Despotism, tyrannical, arbitrary, and absolute government of a single man: such is the government of Turkey, the Mughals, Japan, Persia, and virtually all of Asia. Following some celebrated writers, let us unfold its principle and its character, and let us give thanks to heaven for causing us to be born under a different government, where we obey with joy a monarch who makes us love him.

The principle of despotic states is that a single prince governs everything according to his will, having absolutely no other law to dominate him but that of his whims. It is in the nature of this power that it passes entirely into the hands of the person to whom it is entrusted. [1] This person, this vizir, becomes the despot himself, and each individual officer becomes the vizir. The establishment of a vizir flows from the fundamental principle of despotic states. [2] Once eunuchs have weakened the hearts and minds of Eastern princes, often having left them ignorant even of their status, they are withdrawn from the palace to be placed on the throne. They then appoint a vizir, in order to give themselves up in their seraglio to all the excesses of their most stupid passions. Thus, the more people the prince has to govern, the less he thinks about government; the greater the matters of business, the less he deliberates about them, since this concern belongs to the vizir. The latter, incompetent in his position, can neither express his fears about a future event to the sultan nor blame his lack of success on the caprice of fortune. [3] In such a government, the lot of men is no different from that of beasts: instinct, obedience, punishment. In Persia, when the Sophi [4] has dismissed someone from favor, it would show a lack of respect to present a petition on the latter’s behalf. When he has condemned him, no one may speak to him further about it or ask for a pardon. If he were drunk or mad, the decree would have to be carried out just the same; otherwise, he would be contradicting himself, and the Sophi cannot contradict himself.

But if, in despotic states, the prince is made a prisoner, he is supposed dead, and another ascends the throne. [5] The treaties he makes as a prisoner are null; his successor would not ratify them. Indeed, since he is the law, the state, and the prince, and since as soon as he is no longer the prince he is nothing, if he were not considered dead, the state would be destroyed. The preservation of the state rests only in the preservation of the prince, or rather of the palace in which he is enclosed. This is why he rarely wages war in person.

Despite so many precautions, the succession to dominion in despotic states is no more assured by them, and indeed it cannot be. [6] It would be vain to establish inheritance by the eldest; the prince can always choose another. Since each prince of the royal family is equally entitled to be elected, it happens that the one who ascends to the throne has his brothers strangled immediately, as in Turkey; or blinded, as in Persia; or driven mad, as with the Mughals; and if these precautions are not taken, as in Morocco, then each time the throne is vacated a horrible civil war ensues. In this way, no one is monarch except de facto in despotic states.

It is clear that neither natural law nor the law of nations is the principle of such states, nor is honor. [7] As the men there are all equal, one cannot prefer oneself to others; as the men there are all slaves, one cannot prefer oneself to anything. Still less would we look there for some spark of magnanimity—would the prince give away a share of what he is so far from having? [8] Neither grandeur nor glory are found in him. The whole support of his government is based on fear of his vengeance; this beats down all courage; it extinguishes the least feeling of ambition. [9] Religion, or rather superstition, does the rest, because this is a new fear added to the first. [10] In the Muslim empire, the people derive the principal part of the respect they have for their prince from religion.

Let us go into more detail, to better unveil the nature of and problems with the despotic governments of the Orient.

First of all, since despotic government is exercised over peoples that are timid and beaten down, everything turns on a small number of ideas; education is limited to putting fear in their hearts, and servitude in practice. Knowledge is dangerous there, emulation lethal. It is equally pernicious whether one reasons well or badly; that one is reasoning is enough to offend this kind of government. [11] Education is therefore nothing there; one could only make a bad subject by wanting to make a good slave:

Wives are slaves there, and since having many of them is permitted, countless considerations oblige them to be enclosed. Since sovereigns take as many as they want, they have such a large number of children by them that they can scarcely have affection for them, nor the latter for their brothers. [13] Moreover, there are so many intrigues in their seraglios—those places where artifice, wickedness, and deceit reign in silence—that the prince himself, becoming daily more imbecilic, is in fact only the first prisoner of his palace.

It is an established custom in despotic countries not to approach any superior without giving him presents. [14] The emperor of the Mughals does not accept requests from his subjects unless he has received something from them. This is bound to be the way in a government where one is filled with the idea that the superior owes nothing to the inferior, in a government where men believe themselves bound only by the punishments that the former mete out to the latter.

Poverty and the uncertainty of fortunes naturalizes usury there, as each one increases the price of his money in proportion to the peril involved in lending it. [15] Destitution is omnipresent in these miserable countries; everything is taken away, including the recourse to borrowing. Government could not be unjust without hands to inflict its injustices. Now it is impossible for these hands not to be used on their own behalf; therefore, embezzlement is inevitable there. In countries where the prince declares himself owner of all the land and heir to all his subjects, cultivation of the land is always abandoned. All is fallow, all is deserted. [16] “When the Savages of Louisiana want fruit, they cut down the tree and gather the fruit.” There you have despotic government, says the author of the Spirit of the Laws; [17] Raphael did no better in painting the School of Athens.

In a despotic government of that nature, there are no civil laws concerning landed property, since it all belongs to the despot . [18] Nor are there any concerning inheritance, because the sovereign has the sole right of succession. The monopoly on trade that he exercises in some countries makes all types of laws concerning commerce useless. Since extreme servitude cannot be increased, new laws to increase taxes in wartime do not make their appearance in the despotic countries of the Orient, as they do in republics and monarchies, where the science of government can procure an increase in wealth for the government in time of need. [19] Because marriages are contracted with female slaves in Oriental countries, there are scarcely any civil laws about dowries or the privileges of wives. [20] In Masulipatam, [21] the existence of written laws has not been discovered; the Vedas and other similar books contain no civil laws. In Turkey, where people are equally unbothered about the fortune, life, or honor of subjects, all disputes are speedily concluded in one way or another. The pasha has canings under the soles of the litigants’ feet meted out at whim, and sends them back home. [22]

If litigants are punished in this way, how rigorous must the penalties be for those who have committed some offense? Thus, when we read in history about examples of the atrocious justice of the sultans, we feel with a kind of sorrow the sickness in human nature. In Japan it is even worse; there, almost all crimes are punished by death. There, it is not a question of correcting the guilty but of avenging the emperor. A man who risks some money in gambling is punished by death because he has neither the ownership nor the usufruct of his property; it is the kubo who does. [23]

The people, who possess nothing of their own in the despotic lands we have depicted, have no sense of attachment to their country, and are bound by no obligation to its master. Thus, following M. La Loubère’s observation (in his relation historique de Siam [Historical account of Siam]), [24] since the subjects have to suffer under the same yoke no matter the prince, and since they cannot be made to bear a heavier one, they never take any part in the fortunes of whoever is governing them. At the least sign of disturbance or unrest, they placidly let the crown go to whoever has the most strength, nimbleness, or political savvy, whoever it may be. A Siamese man happily exposes himself to death to avenge a private insult, to escape from a burdensome life, or to avoid a cruel torture; but to die for prince or country is a virtue unknown in that land. They lack the motives that animate other men; they have neither liberty nor property. Those imprisoned by the king of Pegu [25] remain tranquilly in the new habitation assigned them, because it cannot be worse than the prior one. The inhabitants of Pegu act in the same way when they are captured by the Siamese. Those wretches—equally crushed in their country by servitude, equally indifferent toward the change of residence—have the good sense to say with the ass in the fable:

The rebellion of Sacrovir brought joy to the Roman people; [27] the universal hatred Tiberius had attracted by his despotism made people wish for a happy outcome for the public enemy: multi odio praesentium, suis quisque periculis laetabantur , says Tacitus. [28]

I know that the kings of the Orient are regarded as the adoptive children of heaven. Their souls are thought to be celestial, and to surpass others in virtue as much as the prosperity of their condition surpasses that of their subjects. Nonetheless, once the subjects revolt, the people come to harbor doubts on which is the worthier soul, that of the legitimate prince or that of the rebel subject, and on whether the celestial adoption hasn’t passed from the person of the king to that of the subject. Moreover, in those countries there are no small revolts; [29] there is no space between murmur and sedition, sedition and catastrophe. The malcontent goes straight to the prince, strikes him, overthrows him—he erases even the thought of him. In an instant the slave is the master; in an instant he is the usurper and is legitimate. Great events are not prepared by great causes there; on the contrary, the least accident produces a great revolution, often as unforeseen by those who effect it as by those who suffer it. At the time when Osman, emperor of the Turks, was deposed, he was only being asked to give justice on some grievances; a voice arose from the crowd by chance, pronouncing the name of Mustapha, and suddenly Mustapha was emperor.

Father Martini claims that the Chinese have convinced themselves that in changing the sovereign they are conforming to the will of heaven, and they have sometimes preferred a bandit to the prince who was already on the throne. [30] But, he says, aside from the fact that this despotic authority is deprived of defense, since its exercise terminates entirely in the prince, it is weakened for not being shared and transmitted to other persons. Whoever wants to dethrone the prince has scarcely anything else to do but play the role of sovereign and capture its spirit. Authority, being contained within a single man, passes easily from one man to another, for lack of people in positions who have an interest in preserving royal authority. It is thus only the prince who is interested in defending the prince, whereas countless hands have an interest in defending our kings.

Thus, far from a despot’s being assured of maintaining himself on the throne, he is only closer to falling from it. Far from his even being secure in his life, he is only more exposed to seeing its course cut short in a violent and tragic manner, like his reign. The person of a sultan is often torn to pieces with less formality than that of a malefactor from the dregs of the people. If they had less authority, they would have more security: nunquam satis fida potentia, ubi nimia . [31] Caligula, Domitian, and Commodus, who reigned despotically , were assassinated by those whose deaths they had decreed.

Let us conclude that despotism is equally harmful to princes and peoples in all times and all places, because it is everywhere the same in its principle and in its effects. It is particular circumstances—religious opinion, prejudice, received examples, established customs, manners, mores—that make up the differences one encounters among them throughout the world. But whatever these differences, human nature always rises up against a government of this kind, which is the misery of prince and subjects. [32] And if we still see so many idolatrous and barbarous nations subject to this government, it is because they are enchained by superstition, education, habit, and climate.

In Christianity, on the other hand, there cannot be an unlimited sovereignty, because however absolute that sovereignty may be supposed, it cannot include an arbitrary and despotic power, with no other rule or reason than the will of the Christian monarch. Look, how could the creature claim such a power, since the sovereign himself does not have it? His absolute domain is not founded on blind will; his sovereign will is always determined by the immutable rules of wisdom, justice, and goodness.

Thus, to echo La Bruyère, “to say that a Christian prince is the arbiter of the lives and property of his subjects is to say simply that men, by their crimes, become naturally subject to the laws and justice of which the prince is the depository. To add that he is the absolute master of all the property of his subjects— without consideration, without account or discussion—this is the language of flattery, it is the opinion of a favorite who will recant at the hour of death.” ( Chap. x, du Souverain ) [33]

But one may suggest that a king is master of the lives and property of his subjects because, loving them with a paternal love, he preserves them and takes care of their fortunes as he would something that was most proper to him. In this fashion, he conducts himself as if everything belonged to him, taking absolute power over all their possessions in order to protect and defend them. It is by this means that, winning the hearts of his people and thereby everything they have, he can declare himself their master, even though he never causes them to lose their ownership of it, except in cases ordained by law.

“It does not,” says a councilor of state (M. La Mothe le Vayer, in a book entitled l' oeconomique du Prince , [The Household management of the Prince], which he dedicated to Louis XIV, ch. ix), “it does not, SIRE, set harmful limits to your sovereign will, to set them in conformity with those by which God has intended to limit his own. If we say that YOUR MAJESTY owes protection and justice to his subjects, we add at the same time that YOUR MAJESTY is made accountable for this obligation, and for all of your actions, only to the one to whom all kings on earth are subject. Finally, we do not attribute any personal property to your people except to thereby further exalt the dignity of your monarchy.” [34]

Thus, Louis XIV always recognized that he could do nothing contrary to the laws of nature, the laws of nations, or the fundamental laws of the state. In the treatise des droits de la Reine de France [on the rights of the Queen of France], published in 1667 by order of that august monarch to justify his claims over a part of the Catholic Low Countries, one finds these fine words:

“THAT KINGS HAVE THAT HAPPY IMPOTENCE, OF BEING UNABLE TO DO ANYTHING AGAINST THE LAWS OF THEIR COUNTRY . . . It is (adds the author) neither imperfection nor weakness in a supreme authority to submit his promises to the law, or his laws to justice. The necessity of doing well and the powerlessness to fail are the highest means of all his perfection. God himself, according to the thought of Philo the Jew, cannot go further. And it is this divine impotence that sovereigns, who are his images on earth, should particularly imitate in their states. ( Page 279 of the edition made following the Royal printer’s copy .)

“Let it not be said, therefore (continues the same author, who speaks in the name of, and with the approbation of, Louis XIV), let it not be said that the sovereign is not subject to the laws of his state, since the contrary proposition is a truth of the law of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked, but which good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their states. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato that the perfect felicity of a realm is for a prince to be obeyed by his subjects, for the prince to obey the law, and for the law to be upright and always directed toward the public good?”

The monarch who thinks and acts in this way is indeed worthy of the name of GREAT, and he who can only augment his glory by continuing a dominance that is full of clemency, doubtless merits the title of WELL- LOVED. [35]

1. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws , 3.9, and esp. 5.16.

2. Here the references are to Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 2.5.

3. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 3.10, 29.

4. Persian monarch.

5. For this paragraph, see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.14.

6. The rest of this paragraph is from Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.14, 62.

7. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 3.8.

8. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.12.

9. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 3.9.

10. For the rest of the paragraph, see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.14.

11. Montesquieu attributes this “reasoning” to the English in Spirit of the Laws, 19.27, 332.

12. The passage seems to come from P.-J. Crébillon’s play Catalina, in Oeuvres (1749; Renouard: Paris, 1818), 2: 227.

13. The remainder of the paragraph is from Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.14, 63.

14. For this paragraph, see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.17.

15. For this and what follows, see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.15.

16. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.14, 61.

17. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.13.

18. For this and what immediately follows, see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 6.1.

19. This sentence seems loosely adapted from Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 13.13.

20. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 6.1, 74.

21. Modern-day Bandar, on the eastern coast of India; it was the British East India Company’s first trading post.

22. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 6.2, 75.

23. In the article Dairi, or Dairo (4:612), Jaucourt explains that the kubo is the secular ruler of Japan, namely, the emperor.

24. Simon de La Loubère (1643–1729); Description du royaume de Siam

appeared in 1691 in French, in English in 1693 as A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam, and was frequently reprinted.

25. Modern Bago, port city in southern Burma (Myanmar); in Jaucourt’s time, it had again recently (in 1740) been made capital of the Mon kingdom, first established in the sixth century. In 1757, shortly after Jaucourt’s article was published, the king of Burma destroyed Pegu and its independence.

26. From La Fontaine, “Le Vieillard et l’Ane” (The Old Man and the Ass), in his Fables , which began to appear in 1668. Here is an early translation.

27. Julius Sacrovir of Gaul; the revolt occurred in A.D. 21, in the reign of Tiberius. It ultimately failed and Sacrovir killed himself.

28. Tacitus, Annals, III. xliv, “in many hatred of the existing order . . . [was] such that they exulted even in their own perils.”

29. From here until the end of the paragraph, see Montesquieu, Persian Letters, trans. George R. Healy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), LXXXI, 137. An earlier translation is available online here.

30. Martino Martini (1614–61), Austrian-born Jesuit. Probably a reference to his Histoire de la Chine, translated from Latin into French in 1692.

31. “When a man has excessive power, he never can have complete trust.” Tacitus, Histories, II. xcii. Jaucourt may be drawing here on the English Whig Thomas Gordon, The Works of Tacitus (London: T. Woodward, 1728), vol. 1: Discourse V, sect. III, para. 2, for his citation is identical to Gordon’s and slightly different from the original.

32. For a less categorical statement, see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 5.14, 63.

33. See Jean de La Bruyère (1645–96), The Morals and Manners of the Seventeenth Century, being the Characters of La Bruyère , trans. Helen Stott (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1890)), 168, for a nearly identical version. Jaucourt has added the word “Christian,” which is absent from the original.

34. François de La Mothe le Vayer (1583–1672) was an important intellectual in the skeptical tradition; this work, L’Œconomique du prince (Paris, 1653), is part of a six-part series of studies (1651–69) designed for Louis XIV.

35. The references are to Louis XIV ( le grand, r. 1660–1715) and Louis XV ( le Bien-aimé, r. 1726–70).