The Various Systems Of Legislation

Every system of legislation should aim for the greatest good of all as:

1. Liberty

This is because all particular dependence means so much force taken from the body of the State.

2. Equality

This is because liberty cannot exist without it.

Equality does not mean that everyone is identical in power and riches.

Equality is:

• when power:
  • is never great enough for violence
  • is always exercised by virtue of rank and law
• when riches is not so imbalanced so that:
  • no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself

The great should be regulated in goods and position.

The common sort should be regulated in avarice and covetousness.

People say that such equality is an unpractical ideal that cannot actually exist.

But I think that we should aim for it anyway.

These 2 aims vary in every country in accordance with the local situation and the temper of the inhabitants.

A nation with barren soil and crowded lands should turn to industry and the crafts, and trade what they produce.

A fertile nation that lacks inhabitants should:

• focus on agriculture to increase its population
• drive out the crafts, which would only result in depopulation, by grouping in a few localities the few inhabitants there are.[2]

A coastal nation should cover the sea with ships and foster commerce and navigation.

An inaccessible coastal nation should remain barbarous and ichthyophagous.

Every nation has in itself something that gives them a particular application, and makes its legislation peculiarly its own.

The constitution of a State is made solid and lasting by its due observance of the agreement of the natural relations.

• The law assures, accompaniess and rectifies them on every point.

But if the legislator mistakes his object and adopts a principle other than circumstances naturally direct; if his principle makes for servitude while they make for liberty, or if it makes for riches, while they make for populousness, or if it makes for peace, while they make for conquest—the laws will insensibly lose their influence, the constitution will alter, and the State will have no rest from trouble till it is either destroyed or changed, and nature has resumed her invincible sway.

CHAPTER 12: THE DIVISION OF THE LAWS

What is the relation of the Sovereign to the State?

This relation is made up of the relations of the intermediate terms.

The laws which regulate this relation bear the name of political laws, and are also called fundamental laws, not without reason if they are wise.

For, if there is, in each State, only one good system, the people that is in possession of it should hold fast to this; but if the established order is bad, why should laws that prevent men from being good be regarded as fundamental?

Besides, in any case, a people is always in a position to change its laws, however good; for, if it choose to do itself harm, who can have a right to stop it?

The second relation is that of the members one to another, or to the body as a whole; and this relation should be in the first respect as unimportant, and in the second as important, as possible.

Each citizen would then be perfectly independent of all the rest, and at the same time very dependent on the city; which is brought about always by the same means, as the strength of the State can alone secure the liberty of its members. From this second relation arise civil laws.

We may consider also a third kind of relation between the individual and the law, a relation of disobedience to its penalty.

This gives rise to the setting up of criminal laws, which, at bottom, are less a particular class of law than the sanction behind all the rest.

Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of all, which is not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the citizens.

This forms the real constitution of the State, takes on every day new powers, when other laws decay or die out, restores them or takes their place, keeps a people in the ways in which it was meant to go, and insensibly replaces authority by the force of habit.

I am speaking of morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a power unknown to political thinkers, on which none the less success in everything else depends.

With this the great legislator concerns himself in secret, though he seems to confine himself to particular regulations; for these are only the arc of the arch, while manners and morals, slower to arise, form in the end its immovable keystone.