Chapter 25

Whatever theory we adopt respecting the foundation of the social union there is a circle round every human being which no government ought to be permitted to overstep; there is a part of the life of every person of years of discretion within which the individuality of that person ought to reign uncontrolled either by any other individual or by the public collectively. Scarcely any degree of utility short of absolute necessity will justify prohibitory regulation, unless it can also be made to recommend itself to the general conscience.

A general objection to government agency is that every increase of the functions devolving on the government is an increase of its power both in the form of authority and, still more, in the indirect form of influence. Though a better organisation of governments would greatly diminish the force of the objection to the mere multiplication of their duties, it would still remain true that in all the advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them if left to themselves.

Letting alone, in short, should be the practice; every departure from it, unless required by some great good, is a certain evil.

MONTESQUIEU

The Spirit of Laws

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu, was born near Bordeaux, in France, Jan. 18, 1689. For ten years he was president of the Bordeaux court of justice, but it was the philosophy of laws that interested him rather than the administration of them. He travelled over Europe and studied the political systems of the various countries, and found at last in England the form of free government which, it seemed to him, ought to be introduced into France. For twenty years he worked at his masterpiece, "The Spirit of Laws" ("De l'Esprit des Lois"), which was published anonymously in 1748, and in which he surveys every political system, ancient and modern, and after examining their principles and defects, proposes the English constitution as a model for the universe. It may be doubted if any book has produced such far-reaching effects. Not only did it help on the movement that ended in the French Revolution, but it induced those nations who sought for some mean between despotism and mob-rule to adopt the English system of parliamentary government. "The Spirit of Laws" is rather hard reading, but it still remains the finest and the soundest introduction to the philosophical study of history. Montesquieu died on February 10, 1755.

_I.--On a Republic_

There are three kinds of governments: the republican, the monarchical, and the despotic. Under a republic, the people, or a part of the people, has the sovereign power; under a monarchy, one man alone rules, but by fixed and established laws; under a despotism, a single man, without law or regulation, impels everything according to his will or his caprice.

When, in a republic, the whole people possesses sovereign power, it is a democracy. When this power is in the hands of only a part of the people it is an aristocracy. In a democracy the people is in certain respects the monarch, in others it is the subject. It cannot reign except by its votes, and the laws which establish the right of voting are thus fundamental in this form of government. A people possessing sovereign power ought to do itself everything that it can do well; what it cannot do well it must leave to its ministers. Its ministers, however, are not its own unless it nominates them; it is, therefore, a fundamental maxim of this government that the people should nominate its ministers. The people is admirably fitted to choose those whom it must entrust with some part of its authority. It knows very well that a man has often been to war, and that he has gained such and such victories, and it is therefore very capable of electing a general. It knows if a judge is hardworking and if the generality of suitors are content with his decisions, and it knows if he has not been condemned for corruption; this is sufficient to enable a people to elect its prætors.

All these things are facts about which a people can learn more in a market-place than a monarch can in a palace. But does a people know how to conduct an affair of state, to study situations, opportunities, and profit by them? No. The generality of citizens have sufficient ability to be electors, but not enough to be elected, and the people, though it is capable of forming a judgment on the administration of others, is not competent to undertake the administration itself. The people have always too much action or too little. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms it overtakes everything; sometimes with a hundred thousand feet it moves as slowly as a centipede.

In a popular state the people are divided into certain classes, and on the way in which this division is carried out depend the duration of a democracy and its prosperity. Election by lot is the democratic method; election by choice the aristocratic method. Determination by lot allows every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country; but it is a defective measure, and it is by regulating and correcting it that great legislators have distinguished themselves. Solon, for instance, established at Athens the method of nominating by choice all the military posts, and of electing by lot the senators and the judges; moreover, he ordained that the candidates for election by lot should first be examined, and that those who were adjudged unworthy should be excluded; in that manner he combined the method of chance and the method of choice.

It does not require much probity for a monarchy or a despotism to maintain itself. The force of the laws in one, and the uplifted sword of the tyrant in the other, regulates and curbs everything. In a democracy, however, everything depends upon the political virtues of the people. When a democracy loses its patriotism, its frugality, and its passion for equality, it is soon destroyed by avarice and ambition.

The principle of democracy grows corrupt, not only when a people loses its spirit of equality, but when this spirit of equality becomes excessive, and each man wishes to be the equal of those whom he has chosen to rule over him. Great successes, and especially those to which the people have largely contributed, give it so much pride that it is no longer possible to direct it. Thus it was that the victory over the Persians corrupted the republic of Athens; thus it was that the victory over the Athenians ruined the republic of Syracuse. There are two excesses which a democracy must avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy or to the government by one man; and the spirit of excessive equality, which ends in despotism.

_II.--On an Aristocracy_

In an aristocracy the sovereign power is in the hands of a group of persons. It is they who make the laws and see that they are carried out, and the rest of the people are the subjects of the nobility. When there is a great number of nobles, a senate is necessary to regulate the affairs which the nobles themselves are too numerous to deal with, and to prepare those which they are able to decide on. In this case the aristocracy exists in the senate, the democracy in the noble class, and the people count for nothing.

The best aristocracy is that in which the popular party, which has no share of the power, is so small and so poor that the governing class has no reason for oppressing it. Thus when Antipater made a law at Athens that those who had not two thousand drachmas should be excluded from voting, he formed the best aristocracy possible--for this qualification was so slight that it excluded very few people, and no one who had any consideration in the city. Aristocratic families should belong to the people as much as possible. The more an aristocracy resembles a democracy, the more perfect it is. The most imperfect of all is that in which the lower classes are ground down by the upper classes.

An aristocracy has by itself more force than a democracy. The nobles form a corporation which, by its prerogative and for its particular interest, restrains the people; but it is very difficult for this corporation to restrain its own members as easily as it restrains the populace. Public crimes can, no doubt, be punished, as it is in the general interests of an aristocracy that this should be done; but, as a rule, private misdeeds in the nobility will be overlooked. A corporation of this sort can only curb itself in two ways--either by a great political virtue, which leads the nobles to regard the people as their equals and makes for the formation of large republic, or by the lesser virtue of moderation, which enables them to conserve their power.

An aristocracy grows corrupt when the power of the nobles becomes arbitrary. When the governing families observe the laws they form a monarchy which has several monarchies; this is a very good thing in its nature, because all these monarchies are bound together by the laws. But when they no longer observe them, they form a despotic state which has many despots.

The extreme corruption comes about when the nobility becomes hereditary; it can no longer be moderate in the exercise of its powers. If the nobles are small in number their power increases, but their surety diminishes; if they are great in number, their power is less, but their surety more certain, for power goes on increasing, and surety goes on diminishing up to the despot whose power is as excessive as his peril. A multitude of nobles in an hereditary aristocracy thus makes the government less violent; but as they will have but little political virtue, they will grow nonchalant, idle, and irresponsible, so that the state at last will have no longer any force or resilience.

An aristocracy is able to maintain its force if its laws are such that they make the nobility feel more the dangers and fatigues of government than the pleasures of it, and if the state is in such a situation that it has something to dread, and that its surety comes from within, and its danger threatens from without. A certain confidence forms the glory and the safety of a monarchy, but a republic lives on its perils. The fear of the Persians kept the Greek states in strict obedience to republican laws. Carthage and Rome intimidated and strengthened each other. It is a strange thing, but democracies and aristocracies are like water, which grows corrupt only when it is too long unmoved and untroubled.

_III.--On the Monarchy_

Intermediary, subordinate, and dependent powers constitute the nature of a monarchical government, in which a single man governs by means of fundamental laws. The most natural of intermediary, subordinate powers is that of a nobility. This is indeed an essential part of a monarchy, of which the maxim is: "No king, no nobility; no nobility, no king."

There are some persons in certain countries of Europe who wish to abolish all the rights of the nobility. They do not see that they want to do what the English parliament did in the seventeenth century. Abolish in a monarchy the prerogatives of the lords, of the clergy, of the gentry, and of the towns, and you will soon have either a purely popular government or a despotism.

I am not greatly prepossessed in favour of the privileges of the clergy, but I should like to see their jurisdiction clearly fixed once for all. It is not a question of discussing if it be right to establish it, but of seeing if it is established, and if it forms part of the laws of the country, and of deciding if a loyal subject is not within his rights in upholding both the powers of his king and the limits which have from time immemorial been set to that power. The power of the clergy is dangerous in a republic, but convenient in a monarchy, and especially in a monarchy tending to despotism. Where would Spain and Portugal be, since they have lost their laws, without this power which alone arrests the arbitrary force of their kings?

In order to advance liberty, the English have destroyed all the intermediary powers that form their monarchy. They have good reason to guard and cherish this liberty. If ever they lose it, they will be one of the most enslaved races on earth.

It is not sufficient that there should be intermediary ranks in the monarchy; there must also be a depository of laws. This depository cannot be found anywhere save in political corporations, which announce laws when they are made, and recall them when they are forgotten. The ignorance natural to nobility, its inattention, its contempt for civil government, require that there should be a corporation which unceasingly recovers laws from the dust in which they are buried.

As democracies are ruined by the populace stripping the senate, the magistrates, and the judges of their functions, so monarchies decay when the prerogatives of the higher classes and the privileges of towns are little by little destroyed. In the first case, things end in a despotism of the multitude; in the other, in the despotism of a single man.

The people of the ancient world had no knowledge of a monarchy founded on a nobility, and still less knowledge of a monarchy founded on a legislative corporation formed, as in England, by the representatives of the people. On reading the admirable work of Tacitus on the ancient Germans, one sees that it is from them that the English have derived the idea of their political system. This fine form of government was discovered in the forests. It is based on a separation of the three powers found in every state--the legislative power, the executive power, and the judicial power. The first is in the hands of the parliament, the second is in the hands of the monarch, and the third in the hands of the magistracy. The English people would lose their liberty if the same man, or the same corporation, or the lords, or the people themselves, were possessed of these three powers.

By their representative system the English have avoided the great defect of the ancient republics, in which the populace were allowed to take an active part in the government.

There is in every state a number of persons distinguished by birth, wealth, or honour. If they were confounded among the people, and had there only one vote like the rest, the common liberty would be to them a slavery, and they would have no interest in defending it, because most of the laws would be directed against them. The part they play in legislation should, therefore, be proportionate to the other advantages which they have in the state. In England they rightly form a legislative body, which has the power of arresting the enterprises of the people, in the same way as the people have the power of arresting theirs. A house of lords must be hereditary. It is so naturally, and, besides, this gives it a very great interest in the preservation of its prerogatives, which, in a free country, must always be in danger. But as an hereditary power might be tempted to follow its private interests to the neglect of the public welfare, it is necessary that in matters in which corruption can easily arise, such as matters relating to money bills, the House of Lords should have neither any initiating nor any correcting faculty; it should have only a power of veto and a power of approving, like the tribunes of ancient Rome.

The cabinet should not wield the executive power as well as the legislative power. Unless the monarch himself retains the executive power, there is no liberty, for liberty depends upon each of the three powers being kept entirely separate. It is in this way that the balance of the constitution is preserved. As all human things have an end, England will one day lose its liberty, and perish. Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have not been able to last. England will perish when the legislative power grows more corrupt than the executive power.

_IV.--On Despotism_

From the nature of despotism it follows that a despot gives the government into the hands of another man. A creature whose five senses are always telling him that he is everything and that other men are nothing is naturally idle, ignorant, and pleasure-seeking. He therefore abandons the control of affairs. But if he entrusted them to several persons there would be disputes among them, and the despot would be put to the trouble of interfering in their intrigues. The easier way, therefore, is for him to surrender all administration to a vizier, and give him full power. The establishment of a vizier is a fundamental law of despotism. The more people a despot has to govern, the less he thinks of governing them; the greater the business of the state becomes, the less trouble he takes to deliberate upon it.

A despotic state continually grows corrupt because it is corrupt in its nature. Other forms of government perish through particular accidents; a despotism perishes inwardly, even when several accidental causes seem to support it.

It is only maintained when certain circumstances derived from the climate, the religion, the situation, or the genius of a people compel it to observe some order and submit to some regulation. These things compel it, but do not change its nature; its ferocity remains, though for a time it is tamed.

SIR THOMAS MORE

Utopia: Nowhere Land

Thomas More was born in London on February 7, 1478; his father, Sir John, was a magistrate. The boy was placed in the household of the Chancellor, Cardinal Morton, and went to Oxford. The young man had thoughts of entering the religious life, but finally chose the law. His most intimate friend was the great Dean Colet, and his relations with Erasmus, the chief of the Humanists, were of the most affectionate kind. He stood with these two in the forefront of the great effort for the intellectual and moral reform of the Church, which was soon to be overwhelmed in the political and theological Reformation. Drawn into public life by Henry VIII., he became Chancellor after the fall of Wolsey, later resigned on a point of conscience, and was finally beheaded on a charge of treason on July 7, 1535, with Bishop Fisher, virtually for refusing to acknowledge the secular supremacy over the Church. In 1886 he was beatified. The "Utopia: Nowhere Land," was written in 1516, in Latin. The English version is the rendering of Ralphe Robynson, published in 1551. The three factors in its production were, the discoveries in the New World, Plato's "Republic," and More's observation of European affairs.

_I.--How Master More Met Master Raphael Hythloday_

The most victorious and triumphant king of England, Henry VIII., of that time, for the debatement of certain weighty matters sent me ambassador into Flanders, joined in commission with Cuthbert Tunstall, whose virtue and learning be of more excellency than that I am able to praise them. And whiles I was abiding at Antwerp, oftentimes among other did visit me one Peter Gyles, a citizen thereof, whom one day I chanced to espy talking with a stranger, with whom he brought me to speech. Which Raphael Hythloday had voyaged with Master Amerigo Vespucci, but parting from him had seen many lands, and so returned home by way of Taprobane and Calicut.

Now, as he told us, he had found great and wide deserts and wildernesses inhabited with wild beasts and serpents, but also towns and cities and weal-publiques full of people governed by good and wholesome laws, beside many other that were fond and foolish. Then I urging him that, both by learning and experience, he might be any king's counsellor for the weal-publique----

"You be deceived," quoth he. "For the most part all princes have more delights in warlike matters and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace." Then he speaking of England, "Have you been in our country, sir?" quoth I. "Yea, forsooth," quoth he, "and there was I much bound and beholden to John Norton, at that time cardinal, archbishop, and Lord Chancellor, in whose counsel the king put much trust.

"Now," quoth he, "one day as I sat at his table, there was a layman cunning in the law who began to praise the rigorous justice that was done upon felons, and to marvel how thieves were nevertheless so rife."

"'Nay, sir,' said I; 'but the punishment passeth the limits of justice. For simple theft is not so great an offence that it ought to be punished with death, nor doth that refrain them, since they cannot live but by thieving. There be many servitors of idle gentlemen, who, when their master is dead, and they be thrust forth, have no craft whereby to earn their bread, nor can find other service, who must either starve for hunger or manfully play the thieves.

"'Moreover, look how your sheep do consume and devour whole fields, houses, and cities. For noblemen and gentlemen, yea, and certain abbots, holy men, God wot, where groweth the finest wool, do enclose all in pastures, pluck down towns, and leave nought standing but only the church, to make it a sheep-house. Whereby the husbandmen are thrust out of their own! and then what can they do else but steal, and then justly, God wot, be hanged? Furthermore, victuals and other matters are dearer, seeing rich men buy up all, and with their monopoly keep the market as it please them. Unless you find a remedy for these enormities, you shall in vain vaunt yourselves of executing justice upon felons.

"'Beside, it is a pernicious thing that a thief and a murderer should suffer the like punishment, seeing that thereby the thief is rather provoked to kill. But among the polylerytes in Persia there is a custom that they which be convict of felony are condemned to be common labourers, yet not harshly entreated, but condemned to death if they seek to run away. For they are also apparelled all alike, and to aid them is servitude for a free man.'

"Now the cardinal pronounced that this were a good order to take with vagabonds. But a certain parasite sayeth in jest that this were then an excellent order to take with the friars, seeing that they were the veriest vagabonds that be; a friar thereupon took the jest in very ill part, and could not refrain himself from calling the fellow ribald, villain, and the son of perdition; whereat the jester became a scoffer indeed, for he could play a part in that play, no man better, making the friar more foolishly wrath than before.

"Now, none of them would have harkened to my counsel until the cardinal did approve it. So that if I were sitting in counsel with the French king, whose counsellors were all urging him to war; and should I counsel him not to meddle with Italy, but rather to tarry still at home; and should propose to him the decrees of the Achoricus which dwell over against the Island of Utopia, who having by war conquered a new kingdom for their prince, constrained him to be content with his old kingdom, and give over the new one to one of his friends; this, mine advice, Master More, how think you it would be heard and taken?"

"So God help me, not very thankfully," quoth I.

"Howbeit, Master More," quoth he, "doubtless wheresoever possessions be private, where money beareth all the stroke, it is almost impossible that the weal-publique may be justly governed and prosperously flourish. And when I consider the wise and goodly ordinances of the Utopians, among whom all things being in common, every man hath abundance of everything, yet are there very few laws; I do fully persuade myself that until this property be exiled and banished, perfect wealth shall never be among men. Which if you had lived with me in Utopia, you would doubtless grant."

"Therefore, Master Raphael," quoth I, "pray you describe unto us this land."

_II.--Of the Island of Utopia, and the Customs of Its People_