Book review: Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws
Monte-who, you ask?
Why would I read a political treatise of an 18th-century French baron, you ask? Two main reasons:
- It gets me back on track with my personal project to read through The Great Books of the Western World. (This is vol. 35.)
- Montesquieu was one of the most formative writers in the thinking of America’s founding fathers (Blackstone, Locke, and the Bible being the others).
Montesquieu’s best material is in the first 100 pages, and his greatest contribution to political theory is in Book XI: the separation of powers. He divides the ideal republic into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. (This should start to sound very, very familiar!) He issues this somber warning: “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty… Again, there can be no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. …There would be an end of everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.”
Less than half a century after Montesquieu’s death in 1755, men like Madison and Franklin and Washington took his blueprint and created just such a republic – our republic.
I also noticed, as I read The Spirit of Laws, how many other, lesser of Montesquieu’s ideas made their way directly into the U.S. Constitution: the national legislature meeting regularly, the power of impeachment of the executive invested in the legislature, the executive being the commander of the military, the need to provide for amending a constitution, the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, etc.
Montesquieu had a very realistic (i.e., Biblical) view of human nature and the political temptations to which fallen men are prone. Here is a sampling of amazingly relevant thoughts, ideas, and warnings…
“The real wants of the people ought never to give way to the imaginary wants of the state. Imaginary wants are those which flow from the passions and the weakness of the governors, from the vain conceit of some extraordinary project, from the inordinate desire of glory, and from a certain impotence of mind incapable of withstanding the impulse of fancy.” Doesn’t this sound like politicians who promise their constituents that they’ll “bring home the bacon” so that they get bridges-to-nowhere, highways, and libraries named after them?
“Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry: she renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labour. But if an arbitrary [government] should attempt to deprive the people of nature’s bounty, they would fall into a disrelish of industry; and then indolence and inaction must be their only happiness.” Congressional extension of unemployment to 99 weeks (nearly two years), anyone?
“To say that there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying that before the describing of a circle all the radii were not equal.” Yet this is exactly what Elena Kagan recently said in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee: that she didn’t have any theory of natural, unalienable rights (that is, those which are granted by God) outside of those contained in the Constitution (that is, those which are granted by the government).
“In all magistracies, the greatness of the power must be compensated by the brevity of the duration.” Is it too late for term limits for Congress?
“Ambition is pernicious in a republic.” Enough said!
“As education in monarchies tends to raise and ennoble the mind, in despotic governments its only aim is to debase it.” This explains why liberals and progressives have been dumbing down American schools for the past 150 years. As we move in this country from a soft tyranny toward a hard tyranny, they need a more and more docile populace – easily duped and easily led.
“An equal division of lands cannot be established in all democracies. There are some circumstances in which a regulation of this nature would be impracticable, dangerous, and even subversive of the constitution.” The redistribution of wealth, so dearly regarded and tenaciously held by the leaders of our current government, will “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”
“Is it to be imagined that the laws which abolish the property of land and the succession of estates will diminish the avarice and cupidity of the great? By no means. They will rather stimulate this cupidity and avarice. The great men will be prompted to use a thousand oppressive methods [to retain their wealth].” The Marxist class warfare propaganda (“soak the rich”) never works; it never has. It merely creates the “crony capitalism” that we are seeing in America today, in which corporations and their lobbyists suck up to the government to get favorable treatment.
“In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.” Do you feel like our current politicians consider you to be “everything” or “nothing”? That tells you under which kind of government you are living.
The last 2/3 of the book meanders in the very tall weeds of ancient history (Rome, Greece, Egypt) and 18th-century jurisprudence (such arcane laws as trial by combat [duels]), and Montesquieu spends a lot of time on European (and especially French) political debates, but the first 1/3 is worth the price of admission. What Montesquieu could only dream of, we have actually enjoyed in this country, and if we are going to remain free, we have to recover our political moorings. That means getting reacquainted with the founding fathers, and when we follow the footnote trail in their writings, it often leads us to…Baron Charles de Montesquieu.