of the system, no matter what their title or name might be, especially if to attain them the existence or fears of conspiracies is alleged; listen with the greatest distrust to those who speak to you about them for the purpose of provoking you into disposing of the common rules and established order; for if this should be carried out at some time, political crimes will be reproduced unceasingly and freedom will never be seated on its throne in a nation that is a theater of reactions and of persecution, composed of oppressors and oppressed, and that carries in itself the germ of its ruin and de struction.
Peoples and states that make up the Mexican Federation, take warning from France, from the new nations of America, and from the recent events of your history. Fear the power of the ambitious ones and of the factions they call to their assistance. Unite your efforts to destroy them, so will you be invincible; isolated, they will beat you bit by bit. May the law and the national will preside over your destinies and make dominion of factions, etc., cease.
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| 5 | Discourse on the Civil Liberties of the Citizen * |
Political liberty consists of security,
Or at least in the opinion one has of one’s own security . . .
When the innocence of the citizens is not secure, neither is liberty.
— Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, book XII, chapter 4
In a society that is well constituted and intends to destroy all the abuses that have perpetuated the existence of an arbitrary regime, it is necessary to accustom its members not to be enamored of insignificant voices and rather to concern themselves with the reality of things. The abuse of unspecified words, especially in political matters, has been, since the extinction of feudalism, the source of all the woes of peoples who emerge from the control of lords only to become slaves of governments. The word “liberty,” which has been used so often for the destruction of its own meaning, has been the usual pretext for all the world’s political revolutions. People have been moved just by hearing it pronounced and have reached out their hands to embrace the tutelary spirit of societies, which its leaders have made disappear like a phantom at the very moment it ceased being necessary for the attainment and successful outcome of their ambitious aims. Philosophical lovers of humanity have raised their voice in vain against such conduct. The people have been and will be frequently deceived if they are satisfied with forms of government and neglect to ensure the most important point of all free government, the civil liberty of the citizen, or, what is the same, the power to do without fear of being reprimanded or punished everything that the law does not expressly prohibit.
The precious right to do what does not harm another cannot, unfortunately,
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be put into effect in the state of nature in which man, reduced to his individual strengths, would inevitably be despot or slave, depending on whether these strengths are adequate to suppress the rest or insufficient to resist their aggressions. Men, then, have regarded themselves as compelled to create societies and to organize a public force that, being superior to that of each individual, might check and contain the perpetrators of high-handed crime against helpless innocents. But before long, governments and the force put at their disposal, forgetting their origin and feigning ignorance of the purpose and ends for which they have been instituted, themselves commit those crimes that they were supposed to avoid or curb in individuals. It was necessary, therefore, to place limits on their power, to request and seek assurances that these limits would never be violated, that the authority could be exercised only in certain and specified cases and under fixed rules or conditions, which, when they have been well and religiously observed, have created in men such confidence that they can act as they please within legal boundaries without fear of being injured or disturbed and which we know by the name of individual security. Unfortunately, this open and honest conduct among the agents of power has been very rare, and its lack has led to a thousand disturbances because of the prolonged struggle between governments and the people, a struggle that depends on the diverse interests that drive different groups and are the reason for their different and contrary ways of acting.
It is in the nature of those who dominate, whatever might be their number and the name given to them, to seek to make the exercise of power as advantageous as possible for themselves, and it is equally in the nature of those who become subordinated to make domination a heavy burden for those who exercise it and the lightest it can be for those who endure it. Whatever may be the name of those who govern, the question for them is always the same. Whether they be called presidents, directors, emperors, or kings; be they five or be they three, whether there are two or only one; whether they be elected or hereditary, usurpers or legitimate, their interest is always the same: to have persons at their disposal in the most absolute way, to have no obstacle to the exercise of their authority, to shake off the grip of all responsibility or censure. To the contrary, those who are subject to power, whatever may be its form or name, are concerned to make themselves safe from all arbitrariness so that no one might make use of their persons without rule or measure.
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They are equally concerned to become free and to remain so with respect to everything that does not infringe upon the right and security of another. From those two opposing tendencies results a conflict that must have as its ultimate end either the establishment of despotism, no matter what might be the form of government, or the destruction of all arbitrary power. There will be no rest among the people except when one of those outcomes has come to be so essential and inalterable that every hope of alteration or change has been extinguished in the heart of men.
There is no doubt that people will be free under any form of government if those who rule them, even if they are called kings and are perpetual, are truly powerless to make use of the person of the citizen at their whim and without subjection to any rule; and republican forms will be useless, even if the head of the nation is called president and serves for a fixed time, if the fate of the citizen depends on his omnipotent will.
The wise Montesquieu, who analyzed political powers and, making clear their driving and conserving principles placed the first stone of the edifice consecrated to civil liberty, does not hesitate to assert that, although the form of government has some influence on civil liberty’s existence, it is not its true and essential component. In the judgment of this great man, the liberty of the citizen exists uniquely and exclusively in individual security and in the stillness, repose, and tranquility that the conviction of its existence produces in each of the members. In effect, all these words contain everything that a peaceful man, free of ambition, can desire and ask of society, and when one acts in good faith and with the spirit of doing the right thing, it is easy and simple enough to grant such assurances.
On what, then, are contingent the continuous and bitter complaints that are heard with such frequency against the agents of the power? Why are the terms “indifference,” “indolence,” “arbitrariness,” “despotism,” and “tyranny” applied with such frequency to the acts that emanate from the depositaries of the authority? How is it that they are accused by the very ones who have an extremely lively interest in the repression of crimes that are being committed or can be committed against the individual and public security? To resolve these questions with certainty, it is necessary to assert that all the depositaries of the authority, no matter what the political power may be, have the strictest obligation to prevent
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unjust aggressions among individuals and themselves refrain from committing them. Whenever the citizen suffers or
