Summary: The Spirit of Laws (page 2)

Montesquieu is not searching for the "best" laws from an ethical standpoint but rather, it seems, the most effective ones—those that enable a political regime to establish and sustain itself.

These are the laws best suited to:

- the desired political regime (democracy, monarchy, despotism, and so on)

- the physical characteristics of the country (climate, terrain, size of the land, and so on)

- the customs of the people (religion, commerce, and so on)

It is this combination of factors that Montesquieu calls the Spirit of Laws (Esprit des lois):

I shall examine all these relationships; together, they form what is called the spirit of the laws ¹.

Montesquieu begins by examining the relationship between laws and the political regime they are intended to serve. This is the subject of Book II of The Spirit of the Laws.

Book II: Laws that Derive Directly from the Nature of Government

In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu distinguishes three types of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

He defines a republic as that in which the people (or a part of them) hold sovereign power ².

A monarchy is that in which a single ruler governs, but according to fixed laws.

Finally, despotism is that in which a single ruler, without law or constraint, governs solely by his will and caprices ³.

Let us now look at the laws that follow directly from the nature of these three governments—their fundamental laws.

Beginning with the republic: this can take the form of either an aristocracy (where some of the people are sovereign) or a democracy (where all of the people are sovereign). Aristocracy and democracy are therefore not fundamentally opposed—they are merely two different forms of the same kind of political regime.

In a democracy, the people are both monarch and subject. They are monarch through their suffrage, which expresses their will ⁴. Because of this, the laws that establish the right to vote are fundamental in this form of government ⁵.

This is why, in Athens, a foreigner who mingled with the assembly of the people and took part in the vote was punished by death.

Similarly, it is essential in a democracy to fix the number of citizens who form the assemblies; otherwise, it is impossible to determine whether the people as a whole have voted or only a portion of them. The failure to set this number was one of the many causes of Rome's downfall.

Will the people, in their ignorance, know how to choose their representatives? Montesquieu dismisses this classic argument against democracy. History proves that the people can recognise merit and elect the most capable candidates. Just as we can judge a general by the number of his victories, we can gauge a politician's competence from a few simple facts known to everyone.

The Romans, for example, had the right to elect either plebeians (from the common people) or patricians (from noble families), yet the people never elected the plebeians, even though doing so might have brought them certain advantages.

Montesquieu also examines different voting methods: by lot or by choice, secret or public. The secret ballot, he argues, was one of the causes of Rome's downfall, as it prevented the people from being guided by observing whom the most enlightened citizens were voting for.

In an aristocracy, sovereignty resides in the hands of a few.

Montesquieu judges this political system harshly: It is a government that has already established the most distressing distinctions ⁶.

The best form of aristocracy is one in which the segment of the population without sovereignty is so small and poor that the ruling class has no interest in oppressing it ⁷.

This is why the closer an aristocracy comes to democracy, the more perfect it becomes, while the closer it approaches monarchy, the less perfect it will be ⁸.

¹ ibid.
² II, chap.1
³ ibid.
⁴ II, chap.2
⁵ ibid.
⁶ II, chap. 3
⁷ I, chap. 3,
⁸ ibid.