existence,1 upon the whole tissue of morals and manners which is inseparably bound up with these,2 upon the form of government best adapted to its character and way of life,3 upon its bearing towards the fundamental problems of man's being-above all, towards those religious problems which lie at the root of all. All these things are so closely interwoven with each other-soil and climate, for instance, acting largely through national character and forms of government, national character and forms of government reacting readily upon soil and climate-that it is often impossible, and seldom necessary, to disentangle the one from the other. But directly or indirectly, mediately or immediately, it cannot be doubted that the outward conditions of man are of the deepest importance to his political and moral existence: that there is a sense, and a very real sense, in which the first of all empires is the empire of climate.' 5

This, however, by no means exhausts the fertility of Montesquieu. Besides the mutual action and reaction between man's outward conditions and the inward life-moral, political and religious-which he gradually builds up for himself, there is another kind of relation which meets us at every turn of Esprit des lois: which, in fact, is deliberately singled out by the author to set in the forefront of the consequences which flow from the acceptance of his central principle. That is the relation between the outward form of a given Government-republican, monarchical, or despotic-and the secondary laws and institutions which each of them carries in its train: between the constitutional, or fundamental, laws of a given community and the civil laws, the social order, the administrative machinery which each of these types severally demands.

This is the more distinctively political part of the treatise; and, with the exception of those chapters which deal with religion and which were thought, justly enough, to deny that Christianity could ever be the universal religion-to assert that it too, like all other things in this world, is subject to every kind of physical and social condition it is the part which, among the author's contemporaries, aroused more interest and more controversy than any other. To lay bare the distinctive nature of the different types of Government, to trace the manner in which each of them works itself out and articulates itself in practice, modifying, as it does so, the whole structure of the national life down to the minutest detail; to prove that the whole social and civil life of every community depends,

1 Esprit des lois, livres xv., xviii., xx., xxi., xxii.

2 lb. livres xvi., xvii., xix., xxiii.

4 Ib. livres xxiv., xxv.

6 Ib. livres i.-viii.

3 Ib. livres xiv., xvii., xviii.

5 lb. xix., 14.

lb. xix. 18; compare xxiv. 24, 25.

in the last resort, largely upon the particular form of Government established in it: this was to touch a responsive chord in the minds of men, to come home very close to their business and bosoms.' Much of Esprit des lois is a far-reaching philosophy of history. Much of it is concerned, by implication at least, with the questions which lie at the root of political philosophy. But here, at any rate, we are brought face to face with the problems which confront the practical statesman. And it was for this reason, doubtless, that Montesquieu chose to devote the opening books of his treatise to this discussion.

The moving principle, the 'spirit' of the republican form of government, is found by Montesquieu, as is well known, to lie in virtue': by which it is evident that he understood an exalted form of public spirit, of devotion to the common weal.1 This virtue is demanded in the highest degree by a Democracy; in a less, but still a marked, degree by an Aristocracy.2 The spirit of Monarchy— above all, of Monarchy as it had grown up in such a country as France-is, after the same fashion, found to consist in 'honour'; 3 and that of Despotism-on this point there is no room for dispute

in brute force on the part of the ruler, in terror on that of the ruled. The one and only check on the caprice of the despot is religion: the impossibility of running counter to precepts, or even to prejudices, which are supposed to be sanctioned by a higher power, and therefore to be given over the head not only of the subject, but of the ruler also.'5 And as 'the prejudices of superstition are the strongest of all prejudices,' such a check may not seldom serve to punish, if not to prevent, the extreme of wrongdoing and oppression. The check is often belated, and always capricious, in its working. What can be said for an abuse which has no better remedy than this?

8

From these verdicts, it is manifest that Montesquieu draws the hardest possible line between Despotism and all other forms of Government. The despot is not to be tolerated except in backward countries, or in countries where the nature of the climate inclines, or even compels, men to accept him; and even so, he is treated as no more than an odious necessity. As for the other three types of polity-Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracyall of them are capable-in many passages he seems to imply, equally capable of being made good instruments of Government; and the causes which have determined the establishment of one, 2 Ib. iii. 4.

1 Esprit des lois, livres iii. 2, v. 2.

3 Ib. iii. 7.

6 Ib. xviii. 19.

4 Ib. iii. 9.

Ib. ii. 15.

8 Le principe du gouvernement despotique se corrompt sans cesse, parce qu'il est corrompu par sa nature' (ib. viii. 10).

rather than another, of them in a given community must be sought among those which have already been indicated-variations of soil and climate, of national character, of historical tradition-or rather, in all of them together.

With the exception of Despotism, then, there is no form of Government which may not be made to serve the good of the community which has adopted it. Two conditions, however, must be jealously observed. Care must be taken from the first to guard against the abuses incident to each of them: against the danger that Democracy will degenerate into anarchy; Aristocracy or Monarchy into despotism, or something hardly to be distinguished from Despotism.1 And in devising the checks necessary for this purpose, equal care must be taken to keep the original constitution true to the type from which it started: to avoid anything that is incompatible with the vital principle which it embodies.2

The latter condition, no doubt, is less absolute than the former. It holds good only so long as those concerned take for granted—as, in fact, they seldom fail to do-that at all costs revolution is to be avoided. In the absence of this assumption, it manifestly falls to the ground. To introduce changes radically at variance with the spirit of the constitution may, indeed, be an excellent method of paving the way for a revolution. And if on other grounds a revolution is desirable, there is nothing to be said against this way of invoking it. Only, those who do so must be prepared to pay the price; and the price may easily prove to be heavier than they reckoned on.

Having thus established the relations which concern the internal life of the State, Montesquieu goes on to investigate those which concern its dealings with neighbouring communities. This brings him straight across the canons so ruthlessly laid down a century earlier by Grotius, so lightly accepted by a long line of intervening writers: the chain of assumptions summed up in the fateful phrase, the 'rights of war.'

1 Esprit des lois, viii. 2, 3, 5, 6.

2.

Chaque gouvernement a sa nature et son principe. Il ne faut donc pas que l'aristocratie prenne la nature et la principe de la monarchie' (ib. v. 8; compare v. 9). This principle, indeed, is involved in the very title of livre v.: Les lois que le législateur donne doivent être relatives au principe du gouvernement.' Compare xix. 5.

3 Even so, however, Montesquieu has his doubts: doubts based upon grounds of public policy-in particular of public morality. Il y a beaucoup à gagner, en fait de mœurs, à garder les coutumes anciennes. Rappeller les hommes aux maximes anciennes, c'est ordinairement les rappeller à la vertu' (v. 7). This is said with special reference to Democracy; but it must apply-in some measure, at any rate-to Monarchy and Aristocracy also.

To Grotius, the rights of war are laid in the indefeasible right of the conqueror to annihilate the whole nation whose hosts he has defeated in battle: a right which, if mercifully disposed, he may commute into that of eternal enslavement.1 This alleged right of wholesale slaughter, replies Montesquieu, is a pure invention. It is directly contrary to every one of the principles, or sanctions, which have been invoked in its favour. The law of nature'that is, the law which regulates the inanimate world and the world of purely natural agents-is dead against it; for that law tends not to the destruction, but to the preservation, of every created species. So is the natural light' of conscience; for that commands us to do by others as we would be done by ourselves. So is the 'political law,' the principle upon which the whole life of every civil community is manifestly based; for that assumes that any community, once formed, has the right to maintain itself for ever. So, lastly, is the law of expediency, or self-interest; for that commands every man, the conqueror included, to make the best of what he has acquired; and how can he do so, if his first act is to destroy it? 2

Thus the whole argument of Grotius is seen to rest upon a rotten foundation; and, with the foundations, the superstructurethe right of enslavement, still more of perpetual enslavementfalls hopelessly in ruins. The supposed right of war,' in truth, has not even the poor justification of fact; for no conqueror with a particle of common sense' has ever availed himself of its pretensions. The only conquerors who have attempted to do so are those who have wielded a pure despotism over all their subjects; and for that very reason their conquests have commonly been as short-lived as they were violent and oppressive. The only permanent conquests are those built upon the precisely opposite principle: moderation, clemency and conciliation. In other words, the wars of despotism are no more than invasions.' It is only a temperate Government-only a Monarchy, therefore, as Montesquieu understood the term, or a Republic 3—that can hold what it has conquered. And the greater the moderation of the conqueror,

1 Grotius, De jure Belli et Pacis, lib. iii. capp. iv.-viii.

2 Esprit des lois, x. 3.

3 And, for very good reasons, Montesquieu is very much less sure about the latter than the former. It will always, he says, excite resentment that those who claim freedom' for themselves should refuse it to others. And the consciousness of this is likely to make their rule harsher than it would otherwise have been. Their action, therefore, will be a violation not only of Right but of the higher expediency. Both his examples are taken from the history of aristocratic Republics, Carthage and Genoa. A memorable instance of the same thing might have been found in that of the Democracy of Athens (ib. x. 6-8).

the more pains he takes to conciliate and enfranchise' his new subjects, the more lasting, the more profitable, his conquests are likely to be. And that is only as it should be. For the right of conquest, however necessary and legitimate, is at best an invidious and unhappy right. It leaves the conqueror with an immense debt to human nature, which he is bound in honour to make good.' 1 And there is no way of doing this but by admitting the vanquished, sooner or later, to equal rights with the victor. This was, at least in theory, the policy of Rome. It must be the policy of every nation which seeks to emulate either the wisdom or the prosperity of Rome.2

Of relations between States, other than those of war and the conditions arising out of war, Montesquieu has little to say. The one point-but it is a point of the first importance-at which he touches on this group of questions is the matter of Federation; and the main service of his rapid discussion is to have furnished the hint for the ideas which, a few years later, took shape in the brooding mind of Rousseau.3

It would be impossible to end this sketch of Montesquieu's argument without some reference to his conception of liberty and of the means by which liberty may be most effectually secured. 'Liberty,' he justly reminds us, is one of the vaguest words known to speech. It has been confined to Monarchies; it has been confined to Republics. It has been interpreted as the right to bear arms, as the right to wear a long beard, or a short kilt. It has been used, in short, by a thousand peoples to describe the form of Government-tribal, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, theocraticwhich best sorted with their daily way of life: which long use, or a new-born enthusiasm, had most endeared to their imagination.1

Such perversions of the term are mere popular abuses. Its legitimate uses, so Montesquieu urges in effect, may be fairly reduced to two-the absolute and the relative: the unrestrained

1 Esprit des lois, x. 3-4.

2 Ib. x. 6-9. With all her tolerance of local self-government, it must be remembered that the practice of Rome fell far behind her theory. It was not until far on in the last century of the Republic that she extended the full rights of citizenship even to the whole of Italy; and Italy then meant something much smaller than it does to us. It was not until the reign of Caracalla (circ. A.D. 200) that she admitted the whole adult male population of the empire to the title of citizen. And long before that time it had become a mere title. It had ceased to have any political meaning; it conferred no more than equality of civil rights—and an increased burden of taxation.

3 Ib. ix. 1-3. See Political Writings of J. J. Rousseau, i. 95. 4 Ib. xi. 2. The climax is reached when Hegel, followed by a select band of English writers, identifies 'liberty' with the Prussian Constitution.