1720 
 did in the case of the forging of royal papers, but he 
 does not name that declaration, which, however, was 
 remembered at the time of the assignats. 
 
 The worst abuse is when the accusation of high treason 
 is applied to heresy and sacrilege. In Montesquieu's 
 days this was the universally recognised law. The 
 episode of La Barre and that of Galas made noise enough 
 to impress everyone on that point. The declaration of 
 1724, which confirmed and summed up the most implac- 
 able measures of Louis XIV against the Huguenots, was 
 in full activity. No more cruel law can be imagined ; 
 that which existed in England against the Papists was 
 not worse. Autodafes were still practised in Spain and 
 in Portugal. "The idea that the Deity should be 
 avenged," says Montesquieu, "is at the root of this 
 scandal." As the mere crime of sacrilege is a religious 
 one, it can be punished only by expulsion from the place 
 of worship, and the cutting off of the delinquent from the
 
 1 1 6 Montesquieu. 
 
 society of the faithful. As for the sacrilege which leads to 
 disturbances in religious services, it participates in the nature 
 of offences against public tranquillity, and must be classed 
 along with them. In other words, civil law is not cog- 
 nisant of sacrilege, and is not qualified to repress it 
 
 Montesquieu does not dwell upon the suppression of 
 heresy, but he condemns it in a few words of lofty 
 jesting, by parallels which are tantamount to a stigma. 
 " This is a maxim worth considering : we should be very 
 circumspect in the prosecution on a charge of sorcery 
 and heresy ... of what use, besides, are persecutions 
 and penalties? Men who believe in the certainty of 
 rewards beyond the grave will slip through the fingers of 
 the legislator ; their contempt of death is too great." 
 Under the impression of this idea, he addresses a very 
 humble remonstrance to the inquisitors of Spain and 
 Portugal, disguising the pathos of the thought under the 
 irony of the style. This remonstrance he places in the 
 mouth of a Jew, and if you take it in a strictly literal 
 sense, it applies to the Jews alone, but Montesquieu is 
 thinking of France. He appeals indirectly to the 
 persecution of the Huguenots, when in the next chapter 
 he attempts to explain why " Christianity is so hateful in 
 Japan." " The slightest act of disobedience is severely 
 punished by the Japanese laws ; if you will not abjure 
 Christianity, you are guilty of disobedience, the sentence 
 is accordingly pronounced, and if you persist in remaining 
 a Christian, this fresh act of disobedience calls for further 
 punishment. Punishments are regarded by the Japanese
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 117 
 
 as the vengeance taken for an insult offered to the 
 prince." It was exactly the same in France for those 
 who carried impertinence so far as not to believe in the 
 religion practised by the king. 
 
 With reference to toleration, the advice contained in 
 the Esprit des Lois does not go beyond the insinuations 
 of the Lettrcs Persanes. Montesquieu wants the Edict 
 of Nantes, the whole of it, and nothing but it. He dreads 
 religious propagandism, because, according to him, it 
 sows the seeds of discord in the state and destroys paternal 
 authority in families. He dreads the retaliations of 
 proscribed sects, which become persecuting when they 
 cease to be oppressed. " Such is," he says in conclusion, 
 "the fundamental principle of political laws, in matters 
 pertaining to religion. If you are at liberty to receive a 
 new religion in a state or not, do not sanction its 
 establishment ; if it is established, tolerate it. Should you 
 think it expedient to destroy it, gentle and crafty means 
 are the most efficacious. It is safest to attack a 
 religious creed by favour, by the conveniences of life, by 
 the hope of pecuniary advantages ; not by warnings, but 
 by encouraging forgetfulness ; not by exciting indignation, 
 but by fostering lukewarmness, when other passions act 
 upon our soul, and when those which religion inspires 
 are silent. As a general rule, invitations are better than 
 penalties to bring about a change of faith." Such was 
 the opinion of Richelieu, the great follower of Machiavelli 
 in those matters ; such was that of the politicians who, 
 like Saint-Simon, blamed Louis XFV for having spoiled
 
 1 1 8 Montesquieu. 
 
 by his violence and his pride the work of patience and of 
 suggestion. 
 
 Some readers might perhaps feel inclined to look upon 
 the above passage as merely ironical ; they would, we 
 believe, be mistaken, and Montesquieu expresses his 
 whole thought. A state religion tempered by the in- 
 difference of the majority and the unbelief of the higher 
 ranks seems to him preferable, after all, to the competi- 
 tions of petty sects. He deems the clergy a useful order 
 in the state, but its pretensions must be under restraint ; 
 its riches should be limited ; now they were, at that time, 
 far too great in France. Montesquieu dreads the influence, 
 in political questions, of the priests, who, he says, under- 
 stand nothing about politics. As for the monks, he 
 despises them thoroughly, nor does he spare them the 
 expression of his contempt. He goes somewhere so far 
 as to place them in the same rank as conquerors, the 
 most mischievous, he says, of all mortals. We must, 
 nevertheless, praise him, and praise him very much for 
 having composed these chapters. In the age in which 
 he lived, it was already a great step in advance to treat 
 publicly these grave points as matters of discussion and 
 as a political article. It required as much boldness to 
 speak of them freely in the presence of the Church as to 
 deal with them respectfully amongst a company of 
 libertines. Montesquieu rises at once above Voltaire, 
 who, in matters pertaining to religion, could never 
 entirely separate history from polemics, and polemics 
 from jokes. A propos of Bayle, Montesquieu remarks :
 
 Political Laws and Governments. 119 
 
 "He argues badly against religion who in a voluminous 
 work makes a long list of the evils which it has produced, 
 if he does not give an equally full enumeration of the 
 benefits it has conferred. If I wanted to relate all the 
 evils which have resulted in the world from civil laws, 
 monarchies, republican governments, etc., I could reveal 
 frightful things." 
 
 These considerations on criminal laws and on toleration 
 are grave and austere. Why is it that, carried away by 
 some strange aberration of taste, Montesquieu introduced 
 in those magnificent essays, as a kind of interlude, the 
 most useless, the silliest, and the unkindest of digressions ? 
 We mean the chapter entitled : On Outrages against 
 Modesty in the repression of Crime ; we might add : On 
 Outrages against Modesty in the " Esprit des Lois,"
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE " ESPRIT DES LOIS." CLIMATES, CIVIL LAWS, 
 
 INTERNATIONAL LAWS, ECONOMICAL LAWS, 
 
 THEORY OF FEUDAL LEGISLATION. 
 
 NO part of Montesquieu's works has undergone a 
 severer criticism, especially from his contempo- 
 raries, than the one in which he treats of the laws in their 
 relation to the nature of climate. That theory, says 
 Voltaire, is borrowed from Chardin, and is none the truer. 
 Chardin, besides, introduced it merely as a digression, in 
 his chapter on the "Palace of the King's Wives." He 
 refers his reader to Galen, who himself had caught his 
 inspiration from Hippocrates. The idea is no new one, 
 and if critics were astonished at seeing it revived by an 
 historian of political institutions, it is because they lived 
 in an age when those who prided themselves on legislat- 
 ing from the principles of natural law began by eliminating 
 the most elementary components of nature the air, the 
 soil, the country, the race. Montesquieu's error does 
 not consist in his having inquired into the influence ot 
 these various elements, but in having studied only one 
 of them from very insufficient data. His notes on 
 climates, taken at random, and brought together in the
 
 Climates. 121 
 
 most arbitrary manner, full of uncertain facts, of ingenious 
 paradoxes and observations, could have supplied materials 
 for a pleasant essay in Montaigne's style. Montesquieu's 
 aim was to deduce a system from it, and the whole 
 scaffolding fell to the ground. 
 
 It is an easy task to pick up the debris and to deter- 
 mine the causes of the fractures. " The government of a 
 single man is most frequently to be found in fertile 
 countries, and the government of several in barren ones" ; 
 parliamentary rule established itself on a rich agricultural 
 soil ; the sandy districts of Northern Germany have up to 
 the present day been untouched by it. According to 
 Montesquieu, a cold climate will produce, together with 
 more strength, greater self-reliance and the consciousness 
 of one's own superiority; that is to say, a smaller disposition 
 to revenge, a more serious opinion of one's security; that 
 is to say, more frankness, fewer suspicions, less political 
 scheme, less cunning. What a number of virtues 
 ascribed to frost and damp ! These elements may 
 produce them all, but they have seldom been associated. 
 The first qualities enumerated : strength, self-con- 
 fidence, the spirit of enterprise, go well together, and we 
 identify them at once with the Anglo-Saxon, the North- 
 men and the Germans, but we are puzzled by what 
 follows ; and, to mention only truisms and proverbs, we 
 can explain to ourselves neither the wiliness of Normans, 
 nor the perfidiousness of Albion, nor German quarrels. A 
 little further on, heat produces amongst the tribes of Asia 
 all the effects which we should expect from cold in
 
 122 Montesquieu. 
 
 Russia. We shall not dwell further on this point, but be 
 satisfied with having brought to light in these imprudent 
 assertions one side of Montesquieu's character, the one, 
 namely, where to share his views, one is inclined to sus- 
 pect the influence of the capricious climate of Gascony. 
 
 To tell the truth, Montesquieu has cast on that part 
 of nature only the glance of an inquirer, indiscreet and 
 stealthy. All those various conditions of human society 
 climate, country, race are nothing else but elementary 
 causes, vague and inaccessible ; the last is very uncertain 
 and confused in its data ; the two others are extremely 
 precarious in their elements, and can only be observed 
 in masses of population ; now that is what Montesquieu 
 failed to see ; at the same time, from these primary causes 
 originate secondary ones, which by accumulating their 
 effects, produce the real and living effects of social 
 phenomena, we mean the manners, the prejudices, the 
 passions, the instincts, the character, in one word, of 
 individuals, and of the nationalities which these individuals 
 contribute to make up. Montesquieu was not bound to 
 be familiar with a science only just now in search of a 
 method, classifying its collections and determining its 
 frontiers ; but he discerned its principal object, when he 
 wrote as follows : " From the different wants in different 
 climates have arisen the different ways of living ; and 
 these different ways of living have resulted in different 
 kinds of laws." This flash of light has sufficed to guide 
 him on his way, and amongst our most learned modern 
 anthropologists there is not one of whom we can say
 
 The Composing of Laws. 123 
 
 that he has done more than Montesquieu for the progress 
 of social science. 
 
 He studies civil laws in the relation which they should 
 have with the order of subjects on which they decide : 
 it is a vast picture of the efforts of men to organise 
 mankind into societies. These chapters would deserve 
 more than Voltaire's work the title of Essai sur les mceurs 
 et Fesprit des nations. Of that excursion made by both 
 writers through the annals of mankind, Voltaire, as some 
 one has very wisely said, has only drawn the elementary 
 chart, Montesquieu has composed the substantial account. 
 He sees in depth what Voltaire only perceives on the 
 surface. Voltaire does not care to inquire into the 
 " necessary relations of things"; he delights in pointing 
 out everywhere the work of chance ; and, in his determina- 
 tion to exclude God from history, he likewise eliminates 
 logic, consecutiveness, conscience, and human judgment ; 
 all these Montesquieu brings back. 
 
 He gives excellent advice on the way of composing 
 and drawing up laws. The chapter on legislation as 
 applied to private individuals contains remarkable views 
 on divorce, which he approved of; on imprisonment, 
 which he would have suppressed in civil litigation ; on the 
 necessity of keeping civil registers, which he was one of 
 the first to advise ; and on expropriation, the principle of 
 which was laid down by him. His views on slavery do 
 him the greatest honour. It was not useless to point 
 out the abuses rising from slavery and the dangers 
 belonging to it, especially in a democracy. Slavery 
 
 I 2
 
 1 24 Montesquieu. 
 
 gave birth to the republic of the United States, which 
 only freed itself from it after the experience of a century, 
 and a struggle where it nearly perished. A revolution 
 has been necessary to suppress slavery in the French 
 colonies. If official Europe troubled itself about the 
 negroes, and listened to the appeal which Montesquieu 
 made more than half a century before, it was in conse- 
 quence of the extreme weariness which all the governments 
 felt after the Empire and the great truce of Vienna 
 in 1815. "Narrow-minded people," he remarks, with 
 bitter irony, " are fond of over-estimating the injustice 
 committed against the natives of Africa. For if it was 
 such as it is stated to be, would it never have occurred to 
 the princes of Europe, who make such useless conven- 
 tions, to make a general one in favour of mercy and 
 pity?" 
 
 The European princes have followed that suggestion 
 inspired by pity ; they have misunderstood the wise 
 counsels given to them by Montesquieu in his chapters 
 on international rights. On that subject we are still 
 hesitating between an ideal law which speculative thinkers 
 are endeavouring to deduce from scholastic abstractions, 
 and a realistic jurisprudence which politicians follow in 
 society. Voltaire used to call that jurisprudence "the 
 system of highwaymen " ; whilst Montesquieu, always 
 more full of deference towards human nature, and more 
 respectful to political decorum, defines it as a " science 
 which teaches princes how far they can violate justice 
 without damaging their own interests."
 
 Jurisprudence. 125 
 
 Is there anything else, Voltaire asked in his dialogue 
 between Hobbes, Grotius, and Montesquieu ? Is there 
 an international law ? "I am grieved to have to say 
 so," answers one of the interlocutors, " but there is no 
 international law except that of being constantly on the 
 watch. All kings, all cabinet ministers think exactly as we 
 do, and that is why twelve hundred thousand mercenary 
 troops parade about in Europe, at this moment, in time 
 of peace. Let a prince disband his army, allow his 
 fortresses to fall in ruins, and spend his time in reading 
 Grotius, you will see if in a year or two he has not lost 
 his kingdom. That would be a shameful injustice. 
 Granted. And is there no remedy? None, unless that 
 a monarch should put himself in a position to be as 
 unjust as his neighbours. Then ambition is kept in 
 check by ambition, dogs of equal strength show their 
 teeth, and fall upon each other when they have prey to 
 devour." Such was the wisdom of Europe in the 
 eighteenth century. After a century and a half of 
 additional experience, such are the ultima verba of the 
 wisdom of the nineteenth. Fresh millions of men have 
 been sacrificed, and yet not one step forward can be 
 adduced. The empiricists who have nations under their 
 care will keep in their political hygiene to Broussais- 
 bleeding. " Every monarch," says Montesquieu, " retains 
 under arms all the force he would require if his subjects 
 were threatened with extermination : and this state of 
 efforts made by all against all is called peace. Accordingly 
 the whole of Europe is ruined, and so much so, that if
 
 126 Montesquieu. 
 
 private individuals were circumstanced as these most 
 opulent powers in this part of the world, they would not 
 have whereupon to live. We are poverty-stricken, not- 
 withstanding the riches and the commerce of the whole 
 world ; and soon, by dint of having soldiers, we shall 
 possess nothing else but soldiers, and we shall be in the 
 same condition as the Tartars." 
 
 Montesquieu is not inclined to accept this state of 
 things ; he looks for a remedy, and seeks it in the very 
 nature of the disease. He does not take up his position 
 outside the real world ; he enters into it, raises himself 
 up with it, and beholds it, not as it should be, but as it 
 actually is. " In Europe nations are opposed, the strong 
 to the strong ; those which are contiguous to each other 
 are nearly equal in point of courage. That is the grand 
 reason ... of the liberty which we enjoy in Europe. The 
 respect of what is right results here not from the 
 conciliation of wars but from the opposition of forces." 
 "The princes who do not hold intercourse with each 
 other by virtue of civil laws, are not free; they are 
 governed by force, and are continually liable either to 
 force others or to be forced themselves ... a prince 
 living always in such a state, has no right to complain of 
 having been compelled to make a treaty ; it is as if he 
 complained of his natural state . . . force even disposes of 
 the reputation of nationalities." It was only war which 
 decided which of the two expressions was the right one, 
 the Punic faith or the Roman faith. War is at the 
 bottom of all these barbarous relations. Men launch
 
 The Right of Conquest. 127 
 
 into war, for the purpose of attacking their neighbours 
 or of protecting themselves ; they do it with the view of 
 conquering, or, on the other hand, in order to prevent a 
 dreaded attack, and avoid the conquest by which they 
 think themselves threatened. In that pretended right all 
 reduces itself to interest. 
 
 Interest is the only sanction of that right. War is not a 
 right, it is a deed of violence ; conquest creates no right 
 per se. " It is a conqueror's business to repair part of 
 the evil which he has done. I thus define the right of 
 conquest : a necessary, legitimate, and unfortunate right, 
 which always leaves an immense debt to be paid if we 
 would discharge the claims which human nature demands; 
 on these conditions alone is conquest justified, and a right 
 established for the conqueror over the conquered people. 
 The conqueror wins over that people by good govern- 
 ment. There is accordingly a natural limit to conquest, 
 it is the faculty of assimilation. A prince should conquer 
 only that which he can retain and identify with himself. 
 States have their proportions ; and it is a mistake to go 
 beyond the limits of the territory which we can govern 
 without exhausting the strength and ruining the principle 
 of the government." 
 
 All the rules of international law are reduced to the 
 following maxim, and summed up in the following precept . 
 "The various nations, in a state of peace, should do 
 to each other the greatest amount of good, and, in a 
 state of war, should inflict upon each other the smallest 
 amount of harm consistent with their real interests."
 
 128 Mo ntesquieu. 
 
 If we contrast these views of Montesquieu with what is 
 the actual practice of the various states, that will be 
 enough to show us how far politicians still are from 
 humanity, common-sense, and experience. 
 
 Montesquieu did little else but propound general 
 views on a subject which he considered from so lofty a 
 height ; on the other hand, he was fond of economical 
 remarks, in which too much is allowed for conjecture, 
 and in which facts incompletely observed, and accumu- 
 lated, so to say, around him, dazzle his sight and too often 
 lead it astray. His greatest merit here is to have antici- 
 pated Adam Smith, and endeavoured before him to reduce 
 into a scientific shape the problems of political economy. 
 
 The capital and most lasting chapter in this part of the 
 Esprit des Lois is the history of commerce which our 
 author has inserted into it ; it is full of breadth, and has 
 a majestic flow. It constitutes a history of the re- 
 lations between the various societies of mankind, and is 
 a chapter detached from the history of civilisation. We 
 see commerce finding gradually its way out of "vexation 
 and despair," to arrive at security. But what has mankind 
 had to pay in sanguinary and atrocious experiences, 
 such as the proscription of the Jews and Huguenots in 
 France, to grasp that conclusion which confirms all the 
 lessons of politics by those of self-interest ? " It is a well- 
 known truth that the kindness of the government is the 
 only source of prosperity." Montesquieu's theory on 
 commerce rests upon a very subtle distinction between 
 "the commerce in articles of luxury," destined to supply
 
 Trade and Commerce. 129 
 
 nations with what flatters their pride, and the " commerce 
 of economy" resulting from transports and commissions. 
 The former is the trade of great monarchical states, the 
 latter constitutes the trade of republics and smaller 
 nationalities. Although Montesquieu discovers greatness 
 in the commercial enterprise of England, trade seems to 
 him, viewed in itself, a matter of petty government and 
 of low-born people. The Romans spurned it, and France 
 should have nobler cares. Riches are something, no 
 doubt, and the public wealth tends to be transformed 
 by the extension of movable property. This is what 
 Montesquieu sees very well, but he goes further. " The 
 nation which possesses most of that movable property 
 is the richest," and yet he does not covet those riches 
 for his own country. Honour and riches, or, in other 
 words, honour and trade, do not stand on the same 
 level; that feudal honour, he means, which is the 
 principle of monarchical government. 
 
 As for the other form of honour, the popular or bourgeois 
 one, Montesquieu believes, on the contrary, that it is the 
 soul and prop of commerce. If he pronounces on trade 
 with the prejudices of a parlementaire, he decides about 
 it as a good magistrate. His considerations on the 
 dangers of speculation and gambling substituted in the 
 place of work, on the necessity of maintaining in all 
 their severity the laws on bankruptcy, deserve all the 
 more to be meditated, because facts have strongly justified 
 his previsions. Nothing can be truer than his reflections 
 on the rate of interest and on money-exchanges.
 
 1 30 Montesquieu. 
 
 A few lines of his state more clearly than ever 
 was done the problem of tariffs and that of commercial 
 treaties. The everlasting conflict between protection 
 and free-trade is reduced to its legitimate terms, and 
 Montesquieu indicates how we must arrive at the solu- 
 tion of the difficulty. " Wherever there is commerce, 
 there are customs and dues. The object of commerce 
 is the export and import of merchandise for the benefit 
 of the state, and the purpose of customs is the levying 
 of a certain duty, also for the benefit of the state, on 
 that same export and import. The state must therefore 
 occupy a neutral position between its tolls and its com- 
 merce, so that these two elements should not interfere 
 with each other." 
 
 Let us exemplify these maxims by an illustration of 
 Montesquieu's : " When a tribute is merely accidental, 
 and depends neither on the industry of the nation, nor 
 the population, nor even the cultivation of the soil, the 
 riches such a tribute brings in are of a bad kind. The 
 King of Spain, who receives great sums from his Cadiz 
 customs, is, in this respect, merely a very wealthy private 
 individual in a very poor country. ... If some provinces 
 in Castile supplied him with a sum equal to that furnished 
 by the Cadiz customs, his power would be far greater, 
 his wealth could be only the result of that belonging to 
 these countries ; all the other provinces would thus be 
 animated by the prosperity of them, and all united would 
 be better able to bear their respective burdens. Instead 
 of a large exchequer, there would be a great people."
 
 Trade and Commerce. 131 
 
 Montesquieu has discerned all the importance of inter- 
 national commercial relations. " Two nations trading 
 together are in a position of mutual dependence. 
 Properly conducted relations and commercial treaties 
 soundly framed prepare between two nations the most 
 beneficent connection ; but the reverse is equally true, and 
 experience verifies it more constantly." Montesquieu seems 
 thus to have generalised too hurriedly when he affirms 
 that "the natural effect of commerce is to incline people 
 in favour of peace." Commerce requires peace, but it 
 genders a spirit of competition extremely bitter, extremely 
 jealous, and extremely suspicious ; this spirit leads to con- 
 flicts as severe as political rivalries, and to struggles about 
 tariffs as implacable as wars about the delimitation of 
 frontiers. 
 
 If Montesquieu could have been acquainted with the 
 constitution of the United States, he would on more than 
 one point have modified the chapters in which he 
 discusses democracy ; if he had observed the manners of 
 the Americans, he would have altered some of his views 
 on commerce. Not that he failed to anticipate the future 
 reserved to the great industrial nations. He has 
 observed the chief difficulties which these communities 
 have in maintaining their public morality ; they are bound 
 to struggle against the very effects of the industry which 
 is the source of their life. " In the countries imbued 
 solely with the commercial spirit, all human actions and all 
 moral virtues are treated as objects of trade ; the smallest 
 things, even those required by humanity, have a money-
 
 132 Montesquieu. 
 
 value. The spirit of commerce produces amongst men 
 a certain sense of strict justice, opposed on the one 
 hand to robbery, and on the other to those moral virtues 
 which lead us not to be always too strict about our own 
 interests, but to neglect them occasionally for the 
 interests of others." As a point of curiosity, and before 
 finishing this part of our subject, let us quote the remark 
 which concludes the chapter on the commerce of Greece : 
 " How those games contributed to the prosperity of the 
 nation, which the Greeks, so to say, offered to the world ! " 
 Montesquieu, as the inventor of international exhibitions, 
 deserves to be placed side by side with Pascal, originator 
 of omnibuses ! 
 
 If we isolated the noble and generous remarks of 
 Montesquieu, and the duties by which society is bound 
 to all its members, we might see in him the forerunner 
 of our modern state-socialism. At the beginning of his 
 chapter on hospitals, he says : "A man is not poor 
 because he has nothing, but because he does not work"; 
 he then goes on : " The state owes to all citizens a secure 
 subsistence, food, proper clothing, and a healthful kind of 
 life." The state is bound to prevent industrial crises, 
 "to prevent the people either from suffering or from 
 rebellion. In order to this result, schools should be 
 opened for the teaching of manual professions, the exer- 
 cise of those professions should be made easy, and the 
 workmen should be secured against the risks attending 
 them in commercial countries ; when many people have 
 no other resource but their craft, the state is often
 
 State Socialism. 133 
 
 obliged to provide for the wants of the old, the sick, and 
 the orphan. A well-regulated state derives these 
 requirements from the crafts themselves ; it provides 
 some with the work which they are capable of doing, it 
 teaches others to work, and that, in itself, is already a 
 work." The reader, however, must not be mistaken ; 
 Montesquieu contemplates neither " national workshops" 
 nor the famous " right to work." He wants simply to 
 revert to the practice of the ancien regime monarchies. 
 Compare this chapter on Hospitals with de Tocqueville's 
 chapter on Administrative Habits under the Old Monarchy, 
 and you will have Montesquieu's real thought. 
 
 The monarchy which he always has in view, is the 
 paternal one ; his opinions on the duties of the state 
 towards the subjects of the prince, are the result of his 
 notions on the hierarchy of privileged bodies and his 
 system of prerogatives. All these consequences proceed 
 from the very fundamental principle of the monarchy, 
 and the feudal character of its origins. A history of 
 feudal institutions, that is to say, the historical raisin 
 d'etre of monarchy and its privileges, was thus the natural 
 complement of Montesquieu's work ; and innumerable 
 bonds, somewhat confused, no doubt, but yet perfectly 
 fastened, connected it with all the portions of the Esprit 
 des Lois. 
 
 Montesquieu felt a great deal of interest in the history 
 of the middle ages, very much opposed and very superior 
 to his contemporaries, in this as well as in many other 
 subjects. He endeavoured to discover in the obscure
 
 1 34 Montesquieu. 
 
 origin of France, the law of the destinies of his native 
 country. The pride of the gentilhomme was equally con- 
 cerned with the curiosity of the thinker. Both forces 
 drew him towards those mysterious fastnesses from which 
 the elements of political freedom had issued, together 
 with the Germans, his reputed forefathers. He started 
 on a voyage of discovery. The work was toilsome, the 
 investigations slow and painful. " It seems," he says, 
 " that there is nothing but sea, and that the sea itself 
 has no shores. All these cold, dry, insipid, and hard 
 works must be read, assimilated. . . ." "Feudal laws 
 are a splendid sight. An old oak rises, the eye sees its 
 foliage from afar ; we approach, we behold the stem, but 
 we cannot perceive the roots ; if we want to find them, 
 we must dig the ground." 
 
 Montesquieu became passionately fond of his work 
 in consequence of a very sharp controversy which broke 
 out in the meanwhile. The historical memoirs of 
 Count Boulainvilliers on the ancient governments of 
 France were published in 1727, five years after the 
 author's death. The subject was the German conquest 
 and the granting of liberty through the medium of the 
 states-general. According to Boulainvilliers, the con- 
 querors who had reduced Gaul into subjection had, by 
 the very fact of the conquest, assumed the right and the 
 duty of limiting the power of the king. The Abbe Dubos 
 perpetual secretary of the Academic Franfaise, maintained 
 a diametrically opposed view in his Critical History of the 
 Establishment of the French Monarchy in Gaul. This
 
 Boulainvilliers and Diibos. 135 
 
 work came out in 1734. According to Dubos, the 
 Germans, few in number besides, had entered Gaul, not 
 as conquerors, but as allies of the Romans ; their instal- 
 lation in the country led to no fresh institutions. The 
 chiefs of these bands received from the Romans the 
 government of the territories they occupied, and they 
 governed those territories according to Roman customs. 
 The revolution which created France took place only 
 later on ; it consisted in the transformation of offices into 
 lordships ; the regime of the conquest was introduced into 
 Gaul by the advent of feudalism, for the benefit of the 
 lords. 
 
 Montesquieu prided himself on his Teutonic origin, 
 but his spirit was essentially Roman. He seemed 
 destined to reconcile the two conflicting theories. " Count 
 Boulainvilliers and the Abbe Dubos," says he, "have 
 each produced a system, the one of which seems a 
 conspiracy against the third estate, and the other a 
 conspiracy against the aristocracy." He wanted to stand 
 between the rivals. His passions drew him towards 
 Boulainvilliers, whom he treated as a gentilhomme, and 
 estranged him from Dubos, whom, despite their academical 
 confraternity, he regarded as little better than a parvenu 
 and a college scullion. He criticised Boulainvilliers with 
 respect ; if now and then he approves Dubos, it is only 
 disdainfully ; his discussion with him is nothing else but 
 banter. 
 
 He thus turned round the subject, so to say, before 
 dealing with it. In Book xvm, alluding to the laws
 
 1 36 Montesquieu. 
 
 in their relation with the nature of the soil, he treats of 
 the Prankish kings, their majority, their long hair, 
 and the national assemblies under their reign. He 
 reverts to the same question in Book xxviu, on the Origin 
 and the Revolution of t/ie Civil Laws amongst the French. 
 After a broad definition of the subject, he grapples with 
 it on one side, and then stops suddenly short. " I could 
 have inserted a large work in a large work. I am like that 
 antiquary who left his country, arrived in Egypt, cast a 
 glance at the Pyramids, and went off." Yet the Pyramids 
 fascinated him ; he returned to them, and, this time, 
 wished to dive into the secrets of the monument. After 
 having terminated Books xxx and xxxi, that is to say, 
 his theory of the feudal laws, he said, in 1748 : "I believe 
 I have made discoveries on the obscurest subject we 
 have, and notwithstanding, a magnificent one." 
 
 Montesquieu discusses the origin of feudal laws which 
 he finds in Caesar and Tacitus, he then comments on 
 the codes of the Barbarians, and challenges Dubos, en- 
 deavouring to prove against him that the lands occupied 
 by the Teutonic leaders paid no tribute. The whole effort 
 of the debate is there. One of the most judicious and 
 prudent umpires in this great historical controversy, M. 
 Vuitry, remarks that " Montesquieu does not destroy the 
 ensemble of the proofs put forth by Dubos, at any rate as 
 to the continuance under the early Prankish kings of the 
 taxes imposed by the Romans upon the Gallo-Roman 
 population. But his arguing is more conclusive and 
 more peremptory with regard to the Franks; and it must
 
 Feudal Law. 137 
 
 be acknowledged that if the kings endeavoured to oblige 
 these to the payment of the public tributes, it was with- 
 out success." 
 
 Montesquieu studies in due order the origin of feudal 
 dues, that of vassalage, that of fiefs. He discusses the 
 question of military service on the part of freemen, the 
 justice rendered by the lords, the transformation of 
 benefices into fiefs, and the revolution which gave to 
 these fiefs an hereditary character. This revolution 
 brought about feudal government, and Montesquieu 
 connects it with the other revolution which changed the 
 reigning family, and united to an important fief the king- 
 dom deprived of all domanial property in consequence of 
 the dispersion of power. From these two circumstances, 
 contemporaneous and united together, he deduces one 
 leading consequence, namely, the right of primogeniture. 
 Fiefs, originally, were capable of being transferred, and 
 the kingdom was liable to be divided. Henceforth both 
 crown and fiefs are hereditary. The transference of 
 fiefs to foreigners is another result. Hence, for the 
 suzerains, private rights : that of lod and of sale, that of 
 redemption, that of garde-noble, the settling of the forms 
 of homage, and the principle of old French juris- 
 prudence that landed property cannot be alienated from 
 the branch of the family to which it belongs. " I finish," 
 says Montesquieu, " this treatise on fiefs at the point 
 where most writers have begun it." He abruptly concludes 
 there, and winds up by that splendid juridical develop- 
 ment the three books, where, if we may believe a master, 
 
 K
 
 138 Montesquieu. 
 
 " he has stated with so much power, but in so capricious 
 and desultory a manner, his views on the origin of our 
 social institutions." 
 
 Since Montesquieu, the study of mediaeval history, 
 then in its early stage, and limited to conjecture, has pro- 
 duced a science which occupies an important place in 
 our historical schools. Deeper researches, and the inves- 
 tigation of original documents, have remarkably renovated 
 and extended the discussions which divided the erudite 
 French scholars contemporary of Montesquieu. These 
 controversies are still alive, and if the battle-field seems 
 closed, the fight has not come to an end. Although 
 wounded in many places, Montesquieu is still imposing 
 in the distance at which we see him. He has examined 
 the ground of the contest, and given the impulse. " We 
 must," says he, "elucidate history by legislation, and 
 elucidate legislation by history." He was really creating 
 a science and a method which he bequeathed to his 
 disciples. 
 
 These two capital episodes of commerce and feudal 
 laws did not lend themselves, as the previous ones did, 
 to literary amenities and to pictorial illustrations. They 
 form long galleries, very open, but somewhat cold and 
 bare. In order to embellish them, Montesquieu could 
 place in them only busts and statues ; that is what he has 
 done. Two of these statues override all the rest, both by 
 the importance of the personages represented, and by the 
 finish of the execution ; they are those of Alexander the 
 Great and Charlemagne, who were both conquerors and
 
 Alexander and Charlemagne. 139 
 
 civilisers. Under the image of these heroes Montes- 
 quieu has embodied the noblest and greatest qualities 
 which his historical genius inspired him with in the art of 
 governing men. 
 
 Italiam ! Italiam ! Such is his exclamation on reach- 
 ing the goal which he had fixed for his excursion. No 
 conclusion ; he does not shut his book, but leaves it 
 open, so to say, towards the future.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CRITICISM ON THE " ESPRIT DBS LOIS," AND 
 
 REFUTATION OF THE CRITICISM. LAST YEARS 
 
 OF MONTESQUIEU. HIS INFLUENCE THROUGH- 
 OUT EUROPE UNDER THE OLD MONARCHY. 
 HIS VIEWS ON THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT. 
 
 THE Esprit des Lois was printed at Geneva, and 
 published there in November 1748, in two quarto 
 volumes. It bore no author's name, but everyone affixed 
 to it that of Montesquieu. The work soon found its way 
 to the studies of all respectable persons, although the 
 government censors had not authorised its circulation. 
 The success it obtained was extreme, yet critics rose up 
 in large numbers. Montesquieu was too unpretendingly 
 a great man not to excite much jealousy. He attacked 
 too many prejudices and disconcerted too many habits not 
 to suggest many protestations. Above all, he waged war 
 against the prejudice of pure reason, and interfered with 
 the arbitrary decisions of those reformers who delight 
 to work in tabula rasa. That school of speculative 
 philosophers has always been restive against experience. 
 They condemned the Esprit des Lois without taking the
 
 Helvttius. 141 
 
 trouble to understand it, and the historical method with- 
 out trying to apply it. 
 
 Montesquieu had one friend among the members of 
 the coterie to which we are alluding : it was Helvetius. He 
 composed a treatise on esprit in general, but failed to 
 comprehend that of Montesquieu. He possessed as- 
 surance for lack of depth, and summed up in a few lines 
 all the objections of abstract politicians against the Esprit 
 des Lois. " You often lend to the world a reason and a 
 wisdom which are really only yours ... a writer aiming at 
 being useful to mankind wishes rather to busy himself 
 with true maxims in a state of things to come, than to 
 perpetuate those which are dangerous. . . I only know 
 two kinds of government : the good ones and the bad 
 ones ; the former have not yet entered an appearance." 
 According to the opinion of Helvetius, Montesquieu's 
 system of politics was too complicated ; his hygiene was 
 too slow, and required too much patience on the part of 
 the physician, too much virtue on that of the patient. 
 Why all these minute counsels on dietary and mode of 
 living ? It was so easy to find a well-sounding formula, 
 and to follow a good universal remedy. " My aim," said 
 Montesquieu to some one who criticised him thus, " has 
 been to write my work, and not his." Helvetius, who 
 dreaded the Esprit des Lois for the sake of his friend's 
 reputation, would certainly have benefited by the change. 
 
 Montesquieu had always shown his contempt for the 
 farming of the taxes, the/ermiers and traitants in general. 
 One of them attempted to wreak his vengeance upon the
 
 142 Montesquieu. 
 
 philosopher. His name was Claude Dupin, and he 
 compiled in 1740 some Reflexions on certain parts of a 
 book entitled V Esprit des Lois. None but a fool could 
 have selected such a title, and the work was on a level 
 with the title. " If you are looking out for some situation," 
 said Dupin, "you had better take another direction ; the 
 one which you follow would not lead you anywhere." 
 The situation which Montesquieu aimed at was not one 
 of those which are in the gift of the Dupin race. " Here 
 I am," he wrote to a friend, " summoned before the court 
 of tax-collectors." Dupin dared not carry the business to 
 extremities, and was contented with securing for his two 
 volumes a clandestine circulation. A few just remarks, if 
 notreflections, might be found in ihefac/um. Montesquieu 
 had his fits of absence and of carelessness. Dupin noted 
 them, and Voltaire turned these criticisms to account in 
 the writings which he composed about Montesquieu, 
 the A, E, C (1768), and the commentary on F Esprit des 
 Lois (i-m}. 
 
 Voltaire was busy upon FEssai sur les Mceurs when F Es- 
 prit des Lois appeared. It seems as if that masterpiece 
 annoyed him ; he disliked Montesquieu, who in his turn 
 had but little taste for Voltaire, in whom he saw scarcely 
 anything but a literary scamp. "It would be a disgrace for 
 the Academic" said he, "if Voltaire belonged to it; and it 
 will be one day a disgrace for Voltaire not to have been 
 made an academician." " He is too witty to understand 
 me," added Montesquieu. Voltaire only half-listened 
 and half-understood. He stopped at the jokes, and
 
 Religious Criticism. 143 
 
 scarcely perceived the gist of the matter. He praised 
 Montesquieu when others attacked him, and attacked 
 him when the rest heaped praises upon him ; whilst 
 pretending to caress him, he contrived to scratch, and 
 then covered the wound with small flowers'. The following 
 beautiful appreciation, which makes up for many epigrams, 
 is Voltaire's, however : " The human race had lost its 
 titles; M.de Montesquieu found them and testored them." 
 What Voltaire enjoyed most in the Esprit des 
 Lois is the opposition it met with on the part of 
 the clergy. The Jesuits condemned it, but courteously, 
 in the Journal de Trevoux, the Jansenists attacked 
 it bitterly in the Nouvelles Ecdesiastiques for April 
 and October 1749. Both called Montesquieu to account 
 a propos of Spinosism, climate, the Stoics, suicide, 
 Montezuma, polygamy, and Julian the Apostate. 
 These, however, were only outpost skirmishes ; the brunt 
 of their attack was directed against the chapter on religion, 
 where they showed themselves extremely weak, and 
 toleration, where Montesquieu himself had opened the 
 breach. Montesquieu, said they, considers all religions 
 as matters of police ; he does not distinguish the true 
 one to which all rights belong, from the false ones which 
 have no rights at all. They branded him with impiety, 
 and convicted him of contradictions. " The parenthesis 
 which the author inserts to say that he is a Christian," 
 the Nouvelliste wrote, " is a weak evidence of his 
 catholicity. He would laugh at our simplicity if we took 
 him for what he is not." Montesquieu was inclined to
 
 1 44 Montesquieu. 
 
 tolerate the Huguenots in France, and to forbid missions 
 in China ; that was the very reverse of what the Journal 
 de Trevoux and the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques wanted, and 
 therefore they came to the conclusion that the Esprit des 
 Lois "was written in favour of the old and modern 
 persecutors of Christianity." The Jansenists wound up 
 by a regular denunciation, and by an appeal to the se- 
 cular power against a book " whose aim it is to teach men 
 that virtue is a useless motive of action in monarchies." 
 
 Montesquieu felt that kind of insinuation ; he published 
 a Defense de V Esprit des Lois, which appeared in April 
 1750. It is brilliantly written, and of well-sustained 
 irony. The author's thought, disfigured by fragmentary 
 quotations, is restored; on most criticisms of detail he 
 triumphs, but he has less success in those which bear upon 
 the subject-matter. If he had wished to establish his 
 orthodoxy and to submit, he must have disowned the 
 very spirit of the Esprit des Lois, and committed half the 
 work to the flames. That he would not do, and he 
 ended as he ought to have begun by contempt. " To 
 condemn the book is nothing," said he, writing to a 
 friend, " it must be destroyed." The Sorbonne was not 
 equal to the task ; they took cognizance of the case ; but 
 the doctors could not agree as to the chief heads of the 
 indictment. The work was denounced to the assembly 
 of the clergy, when the plaintiffs were scarcely listened to. 
 The congregation of the Sacre- College placed the work 
 on the Index list ; this step was very little talked about, 
 and no one paid any attention to it. Meanwhile
 
 Last Years. 145 
 
 Malesherbes had assumed the direction of the bookselling 
 office, and removed the interdict which stopped the Esprit 
 des Lois at the frontier. This masterpiece of French 
 genius thus received its letters of naturalisation towards 
 the end of 1750. Twenty-two editions of it were 
 published in less than two years, and it was translated 
 into all languages. 
 
 The Italians were enthusiastic about it ; the English 
 paid to it a brilliant homage ; the King of Sardinia made 
 his son read it. Frederick the Great, who had annotated 
 the Considerations sur les Remains, made some reserve on 
 the Esprit des Lois. " M. de Maupertuis sends me word," 
 says Montesquieu, " that he (Frederick) has found certain 
 things about which he does not share my opinion. I 
 answered that I should not mind betting that I would 
 put my finger on those things." Frederick, however, who 
 seized his own property wherever he found it, took care 
 not to neglect Montesquieu's precepts, and the history of 
 his government of Silesia may be regarded as a comment 
 on the wise maxims of the Esprit des Lois respecting con- 
 quests. 
 
 Montesquieu lived enough to enjoy all his glory ; he 
 grew old amidst the admiration of the whole of Europe. 
 He wrote little now : a fine fragment, dictated by the 
 spirit of Stoicism Lysimaque ; an agreeable novel 
 Arsace et Ismenie ; an essay on taste, destined for the 
 Encyclopedic, are all the remains we possess of the literary 
 activity of his later years. He divided his time between 
 Paris and La Brede, enjoying his fortune, enjoying still
 
 1 46 Montesquieu. 
 
 more the society of his friends. He was becoming blind, 
 and bore calmly that great trial. " It seems to me," he 
 said, " that the little light I still have, is only the dawn 
 of the day when my eyes shall have closed for ever." 
 The scheme of his life and his inward feeling led him 
 to die, as he had said, " on the side of hope." His soul 
 was that of a Stoic; he ended as a submissive and 
 respectful Christian. He was sixty-six years old when 
 he breathed his last in Paris, February loth, 1755. 
 
 His glory was not overrated; time has only strengthened 
 and increased it. He was only anxious about the verdict 
 of posterity and the future of his book. "My work," 
 said he, " will be more approved than read." He might 
 have added, more frequently read than understood, and 
 more frequently understood than reduced into practice. 
 His Hippocratic hygiene, spurned by speculative men, 
 irritated the empiricists.' He recommended moderation 
 to princes at a time when all the governments of Europe 
 were becoming corrupted through the abuse of power. 
 The tendency was practically towards enlightened des- 
 potism, theoretically towards natural law. Thinkers and 
 politicians took out of Montesquieu whatever they found 
 within their reach; they could not grasp his method. 
 We see them quoting his authority on points of detail, 
 and disregarding the general spirit of his doctrine ; they 
 apply the reforms which he recommends, and violate the 
 ruleshe lays down. 
 
 D'Alembert composed his tloge, and added to it an 
 Analyse de f Esprit des Lois, where he endeavours to
 
 His Sziccess. 
 
 draw both author and book in the direction of the 
 EttcydopttKe. Beccaria, seeking his inspiration from the 
 chapters on criminal laws, is a mere jurist ; he deduces 
 consequences, but is no observer. Filangieri imitates 
 Montesquieu, and pretends to correct him : " Montes- 
 quieu aims at explaining the reasons of our actions ; I, 
 on the other hand, want to establish the rules of what we 
 should do." Bielfeld borrows from Montesquieu the essence 
 of \i\?, Institutions politiques, but he drowns it, so to say, 
 in natural law, and by this admixture he endeavours to 
 reconcile the Esprit des Lois with Wolfs system. 
 
 Princes behave like philosophers. " His book," says 
 Catherine the Great, "is my breviary." She makes of it 
 extracts which she commits to the meditations of her 
 pompous commissioners for the drawing up of the 
 Russian code of laws ; but if she lavishes upon her 
 subjects glowing maxims on human liberty and equality, 
 in practice she acts according to the master's rule, namely, 
 " that an extensive government naturally supposes un- 
 limited power in him who governs"; and she concludes 
 that the best way of maintaining the Russian state is to 
 strengthen its principle, that is to say, autocracy. The 
 compilers of the Prussian code of 1792 felt the influence 
 of the Esprit des Lois, and the ensemble of their work 
 manifests an enlightened despotism ; but the measures 
 which Montesquieu proposed to maintain the monarch- 
 ical principle have inspired the following details in the 
 Prussian code : Administrative colleges controlling each 
 other and keeping each other in check ; the independence
 
 1 48 Montesquieu. 
 
 of the agents of the government secured by a kind of 
 permanence ; the great share allowed to the aristocracy in 
 communal administration ; the strict upholding of the 
 hierarchy and of castes ; the prohibition enforced upon 
 noblemen to exercise trade and commerce. 
 
 In France, pedants and pietists always considered 
 Montesquieu as a preacher of sedition ; they accused 
 him of shaking the foundations both of Church and State. 
 This proposition Crevier undertook to demonstrate with 
 elucidatory documents, and he published in 1764 a 
 volume entitled Obsewations sur le livre de r Esprit des 
 Lois. Crevier knew ancient history very well, and he 
 easily caught Montesquieu tripping here and there. His 
 mind was naturally a dull one, and of this fact he had 
 still less difficulty in furnishing a proof. He took up the 
 arguments of the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques ; seeing in 
 Montesquieu a mere litterateur greedy of an unhealthy 
 kind of glory, he discovered in the Esprit des Lois nothing 
 but the spirit of vanity, of paradox, and of faction. " By 
 dint of being the friend of mankind," says Crevier, " the 
 author of the Esprit des Lois ceases to love his country as 
 much as he ought ; the English cannot but feel flattered 
 in reading that work, but the perusal of it is capable only 
 of annoying good Frenchmen." 
 
 Crevier was true enough in speaking thus of the 
 English ; they were flattered by the book ; they did 
 better, they profited by it. Up to that time they had 
 worked out their constitution without analysing it > 
 Montesqueiu gave them the raison d'etre of their laws ; he
 
 His Influence in England. 149 
 
 trained disciples in England. Blackstone was one of 
 them, and all the commentators of the English con- 
 stitution follow Blackstone. We must include amongst 
 them the GeneveseDelolme; his work, published in 1771, 
 gave a minute description of the English regime, the 
 principles and maxims alone of which Montesquieu had 
 enumerated. 
 
 Long before Europeans had thought of appropriating 
 these maxims to the time-honoured monarchical in- 
 stitutions, the Americans, by a bolder experiment, had 
 appropriated them to democracy. Montesquieu had 
 foreseen that the English colonies in America would 
 shake off the yoke of the mother country ; and he had 
 indicated the federative system as the only means of 
 conciliating political elements which antiquity had never 
 combined, viz., extensive frontiers, a democracy, and a 
 republic. Washington was acquainted with the Esprit 
 des Lois, and the influence of the work upon the authors 
 of the constitution of the United States cannot be 
 questioned. On the separation of the various powers 
 the Americans have been enlightened by Montesquieu ; 
 they have placed democracy in the states of the Union 
 with their restricted limits ; they have placed the republic 
 in the federation of the states. If they have organised 
 this democracy and this republic, it is because their 
 political training enabled them to do so. Of their 
 Puritan origin they retained a very deep religious feeling, 
 submission to rule and the spirit of self-abnegation, which, 
 according to Montesquieu, constituted the essence of
 
 1 50 Montesquieii. 
 
 republican virtues. Whilst altering the arrangement of 
 the laws recommended by our author to republican 
 governments, they justified his leading thought, and 
 completed his work. 
 
 These traditions and these habits, which constituted 
 the strength of the Americans in their revolution, did not 
 exist in France. If we take everything into account, 
 the French were nearer to Caesar's Rome than to 
 Cromwell's England. When Montesquieu thought of 
 France he never considered either a democracy or a 
 republic. It is, said he, in the old French institutions 
 that we find the spirit of the monarchy. His system on 
 climates prevented him from thinking of introducing 
 into his native country the institutions of England ; he 
 only was anxious to reduce the " fundamental laws" of 
 the French to their peculiar principle. 
 
 A king kept within proper bounds by privileged and 
 dependent bodies ; no states-general, but a magistracy 
 entrusted with the guardianship of the fundamental 
 laws ; an aristocracy which may not exercise commercial 
 pursuits ; no great trading companies which would destroy 
 the hierarchy of intermediate corporations, by placing 
 political power on the one side and fortune on the 
 other; a paternal government, enlightened, intelligent, 
 leading the French not only with kindness, but with 
 intelligence, not endeavouring to interfere with their 
 habits, so as not to interfere with their virtues; 
 avoiding especially the temptation of wearying them, 
 for that is what they tolerate the least ; full liberty to do
 
 The Ideal of France. 1 5 1 
 
 frivolous things seriously, and serious things gaily; 
 honour everywhere; toleration for believers, glory for 
 the gentilshommes ; civil liberty for the people ; no foreign 
 expeditions, few colonies; none of those enterprises 
 which increase absolute power only at the expense of 
 the relative one; finally, moderation with reference to 
 foreigners as well as at home. " France being precisely 
 of the dimensions best suited to it, such," says 
 Montesquieu, " is the ideal of the French monarchy." 
 Good kings and wise cabinet-ministers are the great 
 spring of that government. France has supplied notable 
 instances of both : Charlemagne, who overrules history ; 
 Saint-Louis, "law, justice, greatness of soul"; Louis XII, 
 " the best citizen" ; Henry IV, " whom it is enough to 
 name "; Coligny, Turenne, Catinat ; then, by way of 
 contrast, and in order to demonstrate by bad instances, 
 Richelieu, Louvois, Louis XIV : despotism and its in- 
 struments. 
 
 Montesquieu gives us that ideal sketch, and he fails to 
 perceive that France, such as he describes it, makes 
 France, such as he conceives it, impossible. He would 
 impart strength to institutions which are in a dying state ; 
 the principle is tainted, and he himself has proved that 
 whe-n the principle is tainted, the government is on the 
 brink of ruin. The crown has levelled everything and 
 invaded the whole country. It has concentrated all the 
 powers in itself, and brought together all the classes of 
 society by debasing them before the throne. The nobles 
 have become degraded to the rank of courtiers ; now,
 
 1 5 2 Montesquieu. 
 
 what is a courtier ? " Ambition combined with idleness, 
 and baseness with pride; the anxiety to become rich 
 without work ; the hatred of truth ; flattery, treachery, 
 perfidy, neglect of all duties, contempt of all the virtues 
 which should characterise a citizen ; dread lest the prince 
 should be a virtuous man, the hope that he is full of 
 weaknesses ; more than all that, the continual habit of 
 making virtue look ridiculous, such, I believe, is and 
 has been the character of the majority of courtiers in all 
 ages and all places." Honour does not even make up 
 for the virtues which they lack ; their honour, false and 
 servile, is only one form of their degradation. "It is 
 possible to be covered at the same time with infamy and 
 with dignities. . . ." Nobles of that sort " consider it an 
 honour to obey a king, but deem it the greatest degrada- 
 tion to share the power with the people." Nay, supposing 
 they wished to do so, they would find it impossible. 
 " Their natural ignorance, their want of attention, their 
 contempt for civil government," incapacitate them. The 
 parliaments, discredited by the crown, cannot take the 
 place of the aristocracy. Everything is perishing, and 
 the destruction of the edifice is announced by the 
 downfall of the buttresses. 
 
 The fact we have thus stated was soon perceptible 
 under Louis XVI, when an endeavour was made to 
 govern in conformity with Montesquieu's plan, by 
 restoring authority to the parliament and influence to 
 the privileged classes. They invoked against Turgot 
 and his schemes of reform the maxims of the Esprit des
 
 Foreign Policy. 153 
 
 Lois, and by opposing these reforms they hurried on the 
 Revolution. This attempt to revive the old monarchy 
 only helped to render the monarchy more unpopular, 
 and the privileged classes more hateful. 
 
 On one point alone, namely foreign policy, Mon- 
 tesquieu's advice prevailed, and resulted in a benefit. 
 Vergennes' policy is an application of the Esprit des Lois 
 to diplomacy. When we read the memoirs which that 
 wise minister addressed to Louis XVI about the 
 succession to the throne of Bavaria, we think we are 
 perusing a development of the following sentence, which 
 concludes the chapter on war, in the book treating of 
 international law : " Let no one, especially, mention the 
 glory of the prince; his glory would be his pride; now 
 pride is a passion, not a legitimate right. It is true that 
 the reputation of his power might increase the strength 
 of his kingdom, but a reputation for justice would increase 
 it to the same extent." 
 
 This brings us to the French Revolution, which 
 Montesquieu had not foreseen, but which he nevertheless 
 helped to prepare, and which he often inspired, without 
 even directing its progress.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MONTESQUIEU AND THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 AT the end of the last century, every enlightened 
 Frenchman had in his library the works of Montes- 
 quieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Buffon. As the convoca- 
 tion of the states-general invited all the citizens to give 
 their views on the reform of the state, everyone rushed 
 to his books, and applied to his favourite authors for 
 ideas or arguments which might help him in bringing 
 forth the principles he wished to see prevail. Rousseau 
 and Montesquieu were the most frequently consulted 
 Rousseau had more disciples, but Montesquieu supplied 
 most quotations. The former explained only one system 
 his own ; the latter developed all those which history 
 has collected. The Esprit des Lois became a kind of 
 Digest ; the various parties drew from the book maxims 
 and precedents in support of their wishes or their pre- 
 tensions. 
 
 The intelligent portion of the nobility appropriated 
 both the inmost thought and the letter ; their wishes 
 are exactly " Montesquieu's cahiers " at the states- 
 general ; we there find his predilection for monarchical
 
 Montesquieu and the Revolution. 155 
 
 freedom, his firm conviction that this freedom could not 
 be founded in France except on the prerogatives of 
 privileged bodies. The tiers-'etat borrowed from him the 
 system of the separation of powers, and many a special 
 reform ; but as at the same time they claimed civil 
 equality and liberty as the basis of political freedom, the 
 whole doctrine of Montesquieu on the government of 
 France was at once destroyed. 
 
 The Revolution caused the views of the tiers-etat to 
 prevail. After the night of August 4th, Montesquieu's 
 monarchy was merely the Utopia of an 'emigre. " If in a 
 monarchy you suppress the privileges of the church, the 
 nobility, and the towns, you will soon have nothing but 
 a popular state or a despotic one." Such was the 
 dilemma laid down in the Esprit des Lois, and which has 
 become the periodical problem of the French govern- 
 ment. Politicians who held by the monarchy, but at the 
 same time did not mean to sacrifice liberty, went in quest 
 of a transaction, and found it in the Esprit des Lois. 
 They proposed the example of England. These were, so 
 to say, the second generation of Montesquieu's followers 
 during the period of the Revolution. 
 
 Great minds have their families, and it is the same 
 case with them as with royal dynasties : it is not always 
 the eldest sons who rise to the highest fortunes and 
 secure the glory of the house ; there are younger sons 
 who have descendants of their own, and whose chateaux 
 surpass in importance those of their brothers ; others, 
 penniless, go to the colonies, discover mines, marry into 
 
 L 2
 
 1 5 6 Montesqu leu. 
 
 rich families, and come back to restore the ancestral 
 mansion. Certain young " scamps," strange or scan- 
 dalous in their behaviour, have nevertheless contributed, 
 if not to the honour, at any rate to the celebrity of their 
 family name. Such was the case with Montesquieu's 
 political descendency. The elder branch emigrated ; 
 it was seen sitting in the counsels of princes, and 
 inspiring Burke's famous work ; the whole sketch there 
 drawn by the enthusiastic English orator, of the ancient 
 monarchy and of possible reforms, is taken from the 
 Esprit des Lois. The next generation includes the 
 supporters of two legislative bodies, the monarchistcs, as 
 they were called, Necker in the government ; Mounter, 
 Lally, Bergasse, Clermont-Tonnerre, Malouet, in the 
 assembly ; and amongst the outsiders, Mallet Du Pan 
 and Rivarol. The tempest soon swept that second branch 
 away ; it did not die, but it required many years to 
 resume its growth and put forth fresh buds. 
 
 Public opinion was moving in another track : it was 
 going towards Sieyes, the very opposite of Montesquieu. 
 Thinking, perhaps, of the Esprit des Lois, that famous 
 specialist said : " Too many have busied themselves in 
 combining servile ideas always in accordance with events. 
 Political science is not the science of what is, but of 
 what ought to be." However, if the Revolution stepped 
 into paths which Montesquieu had not wished, it did not 
 entirely escape from his influence. This is the very time, 
 when that influence is exercised indirectly, when we see 
 stalking forward, amidst the general confusion in which
 
 Montesquieu and the Revolution. 157 
 
 France was plunged, venturesome and dissenting fol- 
 lowers, whom he would certainly have disowned if he 
 had seen them at work ; but who nevertheless owed to 
 him their political origin. 
 
 That apologist of monarchy, the restorer of the old 
 public law of the French, was destined to become in 
 their hands the prophet of egalitaire democracy and of a 
 republic after the Roman type. This curious metem- 
 psychosis derives less from the very substance of 
 Montesquieu's thought, than from the shape he gave to 
 it, and from the ideas with which his readers interpreted 
 his work. " When I was drawn towards antiquity," he 
 said, " I endeavoured to catch its spirit." Whilst trying 
 to resuscitate the ancients, he animated them with his 
 own soul, the soul of his times. He did not really 
 conjure up the ghost of an antiquity which is dead 
 beyond the power of a new life ; he elicited from it a 
 certain form of thought which his own times carried 
 along with them, and which was destined to renovate in 
 France, for a season, politics, literature, and even art 
 itself. 
 
 Montesquieu is less a restorer of antiquity than a 
 precursor of that new Hellenic and neo- Latin France 
 which flourished from Andre Chenier to David, and from 
 Vergniaud to Napoleon ; taking on its way Robespierre, 
 Saint-Just, and Charlotte Corday. That which seems on 
 his part the result of a kind of divination, or of an 
 influence more wonderful still, is explained by the same 
 inward state exhibited both in himself and in his
 
 1 5 8 Montesquieu. 
 
 revolutionary disciples in different circumstances and at 
 different epochs. It is quite as much a psychological as 
 an historical problem. 
 
 At the time when Montesquieu was drawing up his 
 theory of a republic, the instinct of such a form of 
 government was rising in everyone's mind, and the 
 word itself was finding favour amongst the people. 
 Classical education fostered that instinct, classical 
 literature popularised the vocabulary. D'Argenson wrote 
 as follows in 1747: "Shall anyone venture to propose 
 that we should take a few steps in the direction of 
 republican government? I see no disposition towards 
 it in the people. The nobility, the courts of law, 
 accustomed to slavery, have never thought about 
 republican institutions, and yet these ideas are springing 
 up, and habit works speedily in France." Habit indeed 
 undermined the soil stealthily that soil which the mon- 
 archy had levelled and paved after the Roman fashion. 
 A movement took place which opened an issue to the 
 subterranean springs of water ; these flowed out and ran 
 spontaneously in the channels which seemed destined 
 for them. 
 
 The same vocation which had called Montesquieu to 
 describe the Roman republic and to become, so to say, 
 its literary citizen, called the Frenchmen of the 
 Revolution to renew that republic in France, and to 
 constitute themselves its literary citizens. Their hereditary 
 instinct, guided by Montesquieu's writings, suggested to 
 them what his historical imagination had made him
 
 Montesquieu and the Revolution. 159 
 
 perceive. Led on to organise democracy, they brought 
 to the task the same dispositions of mind which 
 Montesquieu had shown in writing its history. They 
 conceived it from the same originals, they understood 
 the ancients as Montesquieu had done; they found 
 them in his works such as they wished to find them, and 
 as they were best fitted for them. Montesquieu analysed 
 the laws which constitute a republic and give it vitality ; 
 the people decreed these laws ; according to them, the 
 republic is their natural result. They took no account 
 of any of the conditions laid down by Montesquieu as 
 essential to his theory, as climate, manners, general 
 habits. 
 
 Montesquieu had already confounded all times and all 
 republics together ; they transferred that ideal legislation 
 to a distance of more than twenty centuries in the most 
 different climates and the most dissimilar civilisations. 
 This method is the reverse of that adopted in the Esprit 
 des Lois, but it was in accordance with the spirit of the 
 age, and it is thus that Montesquieu was understood by 
 most Frenchmen of those days. 
 
 They applied to him the system of interpretation which 
 they were in the habit of applying to classical authors : 
 isolating the maxims, and deducing from them, by a 
 process of dialectics, the consequences which are their 
 logical result. They transform his general ideas into 
 abstract and universal ones, that is to say, into a mould 
 for their own passions. Montesquieu had made himself 
 in succession the citizen of every nation, in order to cure
 
 1 60 Montesquieu. 
 
 each community of the worst of all prejudices self-ignor- 
 ance. His interpreters made of him a citizen of the 
 world and a cosmopolitan legislator ; far from seeking in 
 his book the means of getting rid of their prejudices, they 
 endeavoured to find in it a strengthening power for those 
 prejudices, and giving to it an absolute instead of a 
 relative character, they made of it the prophetic code of 
 their Utopia. 
 
 The whole of the Terrorist revolution is contained 
 in one sentence, and that sentence is directly inspired 
 by the republican maxims of the Esprit des Lois, 
 " If," says Robespierre, " the motive-principle of popular 
 government in times of peace is virtue, in revolutionary 
 days it is both virtue and terror : virtue without which 
 terror is fatal; terror without which virtue is powerless." 
 There is not, indeed, any other means than terror ; to do 
 such violence to the nature of things, compel a French- 
 man thus to transform his character and his habits, oblige 
 him to go back from the age of Louis XV to that of 
 Lycurgus, and reduce Paris to put up with what Montes- 
 quieu designated " the prodigious <?;ztfz of Sparta." Those 
 a terrible magistracies" are needed which the Esprit des 
 Lois alludes to, which " bring back violently the state to 
 freedom"; the law of public safety must be enforced as 
 the supreme law, and the following precept must be 
 applied, invoked by the sophists of every species of 
 tyranny. "There are circumstances when a veil must be 
 thrown for a moment over liberty, just as in the case of 
 the statues of the gods." Ostracism must be practised,
 
 Montesquieu and the Revolution. 161 
 
 and arrests of " suspected' citizens who lose the liberty for 
 a season, only to recover it afterwards for ever." We 
 must have a uniform system of legislation, equality of 
 property, and that wholesome mediocrity which corrects 
 the natural wickedness of fortune. 
 
 Why did not those Utopists meditate on the chapters 
 on the corruption of principles, the futility of violence 
 against established customs, and the powerlessness of 
 punishments against the nature of things? Some felt 
 this truth : it was the retaliation of Montesquieu, history, 
 and humanity. The Girondists understood that the 
 republic was perishing for having spurned our author's 
 lessons ; whilst Saint-Just parodied his maxims and 
 caricatured his metaphors, Camille Desmoulins found 
 in the Considerations sur les Romains the secret of 
 republican eloquence ; he borrowed from Tacitus inter- 
 preted by Montesquieu his most eloquent denunciation 
 of tyranny. Persecuted and decimated, the nobles 
 recovered at the foot of the guillotine that pride of 
 honour, the virtue of monarchies, which Montesquieu 
 reproached them for having abdicated in the presence 
 of the crown. Everything confirmed the gloomy 
 anticipations he had conceived as to the decay of political 
 manners in France ; everything justified the opinion he 
 had casually expressed on the "speculative sciences 
 which transform men into savages," and on the terrible 
 consequences of the despotism which might establish 
 itself amongst the ruins of the monarchy. " For that 
 beautiful part of the world human nature would suffer, at
 
 1 62 Montesquieu. 
 
 least for a time, from the insults offered to it in the three 
 others." 
 
 A return to Montesquieu took place when the French 
 endeavoured to restore moderation, order, and liberty. 
 There was certainly much more of his spirit in the 
 constitution of the year III, than in that of 1791. 
 Some of his disciples were called to sit in the national 
 assemblies, Portalis, Barbe-Marbois, Mathieu-Dumas r 
 Simeon, Camille Jordan; and in the very Directoire, the 
 prudent Barthelemy, a diplomatist trained at the school 
 of Vergennes. Montesquieu's works were reprinted. 
 Pastoret, in the Cornell des cinq-cents, %&& Goupil de PreTeln, 
 in the Conseil des anciens, proposed to grant to his remains 
 the honours of the Pantheon. The violent politicians,, 
 however, did not allow time for that measure to be 
 carried out, and the Fructidor coup d'etat once more 
 expelled the Esprit des Lois from the republic. 
 
 The constitution of the year VIII had nothing in 
 common with liberty such as Montesquieu understood it. 
 If we may believe Stendhal, Bonaparte had merely glanced 
 at that great man's writings, but he had the highest 
 esteem for his disciples. He prohibited them, it is true, 
 from discussing politics ; on the other hand, he entrusted 
 to them the magistracy, the administration, and civil 
 legislation. The illustrious council of state which drew 
 up the Code Civil, and had Portalis as its principal 
 secretary, caught its inspiration from Montesquieu's 
 precepts, both as to the substance and as to the form of 
 its compilation.
 
 Montesquieu and the Revolution. 163 
 
 Yet the emperor's policy upset all Montesquieu's 
 maxims whilst it justified all his conclusions. It is 
 impossible to find elsewhere a more complete demon- 
 stration of the existence of the laws of history, or a more 
 conclusive proof of those which our author had laid 
 down. He had shown how a country in a state of 
 revolution is more formidable to its neighbours than it 
 was in other times ; how in a nation where monarchical 
 traditions are concealed under the laws of a republic, 
 war begun as in a republic must end as under a 
 monarchy. "As soon," he said, "as the army is 
 accountable solely to the legislative body, the government 
 becomes a military one." He had written the following 
 sentence, which sounds strange at a time when France 
 was so deficient in captains that it had been necessary 
 to commit the king's sword to an illustrious mercenary, 
 Marshal Saxe, " Soldiers will be the ruin of France. ' 
 The condition of Denmark had suggested to him this 
 thought, which is so strictly applicable to the France of 
 1804 : "There is no authority more absolute than that 
 of the prince who succeeds to a republic ; for he finds 
 himself in possession of all the power of the people who 
 had not been able to limit their own authority." 
 
 The chapter on the politics of the Romans with refer- 
 ence to conquests gives us in substance all Bonaparte's 
 political system. It is precisely because the nature of 
 his genius was essentially Roman and classical, that the 
 First Consul so well understood the French of his times, 
 and persuaded them so easily that whilst obeying his
 
 1 64 Montesquieu. 
 
 will they still exercised their sovereignty. There were 
 reminiscences of Alexander, and probably of Montes- 
 quieu's Alexander, in the wonderful dreams which the 
 general-in-chief of the army of Italy indulged in at 
 Ancona, and which carried him towards Greece and 
 towards the East. We recognise more than one charac- 
 teristic feature of Charlemagne as the Esprit des Lois 
 portrays him to us, in the colossal vision which Napoleon 
 conjures up, a vision which constantly haunted his 
 imagination after the consulate. 
 
 How is it possible not to perceive the Empire in these 
 pictures of Rome, which, composed after the events, 
 would pass for an allusion, a satire, but which, sketched 
 more than half a century before, seem like the fragments 
 of a prophecy ! The master-passion of glory permeating a 
 whole people ; the necessity of astonishing men in order 
 to reduce them to submission ; that " contest for fame," 
 which the boldest in the career of ambition carries on 
 against his rivals ; the art of attacking these rivals " with 
 their own weapons, that is to say, with victories won over 
 the enemies of the republic" ; that imperial Rome, which 
 is, to speak correctly, neither an empire nor a republic, 
 but the head of a body made up of all the nations in Europe ; 
 these nations, associated together, having nothing in 
 common but their common obedience, and bound the 
 one to the other by the very bonds of conquest ; those 
 kings whom Rome had disseminated everywhere to make 
 of them so many slaves, and who direct against her the 
 resources with which she had supplied them ; " the
 
 Montesquieu an.i the Revolution. 165 
 
 impossibility of maintaining to the end an enterprise 
 which cannot fail in one country without failing in all 
 the others, or fail for one moment without failing for ever"; 
 Rome, finally destroyed because all the nations attack 
 her at once, invade her on all sides, so fatal a result of 
 Roman policy that Montesquieu foretells it to all those 
 who might be tempted to follow the same career : " If now- 
 adays a prince made the same ravages in Europe, the 
 nations, driven towards the North, resting against the 
 limits of the world, would hold their ground firmly there, 
 till the moment came for them to overrun Europe, and 
 conquer it a third time." Let us conclude with Eucrates, 
 or rather with Montesquieu : " For a man to be raised 
 above mankind, the cost is too keavy for his fellow- 
 mortals."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE POSTERITY OF MONTESQUIEU IN POLITICS 
 
 AND IN HISTORY. MONTESQUIEU AND 
 
 HIS CRITICS. 
 
 ON the restoration of royalty to France in 1814, 
 that younger branch of Montesquieu's lineage 
 proscribed during the Revolution and absorbed during 
 the Empire in senate and council of state again made 
 its influence felt in the political world. The conditions 
 of the new government permitted the carrying out of the 
 experiment of constitutional monarchy, which had failed 
 in 1791. 
 
 Chateaubriand began withthe pretension of recommenc- 
 ing the Esprit des Lois in the Essai surles Revolutions : he 
 merely transposed the formulae and absurdly exaggerated 
 Montesquieu's artifices of composition. But in the Genie 
 ditCtiristianismehepa.idduehoma.gQto him, and developed 
 many of his favourite maxims in the Monarchic selon la 
 Charte. The study on political liberty in the Esprit des 
 Lois suggested to Benjamin Constant much for his Reflex- 
 ions sur la Constitution. The doctrinaires undertook to 
 correct Montesquieu's classification of governments by 
 applying to the democratic and monarchical forms this
 
 Talleyrand, 167 
 
 thought of Pascal : " Multitude which cannot be reduced 
 to unity is confusion ; unity which does not depend on 
 ivmltitud? is tyranny." Louis XVIII, while still a 
 pretender, had read the Esprit des Lois as a mere lei esprit 
 when seated on the throne he interpreted it as a 
 prudent king ; and under a government which would, 
 unquestionably, at that time, have been the government 
 of Montesquieu's choice in the ministry of the Duke 
 de Richelieu and that of M. de Martignac, in the 
 battle-royal of the Comte de Serre, in the discussions 
 on the freedom of the press, and in the speeches 
 of the Duke de Broglie and Royer-Collard against 
 the disastrous law on sacrilege his spirit is plainly 
 visible. 
 
 Talleyrand, whom it had influenced from his youth, 
 introduced it into the region of diplomacy. The memo- 
 randum written in London (in November 1792) on the 
 inexpediency of a policy of conquest, proves this ; and 
 the same spirit with a loftiness of thought and an art in 
 composition never equalled, perhaps, in any diplomatic 
 document pervades the Instructions for the Congress of 
 Vienna, drawn up by La Besnardiere under his direction. 
 The conception of Europe, and the definition of public 
 right therein contained, are borrowed from Montesquieu ; 
 .and the sketch of Russia ranks among the most brilliant 
 productions of his school in literature. In the passage 
 beginning with this sentence "Poland restored to 
 independence would be inevitably restored to anarchy," 
 \ve almost recognise a quotation from Montesquieu : the
 
 1 68 Montesquieu. 
 
 further development of the subject might almost have 
 been taken from an inedited chapter of .the Esprit des Lois. 
 Indeed, the very spirit of that work is apparent in the follow- 
 ing maxim, entirely expressive of the general drift of the 
 Instructions: " France is in that happy condition in which 
 she needs not to desire that justice and utility should be 
 divided, nor seek her individual good outside that justice 
 which is the good of all." 
 
 But not only Montesquieu's views, his style, and even 
 his comparisons, are almost unconsciously suggested by 
 Talleyrand. In one of his Vienna memoranda he repro- 
 duces, and even improves in the reproduction, a striking 
 though rather bold simile used in the Considerations. 
 11 France," says he, " brought to the Congress no 
 ambitious views or personal interests. Replaced within 
 her ancient limits, she no longer sought to extend them, 
 like unto the sea which only passes its boundaries when 
 agitated by tempests." Montesquieu himself had less 
 justly observed : " It is remarkable that, after so many 
 wars, the Romans lost only what they chose to leave so 
 is the expanse of the sea never narrowed save when it 
 draws back of itself." 
 
 This allusion to the Considerations recalls our 
 attention to history. Montesquieu also founded an 
 historical school, teaching therein the correlation of facts, 
 the association of causes and correspondence of events, 
 the interpretation of laws by history, and the inter- 
 pretation of history by custom. From him proceed both 
 the school of legal historians and that of the modern
 
 Montesquieu s Disciples. 169 
 
 philosophical historians. Guizot is not of the direct 
 line ; but, though a most original and independent 
 disciple, yet he is a disciple of the author of the Esprit 
 des Lois, and during the first half of the present century 
 he stepped into the place and continued the work of the 
 initiator and founder of the science of history. " As the 
 historian of our ancient institutions," says Augustin 
 Thierry, " he has inaugurated the era of science properly 
 so called ; before his day, if we except the single instance 
 of Montesquieu, there had been but a succession of 
 systems." Guizot applies to history the idea of progress 
 which Montesquieu felt, yet hardly understood. Turgot 
 and Condorcet developed the idea. Guizot himself 
 considers it the soul of civilisation, defining this as the 
 "perfecting of society and humanity": it forms the web 
 of history, as is shown in his admirable and exhaustive 
 treatment of the subject in his lectures of 1828. 
 
 Madame de Stael had been one of the first to grasp 
 this idea of perfectibility. We see this noting also 
 many thoughts taken from the Esprit des Lois in her 
 work on the Influence des Passions, and the idea is further 
 worked out in her book, de VAllemagne. She unfolds it 
 with an ardour and an almost religious enthusiasm which 
 Montesquieu's sarcastic and excessively analytical nature 
 entirely lacked. In her last and most powerfully conceived 
 work, the Considerations sur la Revolution Franfaise, 
 occurs the following reflection, which, according to the 
 Esprit aes Lois, discovers the foundation of the history of 
 France : " Liberty is ancient ; it is despotism that is 
 
 M
 
 1 70 Montesquieu. 
 
 modern." Indeed, in writing the history of liberty from 
 1789 to 1814, Madame de Stael traces the progress of 
 Montesquieu's ideas through the Revolution and the 
 Empire. 
 
 The fortunes of the monarchical branch of Mon- 
 tesquieu's line culminated in the Restoration. His 
 intellectual descendants of this branch established that 
 government, and could perhaps have maintained it by 
 constantly recalling its principle : this, however, they 
 failed to do. These moderate politicians could not 
 succeed in persuading the theocrats of the restored 
 monarchy that legitimacy, abstractly considered, means 
 little or nothing the rights claimed therefrom being 
 simply prescriptive rights which only constant reiteration 
 can preserve inviolate ; also that it is " the progress of 
 time and consent of the people" which, according to 
 Bossuet, legalise new forms of government, and, according 
 to Montesquieu, maintain long-established administra- 
 tions. " The government most in harmony with nature," 
 Montesquieu had said, "is that of which the special cha- 
 racteristic adapts itself most readily to the idiosyncrasies 
 of the people for which it is established." 
 
 Montesquieu's royalist disciples fell with the constitu- 
 tional monarchy, and France had once more to choose 
 between "the popular and the despotic state." Demo- 
 cracy was surely gaining ground in this country of 
 monarchical traditions, with its thirty millions of inhabi- 
 tants, a people whose existence was a refinement of 
 civilisation : a people who could not conceive the
 
 De Tocgueville. 171 
 
 possibility of social progress apart from the progress of 
 wealth : a commercial and manufacturing people, who 
 delighted in luxury, and lived upon it. This democracy 
 completely disconcerted all the ideas of the Esprit des 
 Lois, and Montesquieu, who had wisely counselled his 
 country in so many grave crises, would have failed her on 
 this occasion, if his genius had not raised up a continuator 
 and propagator of his views in modern France. Tocque- 
 ville represents the last remaining branch of the 
 intellectual descendants of Montesquieu. During the 
 Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration, this portion 
 of the family maintained an attitude of opposition, in 
 which it appeared sometimes enthusiastic and sometimes 
 indifferent, often depressed, and always uneasy. Drawn 
 by heart and conscience towards liberty, loving it for its 
 own sake as well as desiring it for their country, and 
 believing, moreover, that the advent of democracy was 
 inevitable, these prudent patriots sought to adapt this 
 revolution to the traditions of France. They applied for 
 help in their undertaking to the United States, remember- 
 ing that their predecessors had, in the difficulty of recon- 
 ciling the claims of monarchy with those of national 
 liberty, sought the help of England. 
 
 In Tocqueville's mind as in that of Montesquieu 
 there is a tendency to generalisation and dogmatism : 
 he is rather a moralist than a legislator or a politician. 
 As regards method and classification of subjects, his 
 work is entirely derived from that of Montesquieu. 
 Tocqueville has produced a great historical study, the 
 
 M 2
 
 172 Montesquieu. 
 
 Anden Regime et la Revolution, which corresponds to 
 the Considerations sur les Romains ; his Democratic en 
 Amerique answers to the Esprit des Lois. The impetus 
 which he has given to historical and political studies, 
 though less decided and brilliant than that of which 
 Guizot was the cause in the first half of this century, has 
 been no less productive of result. Through him Montes- 
 quieu is connected with, and influences the France of the 
 present day, has his hold upon it, and this influence is more 
 powerful than one would at first be inclined to suppose. 
 As an historical and experimental influence it has 
 gradually modified existing customs and institutions ; it 
 has conduced to the adoption of the applied mechanics 
 of practical workers, in the place of the theoretical 
 mechanics of Sieyes ; and through its power the republic 
 has become not only parliamentary, but persists by virtue 
 of a constitution which is the most compact in form, 
 the most comprehensive in application, and the most 
 natural product of national tendencies and needs that 
 France has yet possessed. 
 
 The influence exercised by Montesquieu in Europe 
 equals that which he has exercised in France, and may 
 be traced everywhere. It is the genius of the Esprit des 
 Lois that seems to have inspired the greatest statesman of 
 Germany in his work of regenerating his adopted country. 
 Never has the ruin of a government by the corruption of 
 its principle been more clearly shown than in the con- 
 dition of the Prussian monarchy after Jena, nor has the 
 art of raising a nation and reinstating a monarchy by
 
 Influence Abroad. 173 
 
 restoring and renewing its principle ever been practised 
 with greater skill and penetration than by Baron Stein. 
 
 Thus has constitutional government reached the Con- 
 tinent : carried thence by Montesquieu's book, it has been 
 propagated by the French. The two chapters devoted 
 to England and her constitution in the Esprit des Lois 
 have therefore become a separate work, marking an 
 epoch in the history of human societies. Great thinkers 
 often shed a brighter lustre by reflection and by the light 
 of their satellites than by the rays which proceed directly 
 from themselves. 
 
 Much has been written concerning Montesquieu.* We 
 shall hardly meet with a more comprehensive apology 
 than Villemain's in his Eloge and his Lemons sur la 
 Litterature au XVII siecle, or with a more prejudiced 
 and unreasonable attack than that of Destutt de Tracy 
 in his Commentaire de VEsprit des Lois. But Tracy's 
 
 * The reader will find a history and description of the 
 original editions of Montesquieu, and of the works that have 
 been written upon him, at the end of M. Vian's Histoire de 
 Montesquieu. I have made use of this book in considering 
 the criticisms of MM. Brunetiere and Tamizey de Larroque 
 and the researches of M. Tourneux; I have laid under contri- 
 bution the inexhaustible treasures of the Lundis and Port- 
 Royal, and am much indebted to the useful directions and 
 indications contained in the Cite' Antique of M. Fustel de 
 Coulanges, and in the Civilisation et les Lois of M. Funck- 
 Brentano particularly 'in Book i of this latter work, Les 
 Mceurs et les Lois : des Mceurs pohtiques dans les De'mo- 
 craties et dans les Monarchies.
 
 1 74 Montesquieu. 
 
 speculative and a priori criticism no longer satisfies us. 
 We take but a slight interest in the comparisons which 
 an author may choose to institute between the works of 
 great men atid his individual theories as regards those 
 works ; such a mode of procedure supposes on the part 
 of the critic a positive knowledge which no one possesses, 
 and on the part of the reader an unlimited deference 
 which none but a Boeotian could render. The object 
 of criticism is to increase our knowledge of authors, and 
 to explain the raison d'etre and the real signification of 
 their works ; and M. Paul Janet in his Histoire de la 
 Science politique, M. Laboulaye in the Notices of his 
 large edition of Montesquieu, and M. Taine in a forcible 
 review in his Ancien Regime, have shown how this 
 fruitful method of criticism should be applied to the 
 author of the Esprit des Lois. They all admire his 
 genius, extol his system, and, on the whole, accept his 
 conclusions. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve only accepts them conditionally, and 
 with innumerable modifications : it is in his writings that 
 the gravest objections which can be brought forward 
 against Montesquieu are to be found, expressed in 
 the most insinuating manner. Besides his personal 
 notice of Montesquieu, Sainte-Beuve has approached 
 him on all sides and on every opportunity in his 
 Lundis and Port-Royal. The man attracts and the writer 
 charms him ; but the work disquiets him, the historian 
 irritates him, and the legislator bewilders him. 
 
 As a legislator, he considers that Montesquieu places
 
 Sainte-Beuve. 175 
 
 the average man on too high a level, as he does not 
 sufficiently believe in the primordial wickedness ever 
 latent in mankind ; that he is too ready to conceal the rags 
 that is, the real human stuff beneath the social 
 drapery ; and that he allows himself to be too much 
 influenced by merely external polish and a too great 
 respect for humanity. Sainte-Beuve does not see that this 
 optimism is the very foundation of the politic hygiene. 
 How is one to direct man if one does not believe that he 
 can be directed ; how work for his improvement if one 
 believes that he is not capable of improvement ; or how 
 urge him to effort, and thereby restore activity to his 
 muscles, if one believes that he is hopelessly enervated 
 and paralysed ? Also, how cure a sick person, or 
 persuade him to submit to treatment, if one begins by 
 telling him that his strength is exhausted and his illness 
 is incurable, that, after all, strength and restoration are 
 but figures of speech, as no one precisely knows what is 
 health or what is sickness ; and that, after searching 
 analysis, we find that all which science can do is to try 
 to prove that man is in a state of health, and all which 
 medicine can do for him in sickness is to say, " Try to 
 be well"? 
 
 Sainte-Beuve thinks that Montesquieu is, as an 
 historian, too little cognisant of the inconsistencies of 
 men and the caprices of fortune. He considers that 
 Montesquieu too deliberately simplifies and arranges 
 thereby excluding the action of chance ; that he selects 
 certain episodes from the melee, connects and gives them
 
 1 76 Montesquieu. 
 
 the semblance of a rationality which they do not possess ; 
 that he takes account only of events which have been 
 productive of effect, leaving aside all others ; and that of 
 a thousand ways by which an event might have been 
 developed, he notices but one the actual means of its 
 development. He suppresses the unexpected, and 
 disregards "the truth of the intrigue and hypocrisy of 
 man" ; desiring to discover the great highways, he merely 
 directs his own, " his great royal roads, "through the most 
 obvious channel. Apart from Providence, whose secrets 
 are undiscoverable, the moving-springs in this world of 
 confusion are, according to the author of Port-Royal, 
 strength, skill, and chance. Pascal saw the Fronde, 
 meditated upon the English Revolution, sought to 
 determine the cause of all things, and he was everywhere 
 confronted by chance Cleopatra's nose or Cromwell's 
 grain of sand. This great thinker arrived at the 
 conclusion to which we must all come. So much for 
 the men who desire to lead their fellows ; as for those 
 whom they think they lead the multitude, these 
 actually perform the great achievements, though they 
 know it not. Great revolutions and brilliant victories 
 are the work of unconscious actors, who involuntarily 
 accomplish that of which they have no cognisance. 
 
 Such are the objections. The mystic and the 
 Epicurean, the dogmatist and the sceptic Pascal and 
 Montaigne, Hobbes and La Rochefoucauld meet here, 
 and, without in the least agreeing, make common cause 
 together. Frederick favoured this Pyrrhonism ; he had
 
 Causes and Effects. 177 
 
 reasons for quietly inclining to the ironical doctrine 
 which teaches that fact in this world must "justify 
 itself as it best may." "People usually have super- 
 stitious ideas on the great revolutions of empires," said 
 he ; " but when one is behind the scenes one sees that 
 as a general rule the most wonderful effects are produced 
 by common means and by ignominious beings . . . ." 
 To be behind the scenes this is the vanity of the 
 world. How many chroniclers have attributed great effects 
 to slight causes for no other reason than that they might 
 boast of having perceived them ! Voltaire believed in 
 Frederick's idea, and Frederick moulded Voltaire to his 
 wishes by persuading him that he was serving fortune ; 
 the philosopher gloried in this, and the king treated him 
 as famous leaders of men are accustomed to treat 
 their dupes as a political tool. In this universal sifting, 
 what could remain of Frederick himself, of his campaigns 
 and of his policy ? Montesquieu confounds him in one 
 word by recalling him to himself and to his fame : " For- 
 tune has not this kind of constancy." 
 
 As with phenomena in nature, so is it with phenomena 
 in history : chance alone cannot produce their repetition 
 and succession under precisely similar conditions. 
 There are laws in this succession ; facts are not simply 
 consistent and isolated, but they hold together and are 
 mutually related. Chance can only order the form of 
 the event. A river flows from a mountain in the 
 direction of the sea : a rock may slightly alter its course, 
 but cannot make the waters reascend to their source,
 
 178 Montesquieu. 
 
 and in no way alters its general direction, which is 
 determined by the movements of the soil. Above the 
 action of individuals the isolated human cause, there is 
 the action of societies the combination of accumulated 
 individual causes. This is the allure principale, the 
 mainspring to which all particular accidents are subor- 
 dinate : thus, if Caesar had not existed, another would 
 have taken the place of Csesar. Montesquieu never 
 showed this more clearly than by the following example : 
 " It was so impossible that the republic should be 
 restored, that that happened which had never before 
 been seen : there remained neither tyrant nor liberty. 
 The causes which had pro'duced its destruction were still 
 in existence." 
 
 The historian determines and develops these causes. 
 He is supposed to follow the highroads of history, 
 which are also national and popular roads. Man 
 has travelled on these roads ; the historian shows us 
 the traces of his journeyings. Why leave them to 
 wander among the byways? Why ascend every hill, 
 and vainly exhaust oneself in trying to discover the 
 track of all previous wanderers ? The first pedestrians 
 who crossed the mountains followed the course of the 
 mountain torrents ; the paths they made were converted 
 into roads highways took the place of those roads, and 
 now side by side with these run the railways. 
 
 Between Montaigne and Pascal the excess of human 
 irony and the abasement of self-annihilated reason 
 there is space for silence, reflection, and common-sense.
 
 General Summary. 179 
 
 Montesquieu's place is here. He is above all, both 
 politically and socially, a gentleman a man to whom 
 nothing human is strange, who seeks to know himself, 
 that he may more thoroughly know others, and who 
 strives to show men their condition, that he may teach 
 them how to make it more endurable. His writings 
 live, because they are historical and founded on observa- 
 tions of nature. His general views are just this is the 
 important point ; errors of detail signify little. Villemain 
 has very well said, that " in a work of this nature such 
 errors are of no more importance than the fractions in 
 a great calculation." Montesquieu has left us something 
 more than precepts ; he has left a method which enables 
 us to develop his thought and apply it to contingencies 
 that he could not foresee. He exercised a deep and 
 permanent influence in his own time, and is full of 
 teaching for ours. His name is associated with many of 
 the most excellent reforms which this century has seen 
 in France, and he is the representative of the French 
 spirit in all its clearness, breadth, generosity, and wisdom.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (Page 10, line 25.) Characteristic of Vauban and Catinat. 
 "Vauban, le plus honnete homme de son siecle, le plus 
 simple, le plus vrai, le plus modeste .... incapable de se 
 porter a rien de faux, ni de mauvais." (Saint-Simon.) 
 
 (Catinat) " Philosophe dans la veritable acception du mot, 
 religieux sans auste'rite', courtisan sans intrigues, ndgligeant 
 sa fortune, et toujours pret a donner." (FieVe"e, Biog. 
 Universelle.} 
 
 (P. n, 1. 4). That the poor are his brothers. See Mon- 
 taigne, Essais, ii, 8. 
 
 (P. 12,1. 1 6.) The Society of the Temple. A reunion of poets, 
 wits, and. grands seigneurs, who met usually at the palace of 
 the Temple in Paris, under the presidency of the Prince de 
 Vendome, grand-prior. He and his brother, the Duke de 
 Vendome, set before their guests an example of the grossest 
 debauchery and of the most unblushing impudence. These 
 meetings took place during the last years of the seventeenth 
 century, and at the beginning of the eighteenth ; the poet 
 La Fontaine has described one of them in a letter to the 
 Duke de Vendome (Sept. 1689). La Fare, Chaulieu, Sainte- 
 Aulaire, and several other distinguished writers, besides a 
 considerable number of questionable abbfc, belonged to the 
 Soci^ti du Temple. 
 
 (P. 13, 1. 13.) The Basoche. This expression, here applied 
 by contempt to the law, originally designated a corporation 
 of lawyers' clerks established by Philip the Fair, King of 
 France. (Etym.^ L. Basilica.)
 
 1 82 Montesquieu. 
 
 (P. 18, 1. 17.) Sainte-Beuve. See his Causeries du Lundi, 
 vol. vii. 
 
 (P. 21,1. 28.) Henault .... de Brasses. These two anti- 
 quaries and critics were almost as celebrated for the 
 brilliancy of their wit, and the occasional decollett style of 
 their conversation, as for their real literary talent. It is 
 reported of Renault that, becoming converted towards the 
 end of his life, and having made a full confession of his 
 sins, he exclaimed : " On n'est jamais si riche que quand on 
 de'me'nage." 
 
 (P. 26, 1. 27.) Manon Lescaut, the celebrated novel of the 
 Abbd PreVost. The vigour with which the passion of love is 
 delineated, and the genuine accent of truth which prevails 
 throughout that extraordinary book, are the only causes of 
 the interest we cannot help feeling in the adventures of two 
 worthless characters a swindler and a courtesan. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (P. 28, 1. 10.) Evocation : the act by which a high court of 
 justice assumed the right of trying certain special cases 
 which would naturally have come before inferior tribunals. 
 
 (P. 31, 1. 6.) Don Juan .... Tartuffe. See Moliere's plays. 
 
 (P. 32,1. 14.) Montesquieu borrowed from Dufresny (Charles 
 Riviere}, 1648-1724. The work of Dufresny, from which 
 Montesquieu was supposed to have borrowed the idea of 
 the Lettres Persanes, is entitled les Amusements SJrieux *. 
 Comiques d?un Siamois (Paris, 1707, I2mo). 
 
 (P. 16, 1. 17.) .... this traveller's pleasant chronicles. 
 1'he title of Chardin's work is Journal des Voyages du 
 Chevalier Chardin en Perse, et aux Indes Orientales 
 (Amsterdam, 1711, 3 vols. 410, and 10 vols. i2mo). 
 
 (P. 34. 1. 4.) .... oj anticipated Triboulels. See Victor 
 Hugo's play, le Roi s' amuse. 
 
 (P. 16, 1. 8.) The education of Saint-Preux. The hero of 
 Rousseau's novel, la Nouvelle Heloise. 
 
 (P- 37) ! 6.) Prototypes of Lovelace and Valmont. See 
 Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, and Laclos's Chevalier de 
 Faublas. 
 
 (P. 1 6, 1. 15.) Don Louis 's harangue to Don Juan, and
 
 Notes. 183 
 
 the solemn remonstrance of the father of " le Menteur." In 
 Moliere's Festin de Pierre (iv, 4), the address of Don Luis 
 is justly considered one of the most remarkable specimens 
 of honest and legitimate indignation. Respecting the 
 remontrance in Corneille's play, le Menteur (v, 3), Voltaire 
 truly observes : " Dans la scene ou Geronte fait rougir 
 son fils du vice auquel il s'abandonne, on retrouve la meme 
 main qui peignit le vieil Horace et Don Diegue." 
 
 (P. 40, 1. 2.) .... akin to those of Rousseau and Mably. 
 See especially Mably's Entretiens de Phocion, and Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau's Contrat Social. 
 
 Amongst many appreciations of the Lettres Persanes by 
 English critics, we have selected the following one : " It is 
 not too much to say that the entire spirit of the philosophe 
 movement in its more moderate form is contained and 
 anticipated in the Lettres Persanes. All the weaknesses of 
 France in political, ecclesiastical, and social arrangements 
 are here touched on with a light but sure hand, and the 
 example is thus set of attacking ' les grands sujets.' From 
 a literary point of view the form of this work is at least as 
 remarkable as the matter. Voltaire himself is nowhere 
 more witty, while Montesquieu has over his rival the inde- 
 finable but unquestionable advantage of writing more like 
 a gentleman. There is no single book in which the admir- 
 able capacity of the French language for jesting treatment 
 of serious subjects is better shown than in the Lettres 
 Persanes." (Saintsbury, A Short History of French Lite- 
 rature^) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (P. 46, 1. 20.) The Temple de Gnide. " This is half a narra- 
 tive, half an allegory, in the semi-classical, or rather pseudo- 
 classical taste of the time, decidedly frivolous and dubiously 
 moral, but of no small elegance in its peculiar style." 
 (Encyclop&dia Britannica, i, 6.) 
 
 (P. 51,1. i.) The Earl of Waldegrave. " With unbounded 
 benevolence, and the most flowing courtesy to all men, Lord 
 Waldegrave, whose penetration no weakness could escape,
 
 1 84 Montesquieu. 
 
 nor art impose upon, though vice he overlooked, and only 
 abstained sometimes from connecting with black and bad 
 men .... possessed sound sense and respectable abilities. 
 He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and few 
 men have passed through life, and above all, public life, 
 with a character so entirely unblemished." (Walpole's 
 Memoirs of the Reign of George III, vol. i, pp. 267, 268.) 
 
 (P. 53,1. 12.) Bonneval, who was preparing to put into 
 practice the " Lettres Persanes.^ Bonneval's life is most 
 interesting. After serving in turns France and Austria, and 
 compromising himself by his impertinence and his disagree- 
 able temper, he offered his services to the Porte, professed the 
 Mahomedan faith, and took the name of Achmet. He was 
 made a pasha of three tails, and appointed to the com- 
 mand of the artillery. He rendered valuable services to the 
 Sultan in his war with Russia, and with the famous Kouli 
 Khan. See on him an amusing article in Sainte-Beuve's 
 Causeries du Lundi, vol. v. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (P. 71,1. 6.) .... during the remainder of his life. "In 
 1734, this remarkable man published what may be truly called 
 the first book in which there can be found any information 
 concerning the real history of Rome ; because it is also the 
 first in which the affairs of the ancient world are treated in 
 a large and comprehensive spirit" (Buckle, History of Civil- 
 isation, vol. i). " The Grandeur et Decadence des Remains 
 is as original as the Principia, and laid the foundation of a 
 science as sublime, and perhaps still more important to 
 man, than the laws of the planetary bodies" (Alison, 
 Essays}. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (P. 89, 1. 5.) ... lettres de cachet, otherwise called lettres 
 doses, by opposition to the lettres patentes. They were so 
 folded that it was impossible to open them without breaking
 
 Notes. 185 
 
 the seal. Signed by the king, and countersigned by one of 
 the secretaries of state, they generally contained a sentence 
 of exile or of imprisonment against the persons to whom they 
 were addressed. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (P. 107, 1. 17.) Loides suspects, passed by the Convention, 
 Nov. 17, 1793. Loides otages, directed against the royalists ; 
 passed July 12, 1799; cancelled Nov. 16 following, a few 
 days after the i8th Brumaire. 
 
 (P. 1.13, 11. 8-10.) R<?<rie . . . gabelle . . . maltote . . . 
 traitants. Regie: interference on the part of the state in the 
 execution of public works. Gabelle : the salt tax, the most 
 arbitrary and odious of all (from the Saxon gapel or gavel 
 = tribute). Maltote (from the L. L. mala tolta, badly or 
 unfairly raised) : originally a tax raised on the cities ; sub- 
 sequently all kinds of taxes. Traitant : a collector of the 
 taxes, so called on account of the traite (agreement) he had 
 to make with the farmers-general of the revenue. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (P. 121,1.26.). . . . the iviliness of Normans, "Normandy 
 was called Pays de Sapience, originally on account of the 
 wisdom of Rollo's laws, and afterwards because of the 
 prudent and even suspicious character of the Normans. 
 
 (P. I2i,l. 27.) . . . . nor Germ in quarrels . . . . Querelle 
 d'Allemand. A quarrel which nothing justifies, arising from 
 trifles. 
 
 (P. 125, 1. 24.) . ... a la Broussais. Broussais (Victor), 
 1772-1838 ; celebrated French physician, enthusiastically 
 fond of bleeding his patients. 
 
 (P. 137,1. 21.) .... the right of "lods." A due paid by 
 the vassal to the lord when he sold any of his property. 
 
 (P. 137, 1. 22.) .... that of garde-noble, that is to say, the 
 right of the suzerain to protect the fief belonging to his 
 vassal when a minor. In that quality he enjoyed the 
 revenues of the fief. 
 
 N
 
 1 86 Montesquieu. 
 
 (P. 137, 1. 25.) .... the branch of the family to -which it 
 belongs. " Les propres ne remontent point," says the jurist 
 Loysel, " mais retournent aux plus proches parents du cot 
 dont ils sont venus au defunt." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 (P. 147,1. 28.) .... they profited by it. "The immense 
 merit of the Spirit of Laws is, indeed, incontestable, and can- 
 not be affected by the capricious attempts made to diminish 
 it by those minute critics, who seem to think that when they 
 detect the occasional errors of a great man, they in some 
 degree reduce him to their own level. It is not such petty 
 cavilling which can destroy an European reputation ; and the 
 noble work of Montesquieu will long survive all attacks of the 
 kind, because its large and suggestive generalisations would 
 retain their value even if the particular facts of which the 
 illustrations consist were all unfounded. Still, I am inclined 
 to believe, that in point of original thought it is barely equal 
 to his earliest work (Considerations sur les Romains), though 
 it is unquestionably the fruit of much greater reading .... 
 This was the first great merit of Montesquieu, that he 
 effected a complete separation between biography and 
 history, and taught historians to study, not the peculiarities 
 of individual character, but the general aspect of the society 
 in which the peculiarities appeared .... In addition to 
 this, Montesquieu made another great advance in the 
 method of creating history. He was the first who, in an 
 inquiry into the relations between the social conditions of a 
 country and its jurisprudence, called in the aid of physical 
 knowledge in order to ascertain how the character of any 
 given civilisation is modified by the actions of the external 
 world.'' (Buckle, History of Civilisation, i, 754, 755). 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 (P. 173, 1. 30.) .... dans les monarchies. We have already 
 quoted in these notes several extracts from English works 
 on Montesquieu. Further appreciations or mentions of this
 
 Notes. 187 
 
 great writer will be found in the essays, letters, etc., of Sir 
 James Mackintosh, Lord Jeffrey, Gibbon, H. Walpole, Lord 
 Brougham, and others. 
 
 The Esprit des Lois was translated into English by Nugent, 
 with an index, 6th edit., 1793. That part of the work which 
 related to the constitution of England has been translated 
 and published separately by Baron Maseres, Lond.. 1781. 
 Complete works of Montesquieu, translated from the 
 French, Lond., 1777, 4 vols. 8vo.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ARGENSON (Rend Louis, Marquis d'), 1694-1757 ; on the " Leltres Persanes," 
 
 AYDIE (N., Chevalier d') ; a friend of Montesquieu, 46. 
 
 BAYLE (Pierre), 1647-1706 ; the traditions of libertinism found in him, 30 ; and 
 
 Montesquieu, 118. 
 
 BEAUMARCHAIS (Caron de), 1731-1799 ; his style, 34. 
 
 BEAUVILLIKRS (Paul, Ducde), 1648-1714; governor of the Duke of Burgundy ; 40. 
 BERWICK (James Fitzjames, Duke of, Marshal of France), 1660-1734 ; admired 
 
 by Montesquieu, 51. 
 BONNEVAL (Claude Alexandre, Comte de), 1675-1747 ; a celebrated adventurer, 
 
 53' 
 
 BoSSUnT (Jacques Benigne), 1627-1704 ; on politics, 59 ; and Montesquieu, 58-64. 
 BOULAINVILLIERS (Henri, Comte de), 1658-1722 ; and Montesquieu, 134, 135. 
 BOURBON (Louis Henri de Conde", Due de), 1692-1740 ; Montesquieu visits him 
 
 at Chantilly, 46. 
 CATINAT (Nicolas de), 1637-1722 ; Marshal of France ; "an austere aristocrat," 
 
 10. 
 CAYLUS (Anne Claude Philippe, Comte de), 1692-1765 ; a friend of Montesquieu, 
 
 46. 
 
 CHARDIN (Jean), 1643-1713 ; a celebrated traveller, 33 ; and climate, 152. 
 CHATEAUBRIAND (Frangois Auguste, Vicomtede), 1768-1848; style of his novels, 
 
 1 22 ; on Montesquieu, 166, 167. 
 
 CHENIER (Andre" Marie de), 1762-1794 ; a celebrated poet, 48. 
 CHESTERFIELD (Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl o'), 1694-1773 ; meets Montes- 
 quieu in his travels, 53, 54. 
 CLERMONT (Marie Anne deBourbon, styled Mademoiselle de), 1697-1741; admired 
 
 by Montesquieu, 46. 
 
 COLARDEAU (Charles Pierre), 1731-1776; his poetry, 47. 
 " Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur et de la Ddcaden.ee des Remains," 
 
 58-64. 
 
 CREBILLON (Claude Prosper Jollyot de), 1707-1777 ; a French novelist, 32. 
 DE BROSSES (Charles), 1709 1777 ; "magistral galant," 21. 
 " Defense de I' Esprit des Lois," 144. 
 DEFFAND (Marie de Vichy Chambon, Marquise du), 1697-1780; Montesquieu 
 
 frequents her house, 46. 
 
 DESMOLETS (Pierre Nicolas), 1678-1760 ; an Oratorian priest, friend of Montes- 
 quieu, 44. 
 
 DESTUTT DE TRACY (Antoine Louis Claude), 1754-1836 ; on Montesquieu, 173. 
 " Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate" 65-67. 
 DIDEROT (Denis), 1713-1784 ; character of his novels, 22. 
 DOMAT (Jean), 1625-1695 ; on legislation, 72. 
 
 DUBOIS (Guillaume, Cardinal), 1656-1723 ; a corrupt politician, 71. 
 DUBOS (Jean Baptiste, Abbe"), 1670-1742 ; and Montesquieu, 134, 135. 
 DUFRESNY (Charles Riviere), 1654-1724 ; a dramatic writer, 32. 
 DUPIN (Claude), 1700-1769 ; on the " Esprit des Lois" 142. 
 " Esprit des Lois," 72-139 ; severely criticised by the Jesuits and the 
 
 Janseni-,ts, 143, 144 ; by Frederick the Great, 145 ; by Beccaria, 147 ; 
 
 by Filangieri, 147 ; by Crevier 148. 
 FENELON (Francois de Salignac de la Mothe), 1661-1715 ; Archbishop of 
 
 Cambrai ; his "Salentum," 40.
 
 Index. 
 
 189 
 
 FLKURY (Andrd Hercule, Cardinal de), 1653-1743 ; opposes Montesquieu's 
 election to the A cademie Franfaise, 49. 
 
 FONTENELLE (Bernard le Bovier de), 1657-1757 ; character of his free writings , 
 22. 
 
 GUASCO (Ottaviano de), 1712-1781 ; a friend of Montesquieu, 53. 
 
 GUIZOT (Francois Pierre Guillaume), 1787-1874 ; on Montesquieu, 169. 
 
 HBLVETIUS (Claude Adrien), 1715-1771 ; on the "Esprit des Lois," 141. 
 
 HENAULT (Charles Jean Franjois), 1685-1770 ; " magistral galant," 21. 
 
 LA BREDE, castle of, described, n. 
 
 LA BRUYERE (Jean de), 1645-1696 ; his style, 24. 
 
 LAMBERT (Marie TheVese de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de), 1647-1733 ; 
 Montesquieu frequents her house, 46. 
 
 LAW (John), 1671-1719; an unprincipled financier, 31 ; Montesquieu meets him 
 at Venice, 53. 
 
 LEONARD (Nicolas Germain), 1744-1793; poet and novelist. 47. 
 
 " Lettres Persanes" true character of the book, i ; an account of it, 34 ; its 
 success, 46. 
 
 Louis XIV (1638-1715), state of France towards the close of his reign, 29 ; and 
 Montesquieu, 50. 
 
 Louis. Due de Bourgogne, grandson of Louis XIV (1682-1712) ; the ideal ruler 
 of France, 40. 
 
 MABLY (Gabriel Bonnot, Abbe de), 1709-1785 ; a well-known historian, 40. 
 
 MALLET (Jean Roland), died 1736 ; an Academician, 50. 
 
 " Manon Lescaut," a novel by the Abbe Prevost, 26. 
 
 MARIVAUX (Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de), 1688-1763; on the " Lettres 
 Persanes" 45. 
 
 MAUREPAS (Jean Frederic Phelypeaux, Comte de), 1701-1781 ; a statesman, 
 friend of Montesquieu 46. 
 
 MERIMEE (Prosper). 1803-1870 ; a novelist, 34. 
 
 MONTAIGNE (Michel Eyquen de), 1533-1592; of the same intellectual family as 
 Montesquieu, 16, 17 ; and Montesquieu, 73. 
 
 MONTESQUIEU (Jacques de Secondat de), father of the following, 10. 
 
 (Charles Louis Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de), his birthj 10 ; 
 
 sent to Juilly, n ; his education, 12 ; early free-thinking, 12 ; president 
 & mortier, 13 ; his distaste for the law, 13 ; studies nature, 14 ; his 
 personal appearance, 15; fond of Montaigne, 16; his character, 18, 25; 
 fond of study, 17 ; and Pascal, 19 ; set aside by the Court of Versailles, 
 24; writes the "Lettres Persanes," 29-43; an esprit fort in religion, 
 40 ; on the Spaniards, 42 ; writes the " Temple de Gnide," 46-49 ; travels, 
 51 ; member of the Acade'mie Franfaise, 49 ; in England, 54 ; writes 
 the " Considerations," 58-64 ; and Bossuet, 58-60 ; and Machiavelli, 58 ; 
 writes the "Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate" 65-67 ; writes the ^'Esprit 
 des Lois,'' 1 72-139 ; and the Sorbonne, 149 ; on the various forms of 
 government, 94-119; on the English constitution, 109, no; on America, 
 149; "Defense ae f Esprit des Lois" 144; his death, 146; and the 
 French Revolution, 154 ; his most recent followers and disciples, 165-175. 
 
 NATTIER (Jean Baptiste), 1678-1726 ; portrait-painter, 46. 
 
 NICOLE (Pierre), 1625-1695 ; quoted, 30. 
 
 PASCAL (Blaise), 1623-1662 ; and Montesquieu, 19. 
 
 PENEL (Franchise de;, wife of Jacques de Secondat, 10. 
 
 POLIGNAC (Melchior, Cardinal de), 1661-1741 ', a friend of Montesquieu, 53. 
 
 PRIE (Agnes Berthelotde Pleneuf, Marquise de), 1698-1727 ; mistress of the Due 
 de Bourbon, 46. 
 
 RAPIN DE THOYRAS (Paul), 1661-1725 ; historian, 154. 
 
 Regency oj the Due d'OrUans, 25. 
 
 RETZ (Jean Frangois de Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de), 1614-1679 ; the 'tradition 
 of libertinism found in him, 30. 
 
 RICHELIEU (Armand Jean Duplessis, Cardinal de), 1585-1642; Montesquieu's 
 opinion of him, 50. 
 
 ROUSSEAU (Jean Jacques). 1712-1778 ; his novels, 22. 
 
 SAINT-VREMOND (Charles de Marquetel de Saint-Denys de), 1616-1703 ; the 
 tradition of libertinism found in him, 30 ; his style, 58. 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE (Charles Augustin), 1804-1869; on Montesquieu, 174, 175. 
 
 STAK'L-HOLSTEIN (Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de), 1766-1817; 
 and Montesquieu, 169, 170.
 
 1 90 Montesquieu. 
 
 STENDHAL (Henri Beyle, better known as), 1783-1842 ; a sceptic, 34; why he 
 
 admires the "Lettres Persanes," 42. 
 TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD (Charles Maurice de), 1754-1838; and Montesquieu, 
 
 167, 168. 
 
 TAVKRNIER (Jean Baptiste), 1605-1689 ; celebrated traveller, 36. 
 " TfUmaque," "1'ouvrage divm de ce siecle," 26. 
 " Temple de Gnide" (le), 46, 49. 
 TENCIN (Claudine Alexandrine Guerin, Marquise de), 1681-1749; Montesquieu 
 
 frequents her house, 46. 
 TOCQUEVILLB (Alexis Charles Henri CleVel de), 1803-1859 ; a disciple of 
 
 Montesquieu, 171, 173. 
 
 TOURREIL (Jacques Ide), 1656 1714; Academician, 50. 
 " Troglodytes (let)," a tale, by Montesquieu, 40. 
 TURENNE (Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de), 1611-1675 ; Marshal of 
 
 France, 24. 
 VAUBAN (Scbastien Le Prestre, Marquis de), 1633-1707 ; " an austere aristo- 
 
 crat," 10. 
 
 VERNET (Jacob), 1728-1790 ; a Genevese /&; meets Montesquieu, 53. 
 VERGENNES (Charles Gravier, Comte de), 1717-1787 : his merits as a diplomatist, 
 
 - 
 
 VILLEMAIN (Abel Frangois), 1790-1867 ; on Montesquieu, 173. 
 ENON ( 
 AIRE ^ 
 scepti 
 
 VOISENON (Claude Henri de Fuzee, Abbd de), 1708-1755 ; a novelist, 49. 
 VOLTAIRE ^Frangois Marie Arouet de), 1694-1778 ; style of his works, 22 ; his 
 ticism, 142, 143 ; and Montesquieu, 142 ; criticises the "Esprit des 
 
 Lois" 143. 
 WALDKGRAVE (Lord), travels with Montesquieu, 51.
 
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