Lawgiver. [1] The lawgiver is the person who has the power to make or repeal laws. In France, the king is the lawgiver ; in Geneva, it is the people; in Venice, in Genoa, it is the nobility; in England, it is the two houses [of Parliament] and the king.

Every lawgiver must have the intent to provide for the security of the state and the happiness of the citizens.

In uniting in society, men seek a better situation than the state of nature, which had two advantages, equality and liberty, and two disadvantages, fear of violence and a lack of assistance, whether with regard to necessities or in times of danger. Therefore, men consented to give up a little of their equality and liberty in order to shelter themselves from these disadvantages. The lawgiver has fulfilled his objective when he procures for men as much security and happiness as possible in taking away as little equality and liberty as possible.

The lawgiver either makes, maintains, or changes the civil or constitutional laws.

Constitutional laws are those which constitute the type of government. In making these laws, the lawgiver will consider the extent of the nation’s territory, the nature of its soil, the power of the neighboring nations, their character, and the character of his nation.

A small state should be republican. The citizens there are too enlightened about their interests, and these interests are too simple for them to want to leave them to be decided by a monarch who would not be more enlightened than they were. The entire state could at some point have the same reaction, which would often be contrary to the wishes of the king. The people, who cannot always restrain themselves within the limits of a just liberty, would be free the moment the wanted to be: that eternal discontent attached to the condition of man and of the man who obeys, would not be limited to grumbling, and there would be no gap between mood and resolution.

The lawgiver will see that in a fertile country, where the majority of the inhabitants are engaged in agriculture, they must be less jealous of their liberty, because they need only tranquility, and because they have neither the will nor the time to occupy themselves with the details of administration. As Montesquieu says, when liberty is not the only thing one has, one is less attentive to its defense. By the same reasoning, those peoples who inhabit rocky areas or infertile mountains are less disposed to government by a single person. Their liberty is all they have and in addition, if they want to replace through industry and commerce that which nature denies them, they have need of an extreme liberty.

The lawgiver will give government by a single person to larger states. It is too difficult for their different regions to join together in an instant to make revolutions easy. The great advantage of monarchical government is the swiftness of its resolutions and their execution. When necessary, it can relay orders, punishment, and assistance immediately from one province to another. The different parts of a large state are united under the government of one person, and in a large republic, factions will necessarily form which could tear it apart and destroy it. What is more, large states have many neighbors whom they may offend, and are exposed to frequent wars. And this is the triumph of monarchical government: in war especially it has the advantage over republican government. It enjoys secrecy, unity, and speed, no opposition or slowness. The victories of the Romans prove nothing against me. They subjected a world that was either barbaric, divided, or weak; and when their wars put the republic in danger, they hastened to create a dictator, a magistrate more absolute than our kings. Holland, led during peace by their magistrates, created stadtholders in their wars against Spain and France.

The lawgiver assures that civil laws follow constitutional laws: in many cases, they will not be the same in a monarchy as in a republic, or for an agricultural people and a commercial people; they will change according to the times, customs, and climates. But does the climate have as much influence on men as some authors have claimed,  [2] or do they rather influence us as little as other authors have assured us? This question merits the attention of the lawgiver .

Everywhere men are susceptible to the same passions, but they may react to different causes and in different ways. They may react to first impressions with more or less sensibility; and if climate has only a minor impact on the type of passions, it may have a major one on the senses.

Unlike southerners, northerners do not react quickly or rapidly to the stimuli they receive. A robust constitution, the concentration of heat by the cold, and the meagerness of their food cause northerners to have a general experience of hunger. In some cold and wet countries, the animal spirits are rendered numb, and violent movements are required for men to feel their existence.

Southerners need less food, and nature supplies them with it in abundance; the warmth of the climate and the vivacity of their imaginations exhaust them and render labor difficult.

It takes a great deal of labor and industry to clothe and shelter oneself so as not to suffer from severe cold; to protect oneself from the heat it only takes trees, a hammock, and rest.

Northerners must occupy themselves with procuring necessities, whereas southerners feel the need for amusement. The Siberian nomad hunts, digs out a cave, cuts and transports wood to tend to the fire and hot drinks; he prepares skins to clothe himself, whereas the African savage goes about naked, quenches his thirst in a fountain, picks fruit, and sleeps and dances in the shade.

The intensity of their senses and imagination makes the physical pleasures of love more necessary for southerners than for northerners. But, says Montesquieu, since southern women lose their beauty at the age of reason these people are necessarily less moral in love than northerners, in whom mind and reason accompany beauty. The Kaffirs, the people of Guyana and Brazil, work their women like beasts; [3] the ancient Germans honored them as gods.

The intensity of each impression, and the little need to retain and combine their ideas, must explain why the ideas of southerners lack consistency and coherence. They are caught up in the moment, forget the time, and sacrifice their whole lives for a single day. In the evening the Carib cries with regret for having sold his bed in the morning to get drunk on brandy.

In the north, in order to provide for needs which demand more complex ideas, perseverance, and industry, the mind must be more consistent, regular, rational, and reasonable; in the south, one must have immediate enthusiasm, a passionate temper, panics, fears, and baseless hopes.

Research is necessary on the influence of the climate on primitive peoples today, some of whom live near the equator and others near the North Pole. In temperate zones and among peoples who live only a few degrees distant from them, the influence of climate is less perceptible.

The lawgiver for a primitive people must give great consideration to the climate and modify its effects through legislation, as much in relation to the means of subsistence and commodities as in relation to customs. There is no climate, says Hume, where the lawgiver cannot establish customs that are strong, pure and sublime, or weak and barbarous. [4] In our countries, civilized long ago, the lawgiver , without losing sight of the climate, will give more consideration to established prejudices, opinions, and customs; and depending on whether the customs, opinions and prejudices accord with or oppose his plans, he must combat or strengthen them by his laws. With the peoples of Europe, he must seek the causes of their prejudices, customs, morals, and conflicts not only in the government under which they live, but also in the various governments under which they have lived, each of which has left its mark. We find among us the vestiges of the ancient Celts; we see customs which come down to us from the Romans; others have been brought to us by the Germans, the English, the Arabs, etc.

So that men feel as little as possible the loss of the two advantages of the state of nature (equality and liberty), the lawgiver , in all climates, in all circumstances, in all governments, must offer to change the spirit of property into a spirit of community. Legislation is more or less perfect, depending on how well it tends toward this end; and it is a measure of how well it achieves it that it provides the most security and happiness possible. Among a people in whom the spirit of community reigns, the order of the prince or of the magistrate does not seem to be the order of the homeland: there, each man becomes, as Metastasio says, compagno delle legge e non seguace [the friend and not the slave of the laws]. [5] Love of the homeland is the sole passion which unites rivals; it extinguishes divisions; each citizen sees in a citizen only a useful member of the state; all march contented and together toward the common good; love of the homeland instills the most noble kind of courage: we sacrifice ourselves for that which we love. Love of the homeland broadens one’s vision, because it directs it toward a thousand objects that interest other people: it elevates the soul above petty interests; it purifies it, because it makes less necessary that which cannot be obtained without injustice. It gives the soul the enthusiasm of virtue: a state animated by this spirit will not threaten its neighbors with invasion, and they have nothing to fear. We have seen that a state cannot expand without the loss of its liberty, and that to the degree that it pushes back its limits, it has to cede a greater authority to a smaller number of men, or to a single man, until, having at last become a great empire, the laws, the glory, and the happiness of the people are lost in despotism. A state where love of the homeland rules, fears this evil (the greatest of all evils), stays at peace, and leaves others alone. Look at the Swiss, this people of citizens, respected throughout all of Europe, surrounded by nations more powerful than they: they owe their tranquility to the respect and confidence of their neighbors, who know their love for peace, for liberty and for their homeland. If the people where this spirit of community reigns do not regret having submitted their will to the general will ( see Natural rights); if they do not feel the weight of the law, they feel still less that of taxes; they pay little, they pay with joy. The people, happy, multiply, and the very large population becomes a new cause of security and happiness.

In legislation, everything is connected, everything depends on everything else, and the effect of one good law extends to a thousand things unrelated to it: one thing leads to another, the effect follows from the cause, the general order maintains all the parts, and each one influences the others and the general order. The spirit of community, spread throughout the whole, strengthens, connects, and animates the whole.

In democracies, where the citizens, because of the constitutional laws, being more free and more equal than in other governments; in democracies, where the state, because of the participation of the people in its affairs, really belongs to each individual, where the weakness of the homeland strengthens patriotism, where men in a community of perils become necessary to each other, and where the virtue of each of them strengthens and enjoys the virtue of all; in democracies, I say, there will be less artfulness and less care than in those states where power and administration are in the hands of a few or of only one person.

When the spirit of community is not the necessary effect of the constitutional laws, it must derive from its formalities, a few laws, and administration. See in us the germ of the passions which oppose us to our fellows, sometimes as rivals, sometimes as enemies; see in us the germ of the passions which unite us in society: it is up to the lawgiver to repress the former and arouse the latter; it is in arousing the social passions that he will dispose the citizens to the spirit of community.

By means of laws which force the citizens to help one another, he can instill in them a habit of humanity; by means of laws he can make of this virtue one of the principal springs of his government. I speak of a possibility, and I say that it is possible, because it has been realized in the other hemisphere. The laws of Peru aimed to unite the citizens by the chains of humanity; and, as in other legal systems the laws prohibit men from doing harm, in Peru they ordered them constantly to do good. By instituting the community of goods (as far as it is possible outside of the state of nature) these laws weakened the spirit of property, the source of all vices. Fine days, the days of public celebration, were in Peru the days when the fields belonging to the state, the fields belonging to the old man or the orphan, were cultivated: each citizen worked for the mass of citizens; he would deposit the fruit of his labors in the public storehouses and in compensation he would receive the fruit of the labors of others. The only enemies this people had were men capable of evil: they attacked neighboring peoples to divest them of their barbarous manners; the Incas wanted to draw all nations to their own pleasant customs. Even in fighting cannibals, they avoided destroying them and seemed to seek less the submission than the happiness of the vanquished.

The lawgiver can establish a relationship of benevolence from himself to his people, and from his people to himself, and thereby extend the spirit of community. The people love the prince who cares about their happiness; the prince loves men who entrust their destiny to him; he loves the witnesses of his virtues, the organs of his glory. Benevolence turns the state into a family that obeys only paternal authority; without the superstition which dulled the minds of his century and rendered his people fierce, what might a prince like Henri IV have accomplished in France! In all times, in every monarchy, clever princes have made use of the spring of benevolence; the greatest praise that one can give a king is that which a Danish historian gave Cnut the Great: he lived with his people like a father with his children . [6] Friendship, charity, generosity, and gratitude will necessarily be the common virtues in a government in which benevolence is one of the principal springs; these virtues constituted the manners and morals of the Chinese until the reign of Chi-T-Sou. [7] When the emperors of this empire, too vast for a well-governed monarchy, began to make themselves feared there, when they rested their authority less on the love of the people than on their Tartar soldiers, the manners and morals of the Chinese ceased to be pure, but they remained gentle.

One cannot imagine what strength, what activity, what enthusiasm, what courage this spirit of benevolence can spread among the people, and how much it can interest the entire nation in the community; I am pleased to say that in France we have seen examples of this more than once: benevolence is the sole remedy for the inevitable abuses in those governments which by their constitutions allow the least liberty to their citizens and the least equality among them. The constitutional and civil laws inspire benevolence less than the conduct of the lawgiver , and the formalities with which his will is declared and executed.

The lawgiver will arouse the feeling of honor, that is, the desire for esteem and self-esteem, the desire to be honored, to have honors. This is a necessary spring of all governments; but the lawgiver will take care that this feeling is as it was in Sparta and Rome: joined to the spirit of community, and that the citizen attached to his own honor and his own glory be, if possible, even more so to the honor and the glory of his homeland. In Rome there was a temple of honor, but one could not enter it without passing through the temple of virtue. The feeling of honor separated from the love of the homeland can render citizens capable of great feats on its behalf, but it cannot unite them together. On the contrary, it multiplies jealousy: the interest of the state is sometimes sacrificed to the honor of a single citizen, and honor drives them all more to distinguish themselves from one another than to work together under the yoke of duties to maintain the laws and for the general good.

Should the lawgiver make use of religion as a mainspring in the machine of government?

If this religion is false, its falseness will become clear as enlightenment spreads, not to the lowest class of the people, but to the first orders of citizens, that is, to the men destined to lead the others, and who owe them the example of patriotism and the virtues; now, if religion had been the source of their virtues, once disenchanted with this religion, one would see them change their morals, they would lose a check and a motive, and they would be set straight.

If this religion is the true one, it can get mixed up with new dogmas and new opinions; and this new manner of thinking can be opposed to the government. Now, if the people are accustomed to obeying more by the force of religion than by that of the laws, they will follow the torrent of these opinions and reverse the constitution of the state, or will no longer follow its direction. What havoc did the Anabaptists not wreak in Westphalia! The Lent of the Abyssinians weakened them to the point of rendering them incapable of sustaining the work of war. Was it not the Puritans who led the unfortunate Charles I to the scaffold? The Jews did not dare to fight on the Sabbath.

If the lawgiver makes religion a mainspring of the state, he necessarily gives too much credit to the priests, who will soon become ambitious. In countries where the lawgiver has, so to speak, amalgamated religion with the government, we have seen the priests, having become important, encouraging despotism in order to increase their own authority and, this authority once established, threatening the despot and competing with him for the enslavement of the people.

Finally, religion would be a spring whose effects the lawgiver could never predict, and of which nothing could assure him that he would always be the master: this is reason enough for him to make the laws, whether constitutional or civil, supreme, and their execution independent of the cult and religious dogmas; but he must respect and love religion and make it loved and respected.

The lawgiver must never forget the disposition of human nature to superstition, he can count on it being there at all times and among all peoples: indeed, it will always get mixed up with the true religion. Knowledge and the progress of reason are the best remedies against this sickness of our species; but as it is to a certain extent incurable, it deserves a great deal of indulgence.

The conduct of the Chinese in this respect seems to me excellent. Philosophers are ministers of the Prince, and the provinces are filled with pagodas and gods: those who worship them are never treated harshly, but when a god has not fulfilled the wishes of the people, and they are dissatisfied to the point of allowing themselves some doubt about his divinity, the mandarins seize this moment to abolish a superstition: they shatter the god and knock down the temple.

The education of children will be an effective means for the lawgiver to attach the people to the homeland, to inspire in them the spirit of community, humanity, benevolence, public and private virtue, love of decency, and passions useful to the state; in short, to give them, to preserve in them, the kind of character, the genius which is right for the nation. Everywhere that the lawgiver has taken care that the education was appropriate to inspire in his people the character that they ought to have, that character has had energy and endured a long time. In the space of five hundred years, there was almost no change in the amazing morals of Troy. Education made the ancient Persians love the monarchy and their laws; it is above all to education that the Chinese owe the immutability of their manners and morals; for a long time, the Romans taught their children only agriculture, military science, and the laws of their country; they inspired in them only the love of frugality, of glory, and of the homeland; they gave to their children only their knowledge and their passions. There are in the homeland different orders, different classes; there are virtues and branches of knowledge which should be common to all the orders and classes; there are virtues and branches of knowledge which are more appropriate to certain estates, and the lawgiver must make sure these important details are attended to. It is above all the princes and the men who must one day hold in their hands the balance of our destiny that education must teach to govern a nation in the manner in which it wants to be and should be governed. In Sweden, the king is not the tutor of his son; not long ago a senator of one of the states of this kingdom said to the tutor of the heir to the throne: take the prince to the cabin of the working poor: let him see the poor up close and teach him that the people of Europe are not made to serve the whims of a dozen sovereigns.

When the constitutional and civil laws, the formalities, and education have contributed to secure the defense, the subsistence of the state, the tranquility of the citizens and their morals; when the people is attached to the homeland and has adopted the kind of character most appropriate to the government under which it must live, a way of thinking is established which perpetuates itself in the nation; everything that pertains to the constitution and to morals seems sacred; the spirit of the people does not permit it to examine the utility of a law or a practice: whether duties are more or less necessary is not discussed, they are simply respected and followed; and if anyone reasons about their limits, it is less in order to limit than to extend them: it is then that the citizens have principles to regulate their conduct, and the legislator adds the weight of opinion to the authority accorded to him already by the laws. The authority of opinion enters into all governments and consolidates them; it is by its means that almost everywhere the ill-behaved many do not spread rumors against obedience to the few. The real strength is in the subjects, but opinion constitutes the strength of the masters – this is true even in despotic states. If the emperors of Rome and the Turkish sultans ruled over the vast majority of their subjects through fear, they did so by means of praetors and janissaries over whom they reigned by opinion. Sometimes it is only a widespread idea that the ruling family has a real right to the throne; sometimes it is based in religion; often on the idea that is created of the grandeur of the power that oppresses. The only power that is truly solid is that which is founded on the happiness and approval of the citizens.

The power of opinion increases over time unless it is weakened by unforeseen shocks, sudden revolutions, or great mistakes.

It is through administration that the lawgiver preserves the power, the happiness, and the character of his people; and without good administration, the best laws save neither states from their decadence nor peoples from corruption.

As the laws must deprive the citizen of as little liberty as possible, and leave as much equality between them as possible; in governments where men are the least free and the least equal, the lawgiver must through administration make them forget that they have lost the two great advantages of the state of nature; he must constantly consult the desires of the nation; he must expose the details of administration to the view of the public; he must give them an account of his favors; he must even engage the people to become interested in the government, to discuss it, monitor its operations, as a way of attaching them to the homeland. It is necessary, says a king who writes, lives, and rules as a philosopher, that the legislator persuade the people that the law alone can do everything, and that whim can do nothing .

The Lawgiver will dispose his people to humanity by the kindness and respect with which he treats all men, whether citizen or foreigner, by encouraging inventions and men useful to human nature; by the way in which he demonstrates his pity for the unfortunate; by his careful avoidance of war and superfluous expenses; finally, by the esteem he will himself grant to those men known for their goodness.

This very conduct on the part of the Lawgiver, which contributes to the spread of the sentiment of humanity amongst his people, stimulates his own sense of benevolence towards them, which bonds his people to him. Sometimes he will arouse this feeling through brilliant sacrifices of his personal interest to the interest of his nation, such as by bestowing favors on the man who is useful to the homeland, rather than on the man who is useful only to him. A king of China who did not find his son worthy of succeeding him, arranged for his scepter to be passed to his minister, and said: I would rather that my son be ill and my people well, than that my son were well and my people ill. In China, royal edicts are exhortations of a father to his children. Edicts must instruct and exhort as much as they command; this was formerly the practice of our kings, but they have lost it through neglect. The lawgiver can never give too many proofs of his benevolence to the different social orders in his state; a Persian king invited laborers to his table, and he said to them: I am one of you; you need me, and I need you; let us live as brothers.

It is by distributing honors fairly and appropriately that the lawgiver will arouse feelings of honor in his people, and direct it towards the good of the state: when honors are a reward for virtue, honor will lead to virtuous actions.

The lawgiver holds in his hands two reins with which he can conduct the passions at his will: by this I mean punishments and rewards. Punishment should only be imposed by the courts in the name of the law; but the lawgiver should reserve for himself the power to distribute liberally a portion of the rewards.

In a country where the constitution of the state interests the citizens in the government, where education and administration have engraved in men patriotic principles and feelings as well as honor, it is sufficient to impose the lightest punishment on the guilty; it is enough to indicate that the citizen who is punished has committed a crime; the gazes of his countrymen add to his punishment. The lawgiver is in charge of attaching the harshest punishments to the vices most dangerous for his nation. He might make into punishments actual benefits, but those it is useful that the nation not desire; he can even make it so that what in other countries might serve as rewards are regarded as punishments. In Sparta, after certain wrongs were committed, a citizen was no longer permitted to lend out his wife. Among the Peruvians, a citizen who was prohibited from working in the public field would have been a very unhappy man; under such sublime legislation, a man would find himself punished when he was reduced to caring for merely his own personal property and interests. Nations are degraded when torture or the privation of property become ordinary punishments: this is proof that the lawgiver is obliged to punish what the nation will no longer punish. In republics, the law must be gentle, because one is never exempt from it. In monarchies, it must be more severe, because the lawgiver has to make his clemency loved by pardoning despite the law. However, amongst the Persians, before Cyrus, the laws were very mild; they condemned to death or infamy only those citizens who had done more harm than good.

In countries where punishment can be light, mediocre rewards are sufficient for virtue: it is very weak there, and only very rarely must it be bought. Rewards can serve to change the spirit of property into the spirit of community, (1) when they are granted for demonstrations of this latter sort of spirit; (2) in habituating the citizens to regard as rewards new opportunities that one gives them to sacrifice their personal interest to the interest of all.

The lawgiver can put the value of his benevolence beyond any price by granting it only to those men who have served the state well.

If ranks, titles and honors are always the prize for services, and if they impose the duty to render [such services] again, they will not excite the envy of the multitude: they will not feel any humiliation from the inequality of ranks; the lawgiver will give them other consolations for this inequality of wealth, which is in fact an inevitable consequence of the grandeur of states. Extreme wealth must always be the result of industriousness that enriches the state, and never at the expense of the people; the wealthy must bear the costs of society, since it is they who enjoy its advantages. In the hands of a lawgiver who administers well, taxes are a means of abolishing certain abuses, harmful industry, and vices; they can also be a means of encouraging the most useful kind of industry, to stimulate certain talents and virtues.

The lawgiver will not regard etiquette or ceremonies with indifference; he should make a visual impression, striking the sense that acts most powerfully on the imagination. Ceremonies should awaken in the people a feeling of the power of the lawgiver , but they must also be connected to the idea of virtue; they must call up the memory of noble actions, memories of magistrates, glorious warriors, and good citizens. Most of the ceremonies and etiquettes of our moderate European governments would suit only the despots of Asia; many are ridiculous, because they have lost all connection to morals and customs that they had at the time of their establishment. They were once respectable, now they are laughable.

The lawgiver will not neglect manners: when they are no longer the expression of morals, they restrain them; they force men to appear as they should be, and if they only replace morals imperfectly, they often have the same effects. It is in the residence of the lawgiver , it is by his example and that of men who are respected, that manners are spread amongst the people.

Public games, spectacles, and assemblies will be one of the means by which the lawgiver will unite the citizens: the Olympic games, the Swiss brotherhoods, English clubs, our celebrations and spectacles, all spread the spirit of society which contributes to the spirit of patriotism. These assemblies, moreover, accustom men to value as a prize the regards and the judgment of the multitude; they augment the love of glory and the fear of shame. He will simply keep timidity and pretention away from these assemblies; finally, when they no longer serve any purpose beyond increasing our pleasures, they will still deserve the attention of the legislator .

In recalling the purposes and the principles of all legislation, he must, in proportion to the degree of liberty and equality that men have given up, compensate them with a tranquil enjoyment of their property and protection against the authority which prevents them from desiring a less absolute government, where the advantage of more liberty is almost always disturbed by the anxiety of losing it.

If the lawgiver neither respects nor consults the general will; if he makes his power felt more than that of the law; if he treats a man with pride, merit with indifference, and the unfortunate severely; if he sacrifices his subjects to his family, their finances to his whims, and peace to his glory; if his favor is granted more to the man who knows how to please than to the one who can be of service; if honors and posts are obtained by intrigue; if taxes increase — then the spirit of community disappears; the citizen of a republic becomes impatient and the citizen of the monarchy becomes lethargic; he searches for the state, and sees only the prey of a master; activity slows down, the prudent man remains idle, the virtuous man is only a dupe; the veil of opinion falls; national principles seem to be nothing more than prejudices, and they are indeed just that; we are drawn close to the law of nature, because the legislation injures natural rights; morals no longer exist; the nation loses its character; the lawgiver is surprised to be poorly served, so he increases rewards; but those which encouraged virtue (which were based only on opinion) have lost their value; for the noble passions that once animated the people, the lawgiver tries to substitute cupidity and fear, and thereby increases even more the vices and degradation of the nation. If in his perversity he preserves those formalities, those expressions of benevolence with which his predecessors would declare their useful wills; if he preserves the language of a father but maintains the conduct of a despot, he plays the role of a charlatan at first despised, and soon imitated; he introduces into the nation falsity and perfidy, and, as Guarini says, viso di carità mente d'invidia [love in the face, but malice in the mind]. [8]

Sometimes the lawgiver sees the constitution of the state dissolve and the character of the people die because legislation had only a single objective and, this objective having changed, first the manners and morals and soon the laws could not remain the same. Sparta was established to preserve freedom in the midst of a crowd of small states that were weaker than it was because they did not have its morals; but it lacked the power to expand without destroying itself. The objective of legislation in China was the tranquility of the citizens through the exercise of gentle virtues: this great empire would not have been the prey of a few Tartar hordes if the lawgivers had stirred and maintained strong virtues, and if someone had thought as much about elevating the soul as regulating its desires. Roman legislation was aimed too much at expansion: peace for the Romans was a state of troubles, of factions and anarchy; they devoured themselves when they no longer had anyone to subjugate. Venetian legislation is too narrowly focused on keeping the people in slavery: they are either softened or degraded, and the vaunted wisdom of this government is nothing but the art of maintaining itself without power and without virtue.

Often a short-sighted lawgiver loosens the springs of the government and disturbs its principles because he does not sufficiently see the whole, and gives all of his attention to the only part he sees, or that which is most closely aligned with his particular taste and character.

The conqueror greedy for more conquests will neglect Jurisprudence, Commerce and the Arts; another stimulates commerce and neglects war; a third favors the arts of luxury too much, and the useful arts are debased, and the rest follow. There is no nation, at least no great nation, which cannot under a good government be at the same time warlike, commercial, wise, and civilized. I will finish this article, which is already too long, with some reflections on the present state of Europe.

The balance of power, which forms a single body from a multitude of states, influences the decisions of all lawgivers . The constitutional laws, the civil laws, and the administration, are more closely aligned today with human rights, [9] and are even more dependent on them than they used to be: nothing happens in one state which does not interest all the others, and the lawgiver of a powerful state influences the destiny of the whole of Europe.

Several consequences follow from this new situation.

For example, there can be small monarchies and large republics. In the former, the government will be maintained by associations, alliances, and by the general system. The minor princes of Germany and Italy are monarchs; and if their peoples grew tired of their government, they would be repressed by the sovereigns of the large states. Today, dissension, which is inevitable in large republics, would not weaken them to the point of exposing them to invasion. No one has benefitted from the civil wars of Switzerland and Poland: several powers would always join together against any that would wish to expand its territory. If Spain were a republic and was threatened by France, it would be defended by England, Holland, etc.

Today conquest is a moral impossibility in Europe; and until now from this impossibility have arisen more disadvantages than advantages for its peoples. Some lawgivers have neglected that part of administration that makes states strong; and we have seen great kingdoms favored by God languish without wealth and without power.

Other lawgivers have only regarded conquests as difficult, rather than impossible, and their ambition has been to multiply the means of conquest: some have given their states a purely military form, leaving their subjects no other job but soldiering; others maintain mercenary armies even in times of peace, which ruins their finances and leads to despotism. Magistrates and some lictors must enforce obedience to the laws, and immense armies are required to serve a master. This is the principal objective of most of our lawgivers , and to fulfill it they find themselves obliged to employ the sorry means of debt and taxes.

Some lawgivers have profited from the progress of enlightenment that over the past fifty years has spread rapidly from one end of Europe to the other. It has shed light on the details of administration, the means of expanding the population, of stimulating industry, of maintaining the advantages of one’s circumstances and procuring new ones. We may believe that enlightenment, preserved by Printing, cannot be extinguished and may even increase. If a despot wished to plunge his nation back into darkness, he would find free nations that would return it to the light of day.

In enlightened centuries, it is impossible to base legislation on errors; even quackery and the bad faith of ministers are noticed immediately and can only arouse indignation. It is equally difficult to spread a destructive fanaticism, such as that of the disciples of Odin and Mohammed. Today prejudices contrary to human rights and the laws of nature would not be accepted among any of the peoples of Europe.

Today, every nation has reasonably accurate ideas about their neighbors, and consequently they have less enthusiasm for their own homeland than in times of ignorance; there is scarcely any enthusiasm when there is a lot of enlightenment, since it [enthusiasm] is almost always the movement of a soul that is more passionate than informed. When they compare the laws, talents, and morals of all nations, each people will find so little reason to prefer their own to that of others that if they hold on to any love for the homeland that is the fruit of personal interest, they will at least no longer have that enthusiasm which is the fruit only of self-esteem.

Today, one could not by speculations, imputations, or political tricks inspire national hatreds as lively as one could inspire them in the past; the satirical pamphlets that our neighbors publish against us have scarcely any impact except on the weak and vile segment of the inhabitants of a capital which includes everyone from the lowest segment of the people and the first among them.

Becoming more enlightened every day, religion teaches us that we should not hate those who do not think like us; today we know how to distinguish the sublime spirit of religion from the suggestions of its ministers. In our own times we have seen the Protestant nobles at war with the Catholic nobles and neither succeed in their desire to inspire in the people that brutal and ferocious zeal that in the past they had inspired in people of different sects against each other, even in peacetime.

All men of all countries have become necessary to one another for the exchange of the fruits of their industry and the products of their soil; commerce is a new bond among men. Today, each nation has an interest in another nation preserving its wealth, its industry, its banks, its luxury, and its agriculture; the ruin of Leipzig, Lisbon or Lima causes bankruptcies throughout Europe, and has influenced the fortune of several million of its citizens.

Commerce, like enlightenment, reduces ferocity; but as enlightenment eliminates the enthusiasm for esteem, commerce also perhaps eliminates the enthusiasm for virtue: it extinguishes little by little the spirit of disinterestedness, which it replaces with that of justice. It softens the manners that enlightenment polishes; but, in turning minds less to the beautiful than to the useful, to the great rather than the wise, it perhaps alters the strength, generosity and nobility of morals and manners.

From the spirit of commerce and the knowledge that men have today of the real interest of each nation, it follows that lawgivers should be less occupied with defense and conquest than they were in the past. It follows further that they should focus on agriculture and the arts, production and consumption of their products; but at the same time they must ensure that morals and manners having been polished, they are not weakened too much and that esteem for martial virtues is maintained.

Because there will always be wars in Europe, we can entrust this to the interests of ministers; but the wars which used to take place between nations will often only be fought between lawgivers .

That which might still set Europe aflame is the difference between governments. This beautiful part of the world is divided into republics and monarchies. The spirit of the latter is active, and though it is not in their interest to expand, they may undertake conquest at moments when they are governed by men who are not directed by the interests of their nation. The spirit of republics is peaceful, but the love of liberty, a superstitious fear of losing it, will often push republican states to make war in order to bring down or suppress monarchical states. This situation in Europe will maintain the emulation of strong and martial virtues; the diversity of feelings and customs which arise from different types of government will thwart the progress of that indolence, that excessive gentleness of manners and morals, which are the effects of commerce, luxury, and long periods of peace.

1. I translate législateur as “lawgiver” to call attention to the relationship between this article and the Social Contract, written by Saint-Lambert’s friend, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It has become standard practice to translate the title of Book II, Chapter VII of that work, also titled “Législateur,” as “Lawgiver.”

2. The reference is to Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) in which he expounded his theory of the influence of climate and geography on men and societies. See esp. Book 14: “On the Laws in their Relation to the Nature of the Climate,” in Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws.

3. “Kaffir” (Caffre in French) is a derogatory term for black Africans that emerged from the Arabic in the Middle Ages and came to be applied to enslaved Africans and their descendants in the age of colonialism and Atlantic slavery. See Kaffir.

4. David Hume, "Of National Characters," in Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (1758).

5. Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782) was an Italian poet. The reference is to his elegy, L’origine delle leggi, here found in volume 4 of an edition of his poetry published in Milan in 1822.

6. Cnut the Great (c. 995-1035) was King of Denmark when he conquered England in 1016.

7. The reference seems to be to Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), referred to as Emperor Chi-Tsou in an eighteenth-century history of China by the Jesuit historian Jean-Baptiste Du Halde. The general history of China. Containing a geographical, historical, chronological, political and physical description of the empire of China, Chinese-Tartary, Corea, and Thibet. Including an exact and particular account of their customs, manners, ceremonies, religion, arts and sciences, 1:443-45.

8. Battista Guarini (1538-1612), Il Pastor fido (1590) act 5, scene 1. The translation is from a seventeenth-century English edition: Il Pastor Fido: The Faithfull Shepheard (London, 1648).

9. The term Saint-Lambert uses here is droit de gens . See the article in the Encyclopédie on this subject by the legal scholar Boucher d’Argis.