The Spirit of the Laws

Contents

1. Preface 6 min 4

   Montesquieu asks to be judged on the whole book, the labour of twenty years, and not on a few phrases. He has studied the endless variety of human laws and found that they follow from a few first principles drawn “from the nature of things,” not from prejudice. He writes, he says, to censure nothing established anywhere: every nation will find the reasons for its own maxims. He hopes to give people new reasons to love their prince, country and laws, and to free mankind from the prejudices that make people ignorant of themselves.

2. Advertisement 2 min 1

   A note added in the posthumous edition of 1757. The “virtue” that drives a republic is political virtue, love of country and of equality, not Christian or moral virtue. To call honour the spring of monarchy is not to deny that monarchies have virtue. The “honest man” of Book III is the citizen who loves his country’s laws.

3. Book 1 Of Laws in General 15 min 10

   Laws in the widest sense are “the necessary relations arising from the nature of things”: God, the physical world, animals and men all have theirs. Justice exists before positive law. Against Hobbes, Montesquieu argues that man in the state of nature is timid, and that peace, food, sexual attraction and the wish for society are the first natural laws. War begins with society. Hence the law of nations, political law and civil law. Laws must suit each people, its government, climate, soil, way of life, religion, wealth and customs; the relations among all of these are the “spirit of laws” the book will study.

4. Book 2 Of Laws Directly Derived from the Nature of Government 25 min 38

   There are three kinds of government. In a republic the people, or part of it, holds power; in a monarchy one person rules by fixed laws; in a despotism one rules by will. In democracy the laws of suffrage are fundamental: who votes, how citizens are divided into classes, whether by lot or choice, openly or in secret. Aristocracy should come as close to democracy as it can. Monarchy consists of intermediate powers, above all the nobility, and needs a depositary of the laws in the courts. A despot hands power to a vizier and gives himself up to the seraglio.

5. Book 3 Of the Principles of the Three Kinds of Government 22 min 26

   Each government also has a principle, the passion that sets it in motion. Democracy needs virtue, the love of the laws and the country, and when virtue fails, as in Cromwell’s England, late Athens and Carthage, the republic is lost. Aristocracy needs moderation among the nobles. Monarchy works with little virtue, because honour, the prejudice of each rank, makes everyone serve the public while seeking his own advancement. Despotism rests on fear, and its obedience is blind. Only religion can limit the despot.

6. Book 4 That the Laws of Education Ought to Be in Relation to the Principles of Government 25 min 29

   Education must match the principle of government. In monarchies the school is society and the court, which teach an honour that prizes the brilliant over the just, a frankness that shows boldness, and politeness that marks rank. Despotism needs only to instil fear and a few religious notions. Republics need the whole power of education to form love of the laws. Montesquieu admires Sparta, Crete, Plato, Penn’s Pennsylvania and the Jesuits in Paraguay, and explains Greek music as the remedy for the fierceness of citizens trained only for war.

7. Book 5 That the Laws Given by the Legislator Ought to Be in Relation to the Principle of Government 1 h 10 min 70

   Laws made by the legislator must also suit the principle. Democracies keep virtue alive through equality and frugality: land divisions, inheritance rules, censors, senates for life and paternal authority. Commercial republics can grow rich without corruption. Aristocracies must moderate the nobles: no tax privileges, no trade, no primogeniture. Monarchies need a hereditary nobility, entails and privileges. Despotism needs few laws; it ruins property and agriculture, and its succession is bloody. The book ends with questions on gifts, rewards, compulsory office, the sale of offices, which Montesquieu defends in monarchies, and censors.

8. Book 6 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 52 min 70

   Monarchies have complex laws and slow procedures because they protect honour, life and property. The trouble and delay of justice are the price of liberty, and despots simplify. Judges should follow the letter of the law in republics; the prince must never judge in person. Punishments should be mild in moderate governments, since impunity, not leniency, breeds crime, and they should be proportionate to the offence. Montesquieu condemns Japan’s savage laws and refuses to argue for torture, and he values the prince’s clemency in monarchies.

9. Book 7 Consequences of the Different Principles of the Three Governments with Respect to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the Condition of Women 33 min 43

   Luxury grows with the inequality of fortunes. Republics must banish it with sumptuary laws, aristocracies restrain it, but monarchies need it: the spending of the rich keeps the poor alive, and republics end through luxury while monarchies end through poverty. China must suppress luxury because of its huge population. The book then turns to women: their virtue in republics, the Roman domestic tribunal and guardianship, the emperors’ adultery laws, dowries, a Samnite custom of awarding brides for merit, and women’s fitness to govern states.

10. Book 8 Of the Corruption of the Principles of the Three Governments 37 min 42

    Governments fall when their principles are corrupted. Democracy decays through the loss of equality or through “extreme equality,” when everyone wants to command. Aristocracy decays when the nobles become arbitrary and hereditary, and monarchy when the prince absorbs all power into his court. Despotism is corrupt by nature. Size matters: republics must be small, monarchies middling, and great empires are despotic. China, despite the missionaries’ praise, is a despotism ruled by fear, tempered only by the danger of famine and revolt.

11. Book 9 Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to a Defensive Force 16 min 12

    Book IX asks how states provide for their defence. A small republic falls to foreign force and a large one to internal corruption; the remedy is the confederate republic, a union of small republics with the internal advantages of a republic and the strength of a monarchy, as in Holland, Switzerland and ancient Lycia. Confederations should join states of the same kind. Despotisms protect themselves by wasting their frontiers and setting vassals on them, monarchies by fortresses. A state should be of moderate size, and power is relative: Louis XIV gained by not achieving universal monarchy, and it is unwise to ruin a weak neighbour.

12. Book 10 Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to Offensive Force 35 min 29

    Book X derives the right of war from natural self-defence, and the right of conquest from the right of war, so conquest gives only the rights needed for preservation. Montesquieu attacks the jurists who allowed conquerors to kill or enslave the vanquished, and lists the benefits a conquest may bring a corrupt state. Republics conquer badly, ruling subjects despotically; monarchies should leave conquered provinces their laws and manners. Examples follow: Corsica under Genoa, Cyrus and the Lydians, Charles XII of Sweden, who ruined himself, and Alexander, who preserved his conquests by uniting Greeks and Persians. The Manchu rulers of China and Nadir Shah close the book.

13. Book 11 Of the Laws Which Establish Political Liberty, with Regard to the Constitution 1 h 16 min 101

    Book XI defines political liberty as the right to do what the laws permit, found only in moderate governments where power checks power. Chapter 6, on the constitution of England, sets out the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers: juries drawn from the people, a representative house and a hereditary house of nobles, and a monarch holding executive power with a veto. Montesquieu traces this system to the forests of ancient Germany and to the Gothic governments of medieval Europe. The rest of the book analyses how the three powers were distributed in the Roman monarchy, the republic and its provinces.

14. Book 12 Of the Laws That Form Political Liberty, in Relation to the Subject 54 min 91

    Book XII treats the liberty of the subject, which consists in security and depends chiefly on criminal law. Punishments should follow from the nature of each crime: religious, moral, against public order, or against persons and property. Montesquieu urges caution in prosecuting witchcraft, heresy and sodomy, and attacks vague laws of treason that punish thoughts, words or writings rather than overt acts. He condemns informers, spies, anonymous accusations, commissions and cruel debt laws, discusses bills of attainder, and advises monarchs to rule gently and despots to accept a sacred code and religious counsel.

15. Book 13 Of the Relation Which the Levying of Taxes and the Greatness of the Public Revenues Bear to Liberty 31 min 24

    Book XIII examines public revenues, the portion of property each subject gives to secure the rest. Taxes should be measured by real needs, not by what can be extracted. Montesquieu discusses taxes on serfs, persons, land and goods, preferring duties on merchandise, paid by the seller and hidden in the price. Excessive duties breed smuggling and savage penalties. Taxes can be heavier where liberty is greater, but liberty tempts governments to excess. He condemns standing armies and public debt, and prefers collection by state officials to tax-farming, whose financiers come to dictate laws and corrupt honour.

16. Book 14 Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate 31 min 39

    Book XIV opens the theory of climate. Cold tightens the body’s fibres and makes peoples vigorous, brave and frank; heat relaxes them, making peoples sensitive, passionate, timid and indolent, as Montesquieu claims to confirm by freezing a sheep’s tongue. Eastern customs therefore change little. Good legislators oppose the vices of climate, as Chinese rulers encouraged agriculture, while bad ones indulge them, as with monasticism. Laws on drink, leprosy, plague and suicide are related to climate, and England’s restless temper suits its free government. The laws of Germans, Visigoths, Japanese and Indians reflect their climates.

17. Book 15 In What Manner the Laws of Civil Slavery Relate to the Nature of the Climate 35 min 56

    Montesquieu condemns slavery as bad for master and slave and refutes the Roman jurists’ three justifications: war, self-sale and birth. He also rejects contempt for foreign customs and religious conversion as grounds. Chapter 5 is an ironic mock defence of enslaving Africans that exposes its real motives. He then concedes that extreme heat may make slavery “reconcilable to reason”, but argues that free labour with machines does better. The rest of the Book gives practical advice: the dangers of large slave populations in free states, the cruel Roman laws, protections owed to slaves, and gradual enfranchisement.

18. Book 16 How the Laws of Domestic Slavery Bear a Relation to the Nature of the Climate 28 min 44

    Book XVI explains the subjection of women, which Montesquieu calls domestic servitude, by climate. Early maturity in hot countries, he claims, leads to polygamy, which brings seclusion, eunuchs and despotic households; temperate Europe suits monogamy and freer women. He discusses sex ratios, the polyandry of the Nayars, jealousy and modesty, and the link between domestic and political despotism. He insists he explains customs without justifying them. The Book ends with divorce and repudiation: women should have the same right as men, and the Roman evidence is examined through the story of Carvilius Ruga.

19. Book 17 How the Laws of Political Servitude Bear a Relation to the Nature of the Climate 15 min 14

    Political servitude, too, depends on climate. Heat makes peoples timid and cold makes them brave, so hot countries tend to despotism and cold ones to liberty. Asia has no temperate zone: strong northern nations border weak southern ones, so Asia is repeatedly conquered and remains enslaved. Europe’s graded climate and natural divisions produce many moderate states and a “genius for liberty”. Northern conquerors of Europe brought freedom, while the Tartars carried servitude with them. Africa shares Asia’s condition, and a ruler should place his capital in the north.

20. Book 18 Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to the Nature of the Soil 46 min 71

    Soil and mode of life shape laws. Fertile plains invite monarchy and conquest, while barren, mountainous and island countries keep their liberty, and lands won by human labour need moderate rule. Laws grow with the way peoples get their subsistence: hunters, herders, farmers and traders need ever larger codes. Peoples who do not cultivate land or use money live by manners more than laws and keep great liberty, with exceptions such as the Tartars and Natchez. The Book ends with the early Germans and Franks: the Salic law, inheritance, kingship, majority, assemblies and clergy.

21. Book 19 Of Laws in Relation to the Principles Which Form the General Spirit, Morals, and Customs of a Nation 56 min 45

    A nation’s “general spirit” is formed by climate, religion, laws, maxims, precedents, morals and customs together. The legislator should respect it and change manners by example rather than by law; Peter I’s decrees on beards are his example. Montesquieu praises French sociability, contrasts vanity with pride, and analyses China, where rites fuse religion, law, morals and manners and so survive conquest. Laws and manners shape each other. A long final chapter describes the manners that England’s free constitution produces: parties, public credit, naval power, colonies, religious liberty and the national character.

22. Book 20 Of Laws in Relation to Commerce, Considered in Its Nature and Distinctions 34 min 25

    Commerce softens manners and leads trading nations to peace, though it also makes individuals mercenary. Monarchies trade in luxuries; republics such as Venice and Holland live by an “economical” carrying trade, suited to banks, companies and free ports. England puts politics below commerce. Montesquieu examines freedom of commerce, customs administration, confiscation, imprisonment for debt, commercial courts, and why princes should not trade. He defends France’s exclusion of nobles from commerce, together with the purchase of ennobling offices, and argues that trade impoverishes nations like Poland that have only raw produce to sell.

23. Book 21 Of Laws in Relation to Commerce, Considered in the Revolutions It Has Met with in the World 1 h 40 min 164

    Montesquieu traces commerce from the ancient empires to his own day. Climate and geography fix some trades, such as Europe's silver for Indian goods, while conquest, piracy and law move others. He follows the Tyrians, Greeks, Alexander, the Ptolemies, Carthage and Rome, which he finds hostile to trade, and then the ruin of commerce under the barbarians. Medieval bans on interest pushed trade onto persecuted Jews, whose bills of exchange, he claims, made wealth mobile and checked princes. The discoveries brought chartered companies, colonial monopolies and the slave trade. Spain's American gold and silver, losing value as it multiplied, ruined rather than enriched it.

24. Book 22 Of Laws in Relation to the Use of Money 1 h 9 min 74

    A treatise on money. Money is a sign of value; coins drift from real weights into "ideal" units of account; prices depend on the ratio of money to goods in circulation, and American silver halved the rate of interest. Long chapters explain the course of exchange with Holland, recoinages and the collapse of Law's System. Roman alterations of the coinage are praised under the Republic and condemned under the Empire, and the exchange is said to restrain despots. Montesquieu argues that public debt shifts income from the industrious to the idle, recommends sinking funds, defends moderate interest and traces how Roman usury laws bred worse usury.

25. Book 23 Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to the Number of Inhabitants 59 min 130

    On population. After an invocation of Venus from Lucretius, Montesquieu discusses marriage, legitimacy, paternal consent, the effects of oppressive government, the sex ratio, kinds of farming and the arts that sustain demand. Greek cities limited their citizens; Rome, having destroyed its neighbours, encouraged marriage by Augustus's Julian and Papian laws, which he reconstructs in detail before blaming Christian esteem for celibacy for their abolition. Convinced that Europe has fewer people than before, he calls for general rewards for marriage, the distribution of waste land, and work-based public relief, holding that the state owes every citizen a subsistence.

26. Book 24 Of Laws in Relation to Religion Considered in Itself, and in Its Doctrines 39 min 49

    Religion considered only for its effects on civil society. Montesquieu rejects Bayle's claims that atheism is less harmful than idolatry and that true Christians could not sustain a state. He pairs Christianity with moderate government and Islam with despotism, Catholicism with monarchy and Protestantism with republics. He praises the Stoics and Julian, warns against contemplative and fatalist doctrines, and shows religion and civil law compensating for each other's weaknesses. Doctrines are judged by their use: the immortality of the soul can inspire suicide, metempsychosis can protect cattle. Climate, he argues, limits where a religion can be transplanted.

27. Book 25 Of Laws in Relation to the Establishment of Religion and Its External Polity 31 min 31

    On religion as an institution. Montesquieu explains attachment to religions by spirituality, ceremony, hope and fear, morality and magnificence, then discusses temples and asylums, the clergy, and limits on the Church's wealth through mortmain fees. He condemns costly worship, separates the pontificate from the crown in monarchies, and argues that established religions should be tolerated and new ones kept out, and that incentives work better than penal laws. A remonstrance to the Inquisition, written in a Jewish voice, condemns burning for faith. Closing chapters explain Japan's persecution of Christians and Eastern suspicion of missionaries.

28. Book 26 Of Laws in Relation to the Order of Things Which They Determine 53 min 69

    Montesquieu sorts law into nine orders, natural, divine, canon, the law of nations, political, civil, domestic and others, and argues that most bad legislation comes from deciding a question by the wrong one. Religion should not override self-defence; canon law should not govern theft or divorce; private inheritance law cannot settle a royal succession; and the public must compensate an owner whose land it takes. Examples range from Henry VIII's treason laws and Henry II's edict on concealed pregnancy to the Inquisition, incest rules, ostracism, ambassadors and the Spaniards' trial of Atahualpa, ending with the maxim that the safety of the people is the supreme law.

29. Book 27 Of the Origin and Revolutions of the Roman Laws on Successions 24 min 62

    A single chapter on Roman inheritance law. Montesquieu derives the early rules, inheritance only by children and male-line kin, from Romulus's division of land, which forbade estates to leave a family. Wills began as acts of the people's assembly, hence their rigid forms and the mock sale by bronze and scales. Unlimited freedom of bequest concentrated wealth; the Voconian law of 169 BC barred women from inheriting large estates, and was evaded through trusts. Augustus's Papian laws, the emperors and finally Justinian dismantled the old system, a change Montesquieu ties to the passage from republic to monarchy.

30. Book 28 Of the Origin and Revolutions of the Civil Laws among the French 2 h 24 min 338

    The first of the books on medieval French law. Montesquieu traces how the Germanic codes applied to persons rather than territory, why Roman law vanished in the Frankish north but survived in the south, and how compositions ranked Franks above Romans, against Dubos. He derives judicial combat from oaths of compurgation, explains the ordeal and the point of honour, and reconstructs appeals of false judgment and default of justice. St. Louis's reforms, the revival of Roman law and canon-law procedure then displaced noble judges with lawyers, made trials secret, and led to the written customs of France.

31. Book 29 Of the Manner of Composing Laws 33 min 61

    A short manual on the craft of legislation. The legislator’s spirit should be moderation. Montesquieu collects laws that defeated their own ends (the Amphictyonic oath, Caesar’s law on hoarding coin against its French imitation under Law’s System, Syracusan ostracism), laws that look alike but differ in motive or effect (on suicide, theft and false witness), and the rule that systems must be compared as wholes. Chapter 16 sets out maxims of drafting: be concise, plain and unambiguous, and avoid money penalties. The book ends with a warning against the passion for uniformity and a reminder that laws bear their makers’ prejudices.

32. Book 30 Theory of the Feudal Laws among the Franks in the Relation They Bear to the Establishment of the Monarchy 1 h 41 min 237

    The first of two books on the feudal laws of the Franks. From Caesar and Tacitus, Montesquieu traces vassalage to the German chief’s band of companions, before there were fiefs. He denies that the conquest reduced the Gallo-Romans to general servitude and that free Franks paid land taxes, explains compositions and the fredum as the origin of seigneurial jurisdiction, and argues that the lords’ justice was inherent in the fief rather than usurped. The last chapters attack the Abbé Dubos’s thesis that the Franks were invited in and inherited Roman authority, and defend the antiquity of a Frankish nobility.

33. Book 31 Theory of the Feudal Laws among the Franks, in the Relation They Bear to the Revolutions of Their Monarchy 1 h 47 min 247

    A history of the feudal relationship through the revolutions of the Frankish monarchy. Offices and fiefs, at first revocable, were bought, held for life and finally inherited. Brunhild’s fall, the Edict of Paris and the rise of elective mayors of the palace lead to Charles Martel’s seizure of church lands, Charlemagne’s tithes, and the Carolingian crown. Under Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald, alienated demesnes, freemen choosing their lords and hereditary counties and fiefs dissolve royal power, until the crown passes to Hugh Capet as the greatest fief. Primogeniture, female succession and the civil law of fiefs follow from heredity.