“The society is the union of men and not the men themselves; the citizen may perish and the man remain.” – Montesquieu

‘The Spirit Of The Laws’ By Montesquieu

Montesquieu’s ‘The Spirit Of The Laws’ was originally published in 1748 and served as a guide to the Framers of the US Constitution, which was drafted in 1787. Our notes and quotes for today, however, are gathered from the fifth printing of the Cambridge University Press edition of Montesquieu’s ‘The Spirit Of The Laws’, published in 2020 as part of the series, “Cambridge Texts In This History Of Political Thought”, edited by Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller and Harold S. Stone. Let’s get to it!

On Democracy

“… love of democracy is love of equality… Love of equality in a democracy limits ambition to the single desire, the single happiness, of rendering greater services to one’s homeland than other citizens. Men cannot render it equal services, but they should equally render it services.”
“… in a democracy real equality is the soul of the state… Every inequality in a democracy should be drawn from the nature of democracy and from the very principle of equality.”
“Voting by lot is the nature of democracy…”
“The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is lost but also when the spirit of extreme equality is taken up and each one wants to be the equal of those chosen to command. So the people, finding intolerable even the power they entrust to the others, want to… cast aside all the judges… [and] submit to no one. There will no longer be mores or love of order, and finally, there will no longer be virtue… [Citizens will] no longer fear loss, [but] expect to acquire… The people fall into this misfortune when those to whom they entrust themselves, wanting to hide their own corruption, seek to corrupt the people. To keep the people from seeing their own ambition, they speak only of the people’s greatness; to keep the people from perceiving their avarice, they constantly encourage that of the people. Corruption will increase among those who corrupt, and it will increase among those who are already corrupted… they will want to join the amusements of luxury to their poverty. But given their laziness and their luxury, only the public treasure can be their object. One must not be astonished to see votes given for silver.”
“If a democracy conquers a people in order to govern it as a subject, it will expose its own liberty…”

On Laws

“The object of war is victory of victory, conquest; of conquest, preservation. All the laws that form the right of nations should derive from this principle…”
“Laws should be so appropriate to the people for whom they are made that it is very unlikely that the laws of one nation can suit another.”
“Laws must relate to the nature and the principle of the government that is established or that one wants to establish, whether those laws form it as do political laws, or maintain it, as do civil laws.”
“Law is in general human reason…”
“… the people alone should make laws.”
“The laws should always humble the arrogance of domination.”
“… atrocity in the laws prevents their execution. When the penalty is excessive, one is often obliged to prefer impunity.”
“When there is no difference in the penalty, there must be some difference in the expectation of pardon… Letters of pardon are a great spring of moderate governments.”
“The law that determines the way ballots are cast is [a] fundamental law… When the people cast votes, their votes should no doubt be public…”
“There are few laws that are not good when the state has not lost its principles.”
“I should prefer that the laws maintained the roughness of the victorious people than that they kept up the softness of the vanquished people.”
“… judgements should be fixed to such a degree that they are never anything but a precise text of the law.”
“… all citizens… should have the right to vote except those whose estate is so humble that they are deemed to have no will of their own.”
“All would be lost if the same man or the same body of principal men… exercised these three powers: that of making the laws, that of executing public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or the disputes of individuals.”
“… legislative power will be entrusted to the body of the nobles and to the body that will be chosen to represent the people, each of which will have assemblies and deliberations apart and have separate views and interests… the one will be chained to the other by their reciprocal faculty of vetoing. The two will be bound by the executive power, which will itself be bound the legislative power.”
“The executive power should be in the hands of a monarch, because the part of the government that almost always needs immediate action is better administered by one than by many, whereas what depends on legislative power is often better ordered by many than by one.”
“It is the triumph of liberty when criminal laws draw each penalty from the particular nature of the crime. All arbitrariness ends, the penalty does not ensue from the legislator’s capriciousness but from the nature of the trying, and man does not do violence to man.”
“There are four sorts of crimes. Those of the first kind run counter to religion; those of the second, to mores; those of the third, to tranquility; those of the fourth, to the security of the citizens. The penalties infliucted should derive from the nature of each of these kinds.”
“The death penalty is the remedy, as it were, for a sick society.”
“Nothing makes the crime of high treason more arbitrary then when indiscreet speech becomes its material… Speech [is] only an idea… How, then, can one make speech a crime of high treason? Wherever this law is established, not only is there no longer liberty, there is not even its shadow.”
“It often happens in popular states that accusations are made in public and any man is permitted to indict whomever he wants. This has brought about the establishment of laws proper to the defense of the innocence of the citizens. In Athens, the accuser who did not get a fifth of the votes for his side paid a fine of a thousand drachmas… In Rome, the unjust accuser was branded with infamy, and the letter “K” was stamped on his forehead.”
“In order to conquer the laziness that comes from the [hot] climate, the laws must seek to take away every means of living without labor…”
“There must be a more extensive code of laws for a people attached to commerce and the sea than for a people satisfied to cultivate their lands.”
“Laws are established, mores are inspired…”
“… the laws [are] the particular and precise institutions of the legislator and the mores and manners, the institutions of the nation in general. From this it follows that when one wants to change the mores and manners, one must not change them by the laws, as this would appear to be too tyrannical; it would be better to change them by other mores and other manners. Thus… to make great changes… reform by laws what is established by laws and change by manners what is established by manners, and it is a very bad policy to change by laws what should be changed by manners.”
“Every penalty that does not derive from necessity is tyrannical. The law is not a pure act of power…”
“… while laws regulate the actions of the citizen, mores regulate the actions of the man… When a people have good mores, laws become simple… laws follow mores…”
“… the laws of commerce perfect mores… “
“… civil laws should aim principally to make good citizens of men…”
“… laws that cause what is indifferent to be regarded as necessary have the drawback of causing what is necessary to be considered as indifferent.”
“The style of the law should be simple; direct expression is always better understood than indirect. There is no majesty in the laws… When the style of the laws is inflated… as a work of ostentation.”
“The laws should not be subtle; they are made for people of middling understanding; they are not an art of logic but the simple reasoning of a father of the family.”
“When exceptions, limitations, modifications, are not necessary in a law, it is much better not to include them in it. Such details plunge one into new details.”
“In the matter of presumption, that of law is better than that of man… when the law presumes, it gives a fixed rule to the judge.”
“As useless laws weaken necessary laws, those that can be evaded weaken legislation. A law should have its effect, and departure from it must not be permitted by some private agreement.”
“There must be a certain candor in the laws. Made to punish the wickedness of men, they should have the greatest innocence themselves.”

On Legislature

“In moderate states… a good legislature will insist less on punishing crimes than on preventing them; he will apply himself more to giving mores than to inflicting punishments.”
“A wise legislator would… lead men’s spirits… by a just tempering of penalties and rewards; by maxims of philosophy, morality, and religion, matched to this character; by the just application of the rules of honor; by using shame as a punishment, and by the enjoyment of a constant happiness and a sweet tranquility.”
“A good legislature takes a middle way; he does not always order pecuniary penalties; he does not always inflict corporal penalties.”
“… good legislators [require] a certain gravity in the mores of women.”
“So that one cannot abuse power, power must check power by the arrangement of things. A constitution can be such that no one will be constrained to do the things the law does not oblige him to do or be kept from doing the things the law permits him to do.”
“There is nothing that wisdom and prudence should regulate more than the portion taken away from the subjects and the portion left to them. Public revenues must not be measured by what the people can give but by what they should give, and if they are measured by what the people can give, it must at least be by what they can always give.”
“Direct taxes are the administration of a good father of a family who levies his revenues himself with economy and order.”
“The legislator is to follow the spirit of the nation when doing so is not contrary to the principles of the government, for we do nothing better than what we do freely and by following our natural genius.”
“If [a] nation inhabited an island, it would not be a conquering nation because overseas conquests would weaken it. It would be even less a conqueror if the terrain of this island were good, because it would not need war to enrich itself. And, as no citizen would depend on another citizen, each would make more of his liberty… there civil status would be more highly esteemed. This nation, made comfortable by peace and liberty, freed from destructive prejudices, would be inclined to become commercial…”
“In states that engage in economic commerce, one can establish a free port. The economy of the state, which always follows the frugality of individuals, gives its economic commerce a soul, so to speak.”
“Commerce is related to the Constitution… the spirit of commerce unites nations… exclude no nation from one’s commerce without great reasons… Commerce… wanders across the earth, flees from where it is oppressed, and remains where it is left to breathe…”
“Bankers are made in order to change silver and not to lend it.”
“The laws always meet the passions and prejudices of the legislator. Sometimes they pass through and are colored; sometimes they remain there and are incorporated.”

On Liberty

“… political liberty in no way consists in doing what one wants…
“Liberty is the right to do everything the laws permit…
“Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquility of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security…”
“Not much trouble need be taken to discover political liberty in the consitution.”
“… penalties, expenses, delays, and even the dangers of justice are the price each citizen pays for his liberty.”
“If the legislative power leaves to the executive power the right to imprison citizens who can post bail for their conduct, there is no longer any liberty, unless the citizens are arrested in order to respond without delay to an accusation of a crime the law has rendered capital…”
“When the legislative power is united with executive power in a single person or in a single body of the magistracy, there is no liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically. Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separate from legislative power and from executive power. If it were joined to legislative power, the power over the life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislator. If it were joined to executive power, the judge could have the force of an oppressor.”
“… liberty is formed by a certain distribution of the three powers…It consists in security or in one’s opinion of one’s security.”
“… in most states liberty is more hampered, countered, or beaten down than is required by their constitutions…”
“Only the disposition of the laws, and especially of the fundamental laws, forms liberty in its relation to the constitution.”
“In moderate states, there is a compensation for heavy taxes; it is liberty.”
“… the more moderate the government, the more the spirit of liberty reigns, and the more secure fortunes are, the easier it is for the merchant to advance substantial duties to the state and to lend them to individuals.”
“… great advantages of liberty have caused the abuse of liberty itself.”
“May we be left as we are. Our discretions joined to our harmlessness make unsuitable such laws as would curb our sociable humor.”
“… revolutions formed by liberty are but a confirmation of liberty.”
“… in order to enjoy [and preserve] liberty, each [citizen] must be able to say what he thinks…”
“The formalities of justice are necessary to liberty.”

On Republics

“Ambition is pernicious in a republic.”
“… great rewards in… a republic are a sign of… decadence because they prove that the principles have been corrupted… The corruption of… government almost always begins with that of its principles.”
“Virtue, in a republic, is a very simple thing: it is love of the republic… Love of the homeland leads to goodness in mores, and goodness in mores leads to love of the homeland.”
“The laws of education are the first we receive… these prepare us to be citizens… in a republic, everything depends on establishing… love, and education should attend to inspiring it.”
“… civil and military employments… must be united in a republic… In republics it would be very dangerous to make the profession of arms a particular estate distinct from that of civil functions… One takes up arms, in the republic, only to defend the laws and the homeland; it is because one is a citizen that one becomes, for a time, a soldier.”
“Men are all equal in a republican government; they are equal in despotic governments; in the former, it is because they are everything; in the latter; it is because they are nothing.”
“In republics [citizens] are free[d] by the laws and captured by the mores…”
“It is the nature of a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise, it can scarcely continue to exist… In a large republic, the common good is sacrificed to a thousand considerations… In a small one, the public good is better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen; abuses are less extensive there and consequently less protected.”
“If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it is large, it is destroyed by an internal vice.”
“… ultimately men… devised a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of republican government and the external force of monarchy… the federal republic. This form of government… a society of societies… [is] able to resist external force, can be maintained at its size without internal corruption: the form of this society curbs every drawback.”
“In republics, the revenues of the state are almost always from direct taxes.”
“All is lost when the lucrative profession of tax-collectors, by its wealth, comes to be an honored profession… It is not good in a republic…”
“In a republic, the condition of the citizens is limited, equal, gentle, and moderate; the effects of public liberty are felt throughout.”

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