to be elected, so too the people, who have enough capacity to call others to account for their management, are not fit to manage by themselves, nor to conduct public business, which proceeds at a pace with a certain movement that is neither too slow nor too fast. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms they upset everything; sometimes with a hundred thousand feet they move only like insects.
Finally, it is a fundamental law of democracy that the people be the legislator. However, there are countless occasions when it is necessary for the senate to be able to enact laws; it is often even appropriate to test a law before establishing it. The constitutions of Rome and Athens were very wise. The decrees of the senate had the force of law for a year; they became permanent only by the will of the people.12 But although every democracy must inevitably have written laws, ordinances, and stable rules and regulations, nonetheless nothing prevents the people who have provided these from revoking them, or changing them any time they think it necessary, unless they have sworn to observe them in perpetuity. And even in that case, the oath obliges only those citizens who have themselves taken it.
Such are the main fundamental laws of democracy. Let us speak now of the spring or principle that is appropriate for the preservation of this type of government.13 This principle can only be virtue, and it is only by means of this that democracies are maintained. Virtue in a democracy is love of
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the laws and love of Country. Since this love demands self-renunciation, a constant preference of the public interest to one’s own produces all the private virtues; they simply are that preference.14 This love leads to good mores, and good mores lead to love of Country.15 The less we are able to satisfy our private passions, the more we give ourselves up to passions for the general good.
Virtue in a democracy also includes love of equality and of frugality.16 Since everyone there has the same happiness and the same advantages, everyone is bound to taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, things that can be expected only from a generalized frugality. Love of equality limits ambition to the happiness of rendering greater services to one’s Country than other citizens do. They cannot all render it equal services, but they should equally render it services. Thus, distinctions in a democracy arise from the principle of equality, even when equality seems to be erased by successful services or superior talents. Love of frugality limits the desire of possession to the concern required by what is necessary for one’s family, and even by what is surplus for one’s Country.
Love of equality and love of frugality are strongly aroused by equality and frugality themselves, when one lives in a state in which the laws establish both.17 There are nonetheless cases in which equality among democracy’s citizens can be taken away for democracy’s utility.18
The ancient Greeks, persuaded that peoples who lived in a popular government must of necessity be brought up in the practice of the virtues necessary to maintain democracies, created distinctive institutions to inspire these virtues.19 When you read in the life of Lycurgus the laws he gave the Lacedemonians, you think you are reading the history of the Sevarambes.20 The laws of Crete were the originals for the laws of Lacedemon, and Plato’s laws were their correction.
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Private education should also be extremely attentive about inspiring the virtues we have discussed. But there is one sure way for children to have them, and that is for the fathers themselves to have them.21 One is ordinarily in charge of giving one’s knowledge to one’s children, and even more in charge of giving them one’s passions. If this does not happen, it is because what was done in the father’s house is destroyed by impressions from the outside. It is not young people who degenerate; they are ruined only when grown men have already been corrupted.
The principle of democracy is corrupted when love of the laws and of Country begins to deteriorate, when general and individual education are neglected, when honest desires change their goals, when work and duty are called obstacles. From then on, ambition enters those hearts that can admit it, and avarice enters them all.22 These truths are confirmed by history. Athens had in its midst the same forces when it dominated with so much glory as when it served with so much shame. It had twenty thousand citizens when it defended the Greeks against the Persians, when it disputed for empire with Lacedemon, and when it attacked Sicily. It had twenty thousand when Demetrius of Phalereus enumerated them as one counts slaves in a market. When Philip dared dominate in Greece, the Athenians feared him as the enemy not of liberty but of pleasure. They had passed a law to punish by death anyone who might propose that the silver destined for the theaters be converted to the uses of war.
Finally,23 the principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is lost but also when the spirit of extreme equality is taken up and everyone wants to be the equal of those chosen to command. At that point, the people, finding intolerable even the power they entrust to others, want to do everything themselves: deliberate for the senate, execute for the magistrates, and cast off all the judges. This abuse of democracy is with reason called a veritable ochlocracy. See this word. In this abuse, there is no more love of order, no more mores—in a word, no more virtue. Corrupters then emerge, petty tyrants having all the vices of a single one. Soon, a
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single tyrant rises up over the others, and the people lose everything, even the advantages they thought to derive from their corruption.
It would be a fortunate thing if popular government could preserve mores, frugality, love of virtue, execution of the laws; if it could avoid the two excesses—I mean the spirit of inequality that leads to aristocracy, and the spirit of extreme equality that leads to the despotism of one. But it is quite rare that a democracy is able to save itself for long from these two shoals. It is the fate of this government, admirable in its principle, to become almost inevitably the prey of the ambition of some citizens, or of some foreigners, and thereby to pass from a precious liberty into the greatest servitude.
There you have virtually an extract of the book The Spirit of the Laws on that topic, and in any other work but this one, it would be enough to refer to it. I leave it to readers who would like to extend their views still further, to consult Lord Temple in his Posthumous Works, Locke’s Treatise of civil government, and the Discourse on government by Sidney.24 Article by Chevalier DE JAUCOURT
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DESPOTISM (Political law), tyrannical, arbitrary, and absolute government of a single man: such is the government of Turkey, the Mogol, Japan, Persia, and virtually all of Asia. Following some celebrated writers, let us unfold its principle and its character, and let us give thanks to heaven for causing us to be born under a different government, where we obey with joy a monarch that it makes us love.
The principle of despotic states is that a lone prince governs everything according to his will, having absolutely no other law to dominate him but that of his whims. It is in the nature of this power that it passes entirely into the hands of the person in whom it is entrusted.1 This person, this vizir, becomes the despot himself, and each individual officer becomes the vizir. The establishment of a vizir flows from the fundamental principle of despotic states.2 When eunuchs have weakened the hearts and minds of the eastern princes, and have often left them ignorant even of their status, these princes are withdrawn from the palace to be placed on the throne. They then appoint a vizir, in order to give themselves up in their seraglio to
