* * *
The law of nations
[le droit des gens] is by nature
founded on the principle that the various nations should do to one another in
times of peace the most good possible, and in times of war the least ill
possible, without harming their true interests. The object of war is victory;
of victory, conquest; of conquest, preservation. All the laws that form the law of nations should derive from
this principle and the preceding one. (1)
* * *
The life of states is like that of men. Men have the right
to kill in the case of natural defense; states have the right to wage war for
their own preservation. . . . [A]mong societies, the right of natural defense
sometimes carries with it a necessity to attack, when one people sees that a
longer peace would put another people in a position to destroy it and that an
attack at this moment is the only way to prevent such destruction. Hence small
societies more frequently have the right to wage wars than large ones, because
they are more frequently in a position to fear being destroyed. (2)
Conquest is an acquisition; the spirit of acquisition
carries with it the spirit of preservation and use, and not that of destruction
. . . It is clear that, once the conquest is made, the conqueror no longer has
the right to kill, because it is no longer for him a case of natural defense
and of his own preservation.(3)
What good could the Spanish not have done the Mexicans? They
had a gentle religion to give them; they brought them a raging superstition.
They could have set the slaves free, and they made freemen slaves. They could
have made clear to them that human sacrifice was an abuse; instead they
exterminated them. I would never finish if I wanted to tell all the good things
they did not do, and all the evil ones they did.(4)
If a democracy conquers a people in order to govern it as a
subject, it will expose its own liberty, because it will entrust too much power
to the magistrates whom it sends out to the conquered state. What danger would
not the republic of Carthage have run if Hannibal had taken Rome? Having caused
so many revolutions in his own town after his defeat, what might he not have
done there after that victory? (5)
Rome, whose passion was to command, whose ambition was to
subject everything, who had always usurped, who usurped still, continually
pursued great matters of public business; its enemies plotted against it, or it
plotted against them. As it was obliged to conduct itself, on the one hand,
with heroic courage and, on the other hand, with consummate wisdom, the state
of things required that the senate direct public business. The people quarreled
with the senate over all branches of legislative power, because they were
jealous of their liberty; they did not quarrel with it over the branches of
executive power, because they were jealous of their glory. (6)
* * *
If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force;
if it is large, it is destroyed by an internal vice. This dual drawback taints
democracies equally, whether they are good or whether they are bad. The ill is
in the thing itself; there is no form that can remedy it. Thus, it is very
likely that ultimately men would have been obliged to live forever under the
government of one alone if they had not devised a kind of constitution that has
all the internal advantages of republican government and the external force of
monarchy. I speak of the federal republic. This form of government is an
agreement by which many political bodies consent to become citizens of the
larger state that they want to form. It is a society of societies that make a
new one, which can be enlarged by new associates that unite with it. Such associations
made Greece flourish for so long. By using them, The Romans attacked the
universe, and with their use alone, the universe defended itself from the
Romans; and when Rome had reached its greatest height, the barbarians were able
to resist it by associations made beyond the Danube and the Rhine, associations
made from fright. Because of them, Holland, Germany, and the Swiss leagues are
regarded in Europe as eternal republics. (7)
The spirit of monarchy is war and expansion; the spirit of republics
is peace and moderation. (8)
Just as monarchs should be wise increasing their power, they
should be no less prudent in limiting it. While they put an end to the
drawbacks of being small, they must always have an eye out for the drawbacks of
being large. (9)
The enemies of a great prince who has long reigned [Louis
XIV] have accused him a thousand times, more from fears than from reasons, I
believe, of having formed and pursued the project of universal monarchy. If he
had succeeded in it nothing would have been more fatal to Europe, to his first
subjects, to himself, and to his family. Heaven, which knows the true
advantages, has better served him by defeats than it would have by victories.
Instead of making him the only king in Europe, it has favored him more by
making him the most powerful of all. (10)
* * *
A new disease has spread across Europe; it has afflicted our
princes and made them keep an inordinate number of troops. It redoubles in
strength and necessarily becomes contagious; for, as soon as one state
increases what it calls its troops, the others suddenly increase theirs, so
that nothing is gained thereby but the common ruin. Each monarch keeps ready
all the armies he would have if his peoples were in danger of being
exterminated; and this state in which all strain against all is called peace.
Thus Europe is so ruined that if individuals were in the situation of the three
most opulent powers in this part of the world, they would have nothing to live
on. We are poor with the wealth and commerce of the whole universe, and soon,
as a result of these soldiers, we shall have nothing but soldiers and we shall
be like the Tartars. (11)
* * *
These extracts come
from Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws,
translated and edited by Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold
Samuel Stone (Cambridge University Press, 1989).
1. “On positive laws,” Book 1, Chapter 3, pp. 7-8
2. “On war,” Book 10, Chapter 2, p. 138
3. “On the right of conquest,” Book 10, Chapter 3, pp. 139-40
4. “Some advantages for the conquered peoples,” Book 10, Chapter 4, p. 142
5.
“On a republic that conquers,” Book 10, Chapter 6, p. 143
6.
“On executive power in the[Roman] republic,” Book 11, Chapter 17, pp. 177-78
7. “How republics provide for their security,” Book 9, Chapter 1, p. 131
8.
“That the federal constitution should be composed of states of the same nature,
above all of republican states,” Book 9, Chapter 2, p. 132
9. “On the defensive force of states in general,” Book 9, Chapter 6, pp. 135-36
10. “Reflections,” Book 9, Chapter 7, p. 136
11.
“On the increase in troops,” Book 13, Chapter 17, p. 224
