Part 1 of 2
Title Page DIALOGUE IN HELL
BETWEEN
MACHIAVELLI [1]
AND MONTESQUIEU
OR
THE POLITICS OF MACHIAVELLI
IN THE 19TH CENTURY
by a Contemporary
Soon we should see a frightening calm during which everyone will
unite against the power which had violated the laws.
When Sulla wanted to give Rome freedom, she was no longer able to
receive it.
(Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws )
Brussels
Published by A. Mertens and Son
Rue de L'escalier, 22
1864
_______________
A Short Introductory StatementThis book delineates certain attributes applicable to all governments. However, it aims at something more precise: the quintessential features of a political system whose practices have not varied a single day since the fatal and, alas, already too distant date of its enthronement.
The appropriate response to this situation is not to write lampoons or pamphlets. The sensibilities of modern peoples are too civilized to accept harsh truths about contemporary politics. The enduring success of certain other tracts is mystifying and cause enough to corrupt integrity itself. But the public conscience still lives, and heaven will some day take an active role in settling scores with those that trifle with it.
Certain facts and principles are better judged when seen outside the framework they customarily appear to us. The change of perspective can sometimes be very troubling!
Here, everything is presented as fiction. It would be superfluous to give the key to it in advance. If this book has significance, if it conceals a teaching, the reader must understand it himself and not have it explained to him. Moreover, reading this will not be without its lively pleasures. Still, one must proceed slowly through it as befits writings that are not about frivolous matters.
No one should ask whose hand wrote these pages. In a certain sense, a work like this is anonymous. It answers a call to conscience. Everyone hears this call. The ideas take form. The author withdraws to the background because he merely records a thought that is generally held. He is merely a more or less obscure instrument of the partisans who seek the good.
Geneva, October 15, 1864
****************************
Text of the Dialogue
First Part
First DialogueMachiavelli: At the edge of this shore, I was told I would meet the shade of the great Montesquieu. Is this it in front of me?
Montesquieu: The name "great" belongs to no one here, O Machiavelli. But I am the one you seek.
Machiavelli: Among the illustrious persons whose spirits populate this gloomy stopping place, there is no one I wished to meet more than Montesquieu. Forced into these unknown regions by the migration of souls, I thank fortune for finally placing me in the presence of the author of The Spirit of the Law.
Montesquieu: The former Secretary of State of the Florentine Republic has not yet forgotten the language of courts. But what can those who have crossed to these dismal shores have to exchange but anguish and regrets?
Machiavelli: Is this the philosopher, the statesman, who speaks like this? What does death matter to those who have lived by thought, since thought is immortal? For myself, I do not know a more tolerable situation than that which is ours here until Judgment Day. We are delivered from the cares and worries of material existence, live in the domain of pure reason, and are able to converse with the great men whose names have resounded throughout the universe. We may follow from afar the revolutions of states, the fall and transformation of empires. It is open to us to meditate upon their new constitutions, upon the changes brought about in the morals and the ideas of the peoples of Europe, upon the progress of civilization in politics, arts, industry, as well as the sphere of philosophical ideas. What a spectacle to contemplate! What astonishing marvels -- if the shades that have descended here are to be believed! Death is for us like a remote refuge where we can assimilate the final lessons of history and the vindication of human rights. Even the void of death is not able to break all the ties that keep us attached to earthly existence, for posterity still demonstrates its dependence on men like you who have wrought great changes in the human spirit. At this moment your political principles reign over almost half of Europe. Who should be freer from fear in undertaking this somber passage which leads to hell or heaven than someone like you who can appear before Eternal Justice with such pure claims to glory?
Montesquieu: You ought to speak for yourself, Machiavelli. You're being too modest for one who has left behind immense renown as the author of The Prince.
Machiavelli: I think I catch the drift of your irony. Would the great French publicist judge me like the crowd, which knows me only as a name and through blind prejudice? I know that book has given me a disastrous reputation. It has made me responsible for all sorts of tyrannies. It has earned me the enmity of peoples as the hated personification of despotism. It has poisoned my last day, and the reprobation of posterity seems to have followed me even here. But what have I done? For fifteen years I served my country, which was a republic. I conspired for its independence and defended it staunchly against Louis XII, the Spanish, Julius II, and Borgia himself, who, but for me, would have snuffed it out. I protected it against bloody intrigues that riddled it everywhere, combating them with diplomacy when another would have used the sword. I treated, negotiated, made or broke ties in accordance with the interests of the republic which found itself crushed between great powers and which war tossed about like a skiff. And it was not an oppressive or autocratic government but popular institutions that we supported in Florence. Was I one of those who was seen changing with fortune?
The Medici's executioners knew where to find me after the fall of Soderini. I advanced with the rise of liberty and fell with it. I was proscribed and no prince deigned to glance on me. I died impoverished and forgotten. That was my life, and those the crimes that earned me the ingratitude of my country and the hatred of posterity. Perhaps, heaven will be more just toward me.
Montesquieu: I know all that, Machiavelli. That's why I could never understand how the Florentine patriot, the servant of a republic, became the founder of that sinister school which includes all the crowned heads as disciples and is put to use to justify tyrannies' most heinous crimes.
Machiavelli: And what if I told you that that book was only the product of a diplomat's imagination, that it was not intended for print, that the notorious uses to which it has been put are alien to its author. That it was conceived under the influence of ideas which were then common to all Italian principalities and to aggrandize themselves at each other's expense and directed by a cunning politics in which the most perfidious was reputed to be the most skillful. ...
Montesquieu: Are these your real thoughts on the matter? Since you are speaking so candidly, I can assure you that this is what I always thought. Indeed, I share such convictions with those few that know your life and have attentively read your works. Yes, yes Machiavelli, your avowals in this regard do you honor. So, you did not say what you really thought, or you only spoke under the sway of personal feelings which for a moment clouded your exalted mind.
Machiavelli: There you are mistaken, Montesquieu, as are those who have judged this matter like you. My only crime was to speak the truth to peoples and to kings -- not the moral truth, but the political truth, not the truth as it ought to be, but as it is and always will be. I am not the founder of the doctrine whose paternity is attributed to me. It is grounded in the human heart. Machiavellianism preceded Machiavelli.
Moses, Sesostris, Solomon, Lysander, Phillip and Alexander of Macedon, Agathocles, Romulus, Tarquin, Julius Caesar, Augustus, and even Nero, Charlemagne, Theodoric, Clovis, Hugh Capet, Louis XI, Gonzalo of Cordova, Cesare Borgia -- these are the progenitors of my doctrine. I am skipping some even better examples, and of course will not speak of those who came after me. The list would be too long and The Prince would teach them nothing but what they already knew by wielding power. Who in your time has rendered me more brilliant homage than Frederick II? To gain popular favor, he took pen in hand to refute me. While in politics, he rigorously applied my doctrines.
What inexplicable quirk of the human mind would hold what I have written in this book against me? Logic dictates that the scientist should be reproached for investigating the physical causes of bodies that fall and harm us, the doctor for describing diseases, the chemist for cataloguing poisons, the moralist for portraying vice, and the historian for writing history.
Montesquieu: Oh, Machiavelli. Would that Socrates was here to untangle the sophistry couched in your remarks. Although I am not by nature endowed with strong debating skills, it is still not very difficult for me to rebut you. You compare to poison and disease the ills engendered by the spirit of domination, cunning, and violence. But your writings teach the ways to communicate diseases to states. You teach how to distill these poisons. When the scientist, the doctor, or moralist investigates evil, it is not to teach its propagation, but to cure it. As soon as you let out that you do not hold to despotism on principle and that you yourself consider it an evil, it seems to me that by this alone you condemn it and that we agree at least on this point.
Machiavelli: We do not, Montesquieu, for you have not understood my thought in its entirety. I have opened myself to attack by using an analogy that can only too easily be turned against me. Socratic irony itself could not disconcert me. It is sophists who are most skillful in wielding the underhanded weapon of dialectics in such a way. You are not of this school, nor am I. Therefore let's put aside semantics and facile analogies so that we don't lose sight of certain ideas. Here is the essence of my system, and I doubt that you will shake it, because it is composed only of moral and political facts deduced from one eternal truth: the evil instinct in man is more powerful than the good. Man is more attracted by evil than by good, and fear and force have more sway over him than reason. I won't bother to demonstrate these truths. In your country, only the harebrained coterie of Baron d'Holbach, of which J. J. Rousseau was the high priest and Diderot the apostle, attempted to controvert these truths. All men seek to dominate and no one would not be a tyrant if he could. All, or nearly all, are ready to sacrifice another's rights to their own interests.
By what means can these ravenous beasts we call men be restrained? At the origins of societies, it is brutal and unrestrained force; later, it is the law, that is to say, still force, but institutionalized. You have fully investigated the origins of history. Everywhere force precedes right.
Political liberty is only a secondary idea. The need to live is what dominates states as it does individuals.
In certain regions of Europe, there are people incapable of moderation in the exercise of liberty. Prolonged liberty is transformed into license. Civil or social war follows. The state perishes. This happens either when the state fractures and is dismembered as a result of its convulsions, or when its divisions make it the prey of foreigners. In such situations, people prefer despotism to anarchy. Are they wrong?
Once established, states have two kinds of enemies: internal and external. What arms do states use in making war against foreigners? Will two enemy generals inform each other of their battle plans so that each will be better able to defend himself? Will they forbid attacks by night, troops, ambushes, and battles in which the numbers of troops are unequal? Obviously not. Don't you agree? Such combatants would be a laughing stock. But you don't want to use all the traps, artifices, and stratagems that are indispensable to war against internal enemies and factions? Doubtless, this case calls for less rigor but basically the rules are the same. Can pure reason lead violent masses that are motivated by emotions, passions, and prejudices?
Let the direction of affairs be placed in the hands of an autocrat, an oligarch, or the people themselves. No war, no negotiation, no internal reform would succeed without the help of those stratagems that you seem to condemn but which you yourself would have had to use if the king of France had charged you with the least important affairs of state.
What childish condemnation has dogged The Prince! Has politics anything to do with morality? Have you ever seen a single state conduct itself according to the principles that govern private morality? But then every war would be a crime, even when it had fair cause. Given that conquest has no other motive than glory, it would always be a heinous offense. Every treaty in which one power tipped the balance in its favor would be a base fraud. Any usurpation of sovereign power would deserve death. Nothing would be legitimate except what was based on justice! But what I have just related I also maintain even in the face of contemporary history. All sovereign powers find their origin in force or, what is the same thing, in the negation of justice. Does that mean that I proscribe justice? No. But I regard it as having an extremely limited application, both in the relations among nations and in the relations between rulers and ruled.
Moreover, don't you see that this word -- 'justice" -- is infinitely vague? Where do its claims begin? Where do they end? Where should it apply? Where not? I will give some examples. Consider the following state. Its public institutions are poorly organized. It's in the throes of a turbulent democracy. Its laws are powerless before factions. Disorder reigns everywhere -- everything precipitates its ruin.
A bold man springs up from the ranks of the aristocrats or from the midst of the people. He demolishes all constitutional power, takes over lawful authority, reforms all institutions, and gives the country twenty years of peace. Had he the right to do what he did?
Pisastatus seizes the citadel in a surprise attack and prepares the way for the century of Pericles. Brutus violates the monarchical constitution of Rome, expels the Tarquins, and with the thrusts of a dagger founds a republic whose grandeur is the most impressive spectacle that the universe has seen. The struggle between patricians and plebeians, so long as it was controlled, made for the vitality of the Republic but it ultimately leads to its dissolution and brings everything to the brink of destruction. Caesar and Augustus appear. They too are vigilators. But the Roman Empire that succeeded the Republic, thanks to them, lasts as long. It finally falls only after having covered the entire world with its debris. So, was justice on the side of these audacious men? No, according to you. And yet posterity has showered them with glory. In truth, they served their country by saving it. They prolonged its existence through the centuries. You do see that, in states, interest overrules the principle of justice. What emerges from these considerations is that good can come from evil; that one attains good through evil, just as someone is cured by poison, or someone's life is saved by the cut of a knife. I have taken societies as they are and have prescribed rules accordingly.
Considered in the abstract, are violence and deceit evil? Yes, but they will have to be used to govern men, as long as men are not angels.
Everything is good or bad according to the use made of it and the advantage derived from it. The ends justify the means. And now, if you ask me why I, a republican, everywhere give preference to absolute government, I will tell you. In my country, I witnessed the inconstancy and cowardice of the people, its predilection for servitude, its incapacity to conceive and respect the conditions of free life. In my view, the people represent a blind force that dissipates sooner or later, unless taken in hand by a single man. I answer that the people, left alone, only know how to destroy themselves. They are incapable of knowing how to administer, judge, and make war. I tell you that the brilliance of Greece shone only during the eclipse of liberty, that without the despotism of the Roman aristocracy, and later, the despotism of the emperors, the brilliant civilization of Europe would never have developed.
Shall I look for examples among modern states? They are so striking and so numerous that I shall cite only the first that come to mind.
The Italian republics shone under what institutions and under which men? Under which sovereigns did Spain, France, and Germany establish their power. The Leo X's, the Julius II's, the Phillip II's, the Barbarossas, the Louis XIV's, the Napoleons are all men of awesome strength, whose hands were placed more often on the hilts of their swords than on the charters of their states.
But I'm surprised to have to speak at such length to convince the illustrious writer who's listening to me now. If I'm not mistaken, aren't a number of these ideas found in The Spirit of the Laws? Has this discourse offended that sober and reserved man who has dispassionately meditated upon the problems of politics? The Encyclopedists were no Catos. The author of The Persian Letters was not a saint, nor even fervently devout. Our school, which is called immoral, followed the true God more than did philosophers of the eighteenth century.
Montesquieu: I have listened to you attentively. Even your last statement fails to rile me, Machiavelli. Will you be so good as to listen to me and allow me the same liberty to express myself?
Machiavelli: I'll keep quiet and listen in respectful silence to the man they call the legislator of nation.
Second DialogueMontesquieu: Your doctrines contain nothing new to me, Machiavelli, and if I experience some difficulty in refuting them, it is less because of their frightening implications than because, whether true or false in particular instances, they have no philosophic basis. I understand very well that you are above all a political man, and that facts impress you more than ideas. But you will agree nevertheless that when the question concerns government, it is incumbent on us to lay down certain principles. You leave no place in your politics for morals, religion, or justice. You have on your lips but two words: force and cunning. A system that can be summed up by saying that force plays a great role in human affairs, and that cunning is a prerequisite for statesmen expresses truisms, you know full well, that need no demonstration. But if you set up violence as a principle and cunning as a maxim of government, and if your calculations take into account none of the laws of human nature, then the code of tyranny you acclaim is no more than the law of the jungle. Animals also are cunning and strong and, in effect, no right is recognized among them other than brute force. But I don't think your reductionist thinking goes that far, for you recognize the existence of good and evil.
It is your principle that good can come from evil, and that it is permitted to do evil when it may result in a good. Thus, you don't say that betraying one's word is good itself, that it is good to put corruption, violence, and murder to use. Rather, you say that a person can be a traitor when it's useful, kill when it's necessary, and take another's goods when it's advantageous. I hasten to add that, in your system, these maxims apply only to princes, and only when it is a question of their interests or those of the state. Consequently, the prince has the right to break his oaths. He may shed torrents of blood to seize and keep power. He may despoil those he has banished, overturn all law, promulgate new ones, then violate these, squander finances, corrupt, repress, punish, and threaten continually.
Machiavelli: But haven't you yourself said that in despotic states fear is necessary, virtue useless, and honor dangerous, that blind obedience is required, and that the prince is lost if he lowers his guard for an instant. [2]
Montesquieu: Yes, I did say that. But when I discovered, as you did, the horrible conditions on which tyrannical power depends, it was to excoriate it, not to celebrate it, to incite a horror in my country, which, fortunately for her, has never bent her head under such a yoke. How is it you can't see that the use of force is only an exception in the conduct of orderly societies and that even the most arbitrary powers are forced to search for their sanction in considerations divorced from theories of force? It is not only in the name of interest of state, it is also in the name of duty that all oppressors act. They violate its strictures but they invoke it nevertheless. It follows that state interests are inadequate of themselves to justify the ends and therefore the means that they put to use.
Machiavelli: Here, I must stop you. You do take such interest into account. And that is enough to justify all those political necessities that are not in accord with justice.
Montesquieu: You invoke raison d'etat. But look, I won't posit for the basis of societies precisely that which destroys them. In the name of such interests, princes and peoples, in their capacity as citizens, will only commit crimes. State interests, you say! But how do I know whether it is really advantageous for the state to commit this or that iniquity? Don't we both know that the interest (if the state most often serves as cover for the interest of the prince and of the corrupt favorites that surround him? I avoid such consequences by positing justice as the basis of the very existence of societies. This is because the notion of justice sets limits that such interest must not pass beyond.
If you were to ask me what is the foundation of justice, I would tell you that it is morality, whose precepts contain nothing doubtful or obscure, because they are written in all religions and are imprinted in luminous characters in the conscience of man. It is from this pure source that all civil, political, economic, and international laws must flow.
Ex eodum jure, sive ex eoded fonte, sive ex eodem principio.
But it is here that the inconsistency of your argument is most flagrant. You are Catholic; you are Christian; we worship the same God. You accept His commandments. You accept morality. You accept justice in human relations. But you trample upon all its rules where the state or prince is concerned. In short, according to you, politics has nothing at all to do with morality. You allow the monarch what you forbid the subject. Depending on whether the same actions are done by the weak or the strong, you glorify or condemn them. They are crimes or virtues depending on the rank of the one who performs them. You praise the prince for having done them and you send the subject to the galleys. You do not consider the fact that no society based on such maxims could endure. Do you believe that a subject will keep his promises for long when he sees the sovereign betray his? That he will respect the laws when he knows that the lawgiver has violated them, and continues to violate them every day? Do you believe that a subject will hesitate to embark upon the path of violence, corruption, and fraud when he constantly sees walking there those who are charged with leading him? Stop deceiving yourself. Each act of usurpation by the prince in the public domain authorizes a similar infraction where the subject is concerned. Each act of political betrayal engenders the same in society at large. Each act of violence in high places legitimates one in low. Note well what happens to the relations among men in civil society.
And as for the relations between citizens and their rulers, I don't need to tell you that it means the introduction of civil war into the bosom of a society already in a turbulent situation. The silence of the people is only the truce of the vanquished, for which complaint is a crime. Wait until the people awaken. You have devised the theory of force. Rest assured. It will sink into the minds of the people. At the first occasion, they will break their chains on the most trifling of pretexts and take back by force what force has wrested from them.
The maxim of despotism is the Jesuitical saying Perinde ac Cadaver -- kill or be killed. That's all there is to its law. Today the people are brutalized. Tomorrow civil war. At least things happen this way in European climes. In the Orient, people doze peacefully in the degradation of slavery.
Thus, princes cannot let themselves do what private morality does not permit. This is my conclusion. It is categorical. You thought that you could confound me by citing examples of many great men who have undertaken bold acts in violation of the laws and given their countries peace and sometimes glory. And from this you draw your great conclusion: good comes from evil. I'm not very impressed by it. It hasn't been proved to my satisfaction that these bold men have done more good than evil, nor that society would not have been saved and maintained without them. The measure of safety that they bring does not compensate for the germs of dissolution that they introduce into states. A few years of anarchy are often much less deadly for a kingdom then several years of stultifying despotism.
You admire great men. I admire only great institutions. For people to be happy, I believe that they have less need of men of genius than men of integrity. But, if you wish, I concede that some violent enterprises that you defend could have been advantageous for certain states. These acts might be justified in ancient societies where slavery and the belief in fate prevailed. They reappear in the Middle Ages and even in modern times. But as manners have grown softer, as enlightenment has spread among the diverse peoples of Europe, and above all, as the principles of political science have become better known, justice has been substituted for force in theory and in practice. Undoubtedly, the politics of free societies will always be stormy and many crimes will be committed in liberty's name. But a fatalistic mindset no longer exists. If you could say in your time that despotism was a necessary evil, you could not say so today, because given the present state of manners and political institutions among the principal peoples of Europe, despotism has become impossible.
Machiavelli: Impossible? If you succeed in proving that to me, I'll agree to start turning my thought around to your direction.
Montesquieu: I will prove it, if you are still willing to give me the lead.
Machiavelli: I'm quite willing. But be careful. I think that you are undertaking quite a task.
Third DialogueMontesquieu: A dense mass of shadows is coming toward this shore. The place where we are now will soon be overrun. Come over to this side, or else we'll soon be separated.
Machiavelli: Your last statement is less tenable than your remarks at the beginning of our conversation. I find that you have overstated the implications of principles found in The Spirit of the Laws.
Montesquieu: In that work, I purposely avoided elaborating long theories. If hearsay were not your only access to the work, you would see that the particular developments I mention readily for now from the principles there posited. Moreover, I freely confess that the knowledge I have acquired of recent times has not modified or added anything to my ideas.
Machiavelli: Do you seriously intend to argue that despotism is incompatible with prevailing political conditions in Europe?
Montesquieu: I did not say in every country but, if you wish, I will name the ones where the advance of political science has brought about this grand development.
Machiavelli: Which are these?
Montesquieu: England, France, Belgium, a portion of Italy, Prussia, Switzerland, the German Confederacy, Holland, even Austria, which is to say, as you see, almost all the countries over which the Roman world formerly extended.
Machiavelli: I know a little of what has happened in Europe from 1527 to the present, and I confess I am quite curious to hear you back up your claim.
Montesquieu: Well, listen, and maybe you'll end up being convinced. It is not men but institutions that preserve the reign of liberty and sound morals in states. All the good, indeed all the bad, which redounds to man in society, necessarily depends on the correct or incorrect ordering of institutions. And when I call for the most correct institutions, you understand that, following the fine words of Solon, I mean the most perfect institutions that peoples are able to support. That is to say, I don't presuppose impossible conditions and, consequently, I distance myself from those deplorable reformers who claim to found societies on a purely rational basis without taking into account climate, habits, morals, and even prejudices.
Originally, the role of institutions in nation making was narrowly conceived but has since evolved. Antiquity showed us marvelous civilizations and states in which the conditions for free government were admirably understood. The peoples of the Christian era have had more difficulty putting constitutions in harmony with the dynamics of political life, but they have profited from the lessons of antiquity, and with infinitely more complicated civilizations, they have nevertheless arrived at more perfect results.
One of the foremost causes of anarchy and despotism was the theoretical and practical ignorance that had so long existed in the states of Europe regarding the fundamental principles of organizing political power. At a time when sovereignty rested solely in the person of the prince, how could the right of the nation be guaranteed? How could power not be tyrannical when the person who was charged with executing the laws was also the lawmaker? How could the citizens be protected from arbitrary rule, when the legislative and executive powers were from the first mixed together, and when judicial power subsequently came to be united in the same hands?
I know full well that certain ideas of liberty and certain notions of public rights eventually penetrated the consciousness of even the most benighted. Yet they were but feeble obstacles to the unlimited power of absolute monarchy. On the other hand, the fear of popular anarchy and the gentle disposition of certain kings did lead some of them to make moderate use of the excessive powers with which they were invested. But it is no less true that such precarious guarantees existed at the discretion of the monarch who, in principle, possessed the goods, rights, and person of his subjects. In Europe, the separation of powers has solved the problem of free societies, and if anything can alleviate my anxiety in the hours before the Last Judgment, it is the thought that my time on earth had something to do with this great emancipation.
You were born, Machiavelli, at the end of the Middle Ages, and with the renaissance of the arts, you witnessed the dawn of modern times. But let me point out that the society in which you lived was still quite infected with barbarism. Europe was an arena. The ideas of war, domination, and conquest filled the heads of statesmen and princes. I know that force counted for everything and justice very little in those times. Kingdoms were the prey of conquerors. Within states, sovereigns fought lords; the lords crushed cities. In the midst of feudal anarchy that brought all Europe to arms, the people, trampled under foot, had been habituated to regard princes and nobles as preordained divinities, to whom the human race was delivered. You were born into times filled with tumult but also with grandeur. You observed intrepid commanders, men of iron, and audacious geniuses. And this world of disorder in all its complex and colorful variety appeared to you as it would to an artist whose imagination was more affected than his moral sense. In my opinion, this is what explains The Prince. A short while ago, your Italian deviousness was put to use to sound me out about what I thought about that work. You were amused. But in attributing The Prince to the caprice of a diplomat, you weren't so far from the truth after all. Since your time, however, the world has moved forward. Today people regard themselves as the arbiters of their destinies. The claims of privilege and aristocracy have been destroyed in theory and practice. They have raised in its tead a principle that would be quite novel to you, a descendant of Marquis Hugo -- the principle of equality. They see those who govern merely as their representatives. They have fought civil wars to put the principle of equality into practice and it summons an adamant allegiance. They value these laws as their blood, because these laws have in a real sense cost the blood of their ancestors.
A while ago, I spoke to you of wars. I am aware that they are always raging. But one of the primary indications of progress is that conquered states in today's world no longer forfeit their property to the conquerors. Rights and guarantees that you are hardly aware of in international law today regulate the relations among nations as civil law regulates the relations of subjects in each nation.
After having secured their personal rights by civil laws and international obligations by treaties, people wanted to put themselves in an ordered relation with their princes and so they secured their political rights by constitutions. People were subjected for a long time to arbitrary rule because of the blending of powers. This allowed princes to make tyrannical laws and to execute them tyrannically. Now, the three powers of the state -- legislative, executive, and judicial -- are separated by constitutional demarcations that could not be breached without sounding the alarm to the whole body politic.
By this single reform, itself an immense accomplishment, internal public right was created and the superiority of the principles that constitute it became manifest. The person of the prince ceases to be confounded with the notion of the state. Sovereignty is seen to derive its authority from the very heart of the nation. Power is divided between the prince and other political bodies in a way that preserved their independence. In the presence of such an illustrious statesman, I don't want to go into detail describing what is known in England and France as the constitutional regime. Today it is operational in the major European states, not only because it is an expression of the most advanced political science, but above all because it is the only practicable mode of government given the ideas of modern civilization.
Political society is always governed by laws. This holds no less in tyrannical regimes than in free societies. Therefore, all the safeguards a citizenry enjoys depend on the way the laws are made. If the prince is the sole lawgiver, he will make only tyrannical laws. It would be fortunate if he did not overthrow the state's constitution in a few years but, eventually, we would arrive at absolute rule. If a Senate is the lawgiver, oligarchy is established, a regime odious to the people because it gives to them as many tyrants as there are rulers; if the people are the lawgivers, the tendency is toward anarchy, which is but another route to despotism. If an Assembly elected by the people is the lawgiver, the primary problem is already solved, for this is the very foundation of representative government, which today flourishes in all of southern Europe.
But even an Assembly of the people's representatives, if it alone possessed all legislative power, would not hesitate to abuse its power and expose the state to the greatest dangers. The properly constituted regime, a happy compromise of aristocracy, democracy, and monarchy, simultaneously partakes of these three forms of government through a balance of powers which seems to be the masterpiece of the human mind. The person of the sovereign remains sacred and inviolable. Although he keeps many major prerogatives necessary for the good of the state, his essential role is to be the living embodiment of the bws with responsibility for their faithful execution. He is no longer personally accountable for everything. Responsibility is also assumed by the ministers that he brings into his government. The law, which he proposes alone or concurrently with another body of the state, is drawn up by a council composed of men experienced in affairs of state. It is then submitted to an upper chamber which is hereditary or sits for life and which examines the law's provisions to determine whether they contain anything contrary to the constitution. The law is then voted on by a popularly elected legislative body and subsequently interpreted by an independent judicial body. If the law is bad, it is rejected or amended by the legislative body and the upper chamber opposes Is adoption if it is contrary to the principles on which the constitution rests.
You understand that the mechanisms of this system can be adapted in a thou sand ways according to the temperament of the people to which it is applied. Its great achievement ~ to reconcile order and liberty, stability and change, and to bring about the participation of all citizens in public life, thereby defusing popular insurrection. Such a country is self-governing. When different majorities are elected to the legislature, new ministers are named to form a new government.
As you see, relations between the prince and subjects rest upon a vast system of guarantees whose unshakable foundations are found in the social order. No administrative act can touch anyone's property. The judiciary protects individual liberty .In criminal cases, the peers of the accused sit in judgment. A Supreme Court oversees all lower courts and is charged with reversing unfortunate decisions. The citizens themselves are armed for the defense of their rights by forming citizen militias that complement the work of the police in the cities. By right of petition, the most humble individual can bring his grievance to the door of the sovereign assemblies that represent the nation. Regional districts are ad ministered by elected government officials. Each year, large provincial assemblies, likewise popularly elected, convene to express the needs and wishes of the surrounding populace.
This is the merest sketch, O Machiavelli, of some of the institutions that flourish today in modern states and notably in my beloved homeland. But as access to information is the essence of free countries, none of these institutions could long survive if they did not function in full view. These institutions were given the breath of life by a power unknown in your century and only born in my time. I refer to the press, long proscribed, still decried through ignorance, to which could be applied the felicitous phrase spoken by Adam Smith about credit; it is a public thoroughfare. In effect, along this thoroughfare, all the ideas of modern peoples move. In the state, the press performs functions similar to traditional police powers. It voices needs, conveys complaints, denounces abuses and arbitrary acts. It compels the depositories of power to keep within moral bounds, and to do this, it suffices to place them before public opinion.
In societies regulated in such a way, O Machiavelli, how could you advance the ambitions of princes and the designs of tyranny? I am aware of the agonizing convulsions through which these advances triumphed. In France, liberty, steeped in blood during the revolution, returned only with the restoration. Even then, new disturbances were brewing. But all the principles, all the institutions of which I have spoken had already become a part of the mores of France and the peoples who had come under the influence of her civilization. I've finished, Machiavelli. Today, states as well as sovereigns are governed only by the rules of justice. A minister in the present age, inspired by your lessons, would not remain in power a year! The monarch who tried to put into practice the maxims of The Prince would bring upon himself the reprobation of his subjects. He would be banished from Europe.
Machiavelli; You think so?
Montesquieu: Please. Excuse my bluntness.
Machiavelli: Certainly.
Montesquieu: May I assume that you have changed your ideas somewhat?
Machiavelli: I intend to demolish, piece by piece, an the fine things you have just said and to demonstrate to you that ally my doctrines prevail, even today, despite new ideas, despite new morals, despite your so-called principles of public right, despite all the institutions you have just described. But allow me, first, to ask one question. Your knowledge of contemporary history ends where?
Montesquieu: The information I've collected concerning different European states is current to the end of 1847. My wanderings through these infinite spaces filled with this motley crowd of souls haven't brought me into contact with any one who could tell me anything about subsequent periods. Since I descended into this dismal dwelling place, I've spent about half a century among ancient peoples, and it has only been for a quarter of a century that I've come across great numbers of modern peoples. Moreover, most of these have been from the most remote comers of the world. I don't even know what year it actually is.
Machiavelli: Here the last are indeed the first, O Montesquieu. The statesman of the Middle Ages, the political man of barbarous times, knows more about the history of modern times than the philosopher of the eighteenth century. It is the year of grace, 1864.
Montesquieu: Please, tell right away, I beg you, O Machiavelli, what has happened in Europe since 1847?
Machiavelli: With your permission, not until I have given myself the pleasure of refuting your core theories.
Montesquieu: As you wish, but rest assured that I have no misgivings in this regard. Centuries are necessary to change the principles and form of government under which people have been accustomed to live. No new political teaching could have any effect in the fifteen years that have just elapsed, and, in any case, even if it were possible, the doctrines of Machiavelli would never be the ones that triumph
Machiavelli: That's what you think. Now you listen to me.