Republic, form of government in which the people as a body, or only a part of the people, have sovereign power. Republicae forma laudari faciliùs quàm evenire, et si evenit, haud diuturna esse potest , says Tacitus, Annals, 4. [1]

When the people as a body have sovereign power in the republic , it is a democracy . When the sovereign power is in the hands of a part of the people, it is an aristocracy . See Democracy, Aristocracy. When several political bodies join together to become citizens of a larger state that they want to form, it is a federal republic . See Federal republic.3

The most celebrated ancient republics are the republic of Athens, that of Lacedaemon [Sparta], and the Roman republic . See Lacedaemon, Republic of Athens, and Roman Republic.

I must observe here that the ancients were not familiar with government founded on a corps of nobility , still less with government founded on a legislative body made up of the representatives of a nation. The republics of Greece and Italy were cities that each had their government, and that assembled their citizens inside their walls. Before Rome devoured all the republics , there were practically no kings anywhere—in Italy, Gaul, Spain, or Germany. It was all small peoples or small republics . Even Africa was subject to a large one. Asia Minor was occupied by Greek colonies. Thus, there was no example of city deputies or assemblies of estates. One had to go to Persia to find the government of one alone.

In the best Greek republics , wealth was taxed as much as poverty. For the rich were obliged to employ their money in festivals, sacrifices, musical choruses, chariots, racehorses, and magistracies, which alone created respect and esteem.

Modern republics are known to everyone. Their strength, their power, and their liberty are well known. In the republics of Italy, for example, the people are less free than in monarchies. Thus, to maintain itself, the government needs means as violent as the government of the Turks. Witness the state inquisitors in Venice, and the lion’s maw into which an informer can at any moment toss his note of accusation. [2] Observe the possible situation of a citizen in these republics . The body of the magistracy, as executor of the laws, retains all the power it has given itself as legislator. It can plunder the state by its general acts of will, and since it also has the power of judgment, it can destroy each citizen by its particular acts of will. There, all power is one, and although there is none of the external pomp that reveals a despotic prince, it is felt at every moment. In Geneva, one feels only happiness and liberty. [3]

It is in the nature of a republic that it have only a small territory. [4] Otherwise, it can scarcely continue to exist. In a large republic , there are large fortunes, and consequently men’s minds have little moderation. There is too much to be entrusted to the hands of a citizen; interests become particularized. At first, a man feels he can be happy, great, and glorious without his country; and soon, that he can be great only on the ruins of his country.

In a large republic , the common good is sacrificed to countless considerations; it is subordinated to exceptions and dependent on accidents. In a small republic , the public good is better felt, better known, nearer to each citizen; abuses are less extensive and consequently less protected.

What made Lacedaemon last so long is that, after all its wars, it always remained within its territory. Lacedaemon’s only goal was liberty; the only advantage of its liberty was glory.

It was in the spirit of the Greek republics to be as satisfied with their lands as they were with their laws. Athens was seized with ambition, and transmitted it to Lacedaemon. But this was in order to command free peoples rather than to govern slaves; to be at the head of the union rather than to shatter it. All was lost when a monarchy rose up! —a government whose spirit tends toward expansion.

It is certain that a prince’s tyranny does no more to ruin a state than indifference to the common good does to ruin a republic . The advantage of a free state is that there are no favorites. But when that is not the case— when it is necessary to line the pockets not of the prince’s friends and relatives, but of the friends and relatives of everybody who participates in the government—all is lost. There is greater danger in the laws being evaded than in their being violated by a prince, because a prince, always being the foremost citizen of the state, has more interest in its preservation than anyone else. Esprit des lois . [5]

1. The full passage, including an introductory sentence Jaucourt omits, reads, “Every nation or city is governed by the people, or by the nobility, or by individuals: a constitution selected and blended from these types is easier to commend than to create; or, if created, its tenure of life is brief.” Tacitus, Annals, IV.xxxiii, Loeb Classical Library 312 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937), 57. John Jackson, the Loeb translator, has rendered rei publicae as “constitution,” opting for a generic rather than specific interpretation. Jaucourt’s interpretation is therefore doubtful. For an eighteenth-century translation see The Works of Tacitus (London: Woodward and Peele, 1728-31),

2. The argument of this paragraph is from Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws , 11.6.

3. This comment on Geneva, where Jaucourt was educated for several years, is the only sentence in the paragraph that does not appear in Montesquieu.

4. For this passage and the paragraphs to follow, see Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 8.16.

5. Despite Jaucourt’s final reference, this last paragraph is based not on Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws but on his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, trans. David Lowenthal (New York: Free Press, 1965; repr. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), IV, 44. A nineteenth-century translation is available online here.