nor property. Those imprisoned by the king of Pegu25 remain tranquilly in the new habitation assigned them, because it cannot be worse than
[print edition page 91]
the prior one. The inhabitants of Pegu act in the same way when they are taken by the Siamese. Those wretches—equally crushed in their country by servitude, equally indifferent toward the change of residence—have the good sense to say with the ass in the fable:
Fight it out and let us pasture, Our enemy, he is our master.26
The rebellion of Sacrovir brought joy to the Roman people; the universal hatred Tiberius had attracted by his despotism made people wish for a happy outcome for the public enemy:27 multi odio praesentium, suis quisque periculis laetabantur, says Tacitus.28
I know that the kings of the Orient are regarded as the adoptive children of heaven. Their souls are thought to be celestial, and to surpass others in virtue as much as the prosperity of their condition surpasses that of their subjects. Nonetheless, once the subjects revolt, the people come to harbor doubts on which is the worthier soul, that of the legitimate prince or that of the rebel subject, and on whether the celestial adoption hasn’t passed from the person of the king to that of the subject. Moreover, in those countries there are no small revolts;29 there is no space between murmur and sedition, sedition and catastrophe. The malcontent goes straight to the prince, strikes him, overthrows him—he erases even the thought of him. In an instant the slave is the master; in an instant he is the usurper and is legitimate. Great events are not prepared by great causes there; on the contrary, the least accident produces a great revolution, often as unforeseen by those who effect it as by those who suffer it. At the time when Osman, emperor of the Turks, was deposed, he was only being asked to give justice on some grievances; a voice arose from the crowd by chance, pronouncing the name of Mustapha, and suddenly Mustapha was emperor.
[print edition page 92]
Father Martini30 claims that the Chinese have convinced themselves that in changing the sovereign they are conforming to the will of heaven, and they have sometimes preferred a bandit to the prince who was already on the throne. But, he says, aside from the fact that this despotic authority is deprived of defense, since its exercise terminates entirely in the prince, it is weakened for not being shared and transmitted to other persons. Whoever wants to dethrone the prince has scarcely anything else to do but play the role of sovereign and capture its spirit. Authority, being contained within a single man, passes easily from one man to another, for lack of people in positions who have an interest in preserving royal authority. It is thus only the prince who is interested in defending the prince, whereas countless hands have an interest in defending our kings.
Thus, far from a despot’s being assured of maintaining himself on the throne, he is only closer to falling from it. Far from his even being secure in his life, he is only more exposed to seeing its course cut short in a violent and tragic manner, like his reign. The person of a sultan is often torn to pieces with less formality than that of a malefactor from the dregs of the people. If they had less authority, they would have more security: nunquam satis fida potentia, ubi nimia.31 Caligula, Domitian, and Commodus, who reigned despotically, were assassinated by those whose deaths they had decreed.
Let us conclude that despotism is equally harmful to princes and peoples in all times and all places, because it is everywhere the same in its principle and in its effects. It is particular circumstances—religious opinion, prejudice, received examples, established customs, manners, mores—that make up the differences one encounters among them throughout the world. But whatever these differences, human nature always rises up against a government of this kind, which is the misery of prince and subjects.32 And if we still see so many idolatrous and barbarous nations subject to this government, it is because they are enchained by superstition, education, habit, and climate.
[print edition page 93]
In Christianity, on the other hand, there cannot be an unlimited sovereignty, because however absolute that sovereignty may be supposed, it cannot include an arbitrary and despotic power, with no other rule or reason than the will of the Christian monarch. Look, how could the creature claim such a power, since the sovereign himself does not have it? His absolute domain is not founded on blind will; his sovereign will is always determined by the immutable rules of wisdom, justice, and goodness.
Thus, to echo La Bruyère,
to say that a Christian prince is the arbiter of the lives and property of his subjects is to say simply that men, by their crimes, become naturally subject to the laws and justice of which the prince is the depository. To add that he is the absolute master of all the property of his subjects—without consideration, without account or discussion—this is the language of flattery, it is the opinion of a favorite who will recant at the hour of death. (Chap. X du Souverain)33
But one may suggest that a king is master of the lives and property of his subjects because, loving them with a paternal love, he preserves them and takes care of their fortunes as he would something that was most proper to him. In this fashion, he conducts himself as if everything belonged to him, taking absolute power over all their possessions in order to protect and defend them. It is by this means that, winning the hearts of his people and thereby everything they have, he can declare himself their master, even though he never causes them to lose their ownership of it, except in cases ordained by law.
“It does not,” says a councilor of state (M. La Mothe le Vayer, in a book entitled The Household management of the Prince,34 which he dedicated to Louis XIV, ch. ix), “it does not, SIRE, set harmful limits to your sovereign will, to set them in conformity with those by which God has intended to limit his own. If we say that Your Majesty owes protection
[print edition page 94]
and justice to his subjects, we add at the same time that Your Majesty is made accountable for this obligation, and for all of your actions, only to the one by whom all kings on earth are exalted. Finally, we do not attribute any personal property to your people except to thereby further exalt the dignity of your monarchy.”
Also, Louis XIV always recognized that he could do nothing contrary to the laws of nature, the laws of nations, or the fundamental laws of the state. In the treatise Of the rights of the Queen of France, published in 1667 by order of that august monarch to justify his claims over a part of the Catholic Low Countries, one finds these fine words:
That kings have that happy impotence, of being unable to do anything against the laws of their country.… It is (adds the author) neither imperfection nor weakness in a supreme authority to submit to the law of his promises, or to the justice of his laws. The necessity of doing well and the powerlessness to fail are the highest means of all his perfection. God himself, according to the thought of Philo the Jew, cannot go further. And it is this divine impotence that sovereigns, who are his images on earth, should particularly imitate in their states. (Page 279 of the edition printed according to the Royal printer’s copy.)
Let it not be said, therefore (continues the same author, who speaks in the name of, and with the approbation of, Louis XIV), let it not be said that the sovereign is not subject to the laws of his state, since the contrary proposition is a truth of the law of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked, but which good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their states. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato that the perfect felicity of a realm is for a prince to be obeyed by his subjects, for the prince to obey the law, and for the law to be upright and always directed toward the public good?
The monarch who thinks and acts in this way is indeed worthy of the name of Great, and he who can only augment his glory by continuing a dominance that is full of clemency, doubtless merits the title
