Here is an opinion, overstated perhaps, but not without its frequent illustrations since he wrote it. "It seems … that the largest heads grow narrow when they are assembled, and that where there are, most wise men, there is least wisdom. Large bodies are always deeply attached to details, to vain customs; and essential matters are always postponed. I have heard that a king of Aragon, having assembled the Estates of Aragon and Catalonia, the first meetings were taken up in deciding in what language the deliberations should be held. The dispute was lively, and the Estates would have broken up a thousand times, had not an expedient been hit upon, which was that the questions should be put in Catalonian and the answers given in Aragonese."[Footnote: Montesq., i. 344, Letter cix. See several of the principal deliberative bodies of the world so bound by their own rules that they can scarcely move; and compare with them in point of efficiency the small legislatures and boards which manage many important and complicated interests promptly, sitting with closed doors.]
"I have never heard people talk about public law," he says in another letter, "that they did not inquire carefully what was the origin of society; which strikes me as absurd. If men did not form a society, if they separated and fled from each other, we should have to ask the reason of it, and to seek out why they kept apart. But they are created all bound to each other, the son is born near his father and stays there; this is society, and the cause of society."[Footnote: Ibid., i. 301, Letter xciv.]
A satirical book, like the "Persian Letters," could not have been openly published in France under Louis XV. The first edition was in fact printed at Amsterdam, although Cologne appeared on the title-page as the place of publication. The book was anonymous, but Montesquieu was well known to be the author, and speedily acquired a great reputation. After several years, for things did not move fast in Old France, he was proposed for election to the Academy. To be one of the forty members of that body is the legitimate ambition of the literary Frenchman. The Cardinal de Fleury, who was prime minister, is said to have announced that the king would never consent to the election of the author of the "Persian Letters." He added that he had not read the book, but that people in whom he had confidence assured him that it was dangerous. According to Voltaire, Montesquieu thereupon had a garbled edition of the Letters hastily printed, himself took a copy to the Cardinal, induced His Eminence to read a part of it, and, with the help of friends, prevailed on him to alter his decision. Such a trick is more worthy of Voltaire, who continually denied his own works, than of Montesquieu, who, I believe, never did so. D'Alembert tells the story in a way entirely creditable to the latter. He says that Montesquieu saw the minister, told him that for private reasons he did not give his name to the "Persian Letters," but that he was far from disowning a book of which he did not think he had cause to be ashamed. He then insisted that the Letters should be judged after reading them, and not on hearsay. Thereupon the Cardinal read the book, was pleased with it and with its author, and withdrew his opposition to the latter's election to the Academy.[Footnote: Nouvelle Biographie Universelle. Voltaire (Siècle de Louis XIV. liste des écrivains). D'Alembert, vi. 252. The date of Montesquieu's election was Jan. 24, 1728. See a discussion of the whole story in Vian, 100. Montesquieu is there said to have threatened to leave France, and to have declined a pension at this time. Montesquieu tells the story of the pension, but without fixing a date: "Je dis que n'ayant pas fait de bassesse, je n'avais pas besoin d'etre consolé par des graces," vii. 157. Voltaire was always jealous of Montesquieu's reputation; and also, at this time, out of temper with the Academy, to which he was elected only in 1746.]
A little before this time Montesquieu resigned his place as one of the presidents of the Parliament of Bordeaux, selling the life estate in it, but reserving the reversion for his son. Having thus obtained leisure, he set out on a long course of travel, lasting three years. "In France," said he later, "I make friends with everybody; in England with nobody; in Italy I make compliments to every one; in Germany I drink with every one." "When I go into a country, I do not look to see if there are good laws, but whether they execute those they have; for there are good laws everywhere."[Footnote: Vian, 90. Montesq. vii. 186, 189.]
Montesquieu arrived in England in the autumn of 1729, sailing from Holland in the yacht of Lord Chesterfield, whose acquaintance he had made on the Continent. He spent seventeen months in the country, and, in spite of his epigram about making friends with nobody, saw some of the most eminent men, including Swift and Pope, was received by the Royal Society, and presented at Court. At a time when England and the English language were little known in France, he studied them in a way which deeply influenced all his views of government. "In London," he says, "liberty and equality. The liberty of London is the liberty of the best people,[Footnote: Honnestes gens, which cannot be exactly translated. Montesq., vii. 185. Vian, 112.] in which it differs from the liberty of Venice, "which is the liberty of debauchery." The equality of London is also the equality of the best people, in which it differs from the liberty of Holland, which is the liberty of the populace."
"England is at present the most free country in the world; I do not except any republic. I call it free because the prince can do no conceivable harm to anybody; because his power is controlled and limited by a law. But if the lower chamber should become them mistress, its power would be unlimited and dangerous, because it would have executive power also; whereas now unlimited power is in the parliament and the king, and the executive power in the king, whose power is limited. A good Englishman must, therefore, seek to defend liberty equally against the attacks of the crown and those of the chamber."[Footnote: Montesq., vii. 195 (Notes sur l'Angleterre).]
Montesquieu brought back from England an admiration of what he had seen there as genuine, and far more discriminating than that of Voltaire. While the studies of Montesquieu were principally directed to the political institutions of the country, those of Voltaire embraced the philosophy and social life of England. Through these two great men, more perhaps than through any others, English ideas were spread in France in the middle of the eighteenth century.[Footnote: Voltaire returned from England a few months before Montesquieu went there in 1729.]
Montesquieu now went on with his studies with an enlarged mind. He would appear, before he started on his travels, to have already formed the project of writing a great work on the Spirit of the Laws. But in 1784 he published a smaller book, the "Greatness and Decadence of the Romans." It is said that this essay was composed of a part of the material collected for the Spirit of the Laws, and was published separately in order not to give the Romans too large a place in the more important work. This has been doubted, but there is nothing either in the subject or in the treatment to make it improbable. Nor is it important, so long as between the two books there is unity of purpose and agreement of method.
The "Greatness and Decadence of the Romans" is a study of philosophic history. In form it is not unlike Machiavelli's Discourses on the first ten books of Livy. That remarkable work would have been most profitable reading for Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, as it must be in all times for students of the science of politics. Of republics Machiavelli had more experience than Montesquieu. Both considered the republican form of government the most desirable; both thought it impossible without the preservation of substantial equality of property among the citizens. Montesquieu, who knew more of monarchy than Machiavelli, had also more faith in it. Both hated the Rule of the Roman Church. [Footnote: Machiavelli, ii. 210. Montesq., ii. 136, 140. Mach., ii. 130.] The Frenchman excels the Italian in practical wisdom; he is also more brilliant. By his brilliancy he may sometimes have been led away, but I think not often. While we feel in reading Voltaire that the sparkling point is often the cause of the saying, with Montesquieu we are generally struck with the weight of thought in what we read.
"The tyranny of a prince," says Montesquieu, "does not bring him nearer to ruin, than indifference to the public good brings a republic. The advantage of a free state is that the revenues are better administered—but how if they are worse? The advantage of a free state is that there are no favorites; but when that is not the case, and when instead of enriching the prince's friends and relations, all the friends and relations of all those who share in the government have to be enriched, all is lost; the laws are evaded more dangerously than they are violated by a prince, who, being always the greatest citizen of a state, has the most interest in its preservation."[Footnote: Montesq., ii. 139.]