MONTESQUIEU—
To sustain the spirit of commerce, it is necessary that
all the laws should favor it; that these same laws, by their
regulations in dividing the fortunes in proportion as
commerce enlarges them, should place every poor citizen in
sufficiently easy circumstances to enable him to work like
the others, and every rich citizen in such mediocrity that
he must work, in order to retain or to acquire.
Thus the laws are to dispose of all fortunes.
Although in a democracy, real equality be the soul of the
State, yet it is so difficult to establish that an extreme
exactness in this matter would not always be desirable. It
is sufficient that a census be established to reduce or fix
the differences to a certain point, after which, it is for
particular laws to equalize, as it were, the inequality by
burdens imposed upon the rich and reliefs granted to the
poor.
Here, again, we see the equalization of fortunes by law, that is, by force.
There were, in Greece, two kinds of republics. One was
military, as Sparta; the other commercial, as Athens. In the
one it was wished (by whom?) that the citizens should be
idle: in the other, the love of labor was encouraged.
It is worth our while to pay a little attention to the
extent of genius required by these legislators, that
we may see how, by confounding all the virtues, they showed
their wisdom to the world. Lycurgus, blending theft with the
spirit of justice, the hardest slavery with extreme liberty,
the most atrocious sentiments with the greatest moderation,
gave stability to his city. He seemed to deprive it of all
its resources, arts, commerce, money, and walls; there was
ambition without the hope of rising; there were natural
sentiments where the individual was neither child, nor
husband, nor father. Chastity even was deprived of modesty.
By this road Sparta was led on to grandeur and to glory.
The phenomenon that we observe in the institutions of
Greece has been seen in the midst of the degeneracy and
corruption of our modern times. An honest legislator has
formed a people where probity has appeared as natural as
bravery among the Spartans. Mr. Penn is a true Lycurgus, and
although the former had peace for his object, and the latter
war, they resemble each other in the singular path along
which they have led their people, in their influence over
free men, in the prejudices which they have overcome, the
passions they have subdued.
Paraguay furnishes us with another example. Society has
been accused of the crime of regarding the pleasure of
commanding as the only good of life; but it will always be a
noble thing to govern men by making them happy.
Those who desire to form similar institutions will
establish community of property, as in the republic of
Plato, the same reverence as he enjoined for the gods,
separation from strangers for the preservation of morality,
and make the city and not the citizens create commerce: they
should give our arts without our luxury, our wants without
our desires.
Vulgar infatuation may exclaim, if it likes, "It is Montesquieu! magnificent! sublime!" I am not afraid to express my opinion, and to say:
What! You have the gall to call that fine? It is
frightful! It is abominable! And these extracts, which I
might multiply, show that according to Montesquieu, the
persons, the liberties, the property, mankind itself, are
nothing but grist for the mill of the sagacity of lawgivers.