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operate on the machine, with a view to the end proposed. These are called the principles of operation. The term is frequently used to signify some passive quality, capacity or susceptibility; that condition of a subject, by which it is fitted to exhibit, in consequence of the operations of certain agents upon it, certain effects agreeable to certain laws. Thus we speak of the principle of fluidity, the inflammable principle, the principle of malleability; and thus we say of man, that the principles of society and government are implanted in his nature, by which we mean that he is fitted for such state, or at least that his nature requires it.

In the science of government, there are the principles of construction, by which the government is constituted and organized; the principles of operation, by which its activity and efficiency are produced. There are also the passive principles arising out of the susceptibilities of man, through which he becomes subject to all the variety of passions and emotions, that are excited by means of impressions made on his mind, by a multiplicity of agents and objects both corporeal and mental. To these the operative principles are adapted to produce the end intended-obedience to the laws. These principles, however, are, or ought to be, directed by ulterior principles, to be sought in the social nature of man, and by those laws established by the Author of nature, in his formation, designed to promote the general happiness. The operative and passive principles in any government are determined by the constructive principles employed, or the nature of the constitution. They will therefore be different according to the different constitution or nature of the government. Those which are here denominated the operative and passive principles, Montesquieu, has, by way of eminence called the principles of government; and this is altogether proper to his design, which was to treat of the spirit of the laws peculiar to the different constitutions of governments in being; not of the principles on which governments ought to be formed. But in the view we have proposed to take of the subject, the principles of government are not capable of being thus simplified, or reduced to any single principle. Far from it, they are often very complex and subject to a great variety

of modifications, from the admission of different principles in the construction. Each government, however, has its predominant and characteristic principles. The same may be said of other principles beside those of Montesquieu. He has in one place defined the principle of a government to be the human passions, which set it in motion.* This, taken in the author's sense, does not militate against what has just been observed of the passive principles arising out of a susceptibility of passions and emotions. The passions, it may be said, when excited, alone, give activity and vigor to the operative principles.

He has introduced three different principles, which he tells us, are peculiar to the three principal forms of government, the despotic, monarchical, and republican. Fear, he tells us, is the principle of a despotic government. This, in his sense of the term principle, is undoubtedly just. The instruments of despotism are a military force at the beck of the sovereign, which, by the terror of punishment, or rather of vengeance, secures obedience to his mandates. Inveterate habits of superstition often come in aid of the military force, and clothe the messenger of the prince, with the power of armies. Fear is that passion of human nature, to which the measures of this government are principally addressed, and without which the despot could procure obedience only by the constant and present application of force in each particular case.

Honor he assigns as the principle of a monarchy. This I will venture to say, is, taken in his sense, very deficient. That passion of emulation, that desire of excellence, which is natural to man, and which, by cultivation, is capable of an infinity of directions, good and evil, is with the higher orders in a monarchy, modified into what is called the principle of honor; but its direct effect in securing obedience to the sovereign, is confined principally to those orders. The multitude, the great majority of the nation are under a complicated despotism. The nobles, in conjunction with the military order, are the instruments employed to awe the people to obedience. Religion, transformed into a gloomy superstition, has been often employed to the same end.

* Book III, Chapter 1.

In the same sense he makes virtue the principle of a republic. We are liable to be misled by the use of this term, in a sense different from that, in which it is commonly received. As the principle of republican government he has therefore defined it to be "a love of the laws and of our country." It is necessary here to observe, that the term " republic" in its usual acceptation comprehends several kinds of government very different in their nature and principles; they may, however, be reduced to two principal kinds,—an aristocracy, of which oligarchy is a degenerate specics; and a democracy, of which a government by representatives, periodically elected by the people, is an improved form. A form of government unknown to the ancients, and which has not been distinguished by an appropriate name.t An aristocracy differs from a monarchy as an aggregate from a sole corporation. The people are under the same slavery, both civil and political, as under a monarchy; and are indeed farther removed from all prospect of honors. A sole monarch is under a necessity, in administering the government, to communicate honors and authority to some of his subjects; but an aristocracy always confines the distribution of honors and authority to its own members and their families. The principle of virtue, the love of the laws and of the country is, in strictness, no more applicable to this kind of government than to a monarchy. Both the monarch and the members of the aristocracy love their country; they love their people, in a certain sense; because they are the source of their political consequence, and the machines of their power; but as for a love of the laws, they are, in both governments, made for the people, not for the rulers. In a democracy, where the powers of government are retained in the body of the people, and in the representative form, where the powers are vested in delegates periodically elected by the people, and accountable to them, the laws are made for all, as well for the rulers as the people, and are or ought to be, an expression of the will of the society, being an aggregate of the individual wills. Now if the will of the aggregate, in all cases, coincide with each individual will, the observance of the law

* Book IV. Chapter 5. + Note.

must be as necessary as the power of willing; but this can, perhaps in no instance be the case.

The will of the whole, that is the law, is the result of mutual concessions or a compromise of the individual wills, as determined by the majority. Hence the necessity of our author's principle of virtue, which he has appropriated to republican government, and which I have ventured to call a predominant sentiment of attachment to the community, its institutions and laws, which alone can secure for the laws a general acquiescence, and the ready obedience of the individual members. Under this kind of government, no force can be applied in the execution of the laws but what depends on this principle. It is certainly no more entitled to the appropriate appellation of virtue, than other social passions and sentiments common to man; but it has this pre-eminence over the other principles, mentioned above, that it is, when rightly informed, perfectly in harmony with all the other moral and social virtues, and is best promoted by them.

In the following work the term " principle" and " principles of government," will sometimes, according to the nature of the subject, be used in the appropriate sense of Montesquieu, but more generally, in the same sense, in which it is used in other sciences, as explained above.

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