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Montesquieu's Grand Design: The Political Sociology of ‘Esprit des Lois’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

M. P. Masterson
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Extract

Nobody, least of all anyone intending to allude to sociology and stay respectable, should nowadays dare employ a generalization from a single instance. Nonetheless (since this is an introductory paragraph, and therefore only rhetoric), 1 I shall permit myself to do so and excuse the lapse by calling it an illustration. A professor of my acquaintance recently observed that reading an essay on Montesquieu (by one of my better students) had almost persuaded him to go himself and read Esprit des lois. In this country, I suspect, Montesquieu is less read than merely acknowledged as ‘a precursor of sociology’ or even as one of the ‘great theorists’ of sociology in general and political sociology in particular. One of the contributions that I hope this article will make is to persuade others, not merely historians of ideas, that Montesquieu should actually be read, because his ideas and his difficulties are important, interesting and instructive.

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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , July 1972 , pp. 283 - 318
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 I have shamelessly plagiarized this mot from somewhere or other. I had hoped to blame it on Professor Crick, but he appears to be innocent, or, at least, I cannot find the place.

2 ‘Finishing’ may be over-optimistic, especially in modern times. Montesquieu is in some ways the worst enemy of his own ideas. Plamenatz has observed truly, ‘The Spirit of the Laws is a long book, but not nearly as long as it seems. No book so well written, and with so much that is excellent in it, was ever so liable to weary the reader’ — and, it should be added, so liable to confuse him. To make matters worse, Montesquieu began the work with three chapters on law which ‘are among the worst in the book’. These loose, baffling chapters effectively prevented me, as an undergraduate, from ever winning through to Montesquieu's sociological ideas at all. (Cf. Plamenatz, J., Man and Society, Vol. I (London: Longmans Green, 1967), pp. 254, 260–2.)Google Scholar See also footnote 19 below.

3 Aron, R., Main Currents in Sociological Thought, Vol. I (Harmondsworth: Penguin Book, 1969), PP. 30–1.Google Scholar

4 ‘Sociology marks a moment in man's reflection on historical reality, the moment when the concept of the social, of society, becomes the centre of interest, replacing the concept of politics or of the regime or of the state’, remarks Raymond Aron (Main Currents, p. 15). Similarly, Durkheim, (Montesquieu and Rousseau (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965))Google Scholar tells us that ‘A discipline may be called a science only if it has a definite field to explore… Before social science could begin to exist, it had to be assigned a definite subject matter… the subject matter of social science is social ‘things’, that is, laws, customs, religions, etc’ (p. 3); and he emphasizes Montesquieu's importance in making the study of these ‘things’ more genuinely social. At one point (p. 24) Durkheim says, ‘Montesquieu did not classify societies, but rather the ways in which they are governed’, but later he relents and talks of Montesquieu classifying and describing types of society (p. 32). Durkheim does not, however, make the point that, in addition to giving social science a subject matter by studying such social ‘things’ as laws more socially, Montesquieu plays a part in creating society as a whole, or societies as wholes as a subject matter for science. I do not wish, in saying this, to answer the difficult question whether Montesquieu takes the possibly dangerous step of completely reifying society, making society a ‘thing’ of the same ontological status as a man or as the inanimate objects of physical science (although even this may not be wholly damaging at certain stages in the development of social science): but I do wish to stress the importance of Montesquieu in developing the use of words in such a way as to enable us to think, when it suits us, of a society as a single entity. See footnote 24 below.

5 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Preface, para. 9. I have used Montesquieu, , Oeuvres Complétes. Oster, D., ed. (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1964).Google Scholar When giving references to Esprit des lois, I give the numbers of books always, of chapters usually, and sometimes the paragraph numbers as well. N.B. There are slight variations in text and paragraphing between various editions and translations.

6 Provided that Montesquieu's solution to the problem of free-will and determinism is not too closely inspected, particularly in the light of his own aspiration to establish the scientific laws of human moral and social difference and change. (For his solution, see Esprit des lois, Book I Chap. 1, paras. 10–14.)

7 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Preface, para. 10: Book I, Chap. 3, paras. 12–14; Book XIX, Chap. 2: Chap. 5, para. 3: Chap 14, para. 8: and especially Chap. 21, para. 2.

8 See my remarks on Montesquieu's selection and use of evidence, page 292 below.

9 See my remarks on the conflict between exposition and analysis in Montesquieu, pp. 287–90 below.

10 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Books II–X, XVII and XIX, but especially Books II–IV.

11 On the difficulties raised for Montesquieu by his seizing unnecessarily on this number see page 291 below.

12 To translate this word as principle may mislead. For Montesquieu the idea was of motive principle. In his Explanatory Notes (Avertissement, para. 2) he likens it to the mainspring of a watch. To say it is what makes a society tick hits it off exactly.

13 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book III, and Book IV, Chaps. 1–5. Similar attitudes may play a stabilizing role in one type but a destabilizing role in another, e.g. ambition needs to be suppressed in a republic although it is of positive value in monarchy (Book III, Chap. 7, para. 2).

14 Not necessarily completely without shocks. At times Montesquieu adheres to the view that a degree of political conflict can contribute towards the maintenance of liberty in the two forms of government, monarchy and republic, where liberty is possible (but not inevitable). He approves of the considerable, but not uncontrollable, excitement of English party politics (Book XIX, Chap. 27, paras. 4–8, 11–12, 15, 41, 58). Conflict that is regularized in established institutions (Book XI, Chap. 6, paras. 30–1) is the basis of his account of the balancing of power in England. Similarly a restrained form of conflict is the basis in stable monarchy of the moderation of central power by subordinate dependent powers (Book III, Chap. 8, para. 1–Chap. 9, para. 1): ‘honour knows not how to submit’. Montesquieu even attempts to apply this approval of conflict to republics (Book II, Chap. 2, para. 26; Book XI, Chap. 4 and Chap. 13, para. 7): even though (to my mind) this would destroy the explanatory force of the principe of virtue.

15 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Books XVII–XX, especially Book XIX, Chap. 4, para. 1.

16 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book VIII, especially Chap. 2, para. 9: Chap. 7: Chap. 16, paras. 1–2: Chap. 17; Book X, Chap. 4, para. 2: Chap. 9, paras. 1–2; Book III, Chap. 3.

17 Montesquieu, , Esprit des his, Book II, Chap. 4, para. 6; Book IX, Chap. 6, para. 1; Book V, Chap. 10, paras. 1–2.Google Scholar Montesquieu contradicts himself on this question of how difficult it is for a society to recover from despotism (i.e. not simply to have one despotic government replace another): compare Esprit des lois, Book XVII, Chap. 3, para. 6 and Book XIX, Chap. 14 with Book VIII, Chap. 8.

18 Too much later. By which time many a faint-hearted reader, daunted by Montesquieu's apparently butterfly style and enormous length, has no doubt abandoned the book, or decided to skip large sections and to go straight to the most famous passages, mentioned in all the commentaries, like the account of Britain's constitution and liberty. Thus what is important about Montesquieu is ignored in favour of what is by comparison second-rate and derivative. Thus the one-sided and even mistaken view of Montesquieu as advocate of the separation and balance of powers, and recommender of liberty à l'anglaise is reinforced.

19 Plamenatz remarks of this baffling book that, ‘His general definitions of law lead to nothing, and are probably brought in only out of deference to a traditional theory which he could neither bring himself to discard nor knew how to make use of for the purposes of his own theory’ (p. 262). This is a little harsh. One reason for the chapter may be only too human. Montesquieu may be putting on the style, indeed putting on the academic style, for this is to be his masterpiece: this, it may seem to him, is the way that proper books (as opposed to the slightly improper ones he has previously written) should begin. Inability to escape traditional modes of thinking may also play a part here, but nonetheless he does wish to develop and employ these modes of thinking to some purpose. His long catalogue of various types of law has greater intellectual coherence than is at first obvious, although that coherence is apparent only after reading the later sociological sections of the work. His idea, albeit easily assailable, is, I believe, that what makes ‘laws’ of all these disparate items is their necessity for the conservation or preservation of whatever is subject to them. A reason for devoting a chapter to the idea of laws of nature is that Montesquieu wishes to discuss men in the condition of nature in order to put Hobbes’ dangerous theories of absolutism out of court from the beginning. When Montesquieu's attention is directed towards contemporary politics it is frequently directed to the risk of absolutism in France. One of the conclusions of his sociological theory is that despotism is not inevitable in France: even so, theories of absolutism could pave the way for developments in that direction, by weakening the will of subordinate political institutions to continue moderating central authority as they should. Montesquieu dignifies few theorists with a personal reference: Hobbes is thefirstso honoured, probably because he is so dangerous. Montesquieu gives prominence to the laws and condition of nature, not out of mere purposeless traditionalism, but because he thinks the justification for Hobbes’ theories is rooted in Hobbes’ view of the natural condition of mankind. Unfortunately, Montesquieu's argument is ill-designed for its purpose because he misunderstands the hypothetical character of the ‘natural condition of mankind’ and of the ‘condition of war’ in Hobbes. Montesquieu proves to his own satisfaction that men are peaceable in the state of nature, but in the next chapter, when facing a different problem, he blindly concedes the point that is so important to Hobbes, whatever the vocabulary it is expressed in. Montesquieu concedes that men in social contact with one another are aggressive. The weapon for refuting Hobbes, or at least for cutting down the significance of his argument, should be Montesquieu's own sociological explanation of political behaviour in moderate governments: but Montesquieu is worsted because he attacks too soon, meeting Hobbes with Hobbes’ own weapons and on Hobbes’ ground, the wrong ground. Book I, then, although it is not of Montesquieu's best, is not merely pointless, nor does it lack connection with Montesquieu's concerns elsewhere in the work. It may be revealing that Book I seems to have been less of an obstacle to the appreciation of Montesquieu in his own day than later.

20 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book II, Chap, 1, para. 1.

21 So ‘it appears from the manuscript’, Shackleton, Robert, Montesquieu, A Critical Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 239.Google Scholar

22 This word, of course, had not yet been coined. See my remarks on Montesquieu's vocabulary, below and footnote 24.

23 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Explanatory Notes (Avertissement); and Books III–V. I have ignored the difficulties of the distinction in Montesquieu between democratic and aristocratic republics here, but see below p. 291.

24 The word société is in use and Montesquieu employs it in the abstract sense of the condition of beings who live in groups more or less numerous and organized, as opposed to the condition of nature without society (Book I, Chap. 2, para. 8; Book VIII, Chap. 3, para. 2). But a more modern sense is also emerging. For Montesquieu, the word has also the sense of a particular society, distinguishable from other societies (Book I, Chap. 2, para. 5). It may refer to a society without necessarily any limits to its duration, conceptually distinguishable from its government, and distinguishable too from the individuals who compose the society from time to time (Book I, Chap. 3, para. 7; Book X, Chap. 3). It may also apply to a society as a whole, including its government (Book X, Chap. 2, paras. 3–4). Nonetheless, where a modern ear would expect to hear a society or societies spoken of, Montesquieu still prefers to talk of a people and peoples.

25 and to himself! It should not be forgotten that a thinker striking out on his own has also, as it were, to explain his views to himself, and, in doing so, often finds it difficult to escape completely from more traditional modes of expression and thought. Montesquieu's exposition is not free from signs of this. While this must be recognized, however, it should not be exaggerated. Durkheim would no doubt have modified his view of this matter, had the information been available to him about Montesquieu's apparent intention, at one time, of beginning with the present Book III. With this information, it would be likely that Durkheim would have been even milder in his reproof (pp. 32–3) of Montesquieu's initial ‘classification’ of ‘societies according to form of government’, which he criticized because it appeared to him to carry the false implication that the ‘form of government determines] the nature of society’. He would have been less likely to have seen the classification in Book II as a failure ‘to break entirely with [the] point of view of… Montesquieu's predecessors’. He would have been more likely to have seen it as a device by which Montesquieu hopes to instruct his contemporaries, even if, as is not unlikely, it is a device that replicates the mental processes by which Montesquieu himself originally came to develop the new concepts of Book III.

26 Montesquieu, , Esprit des lois, Book V, Chap. 19, para. 9. England is not named here, but see page 315.Google Scholar

27 Montesquieu, , Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chap. 9, paras. 1–2.Google Scholar

28 That is his Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, a work which partly overlaps Esprit des lois in analysis and content. See Shackleton, , Montesquieu, pp. 158–9.Google Scholar

29 Shackleton, , Montesquieu, p. 158Google Scholar, but see also pp. 234–5.

30 If institutions were patterns of behaviour, and nothing more, and if attitudes were inferable only from behaviour, then this statement would be a mere tautology. It is not a tautology because the same outward action may result from different motives in either the same or different individuals. We can hope to reconstruct motives, even those of agents in the remote past or distance, by investigating what they said and wrote and attempting to find some coherence underlying their actions. This is, ideally, the method Montesquieu indicates. Talk of institutions does have strong behavioural implications. We can distinguish between institutions de jure and de facto, between what is supposed to happen according to current or previous norms and what actually does happen. If attitudes come to support or require behaviour other than that demanded by those norms, then we say that institutions have changed, what was only de facto comes to be accepted as de jure or at least as usual.

31 Certainly Montesquieu's period and, superficially, his style, a style ‘in which the rules of proportion are not observed and everything is represented according to the artist's whim’, Dictionnaire de Trévoux (?) 1771. Some derive baroque from barroco, an irregularly shaped pearl (see Kitson, M., The Age of Baroque (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1966), p. 10Google Scholar). In view of the frequent and justifiable criticisms of the way Montesquieu has assembled Esprit des lois, I find irresistible the thought of this book as a casket of irregular pearls.

32 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book V, Chap. 7, paras. 6–14.

33 Althusser, L., Montesquieu, La Politique et l'Histoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), pp. 59–65.Google Scholar

34 Venturi, Franco, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 18–19,44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Venturi points out that, towards the end of the eighteenth century, French thinkers ‘restored an ancient form to the European republican tradition’. ‘For them only the neo-classical model could assume the grandeur and vigour of a myth.’ This was so, because, although these thinkers ‘derived strength from the English, Polish, Italian and Dutch examples’ of ‘free forms of organization and constitution’, ‘these examples did not belong to them directly; they were less local, less “personal”’ to them. French thinkers adopted the neo-classical model even though ‘for them. the roots of republican thought, from Montesquieu to Rousseau, were deep in a European experience which was recent and not at all mythical’. Professor Venturi is right to draw our attention to the fact that the French had no local ‘experience which could serve as a model of republican inspiration’. I shall argue, however, that he exaggerates the extent to which Montesquieu's theory of republics, by being ‘modern’, escapes this limitation on French thought.

35 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, pp. 43–4.Google Scholar

36 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 44Google Scholar, quoting Esprit des lois, Book VIII, Chap. 16, para. 1.

37 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 44, quoting Esprit des lois, Book IX, Chap. 1, para. 6.Google Scholar

38 The greater the territory under a single government, the less it is capable of preserving the republican form of government. Esprit des lois, Book VIII, Chaps. 16–18.

39 I suspect that the reason for mentioning Holland, Germany and the Swiss federation at all at precisely this point in the chapter is historical rather than political. Immediately after mentioning the successful resistance against Rome of the Barbarian confederations beyond Rhine and Danube, he says ‘Hence Holland, Germany and the Swiss Confederacy are regarded in Europe as eternal republics’. His idea seems to be that these modern federative states are direct descendents of those unconquered Barbarian associations. Whether this was an idea held by anyone else, as Montesquieu implies, I do not know. Certainly it is an idea of the same kind as that he shows by his interest in the Barbarian origins of feudal institutions in France and in tracing (via Tacitus) the origins of English freedom to the woods of Germany. (Books XXVIII, XXX-XXXI; and Book XI, Chap. 6, para. 67.)

40 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book IX, Chap. 1, para. 7. I discuss this remark on page 309 below.

41 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book IX, Chap. 3, para. 4.

42 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 45.Google Scholar

43 But see also p. 304.

44 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book IX, Chap. 3, paras. 2–4.

45 In another place Montesquieu drops a discussion rather abruptly, remarking that an author ‘must not always so drain a subject that there is nothing left for the reader to do. It's not a question of making people read, but of making them think’ (Book XI, Chap. 20, para. 1). We are urged to speculate, guided by what we take to be Montesquieu's point of view.

46 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 44Google Scholar, apparently quoting Esprit des lois, Book IX, Chap. 2, para. 3.

47 Montesquieu uses this term even for federations whose constituents include princely states.

48 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book VIII, Chap. 16, paras. 1–4; Book X, Chap. 6.

49 Montesquieu was not without ideas to explain such expansion, although he does not give them prominence in Esprit des his. In Considerations he discovers a major stimulus to aggression in internal political change at Rome. Formally, the replacement of an elective kingship by elected consuls did not amount to much, but it resulted in profound psychological differences in the conduct of the office. ‘During their lifetimes, princes have periods of ambition; after which follow different passions and indeed idleness: but, because the republic had leaders who changed every year and who sought to distinguish their tenure of office in order to gain new offices, ambition did not waste a moment. [These leaders] induced the senate to propose war to the people and daily they pointed out fresh enemies to the people. The senate itself was already somewhat inclined to do this: perpetually wearied by popular complaints and demands, it sought to distract the people from their unrest and to keep them busy abroad’. Under such a stimulus, a nation either perishes or acquires a profound understanding of the military art (Considerations, I, paras. 19–20, 28–9). The Romans became remarkable military innovators and showed readiness to adopt better military techniques wherever they found them. Their practices in land-use, in land-tenure and in consumption, like those of Sparta, were able to sustain a republic in which a very high proportion of its people were engaged in warfare (Considerations, I–III).

50 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 44Google Scholar, quoting Esprit des lois, Book IX, Chap. 1, para. 1.

51 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book III, Chap. 3, para. 7.

52 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 44Google Scholar, quoting Esprit des lois, Book VIII, Chap 5, para. 3.

53 Apparently, by 1742 eighteen books are completed and six more are roughly prepared. The finished books include III, V, VIII, IX, X I, XIV, XV, XVII, XX, XXI and XXIV and some of the intervening books. See Shackleton, , Montesquieu, p. 235.Google Scholar

54 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 45.Google Scholar May not Montesquieu think that these aristocracies are rather open? See Voyages en Europe, 1728–1732, in Montesquieu, Oeuvres Complètes, D. Oster, ed., pp. 217, 223, 246, 345, 346. In his travel notes of 1728, Montesquieu notes that in Venice there are ‘about 2000 nobles counting children; but only 12–1500 at the Grand Council’. He records that nobility can be purchased; as many as fifty bought nobility during a recent war. At Lucca, too, he notes that 4–500 families are noble and that here, too, nobility can be purchased. At Genoa he notes 8–900 nobles in a city of 80–100,000 souls. Nor does Montesquieu fail to notice the differences between these constitutionally similar states: in Genoa the nobility are detested by the people while the Venetian nobility are loved by their people. Contrary to Venturi, it is odd that this hostility to Genoa does not show later, in Esprit des lois.

55 I have not dealt with the one other reference Venturi gives (p. 45), i.e. the reference to republics modern and ancient, and their need ‘d'étre conduit par un conseil ou sénat’ (Esprit des lois, Book II, Chap. 2, para. 9). But again Montesquieu's references are to Greece and Rome here and throughout the chapter. The only specific reference to the modern world is on a rather different point: it is a three-word footnote, again to Venice, as an example of aristocracies where nobles vote.

56 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book II, Chap. 3, para. 8 and footnote. Even the Lycurgan Mr. Penn of Pennsylvania and the Jesuits of Paraguay (who all seem to be considered by Montesquieu as founders of modern communities of republican character) although relatively distant and inaccessible, receive no less and no more attention than Ragusa and Lucca.

57 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book II, Chap. 3, para. 4.

58 ‘Remarks on Several Parts of Italy’, 1705 — a book Montesquieu may well never even have finished reading. Cf. Shackleton, , Montesquieu, p. 232.Google Scholar

59 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book X, Chap. 6, para. 3–Chap. 8, para. 2.

60 Montesquieu, Esprit des bis, Book ll, Chaps. 2 and 3; Book V, Chap. 8; Book VII, Chap. 3; Book V, Chap. 5; Book XI, Chap. 6; Book XX, Chaps. 4 and 5; Book XXI, Chap. 21; Book XXVI, Chap. 24.

61 These are, perhaps, the laws that led Montesquieu to say that ‘Venice is one of the republics which has best corrected, by its laws, the inconveniences of hereditary aristocracy’ (Book VII, Chap. 5, para. 4, footnote).

62 Indeed, from the space devoted in his travel notes to the extent of prostitution in Venice, it seems to have been one of the most remarkable things in that city.

63 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book V, Chap. 8, para. 7.

64 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chap. 6, para. 26; Book XIII, Chap. 12, para. 1; Book XVIII, Chap. 6, paras. 1–2; see also Book XX, Chap. 2, para. 2, footnote.

65 An interesting precursor of Weber's attribution of the development of rationally oriented and dependable officialdom in ancient Egypt to the need to regulate waterways collectively. Cf. Bendix, R., Max Weber, An Intellectual Portrait (London: Methuen, 1966).Google Scholar

66 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 45.Google Scholar

67 See Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 34.Google Scholar

68 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book II, Chap. 3, para. 11; Book XI, Chap. 5, para. 1; Book XX, Chap. 9, para. 2: Chap. 23, para. 4; Book XXI, Chap. 20, para. 4.

69 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, pp. 45–6.Google Scholar

70 I discuss this problem on pp. 314–16.

71 See Shackleton, , Montesquieu, p. 230.Google Scholar

72 Corruption is mentioned only briefly at the end and more or less outside of the account of the constitution, not as part of the working of England's constitution and politics but only as a reason why it will all ultimately pass away. See page 315 and footnote 97.

73 I refer here to all the contemporary republics that Montesquieu visited and then referred to in Esprit des lois. The notes on the various states may be found in Montesquieu, , Oeuvres Complètes: Venice, pp. 215–32Google Scholar; Genoa pp. 241–8 and 344–8; Lucca pp. 245–6; Holland pp. 326–31; England pp. 331–4.

74 Apparently some changes were made to Esprit des lois, including the excision of a chapter on the government of the Netherlands ‘lest it should inconvenience French foreign policy’, Shackleton, Montesquieu, p. 242. This chapter has long been lost. According to Montesquieu's friend Guasco, the chapter demonstrated the need of the Dutch for a stadholder as an ‘integral part of the constitution of the republic’ (see Montesquieu, , Correspondance, ed. Gebelin, F. (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1914), t.II, pp. 6–7).Google Scholar I hope to present on another occasion my reasons for believing the following: (a) This chapter may well not be entirely lost, (b) It does not or would not go much beyond the view that the republic could never get to its feet again without a stadholder. (c) The type of recovery Montesquieu thought a stadholder would bring would be primarily military, (d) Montesquieu would not see the stadholder as a monarchical solution to the problems of an anachronistic republic. He would stress, not the hereditary element of the stadholderate, nor its novelty, but the restoration, to its properly integrated place in the array of Dutch institutions, of an essentially republican magistracy. He would expect that, in Dutch conditions, the stadholder would return to his function of acting as a counterpoise to local magistrates who, in the absence of a stadholder, had been able to abandon themselves to the pursuit of their own narrow material interests as members of various closed urban oligarchies. This counterpoise would operate, not in a simple mechanical way, but by establishing or re-establishing the motive principle of virtue (or something akin to it) in the magistrates. This would be a consequence of the conduct that would be necessary for the magistrates if they were to be able to bid successfully for the popular support needed to resist the tendency of a stadholder to try to become more like a monarch, at the expense of the other institutions of the republic, that is, at the expense of all the other magistrates, (e) Nonetheless, even if Montesquieu had felt free to print exactly what he had wished in Esprit des lois, the foregoing would have been expressed or alluded to in an exceedingly fragmentary way. He would have confined himself (as he did with regard to the other modern republics) to a few remarks on the Dutch Republic, cheek by jowl with references to his favoured classical material, and all in illustration of his general theory of the close interrelation between institutions and attitudes. Finally, it should be added that, however good or bad may be my arguments for these propositions about what Montesquieu did not print, my conclusions on his treatment of Holland in Esprit des lois, as published, remain valid.

75 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 45.Google Scholar

76 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book IX, Chap. 1, para. 7.

77 Montesquieu is prepared to admit that, where the true rights deriving to a conqueror from his conquest are not exceeded, there may be some advantage to the bulk of a people in being conquered. Frequently, states that are conquered are already somewhat degenerated from their original condition and incapable of reforming themselves. A conqueror who restricted himself only to the rights of conquest could be of benefit to such a people. Nonetheless the examples Montesquieu gives of actual conquerors suggest that conquerors frequently exceed their rights and that, usually in the short-term and often in the long-term, conquest is of little benefit and frequently of much harm to the defeated. (Esprit des lois, Book X, especially Chap. 4.)

78 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chap. 2, para. 1.

79 A full analysis of Montesquieu's doctrine of liberty would take me too far from my purpose in this article. I have given here what I take to be Montesquieu's intentions in Books XI–XII, especially XI, Chaps. 3–4 and XII, Chaps. 1–2.

80 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chaps. 7,11–18.

81 Even if Montesquieu thinks that some republics are not politically free in structure, this does not mean that he thinks that the citizens of those countries are necessarily unfree as citizens. ‘It may happen that the constitution is free and the citizen not free at all. The citizen may be free and the constitution not. In the one case, the constitution will be free in law but not in fact: in the other, the citizen will be free in fact but not law.’ (Book XII, Chap. 1, paras. 2–3.) Not only the constitution, but also social custom and civil law influence the extent of individual freedom.

82 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chap. 6, para. 8. How much, we may ask, is this a sign of justifiable caution in the face of the censors of a monarchy, a caution which itself shows how unfree that monarchy was? We know that ‘a hostile comment on Richelieu was modified; and five criticisms of monarchy were slightly attenuated’ in the course of printing Esprit des lois (Shackleton, , Montesquieu, p. 242Google Scholar).

83 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book VIII, Chaps. 17–18; Book IX, Chap 7; Book X, Chap. 9.

84 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, pp. 45–6.Google Scholar

85 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, pp. 45–6.Google Scholar

86 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book V, Chap. 10, para. 2.

87 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 46.Google Scholar

88 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 46.Google Scholar

89 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book III, Chap 3, para. 4, quoted by Venturi on p. 46.

90 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book V, Chap. 3, para. 3; Book III, Chap. 7, para. 2.

91 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 47.Google Scholar

92 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 47.Google Scholar I know of no place where Montesquieu speaks like this.

93 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

94 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book II, Chap. 4, paras. 3, 8.

95 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chap. 6, para. 46.

96 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book XI, Chap. 6, para. 68.

97 That the constitution was unstable was an idea that troubled British minds, too. In 1741, Hume in his Essays (Nos. VI and VII) thought the constitution was unstable. The balance between Crown and Commons depended upon corruption (he denies meaning pecuniary corruption, but slips in an approving reference to Polybius on Rome which, no doubt deliberately, removes the force of the denial!). He did not think the balance could last for ever in the face of the ‘immense property which is now lodged in the king, and which is still increasing': ‘The tide has run long… to the side of popular government… and is just beginning to turn towards monarchy’. In short, Hume expected (and preferred) that ‘Absolute monarchy… is the easiest death, the true euthanasia of the British constitution.’ While too much should not be made of the fact that Montesquieu and Hume did ultimately exchange several letters, or of the likelihood that Montesquieu was familiar with the work of Hume, it does seem strange that corruption and election management, which were so important and so obvious, play so little part in Montesquieu's published account of England. To me it seems best explicable by the hypothesis that it is not the real England that is being described but a model suggested by it.

98 In Book XIX, Chap. 27, when giving an account of British society, Montesquieu portrays a people with attitudes liable to maintain the present balance between executive and legislative.

99 This is his conclusion in Pensée 238 (Montesquieu, , Oeuvres Complètes, p. 878Google Scholar). ‘What, then, is the constitution of England? It is a mixed monarchy… England, as one has seen, inclines more to monarchy…’

100 Venturi, Utopia and Reform, Chap. 1, passim.

101 See Shackleton, , Montesquieu, pp. 230, 411–18.Google Scholar

102 Venturi, , Utopia and Reform, p. 43.Google Scholar

103 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Book I, Chap. 3, paras. 8–9.