9779 THE SPIRIT OF LAWS BY BARON DE MONTESQUIEU (CHARLES DE SECONDAT) INCLUDING D'ALEMBERT'S ANALYSIS OF THE WORK TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY HON. FREDERIC R. COUDERT, J.U.D., LL.D. M SPECIAL INTRODUCTION ONTESQUIEU, Charles Louis Secondat de la Brède, was born at the Château de la Brède, near Bordeaux, in the month of January, 1689. He lived sixty-six years, and died on the tenth day of February, 1755. If we should omit his literary performances from the record of his life, and consider his existence apart from his books, the record would end here, and it might be said of him, as has been justly said of some royal personages, that he was born, he lived and he died. Not only was that life uneventful, but it was studiously shut off from the public eye. He shrank from those who would peer into his privacy, and reserved that part of himself for his family and his friends. He loved fame, that is, the honorable repute that grew out of the intellectual productions with which he enriched the world. Apart from these, as Horace, whom he resembled in many ways, has said of himself: "He sought the secret way and unfrequented path of life that steals away unknown.” That he was thoroughly a gentleman in the best sense of the word-courteous, gentle, kindly and unassuming all who knew him testify: withal a genuine Gascon in the sparkle of his speech, in the southern brogue that he patriotically exaggerated, in his wit and effervescence, in all the qualities that he derived from the sunny atmosphere of his native Gascony and the ruddy wines that flowed so freely from the land that he dearly loved to the end. Writers with an ingenious turn for the discovery of analogies have compared him to Voltaire, who was born but a few years after Montesquieu, and survived him many years. Voltaire was undoubtedly a man of rare genius and unequalled skill when it came to the work of destruction. To demolish ancient things was the task in which he excelled and which he delighted to perform. His bitterness against the sociai system of which the Church was an integral part displayed itself with all the venom of personal enmity: it was flavored with the passion of revenge rather than a desire to promote right and to prevent wrong. Throughout all his aggressive life, this feature was apparent; it existed in fact and showed itself by unmistakable symptoms. Nor was it without reason. In his early youth, he had been subjected to personal indignities at the hands of blue-blooded men who considered it the privilege of their caste to disregard the claims of those whose pedigree was not as long as their own; they laughed to scorn the demands for satisfaction of such, however grievously and wantonly they had been injured. When Voltaire sought to obtain redress for deliberate affronts, they were repeated in most brutal and offensive form; the only compensation that he received was free quarters at the Bastille and abundant opportunity, in the silence of solitary meditation, to nurse his hatred and to lick his wounds. The friend of Frederick II never forgot the humiliation of his early life: and the sharpness of his pen and tongue may both be traced in a measure to these days of wrong unavenged and unpunished. The Church was the ally and prop of the social scheme which permitted these wrongs, hence the Church must pay the penalty. His rage increased with his years, until he boasted, in the heat of his madness, that one man might destroy the religion which twelve men had founded. But Montesquieu had no personal reasons for disliking either Church or State. No insult had embittered his early life, his unwounded pride never festered at the recollection of personal maltreatment. He was always decorous, conservative and prudent. In the rich soil of his generous nature, no seed had been sown from which hatred could grow. He was a lover of the human race, and sought to promote its happiness. If, in the effervescence of his early youth, he allowed his brilliant pen to enter upon dangerous fields of controversy, he never intended other than good results. He meant to cure, not to kill: he hoped to make, not to mar: he sought to repair and to improve, not to tear down and to destroy. His warm Gascon nature exulted in the mere fact of existence, the sunshine of the merry Gascon country was in itself a delight. He would have had the whole world as happy as himself. He loved the companionship of friends, he delighted in the society of books. |