The Spirit of the Laws by M. de Montesquieu - HTML preview

THE GENERAL SPIRIT, THE MORALS, AND CUSTOMS, OF A NATION.

CHAP. I.

Of the Subject of this Book.

THIS subject is very extensive. In that croud of ideas, which present themselves to my mind, I shall be more attentive to the order of things than to the things themselves. I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

CHAP. II.

That it is necessary People’s Minds should be prepared for the

Reception of the best Laws.

NOTHING could appear more insupportable to the Germans∥ than the tribunal of Varus.

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That which Justinian erected amongst the Lazi, to proceed against the murderers of their king, appeared to them as an affair the most horrid and barbarous.

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Mithridates , haranguing against the Romans, reproached them more particularly for

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their law proceedings. The Parthians could not bear with one of their kings, who,

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having been educated at Rome, rendered himself affable and easy of access to all.

Liberty itself has appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to enjoy it. Thus a pure air is sometimes disagreeable to such as have lived in a fenny country.

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Balbi, a Venetian, being at Pegu, was introduced to the king. When the monarch was informed that they had no king at Venice, he burst into such a fit of laughter that he was seized with a cough, and with difficulty could speak to his courtiers. What legislator could propose a popular government to a people like this?

CHAP. III.

Of Tyranny.

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THERE are two sorts of tyranny; one real, which arises from oppression; the other is seated in opinion, and is sure to be felt whenever those who govern establish things shocking to the present ideas of a nation.

Dio tells us that Augustus was desirous of being called Romulus; but, having been informed that the people feared that he would cause himself to be crowned king, he changed his design. The old Romans were averse to a king because they could not suffer any man to enjoy such power; these would not have a king because they could not bear his manners. For, though Cæsar, the triumvirs, and Augustus, were really invested with regal power, they had preserved all the outward appearance of equality, while their private lives were a kind of contrast to the pomp and luxury of foreign monarchs; so that, when the Romans were resolved to have no king, this only signified that they would preserve their customs, and not imitate those of the African and Eastern nations.

The same writer informs us, that the Romans were exasperated against Augustus for making certain laws which were too severe; but, as soon as he had recalled Pylades, the comedian, whom the jarring of different factions had driven out of the city, the discontent ceased. A people of this stamp have a more lively sense of tyranny when a player is banished than when they are deprived of their laws.

CHAP. IV.

Of the general Spirit of Mankind.

MANKIND are influenced by various causes; by the climate, by the religion, by the laws, by the maxims of government, by precedents, morals, and customs; from whence is formed a general spirit of nations.

In proportion as, in every country, any one of these causes acts with more force, the others, in the same degree, are weakened. Nature and the climate rule almost alone over the savages; customs govern the Chinese; the laws tyrannize in Japan; morals had formerly all their influence at Sparta; maxims of government and the ancient simplicity of manners once prevailed at Rome.

CHAP. V.

How far we should be attentive lest the general Spirit of a Nation be

changed.

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SHOULD there happen to be a country whose inhabitants were of a social temper, open-hearted, chearful, endowed with taste, and a facility of communicating their thoughts; who were sprightly and agreeable; sometimes imprudent, often indiscreet; and,

besides, had courage, generosity, frankness, and a certain notion of honour; no one ought to endeavour to restrain their manners by laws, unless he would lay a restraint on their virtues. If, in general, the character be good, the little foibles that may be found in it are of small importance.

They might lay a restraint upon women, enact laws to reform their manners, and to reduce their luxury: but who knows but that, by these means, they might lose that peculiar taste which would be the source of the wealth of the nation, and that politeness which would render the country frequented by strangers?

It is the business of the legislature to follow the spirit of the nation when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of our natural genius.

If an air of pedantry be given to a nation that is naturally gay, the state will gain no advantage from it, either at home or abroad. Leave it to do frivolous things in the most serious manner, and with gaiety the things most serious.

CHAP. VI.

That every Thing ought not to be corrected.

LET them but leave us as we are, said a gentleman of a nation which had a very great resemblance to that we have been describing, and nature will repair whatever is amiss.

She has given us a vivacity capable of offending and hurrying us beyond the bounds of respect: this same vivacity is corrected by the politeness it procures, inspiring us with a taste of the world, and, above all, for the conversation of the fair-sex.

Let them leave us as we are: our indiscretions, joined to our good-nature, would make the laws which should constrain our sociability not at all proper for us.

CHAP. VII.

Of the Athenians and Lacedæmonians.

THE Athenians, this gentleman adds, were a nation that had some relation to ours. They mingled gaiety with business; a stroke of raillery was as agreeable in the senate as in http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Montesquieu0187/CompleteWorks/0171-01_Bk.html

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the theatre. This vivacity, which discovered itself in their councils, went along with them in the execution of their resolves. The characteristic of the Spartans was gravity, seriousness, severity, and silence. It would have been as difficult to bring over an Athenian by teazing as it would a Spartan by diverting him.

CHAP. VIII.

Effects of a sociable Temper.

THE more communicative a people are, the more easily they change their habits,

because each is, in a greater degree, a spectacle to the other, and the singularities of individuals are better observed. The climate, which influences one nation to take a pleasure in being communicative, makes it also delight in change; and that, which makes it delight in change, forms its taste.

The society of the fair-sex spoils the manners and forms the taste; the desire of giving greater pleasure than others establishes the embellishments of dress; and the desire of pleasing others more than ourselves gives rise to fashions. This mode is a subject of importance; by giving a trifling turn of mind, it continually increases the branches of its commerce.∥

CHAP. IX.

Of the Vanity and Pride of Nations.

VANITY is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this, we need only represent, on the one hand, the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, as laziness, poverty, a total neglect of every thing; in fine, the destruction of the nations which have happened to

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fall under their government as well as of their own. Laziness is the effect of pride; labour a consequence of vanity: the pride of a Spaniard leads him to decline labour; the vanity of a Frenchman to work better than others.

All lazy nations are grave: for those who do not labour regard themselves as the sovereigns of those who do.

If we search amongst all nations, we shall find, that, for the most part, gravity, pride, and indolence, go hand in hand.

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The people of Achim are proud and lazy; those who have no slaves hire one, if it be only to carry a quart of rice a hundred paces; they would be dishonoured if they carried it themselves.

In many places, people let their nails grow, that all may see they do not work.

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Women, in the Indies , believe it shameful for them to learn to read: this is, they say, the business of their slaves, who sing their spiritual songs in the temples of their pagods. In one tribe they do not spin; in another they make nothing but baskets and mats; they are not even to pound rice; and in others they must not go to fetch water.

These rules are established by pride; and the same passion makes them followed. There is no necessity for mentioning that the moral qualities, according as they are blended with others, are productive of different effects: thus pride, joined to a vast ambition and notions of grandeur, produced such effects among the Romans as are known to all the world.

CHAP. X.

Of the Character of the Spaniards and Chinese.

THE characters of the several nations are formed of virtues and vices, of good and bad qualities. From the happy mixture of these great advantages result, and frequently where it would be least expected; there are others from whence great evils arise, evils which one would not suspect.

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The Spaniards have been, in all ages, famous for their honesty. Justin mentions their fidelity in keeping whatever was entrusted to their care; they have frequently suffered death rather than reveal a secret. They have still the same fidelity for which they were formerly distinguished. All the nations who trade to Cadiz trust their forunes to the Spaniards, and have never yet repented it. But this admirable quality, joined to their indolence, forms a mixture from whence such effects result as to them are most

pernicious. The rest of the European nations carry on, in their very sight, all the commerce of their monarchy.

The character of the Chinese is formed of another mixture, directly opposite to that of

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the Spaniards: the precariousness of their subsistence inspires them with a prodigious activity, and such an excessive desire of gain, that no trading nation can confide in them∥. This acknowledged infidelity has secured them the possession of the trade to Japan. No European merchant has ever dared to undertake it in their name, how easy soever it might be for them to do it from their maritime provinces in the North.

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CHAP. XI.

A Reflection.

I have said nothing here with a view to lessen that infinite distance which must ever be between virtue and vice. God forbid that I should be guilty of such an attempt. I would only make my readers comprehend, that all political are not moral vices; and that all moral are not political vices; and that those, who make laws which shock the general spirit of a nation, ought not to be ignorant of this.

CHAP. XII.

Of Custom and Manners in a despotic State.

IT is a capital maxim, that the manners and customs of a despotic empire ought never to be changed; for nothing would more speedily produce a revolution. The reason is, that, in these states, there are no laws; that is, none that can be properly called so; there are only manners and customs; and, if you overturn these, you overturn all.

Laws are established, manners are inspired; these proceed from a general spirit, those from a particular institution: now, it is as dangerous, nay, more so, to subvert the general spirit as to change a particular institution.

There is less communication in a country where each, either as superior or inferior, exercises, or is oppressed by, arbitrary power, than there is in those where liberty reigns in every station. They do not, therefore, so often change their manners and behaviour. Fixed and established customs have a near resemblance to laws. Thus it is here necessary that a prince or a legislator should less oppose the manners and customs of the people than in any other country upon earth.

Their women are commonly confined, and have no influence in society. In other

countries, where they have an intercourse with men, their desire of pleasing, and the desire men also have of giving them pleasure, produce a continual change of customs.

The two sexes spoil each other; they both lose their distinctive and essential quality; what was naturally fixt becomes quite unsettled, and their customs and behaviour alter every day.

CHAP. XIII.

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Of the Behaviour of the Chinese.

BUT China is the place where the customs of the country can never be changed.

Besides, their women being absolutely separated from the men, their customs, like their

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morals, are taught in the schools. A man of letters may be known by his easy address.

These things, being once taught by precept and inculcated by grave doctors, become fixed, like the principles of morality, and are never changed.

CHAP. XIV.

What are the natural Means of changing the Manners and Customs of

a Nation.

WE have said that the laws were the particular and precise institutions of a legislator, and manners and customs the institutions of a nation in general. From hence it follows, that, when these manners and customs are to be changed, it ought not to be done by laws; this would have too much the air of tyranny: it would be better to change them by introducing other manners and other customs.

Thus, when a prince would make great alterations in his kingdom, he should reform by law what is established by law, and change by custom what is settled by custom; for it is very bad policy to change by law what ought to be changed by custom.

The law which obliged the Muscovites to cut off their beards and to shorten their cloaths, and the rigour with which Peter I. made them crop, even to their knees, the long cloaks of those who entered into the cities, were instances of tyranny. There are means that may be made use of to prevent crimes; these are punishments: there are those for changing our customs, these are examples.

The facility and ease with which that nation has been polished plainly shew that this prince had a worse opinion of his people than they deserved; and that they were not brutes, though he was pleased to call them so. The violent measures which he

employed were needless; he would have attained his end as well by milder methods.

He himself experienced the facility of bringing about these alterations. The women were shut up, and in some measure slaves; he called them to court; he sent them silks and fine stuffs, and made them dress like the German ladies. This sex immediately relished a manner of life which so greatly flattered their taste, their vanity, and their passions; and, by their means, it was relished by the men.

What rendered the change the more easy was, that their manners, at that time, were http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Montesquieu0187/CompleteWorks/0171-01_Bk.html

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foreign to the climate, and had been introduced amongst them by conquest and by a mixture of nations. Peter I. in giving the manners and customs of Europe to an

European nation, found a facility which he did not himself expect. The empire of the climate is the first, the most powerful, of all empires. He had, then, no occasion for laws to change the manners and customs of his country; it would have been sufficient to have introduced other manners and other customs.

Nations are, in general, very tenacious of their customs; to take them away by violence is to render them unhappy: we should not, therefore, change them, but engage the people to make the change themselves.

All punishment which is not derived from necessity is tyrannical. The law is not a mere act of power; things in their own nature indifferent are not within its province.

CHAP. XV.

The Influence of domestic Government on the political.

THIS alteration in the manners of women will doubtless have a great influence on the government of Muscovy. One naturally follows the other: the despotic power of the prince is connected with the servitude of women; the liberty of women with the spirit of monarchy.

CHAP. XVI.

How some Legislators have confounded the Principles which govern

Mankind.

MANNERS and customs are those habits which are not established by legislators, either because they were not able, or were not willing, to establish them.

There is this difference between laws and manners, that the laws are most adapted to regulate the actions of the subject, and manners to regulate the actions of the man.

There is this difference between manners and customs, that the former principally relate to the interior conduct, the latter to the exterior.

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These things have been sometimes confounded. Lycurgus made the same code for the laws, manners, and customs; and the legislators of China have done the same.

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We ought not to be surprized that the legislators of China and Sparta should confound the laws, manners, and customs: the reason is, their manners represent their laws, and their customs their manners.

The principal object, which the legislators of China had in view, was, to make their subjects live in peace and tranquility. They would have people filled with a veneration for one another, that each should be every moment sensible of his dependence on society, and of the obligations he owed to his fellow-citizens. They therefore gave rules of the most extensive civility.

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Thus the inhabitants of the villages of China practise amongst themselves the same ceremonies as those observed by persons of an exalted station: a very proper method of inspiring mild and gentle dispositions, of maintaining peace and good order, and of banishing all the vices which spring from an asperity of temper. In effect, would not the freeing them from the rules of civility be to search out a method for them to indulge their own humours?

Civility is, in this respect, of more value than politeness. Politeness flatters the vices of others, and civility prevents ours from being brought to light. It is a barrier which men have placed within themselves to prevent the corruption of each other.

Lycurgus, whose institutions were severe, had no regard to civility in forming the external behaviour; he had a view to that warlike spirit with which he would fain inspire his people. A people, who were in a continual state of discipline and instruction, and who were endued with equal simplicity and rigour, atoned by their virtues for their want of complaisance.

CHAP. XVII.

Of the peculiar Quality of the Chinese Government.

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THE legislators of China went farther. They confounded together their religion, laws, manners, and customs; all these were morality, all these were virtue. The precepts relating to these four points were what they called rites; and it was in the exact observance of these that the Chinese government triumphed. They spent their whole youth in learning them, their whole life in the practice. They were taught by their men of letters, they were inculcated by the magistrates; and, as they included all the ordinary actions of life, when they found the means of making them strictly observed, China was well governed.

Two things have contributed to the ease with which these rites are engraved in the hearts and minds of the Chinese; one, the difficulty of writing, which, during the http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Montesquieu0187/CompleteWorks/0171-01_Bk.html

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greatest part of their lives, wholly employs their attention , because it is necessary to prepare them to read and understand the books in which they are comprized; the other, that the ritual precepts, having nothing in them that is spiritual, but being merely rules of common practice, are more adapted to convince and strike the mind than things merely intellectual.

Those princes, who, instead of ruling by these rites, governed by the force of

punishments, wanted to accomplish that by punishments which it is not in their power to produce, that is, to give habits of morality. By punishments, a subject is very justly cut off from society, who, having lost the purity of his manners, violates the laws: but, if all the world were to lose their moral habits, would these re-establish them?

Punishments may be justly inflicted to put a stop to many of the consequences of the general evil, but they will not remove the evil itself. Thus, when the principles of the Chinese government were discarded and morality was banished, the state fell into anarchy, and revolutions succeeded.

CHAP. XVIII.

A Consequence drawn from the preceding Chapter.

FROM hence it follows that the laws of China are not destroyed by conquest. Their customs, manners, laws, and religion, being the same thing, they cannot change all these at once; and, as it will happen that either the conqueror or the conquered must change, in China it has always been the conqueror. For, the manners of the conquering nation not being their customs, nor their customs their laws, nor their laws their religion, it has been more easy for them to conform, by degrees, to the vanquished people, than the latter to them.

There still follows from hence a very unhappy consequence, which is, that it is almost impossible for Christianity∥ ever to be established in China. The vows of virginity, the assembling of women in churches, their necessary communication with the ministers of religion, their participation in the sacraments, auricular confession, extreme unction, the marriage of only one wife, all these overturn the manners and customs of the country, and, with the same blow, strike at their religion and laws.

The Christian religion, by the establishment of charity, by a public worship, by a participation of the same sacraments, seems to demand that all should be united; while the rites of China seem to ordain that all should be separated.

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And, as we have seen that this separation depends, in general, on the spirit of despotism, this will shew us the reason why monarchies, and indeed all moderate http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Montesquieu0187/CompleteWorks/0171-01_Bk.html

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governments, are more consistent with the Christian religion.

CHAP. XIX.

How this Union of Religion, Laws, Manners, and Customs, among the

Chinese, was effected.

THE principal object of government, which the Chinese legislators had in view, was the peace and tranquility of the empire: and subordination appeared to them as the most proper means to maintain it. Filled with this idea, they believed it their duty to inspire a respect for parents, and therefore exerted all their power to effect it. They established an infinite number of rites and ceremonies to do them honour when living, and after their death. It was impossible for them to pay such honours to deceased parents without being led to reverence the living. The ceremonies at the death of a father were more nearly related to religion; those for a living parent had a greater relation to the laws, manners, and customs: however, these were only parts of the same code; but this code was very extensive.

A veneration for their parents was necessarily connected with a suitable respect for all who represented them, such as old men, masters, magistrates, and the sovereign. This respect for parents supposed a return of love towards children, and consequently the same return from old men to the young, from magistrates to those who were under their jurisdiction, and from the emperor to his subjects. This formed the rites, and these rites the general spirit of the nation.

We shall now shew the relation which things, in appearance the most indifferent, may have to the fundamental constitution of China. This empire is formed on the plan of a government of a family. If you diminish the paternal authority, or even if you retrench the ceremonies which express your respect for it, you weaken the reverence due to magistrates, who are considered as fathers; nor would the magistrates have the same care of the people, whom they ought to look upon as their children; and that tender relation, which subsists between the prince and his subjects, would insensibly be lost.

Retrench but one of these habits, and you overturn the state. It is a thing in itself very indifferent, whether the daughter-in-law rises every morning to pay such and such duties to her mother-in-law; but, if we consider that these exterior habits incessantly revive an idea necessary to be imprinted on all minds