Thus, there was no service which nations and kings were not ready to perform, nor any humiliation which they did not submit to, in order to obtain this distinction....
These customs were not merely some particular facts which happened at hazard. They were permanently established principles, as may be readily seen; for the maxims which the Romans acted upon against the greatest powers were precisely those which they had employed in the beginning of their career against the small cities which surrounded them....
But nothing served Rome more effectually than the respect which she inspired among all nations. She immediately reduced kings to silence, and rendered them as dumb. With the latter, it was not a mere question of the degree of their power: their very persons were attacked. To risk a war with Rome was to expose themselves to captivity, to death, and to the infamy of a triumph. Thus it was that kings, who lived in pomp and luxury, did not dare to look with steady eyes upon the Roman people, and, losing courage, they hoped, by their patience and their obsequiousness, to obtain some postponement of the calamities with which they were menaced.
The "Spirit of Laws" is probably to be considered the masterpiece of Montesquieu. It is our duty, however, to say, that this work is quite differently estimated by different authorities. By some, it is praised in terms of the highest admiration, as a great achievement in wide and wise political or juridical philosophy. By others, it is dismissed very lightly, as the ambitious, or, rather, pretentious, effort of a superficial man, a showy mere sciolist. It acquired great contemporary fame, both at home and abroad. It was promptly translated into English, the translator earning the merited compliment of the author's own hearty approval of his work. Horace Walpole, who was something of a Gallomaniac, makes repeated allusion to Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," in letters of his written at about the time of the appearance of the book. But Walpole's admiring allusions themselves contain evidence that admiration equal to his own of the work that he praised, was by no means universal in England.
The general aspect of the book is that of a composition meant to be luminously analyzed and arranged. Divisions and titles abound. There are thirty-one "books"; and each book contains, on the average, perhaps about the same number of chapters. The library edition, in English, consists of two volumes, comprising together some eight hundred open pages, in good-sized type. The books and chapters are therefore not formidably long. The look of the work is as if it were readable; and its character, on the whole, corresponds. It would hardly be French, if such were not the case. Except that Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws" is, as we have indicated, a highly organized, even an over-organized, book, which, by emphasis, Montaigne's "Essays" is not, these two works may be said, in their contents, somewhat to resemble each other. Montesquieu is nearly as discursive as Montaigne. He wishes to be philosophical, but he is not above supplying his reader with interesting historical instances.
We shall not do better, in giving our readers a comprehensive idea of Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," than to begin by showing them the titles of a number of the books:—
Book I. Of Laws in General. Book II. Of Laws Directly Derived from the Nature of Government. Book III. Of the Principles of the Three Kinds of Government. Book IV. That the Laws of Education ought to be Relative to the Principles of Government. Book V. That the Laws given by the Legislator ought to be Relative to the Principle of Government. Book VI. Consequences of the Principles of Different Governments with Respect to the Simplicity of Civil and Criminal Laws, the Form of Judgments, and the Inflicting of Punishments. Book VII. Consequences of the Different Principles of the Three Governments with Respect to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the Condition of Women. Book VIII. Of the Corruption of the Principles of the Three Governments. Book XIV. Of Laws as Relative to the Nature of the Climate.
The philosophical aim and ambition of the author at once appear in the inquiry which he institutes for the three several animating principles of the three several forms of government respectively distinguished by him; namely, democracy (or republicanism), monarchy, and despotism. What these three principles are, will be seen from the following statement: "As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in monarchy, honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government." The meaning is, that in republics, virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of national prosperity; that under a monarchy, the desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is what quickens men to perform services to the state; that despotism thrives by fear inspired in the breasts of those subject to its sway.
To illustrate the freely discursive character of the work, we give the whole of chapter sixteen—there are chapters still shorter—in Book VII.:—
AN EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMNITES.