How the Laws are in Monarchies

Honour is the principle of a monarchical government.

• This is why the laws should be relative to the principle of honour.

The laws should:

• support the nobility; in respect to whom, honour may be, in some measure, deemed both child and parent.
• render the nobility hereditary; not as a boundary between the power of the prince and the weakness of the people, but as the link which connects them both.

In this government, substitutions, which preserve the estates of families undivided, are extremely useful, though in others not so proper.

Here the power of redemption is of service, as it restores to noble families the lands that had been alienated by the prodigality of a parent.

The lands of the nobility ought to have privileges as well as their persons. The monarch’s dignity is inseparable from that of his kingdom, and the dignity of the nobleman from that of his fief.

All these privileges must be particular to the nobility and incommunicable to the people, unless we intend to act contrary to the principle of government, and to diminish the power of the nobles together with that of the people.

Substitutions are a restraint to commerce; the power of redemption produces an infinite number of processes; every estate in land, that is sold throughout the kingdom, is, in some measure, without an owner for the space of a year. Privileges annexed to fiefs give a power very burthensome to those governments which tolerate them.

These are the inconveniences of nobility; inconveniences, however, that vanish when confronted with its general utility. But, when these privileges are communicated to the people, every principle of government is wantonly violated.

In monarchies, a person may leave the bulk of his estate to one of his children; a permission improper in any other government.

The laws should favour all kind of commerce consistent with the constitution, to the end that the subjects may, without ruining themselves, be able to satisfy the continual cravings of the prince and his court.

They should establish some regulation, that the manner of collecting the taxes may not be more burthensome than the taxes themselves.

The weight of duties produces labour, labour weariness, and weariness the spirit of indolence.

Chapter 10: The Expedition peculiar to the executive Power in Monarchies

GREAT is the advantage which a monarchical government has over a republic. As the state is conducted by a single person, the executive power is thereby enabled to act with greater expedition= but, as this expedition may degenerate into rapidity, the laws should use some contrivance to slacken it= they ought not only to favour the nature of each constitution, but likewise to remedy the abuses that might result from this very nature.

Cardinal Richelieu§ advises monarchs to permit no such things as societies or communities that raise Edition= current; Page= [71] difficulties upon every trifle. If this man’s heart had not been bewitched with the love of despotic power, still these arbitrary notions would have filled his head.

The bodies, intrusted with the depositum of the laws, are never more obedient than when they proceed slowly, and use that reflection in the prince’s affairs which can scarcely be expected from the ignorance of a court, or from the precipitation of its councils¶.

What would have become of the finest monarchy in the world, if the magistrates, by their delays, their complaints, and entreaties, had not checked the rapidity even of their princes virtues, when these monarchs, consulting only the generous impulse of their minds, would fain have given a boundless reward to services performed with an unlimited courage and fidelity?

Chapter 11: The Excellence of a monarchical government

MONARCHY has a great advantage over a despotic government. As it naturally requires there should be several orders or ranks of subjects, the state is more permanent, the constitution more steady, and the person of him who governs more secure.

Cicero* is of opinion, that the establishing of the tribunes preserved the republic. “And, indeed, (says he,) the violence of a headless people is more terrible. A chief, or head, is sensible that the affair depends upon himself, and therefore he thinks; but the people, in their impetuosity, are ignorant of the danger into which they hurry Edition= current; Page= [72] themselves.” This reflection may be applied to a despotic government, which is a people without tribunes, and to a monarchy, where the people have some sort of tribunes.

Accordingly, in the commotions of a despotic government, the people, hurried away by their passions, are apt to push things as far as they can go.

The disorders they commit are all extreme. Whereas, in monarchies, matters are seldom carried to excess.

The chiefs are apprehensive on their own account; they are afraid of being abandoned; and the intermediate dependent powers† do not choose that the populace should have too much the upper hand.

It rarely happens that the states of the kingdom are entirely corrupted= the prince adheres to these; and the seditious, who have neither will nor hopes to subvert the government, have neither power nor will to dethrone the prince.

In these circumstances, men of prudence and authority interfere; moderate measures are first proposed, then complied with, and things at length are redressed; the laws resume their vigour, and command submission.

Thus all our histories are full of civil wars without revolutions, while the histories of despotic governments abound with revolutions without civil wars.

The writers of the history of the civil wars of some countries, even those who fomented them, sufficiently demonstrate the little foundation princes have to suspect the authority with which they invest particular bodies of men; since, even under the unhappy circumstance of their errors, they sighed only after the laws and their duty, and restrained, more than they were capable of inflaming, the impetuosity of the revolted∥. Edition= current; Page= [73]

Cardinal Richelieu, reflecting perhaps that he had too much reduced the states of the kingdom, has recourse to the virtues of the prince and of his ministers for the support‡ of government= but he requires so many things, that indeed there is none but an angel capable of such attention, such resolution, and knowledge; and scarce can we flatter ourselves ever to see such a prince and ministers, no not while monarchy subsists.

As people, who live under a good government, are happier than those who, without rule or leaders, wander about the forests; so monarchs, who live under the fundamental laws of their country, are far happier than despotic princes, who have nothing to regulate either their own passions or those of their subjects.

Chapter 12: The same Subject continued

LET us not look for magnanimity in despotic governments. The prince cannot impart a greatness which he has not himself= with him there is no such thing as glory.

It is in monarchies we behold the subjects encircling the throne, and cheered by the irradiancy of the sovereign= there it is that each person, filling, as it were, a larger space, is capable of exercising those virtues which adorn the soul, not with independence, but with true dignity and greatness.⚓✪