A brief foreword
This work is by Maurice Joly, a French attorney, and it was published anonymously, in Brussels, in the year 1864. The book, in reality, an elaborately written pamphlet but a pamphlet nonetheless, was a piece of satire supposedly directed against Napoleon III. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since those momentous days of the third Napoleon’s remarkable rule and of the calamitous end that followed his reign, events which had, no doubt, late become contributing factors to the First World War, at least two Russian revolutions, the emergence of the short-lived Third Reich as well as the rise of the United States as a global superpower. Events that were far beyond the wildest fantasies of the book’s author.
You can read the Dialogue between Machiavelli and Montesquieu in the original here. The text below is an unfinished and rough English translation. I am working on it. Then I’d have to get a real editor and we’d see what we’ll do with a multilingual edition of this work.
Now, the work itself, which on its own would have remained a stand-alone historical curiosity at best, is notable for two additional reasons. Supposedly the authors of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, provided that masterpiece even exists as finding an original copy has been an elusive task, used the book by Maurice Joly as a blueprint for their piece of defamatory literature. They plagiarized Maurice Joly’s work. Or so we are being told. Additionally, we are being told, Sir John Retcliffe, who authored the 1868 novel Biarritz, was no Sir. no John and no Retcliffe either, but some Hermann Goedsche, a Prussian, and he plagiarized the book as well. He stole a part of it and incorporated the loot in the chapter, entitled At the Jewish Cemetery in Prague. Which in turn had been then used to build the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
I could not find a copy of Goedsche’s Biarritz so far but I read the offending chapter in a 1906 Russian translation. Goedsche’s stuff is comical at best: theatrical, naive, “over the top” farcical lore. If he indeed found some inspiration in the Dialogue in Hell by Maurice Joly, then it is hardly plagiarism. Imitation is not plagiarism besides he did not imitate. He might have borrowed a few things. Joly’s work is an extremely wordy, tedious, overstretched narrative. But it is a satire that is as relevant today as when it was first published in the year 1864. What I find puzzling is why “we are being told” that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are based on Maurice Joly’s pamphlet when anyone with enough patience and time on his hands can find out that this is not the case. True that “Machiavelli” talks of subversion and the Nineteenth Dialogue is pretty spectacular in its frankness, and a few things are outright funny, but shocking things had been written for ages since literally the times immemorial, and what a reader finds here are certainly not some cryptic blueprints for the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
The text as it presented requires additional extensive editing and rearranging. I thank you in advance for your understanding and your patience.
And here it is, the Dialogue in Hell between two Great Savants. For now, though, better read it in French.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU IN HELL OR THE MACHIAVELLI’S POLICY
In the nineteenth century,
WRITTEN BY A CONTEMPORARY.
“Soon we would see a dreadful calm, during which everything would unite against the law-breaking power. “
“When Sylla wanted to give freedom to Rome, she could no longer receive it. “
(Montesquieu, Esp. Des Lois.)
PRINTED AT BRUSSELS,
PRINTING OF A. MERTENS AND SONS
1864
(Dialogue in the Underworld)
A SIMPLE WARNING.
This book has features: which can be applied to all governments, but it has a more precise aim: it personifies, in particular, a political system that has not changed for a single day in its operations since the harmful date of its appearance and is already too far away, alas! from his enthronement.
This is neither a libel, nor a pamphlet; the sensibilities of modern peoples are too civilized to accept violent truths about contemporary politics. The supernatural duration of certain successes is moreover made to corrupt the honesty itself, but the public conscience is still alive and Heaven will someday end up interfering in the game being played against it.
We can better judge certain facts and certain principles when we see them outside the frame in which they usually move before our eyes; the change of the optical point sometimes terrifies the eye!
Here, everything is presented in the form of a fiction; it would be superfluous to give the key to it in advance. If this book has significance, if it contains teaching, the reader must comprehend it and not be commented on.
This reading, moreover, will not lack lively distractions; it must be done slowly, however, as befits writing which is not frivolous.
We will not ask which hand traced these pages: a work like it is in a way impersonal. It responds to a call from consciousness; everyone has conceived it, and as it is carried out, the author disappears, because he is only the recorder of common thought, and the general sense, the writer is only a more or less obscure participant of the coalition of good.
Geneva, October 15, 1864.
THE FIRST DIALOGUE.
Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
MACHIAVELLI.
On the shores of this deserted beach, I was told that I would meet the shadow of the great Montesquieu. Is it the shadow who is in front of me?
MONTESQUIEU.
The appellation “great| does not belong here to anyone, O Machiavelli! But I am the one you are looking for.
MACHIAVELLI.
Among the illustrious personages whose shadows populate the abode of darkness, there is none that I have wished to meet more than Montesquieu. Pushed back into these unknown spaces by the migration of souls, I give thanks to chance which finally puts me in the presence of the author of The Spirit of Law.
MONTESQUIEU.
The former Secretary of State of the Florentine Republic has not yet forgotten the language of the courts. But what can those who have crossed these dark shores have to exchange, if not anguish and regret?
MACHIAVELLI.
Is it the philosopher, is it the statesman who speaks thus? What does death matter to those who have lived by thought, since thought does not die? As for me, I do not know of a more tolerable condition than that which is made to us here until the day of the last judgment. To be freed from the care and worries of material life, to live in the domain of pure reason, to be able to converse with the great men who have filled the universe with the noise of their name; follow from afar the revolutions of states, the fall and transformation of empires, meditate on their new constitutions, on the changes brought about in the customs and ideas of the peoples of Europe, on the progress of their civilization, in politics , in the arts, in industry, as in the sphere of philosophical ideas, what theater for thought! So many subjects of astonishment! What new points of view! What incredible revelations! What marvels, if we are to believe the shadows that descend here! Death is for us like a deep retreat where we finish collecting the lessons of history and the titles of humanity. Nothingness itself could not break all ties that bind us to the earth, for posterity still talks about those who, like you, have made great movements in the human spirit. Your political principles reign, at the present time, over nearly half of Europe; and if anyone can be freed from fear by making the dark passage that leads to hell or heaven, who better than you, the who comes with such pure titles of glory before eternal righteousness?
MONTESQUIEU.
You are not talking about yourself, Machiavelli; it is too much modesty, when one leaves behind the immense fame of the author of the Prince.
MACHIAVELLI.
I think I understand the irony behind your words. Would the general French publicist therefore judge me like the crowd who only know my name and blind prejudice? This book injured me I know it: it made me responsible for all tyrannies; it has drawn upon me the curse of the peoples who have personified in me their hatred for despotism; it poisoned my last days, and the reprobation of posterity seems to have followed me thus far. What have I done yet?
For fifteen years I served my homeland which was a Republic; I conspired for its independence, and I defended it relentlessly against Louis XII, against the Spaniards, against Julius II, against Borgia himself who, without me, would have stifled it. I protected the Republic against the bloody intrigues which crossed in all directions around her, fighting by diplomacy as someone else would have fought by the sword; dealing, negotiating, tying or breaking the threads according to the interests of the Republic, which then found itself crushed between the great powers, and which the war tossed about like a skiff. And it was not an oppressive or autocratic government that we supported in Florence; ours were the people’s institutions.
Was I among those who saw the change of fortune? The executioners of the Medici were able to find me after the fall of Soderini. Raised with liberty, I succumbed with it; I have lived in proscription without the gaze of a prince deigning to turn towards me. I died poor and forgotten. This is my life, and these are the crimes which have earned me the ingratitude of my country, the hatred of posterity. Heaven, perhaps, will be fairer to me.
MONTESQUIEU.
I knew all this, Machiavelli, and it is for this reason that I have never been able to understand how the Florentine patriot, how the servant of a Republic had made himself the founder of this dark school which gave you for disciples. all crowned heads, but who is apt to justify the greatest crimes of tyranny.
MACHIAVELLI.
What if I told you that this book was just a diplomat’s fantasy; that it was not intended for printing; that it was conceived as an advertisement for something to which the author remained foreign; that it was created under the influence of ideas which were then common to all the Italian principalities eager to grow at the expense of each other, and directed by a shrewd policy in which the most treacherous was reputed to be the most skillful?
MONTESQUIEU.
Is this really your thought? Since you speak to me with this frankness, I can confess that it was mine, and that I shared in this respect the opinion of several of those who knew your life and had carefully read your works. Yes, yes, Machiavelli, and this confession honors you, you did not then say what you thought, or you only said it under the influence of personal feelings which disturbed your high reason for a moment.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is what deceives you, Montesquieu, following the example of those who have judged like you. My only crime was to speak the truth to peoples as well as to kings; not moral truth, but political truth; not the truth which it should be, but as it is, as it always will be. This is not I who is the founder of the doctrine whose authorship is attributed to me; it is the human heart. Machiavelliniasm is older than Machiavelli
Moses, Sesostris, Solomon, Lysander, Philippe and Alexander of Macedon, Agathocles, Romulus, Tarquin, Julius Caesar, Augustus and even Nero, Charlemagne, Théodorjc, Clovis, Hugues Capet, Louis. XI, Gonzalve of Cordoba, César Borgia, these are the ancestors of my doctrines. I am passing, and of the best, without speaking, of course, of those who came after me whose list would be long, and to whom the Prince’s Treatise has learned nothing but what they already knew, through the practice of power.
Who in your time paid me a more brilliant homage than Frederick II? He refuted me pen in hand in the interest of his popularity, and in politics he rigorously applied my doctrines.
By what inexplicable passage of the human mind has I been criticized for what I have written in this work? It would be as well to reproach the scientist for seeking the physical causes which bring about the fall of the bodies which injure us by falling; for the doctor to describe diseases, for the chemist to write the history of poisons, for the moralist to paint lives, for the historian to write history.
MONTESQUIEU.
Oh! Machiavelli, why is Socrates here to unravel the fallacy hidden in your words! However little suited nature to discussion, it is hardly difficult for me to answer you: you compare to poison and disease the evils engendered by the spirit of domination, cunning and violence; and it is these diseases that your writings teach the means of communicating to the States, it is these poisons that you learn to distil. When the scientist, when the doctor, when the moralist, seek evil, it is not to teach how to propagate it; it is to cure him. Now, this is what your book does not do; but I do not care, and I am none the less disarmed.
From the moment you deny despotism in principle, the moment you yourself consider it evil, it seems to me that by that alone you condemn it, and on this point at least we can agree.
MACHIAVELLI.
We are not, Montesquieu, for you have not understood all my thoughts; I gave you the side by a comparison which it was too easy to overcome. The irony of Socrates itself would not worry me, for he was only a sophist who used, more skilfully than the adirés, a false instrument, your logomachy.
This is not your school and it is not mine, so let’s leave words and comparisons and stick to ideas. This is how I formulate my system, and I doubt you will shake it, for it consists only of deductions from moral and political facts of eternal truth: The bad instinct in man is more powerful than the good. Man has more training towards evil than towards good; fear and strength have more sway over him than reason.
I do not stop to demonstrate such truths; you have only had the mindless coterie of Baron d’Holbach, of which J.-J. Rousseau was the high priest and Diderot the apostle, to have been able to contradict them. Men all aspire to domination, and there is not one who was not an oppressor, if he could; all or almost all are ready to sacrifice the rights of others for their interests.
Who contains among them these devouring animals that we call men? At the origin of societies, it is brutal and unbridled force; later, it is the law, that is to say again force, regulated by forms. You have consulted all the sources of history; everywhere force appears before right.
Political freedom is only a relative idea; the need to live is what dominates states as well as individuals.
In certain latitudes of Europe, there are peoples incapable of moderation in the exercise of freedom. If freedom is prolonged, it is transformed into license; the civil or social war arrives, and the State is lost, either because it splits up and becomes dismembered by the effect of its own convulsions, or because its divisions make it fall the prey to the foreigner. Under such conditions, people prefer despotism to anarchy; are they wrong?
States once formed have two kinds of enemies: enemies from within and enemies from without. What weapons will they use in war against foreigners? Will the two enemy generals communicate to each other their campaign plans to put each other in a position to defend themselves? Will they refrain from nocturnal attacks, traps, ambushes, battles in unequal numbers of troops? No, no doubt, is not it? and such combatants would be ready to laugh.
And these traps, these artifices, all this strategy essential to war, you do not want us to use it against the enemies from within, against the factions? No doubt, we will apply less rigor; but basically the rules will be the same. Is it possible to lead by pure reason the violent masses who move only by feelings, passions and prejudices?
Whether the direction of affairs is entrusted to an autocrat, to an oligarchy or to the people themselves, no war, no negotiation, no internal reform will be able to succeed without the help of these combinations which you seem to disapprove of, but which you would have. have been obliged to employ yourself if the King of France had entrusted you with the slightest affair of state.
Such puerile disapproval as that which struck the Prince! Does politics have anything to disentangle from morality? Hail, have you ever seen a single State behave according to the principles which govern private morality? But any war would be a crime, even when it had a just cause; any conquest having no other motive than glory would be a forfeit; any treaty in which a power would have tipped the scales on its side would be an indignant deception; any usurpation of sovereign power would be an act which deserves death. Nothing would be legitimate except what would be founded on the right! but, I told you earlier, and I maintain it, even in the presence of contemporary history: all sovereign powers have had force for origin, or, what is the same thing, negation law.Does this mean that I proscribe it? No; but I regard it as of an extremely limited application, as much in the relations of nations among themselves as in the relations of the rulers with the ruled,
This word of the right itself, moreover, don’t you see that it is infinitely vague? Where does it know, where does it end? When will the law exist, and when will it not? I take examples. Here is a State: the bad organization of the public powers, the turbulence of democracy, the powerlessness of the laws against the factions, the disorder which reigns everywhere, will precipitate it into ruin. A bold man springs from the ranks of the aristocracy or from the bosom of the people; he breaks all the Constituted powers; he gets his hands on the laws, he reorganizes all the institutions, and he gives twenty years of peace to his country. Did he have the right to do what he did?
Pisistratus seizes the citadel with a helping hand and prepares the century of Pericles. Brutus violates the monarchical constitution of Rome, expels the Tarquins, and founds with stab wounds a republic whose grandeur is the most imposing spectacle that has been given to the universe.
But the struggle between the patricians and the plebs, which, as long as it was contained, made the vitality of the Republic, brings about its dissolution, and everything will perish. Caesar and Augustus appear; they are still violators; but the Roman Empire which succeeded the Republic, thanks to them, lasts as long as it is, and only succumbs by covering the whole world with its ruins. Well, was the right with these daring men? No, according to you. And this-
autocrat, to an oligarchy or to the people themselves, no war, no negotiation, no internal reform will be able to succeed without the help of these combinations which you seem to disapprove of, but which you would have been obliged to employ yourself if the King of France would have entrusted you with the slightest affair of state.
Such puerile disapproval as that which struck the Treaty of the Prince! Does politics have nothing to disentangle from morality? Have you ever seen a single state behave according to the principles which govern private morality? But any war would be a crime, even when it had a just cause; any conquest having no other motive than glory would be a forfeit; any treaty in which a power would have tipped the scales on its side would be an unworthy deception; any usurpation of sovereign power would be an act which deserves death. Nothing would be legitimate except what would be founded on the right! but, I told you earlier, and I maintain it, even in the presence of contemporary history: all sovereign powers have had force for their origin, or, what is the same thing, negation. law. Does this mean that I proscribe it? No; but I regard it as of an extremely limited application, as much in the relations of nations among themselves as in the relations of the rulers with the ruled,
Besides, don’t you see that this law is infinitely vague? Where does it start, where does it end? When will the law exist, and when will it not? I take examples. Here is a State: the bad organization of the public powers, the turbulence of democracy, the powerlessness of the laws against the factions, the disorder which reigns everywhere, will precipitate it into ruin. A bold man springs from the ranks of the aristocracy or from the bosom of the people; it breaks all the constituted powers; he gets his hands on the laws, he reorganizes all the institutions, and he gives twenty years of peace to his country. Did he have the right to do what he did?
Pisistratus seizes the citadel with a helping hand and prepares the century of Pericles. Brutus violates the monarchical constitution of Rome, expels the Tarquins, and founds with stab wounds a republic whose grandeur is the most imposing spectacle that has been given to the universe. But the struggle between the patriciate and the plebs, which, as long as it was contained, made the vitality of the Republic, brings about its dissolution, and everything will perish. Caesar and Augustus appear; they are still violators; but the Roman Empire which succeeded the Republic, thanks to them, lasts as long as it does, and only succumbs by covering the entire world with its ruins.
Well, was the right with these daring men? No, according to you. And yet posterity has covered them with glory; in fact, they served and saved their country; they have prolonged its existence through the centuries. You can see that in States the principle of law is dominated by that of interest, and what emerges from these considerations is that good can arise from evil; that one arrives at good by evil, as one cures with poison, as one saves life by the edge of iron. I was less concerned with what is good and moral than with what is useful and necessary; I have taken societies as they are, and have given rules accordingly.
Abstractly speaking, are violence and trickery wrong? Yes; but they will have to be used to govern men, as long as men are not angels.
Everything is good or bad, according to the use which one makes of it and the fruit which one draws from it; the end justifies the means: and now if you ask me why, I republican, I give preference everywhere to absolute government, I will tell you that, a witness in my country of the inconstancy and cowardice of the populace, of its taste innate for servitude, its inability to conceive and respect the conditions of free life; in my eyes, it is a blind force which dissolves sooner or later, if it is not in the hand of one man; I answer that the people, left to themselves, will only know how to destroy themselves; that he will never know how to administer, nor to judge, nor to make war. I will tell you that Greece shone only in the eclipses of freedom; that without the despotism of the Roman aristocracy, and that, later, without the despotism of the emperors,the brilliant civilization of Europe would never have developed.
Shall I seek my examples in modern states? They are so striking and so numerous that I will take the first to come.
Under what institutions and under what men did the Italian republics shine? With which sovereigns Spain, France and Germany have they constituted their power? Under the Leon X, the Julius II, the Philippe II, the Barbe-rousse, the Louis XIV, the Napoleon, all men with terrible hands, and more often placed on the hilt of their swords than on the charter of their States.
But I am surprised to have spoken for so long to convince the illustrious writer who is listening to me. Is not some of these ideas, if I am well informed, in the Spirit of the Laws? Did this speech hurt the serious and cold man who meditated, without passion, on the problems of politics? The encyclopedists were not Catons: the author of the Persian Letters was not a saint, nor even a very fervent devotee. Our school, which is said to be immoral, was perhaps more attached to the true God than the philosophers of the eighteenth century.
MONTESQUIEU.
Your last words find me without anger, Machiavelli, and I have listened to you attentively. Will you hear me, and will you let me use it towards you with the same freedom?
MACHIAVELLI.
I hold myself for mute, and I listen in a respectful silence eeltti that one has called the legislator of the nations.
THE SECOND DIALOGUE.
Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
MONTESQUIEU.
Your doctrines are nothing new to me, Machiavelli; and, if I have experienced any difficulty in refuting them, it is much less because they disturb my reason than because, false or true, they have no philosophical basis. I understand that you are, above all, a politician, and that facts affect you more closely than ideas.
But you will agree, however, that when it is a question of government, it is necessary to arrive at principles. You make no room in your policy, neither for morality, nor for religion, nor for law; you have only two words in your mouth: strength and cleverness.
If your system boils down to saying that force plays a great role in human affairs, that skill is a necessary quality of a statesman, you will understand that this is a truth which has never been found. need for demonstration; but, if you set up violence as a principle, cunning as a maxim of government; if you do not take into account in your calculations any of the laws of humanity, the code of tyranny is nothing more than the code of the brute, for animals too are skilful and strong, and there is, indeed, among them other rights than that of brute force. But I don’t believe that your fatalism itself goes that far, for you recognize the existence of good and evil.
Your principle is that good can come out of evil and that it is permissible to do evil when it can result in good. Thus, you do not say: It is good in oneself to betray his word; it is good to use corruption, violence, and murder.
But you say: We can betray when it is useful, kill when it is necessary, take the property of others when it is advantageous. I hasten to add that, in your system, these maxims apply only to princes, and when it is a question of their interests or those of the State. Consequently, the prince has the right to violate his oaths; he can shed blood in torrents to seize power or to maintain it; he can rob those he has proscribed, overturn all laws, give new ones and violate them again; squandering finances, corrupting, squeezing, punishing and hitting incessantly.
MACHIAVELLI.
But wasn’t it yourself who said that,
in despotic states fear was necessary, virtue useless, honor dangerous; that blind obedience was required, and that the prince was lost if he ceased to raise his arm for a moment.
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, I said it; but when I observed, like you, the dreadful conditions in which tyrannical power maintains itself, it was to stigmatize it and not to raise altars to it; it was to inspire horror in my country which never, fortunately for her, has bowed its head under such a yoke.
How can you not see that force is only an accident in the progress of regular societies, and that the most arbitrary powers are obliged to seek their sanction in considerations foreign to the theories of force? It is not only in the name of interest, it is in the name of duty that all oppressors act. They rape him, but they invoke him; the doctrine of interest is therefore as impotent on its own as the means which it employs.
MACHIAVELLI.
Here I stop you; you make a part in the interest, that is enough to justify all the political necessities which do not agree with the right.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is the reason of state that you invoke. Notice, then, that I cannot base societies on precisely what destroys them. In the name of self-interest, princes and peoples, like citizens, will only commit crimes. State interest, you say! But how will I know if it is really profitable for him to do this or that iniquity? Don’t we know that the interest of the state is most often the interest of the prince in particular or that of the corrupt favorites around him? I am not exposed to similar consequences by giving law as the basis for the existence of societies, because the notion of law draws limits that interest must not cross.
That if you ask me what is the basis of the law, I will tell you that it is the morality whose precepts bridge nothing doubtful or obscure, because they are written in all religions, and they are printed in luminous characters in the consciousness of man. It is from this pure source that all civil, political, economic and international laws must flow.
Ex rodent jure, sive ex eodem font, sive ex eodem principio.
But it is here that your inconsistency breaks out; you are a Catholic, you are a Christian; we worship the same stake, you admit? its opinions, you admit morality, you admit the law in the relations of men between them, and you trample underfoot all these rules when it is a question of the State or the prince. In short, in your opinion, politics has nothing to do with morality. You allow the monarch what you defend about. Depending on whether the same bridge actions accomplished by the weak or by the strong, you glorify them or you blame them; they are crimes or virtues, according to the rank of the one who accomplishes them. You praise the prince for having made them, and you send the subject to the galleys.
So you do not think that with such maxims there is no society that can live; you believe that the subject will keep his oaths for a long time when he sees the sovereign betray them; that he will respect the laws when he finds out that the one who gave them to him has violated them, and that he is violating them every day; Do you think that he will hesitate in the way of violence, corruption, and fraud, when he sees those who are responsible for leading him walking incessantly there? Think again; know that each usurpation of the prince in the domain of the public good authorizes a similar offense in the sphere of the subject; that every political perfidy breeds special perfidy; that each violence above legitimizes a violence below. So much for what concerns the citizens among themselves.
As for what concerns them in their relations with the governors, I do not need to tell you that it is the civil war introduced in the ferment state, within the company. The silence of the people is only the truce of the vanquished, for whom the complaint is a crime. Wait until he wakes up: you have invented the theory of force; be sure he has retained it. On the first day he will break his chains; he will break them under the most futile pretext perhaps, and he will take back by force what force has snatched from him.
The maxim of despotism is the death principle of the Jesuits; kill or be killed: that is his law; it is stultification today, civil war tomorrow. At least, this is how things are done in European climates: in the East, the peoples slumber in peace in the degradation of servitude.
The princes cannot therefore afford what private morality does not allow: this is my conclusion; it is formal. You thought you embarrassed me by offering me the example of many great men who, by daring acts accomplished in violation of the laws, had given peace to their country, sometimes glory; and that’s where you get your big argument: good comes out of bad. I am little touched by it; it has not been shown to me that these daring men did more good than harm; he is zero-
– like established for me that societies would not have been saved and sustained without them. The means of salvation which they bring do not compensate for the seeds of dissolution which they introduce into States. A few years of anarchy are often much less fatal for a kingdom than several years of silent despotism.
You admire great men; I only admire large institutions. I believe that, in order to be happy, peoples have less need of men of genius than of men of integrity; but I grant you, if you will, that some of the violent enterprises of which you defend, have been able to turn to the advantage of certain States.
These acts could be justified in ancient societies where slavery and the dogma of fatality reigned. We find them in the Middle Ages and even in modern times; but as manners have softened, as the enlightenment has spread among the various peoples of Europe; Above all, as the principles of political science became better known, law was substituted for force in principles as well as in fact. Without doubt, the storms of freedom will always exist, and many crimes will still be committed in its name: but political fatalism no longer exists. If you could say in your time that despotism was a necessary evil,
you could not today, because, in the present state of mores and political institutions among the principal peoples of Europe, despotism has become impossible.
MACHIAVELLI.
Impossible?. ,, If you can prove this to me, I agree to take a step in the direction of your ideas.
MONTESQUIEU.
I will prove it to you very easily if you will follow me still.
MACHIAVELLI,
Very willingly, but take care; I think you get involved a lot.
THE THIRD DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
A thick mass of shadows is heading towards this beach; the region where we are will soon be invaded. Come this way; without it, we would soon be separated.
MACHIAVELLI.
I did not find in your last words the precision which characterized your language at the beginning of our conversation. I find you have exaggerated the consequences of the principles that are contained in the Spirit of the Laws.
MONTESQUIEU.
I have deliberately avoided making long theories in this work; If you knew it otherwise than by what has been reported to you, you would see that the particular developments which I am giving you here flow effortlessly from the principles which I have laid down. Moreover, I have no difficulty in admitting that the knowledge which I have acquired in new times has not modified or supplemented some of my ideas.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do you seriously intend to maintain that despotism is incompatible with the political state of the peoples of Europe?
MONTESQUIEU.
I didn’t say all people; but I will quote you, if you will, those among whom the development of political science has brought about this great result.
MACHIAVELLI.
Who are these peoples?
MONTESQUIEU.
England, France, Belgium, a portion of Italy, Prussia, Switzerland, the German Confederation, Holland, even Austria, that is to say, as you see, almost all the parts of Europe where the Roman world once stretched.
MACHIAVELLI.
I know a little about what has happened in Europe from 1527 to the present day, and I confess that I am very curious to hear you justify your proposal.
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, listen to me, and maybe I can convince you. It is not the men, it is the institutions that ensure the reign of liberty and good morals in the States. On the perfection or the imperfection of institutions depends all the good, but will necessarily also depend all the evil which can result for men from their union in society; and, when I ask for the best institutions, you will understand that, to use Solon’s beautiful word, I mean the most perfect institutions that the people can support.
This is to tell you that I do not conceive of impossible conditions of existence for them, and that by this I separate myself from those deplorable reformers who claim to build societies on pure rational hypotheses without taking into account the climate, habits, manners and even prejudices.
At the origin of nations, institutions are what they can. Antiquity has shown us wonderful civilizations, states in which the conditions of free government were admirably understood. The peoples of the Christian era had more difficulty in bringing their constitutions into harmony with the movement of political life; but they profited from the teachings of antiquity, and with infinitely more complicated civilizations, they nevertheless arrived at more perfect results.
One of the primary causes of anarchy, like despotism, has been the theoretical and practical ignorance in which the states of Europe have been x
s for so long on the principles that govern the organization of powers. However, when the principle of sovereignty resided solely in the person of the prince, could the right of the nation be asserted? How, when he who was responsible for carrying out the laws, was at the same time the legislator, his power could not have been tyrannical? How could citizens be guaranteed against arbitrariness, when, the legislative power and the executive power being already confused, the judicial power again came to unite in the same hand (1)?
I know very well that certain freedoms, that certain public rights which are introduced sooner or later into the less advanced political customs, did not fail to bring obstacles to the unlimited exercise of absolute royalty; that, on the other hand, the fear of making the people cry out, the spirit of gentleness of certain kings, led them to use with moderation the excessive powers with which they were invested; but it is none the less true that these precarious guarantees were at the mercy of the monarch who in principle possessed the property, rights and person of the subjects. The division of powers has brought about the problem of free societies in Europe, and if anything can alleviate for me the anxiety of the hours before the Last Judgment, it is the thought that my passage on earth was no stranger to this great emancipation.
You were born, Machiavelli, on the limits of the Middle Ages, and you have seen, with the renaissance of the arts, the dawn of modern times; but the society in the midst of which you lived was, allow me to say it, still quite imprinted with the errors of barbarism; Europe was a tournament. The ideas of war, domination and conquest filled the heads of statesmen and princes. Force was everything then, right very little, I agree; kingdoms were like the prey of conquerors; within the states, the sovereigns fought against the great vassals; the great vassals crushed the cities.
In the midst of the feudal anarchia which put all Europe in arms, the trampled peoples had become accustomed to regard the princes and the great as fatal divinities, to whom the human race was delivered. You have come in these times full of turmoil, but also full of grandeur. You have seen intrepid captains, men of iron, daring geniuses; and this world, filled with gloomy beauties in its disorder, appeared to you as it would appear to an artist whose imagination would be more struck than his moral sense; this is what, in my eyes, explains the Treatise of the Prince, and you were not so far from the truth that you are willing to say it, when a while ago, by an Italian feint, you pleased, to fathom me, to attribute it to the caprice of a diplomat. But, since you, the world has walked; the peoples today regard themselves as the arbiters of their destinies: they have, in fact as in law, destroyed the privileges, destroyed the aristocracy; they established a principle which would be very new for you, descendant of the Marquis Hugo: they established the principle of equality; they no longer see in those who govern them more than agents; they realized the principle of equality by civil laws which nothing could take away from them. They hold to these laws as to their blood, because they indeed cost their ancestors a lot of blood.
I spoke to you about wars earlier: they are still raging, I know; but the first step forward is that they no longer give the conquerors the property of conquered states today. A law that you hardly knew, international law, today governs the relations of nations among themselves, as civil law governs the relations of subjects in each nation.
After having ensured their private rights by civil laws, their public rights by treaties, the peoples wanted to put themselves in order with their princes, and they assured their political rights by constitutions. Long left to arbitrariness by the confusion of powers, which allowed the princes to make tyrannical laws in order to exercise them tyrannically, they separated the three powers, legislative, executive and judicial, by constitutional lines which cannot be crossed without the alarm be given to the whole body politic.
By this one reform, which is an immense fact, the internal public law was created, and the superior principles which constitute it are released. The person of the prince ceases to be confused with that of the State; sovereignty appears to have its source in part within the nation itself, which distributes powers between the prince and political bodies independent of each other. I do not wish to make, in front of the illustrious statesman who hears me, a developed theory of the regime which is called, in England and in France, the constitutional regime; it has become part of the customs of the principal states of Europe today, not only because it is the expression of the highest political science,but above all because it is the only practical mode of government in the presence of the ideas of modern civilization.
In all times, under the reign of liberty as under that of tyranny, we have been able to govern only by laws. It is therefore on the way in which the laws are made that all the
3.
guarantees for citizens. If it is the prince who is the sole legislator, he will only make tyrannical laws, happy if he does not upset the constitution of the state in a few years; but, in any case, we are in the midst of absolutism; if it is a senate, the oligarchy has been established, a regime odious to the people, because it gives them as many tyrants as there are masters; if it is the people, we run into anarchy, which is another way of ending up in despotism; if it is an assembly elected by the people, the first part of the problem is already solved; for this is the very basis of representative government, now in force throughout the southern part of Europe.
But an assembly of representatives of the people, which alone possessed all legislative sovereignty, would not be long in abusing its power, and causing the State to run the greatest dangers. The regime which was definitively constituted, a happy transaction between the aristocracy, the democracy and the monarchical establishment, participates at the same time of these three forms of government, by means of a weighting of powers which seems to be the chief d work of the human spirit. The person of the sovereign remains sacred, inviolable; but, while retaining a mass of capital attributions which, for the good of the State, must remain in its power, its essential role is not any more than to be the procurator of the execution of the laws.
No longer having in his hand the fullness of powers, his responsibility is effaced and passes over the heads of the ministers whom he associates with his government. The law, of which he has the exclusive proposal, or concurrently with another body of the State, is prepared by a council composed of men matured in the experience of business, submitted to an upper chamber, hereditary or life, which examines if its provisions have nothing contrary to the constitution, voted by a legislative body emanating from the suffrage of the nation, applied by an independent magistracy. If the law is vicious, it is rejected or amended by the legislative body: the upper chamber opposes its adoption, if it is contrary to the principles on which the constitution is based.
The triumph of this system so deeply conceived, and whose mechanism, you will understand, can be combined in a thousand ways, according to the temperament of the peoples to which it is applied, was to reconcile order with freedom, stability with the movement, to involve the universality of citizens in political life, by suppressing the agitations of the public square. It is the country governing itself, by the alternative displacement of majorities, which influences in the chambers on the nomination of the leading ministers,
The relations between the prince and the subjects repo-
feels, as you can see, on a vast system of guarantees whose unshakable foundations are in the civil order. No one may be affected in his person or in his property by an act of the administrative authority; individual liberty is under the protection of the magistrates; in criminal matters, the accused are tried by their peers; above all the jurisdictions, there is a supreme jurisdiction charged with reversing the judgments which would be delivered in violation of the laws. The citizens themselves are armed, for the defense of their rights, by the institution of bourgeois militias which contribute to the police of the cities; the simplest individual can, by petition, bring his complaint to the feet of the sovereign assemblies which represent the nation. Municipalities are administered by # of elected public officers. Each year, large provincial assemblies, also resulting from suffrage, meet to express the needs and wishes of the populations around them.
Such is the image too weakened, O Machiavelli, of some of the institutions which flourish today in the modern States, and in particular in my beautiful country; but since advertising is of the essence of free countries, all these institutions could not live long if they did not function in broad daylight. A power still unknown in your century, and which was only born in my time, came to give them the last breath of life. It is the press for a long time outlawed, still decried by ignorance, but to which one could apply the beautiful word that Adam Smith said when speaking of credit: It is a public road.
It is in this way, in fact, that the whole movement of ideas among modern peoples manifests itself. The press exercises in the State like police functions: it expresses the needs, translates the complaints, denounces the abuses, the arbitrary acts; it constrains all those who hold power to morality; it suffices for him to put them in the face of public opinion.
In societies thus regulated, O Machiavelli, what part could you play in the ambition of princes and in the enterprises of tyranny? I am not unaware by what convulsions. painful, this progress has triumphed. In France, freedom drowned in blood during the revolutionary period, only recovered with the Restoration. There, new commotions were still brewing; but already all the principles, all the institutions of which I spoke to you, had passed into the customs of France and of the peoples which gravitate in the sphere of its civilization. I’m done, Machiavelli. States, like sovereigns, no longer govern themselves today than by the rules of justice. The modern minister who would draw inspiration from your lessons would not stay in power for a year; the monarch who would put into practice the maxims of Prince would raise against him the reprobation of his subjects; he would be ostracized by Europe.
MACHIAVELLI.
You think?
MONTESQUIEU.
Will you forgive me for my frankness?
MACHIAVELLI.
Why no?
MONTESQUIEU,
Do I think your ideas have changed somewhat?
MACHIAVELLI.
I propose to demolish, piece by piece, all the beautiful things you have just said, and to show you that it is my doctrines alone which prevail even today, despite new ideas, despite new customs, despite your so-called principles of public law, despite all the institutions you have just told me about; but allow me, first, to ask you a question: Where have you remained in contemporary history?
MONTESQUIEU,
The notions that I have acquired on the various States of Europe go to the last days of the year 1847. The chances of my wandering march through these infinite spaces and the confused multitude of souls which fill them, do not know me. did not meet any which could have informed me beyond the period which I have just told you. Since I descended into the abode of darkness, I have spent about half a century among the peoples of the old world, and it has only been in the past quarter of a century that I have met the legions of peoples. modern; it must still be said that most of them came from the most remote corners of the universe. I don’t even know exactly what year in the world we are at.
MACHIAVELLI.
Here, therefore, the last are the first, O Montesquieu! The statesman of the Middle Ages, the politician of barbarian times, is found to know more than the philosopher of the eighteenth century about the history of modern times. The peoples are in the year of grace 1864.
MONTESQUIEU.
So please let me know, Machiavelli, I urge you, what has happened in Europe since the year 1847.
MACHIAVELLI.
No, if I may, before I have given myself the pleasure of defeating your theories.
MONTESQUIEU.
As you would like; but believe well that I do not conceive any concern in this respect. It takes centuries to change the principles and form of governments under which people have come to live. No new political education can result from the fifteen years which have just passed; and, in any case, if it were so, it would not be the doctrines of Machiavelli which would never have triumphed.
MACHIAVELLI.
You think so: listen to me in your turn.
THE FOURTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
Listening to your theories on the division of powers and on the benefits owed to it by the peoples of Europe, I could not help admiring, Montesquieu, to what extent the illusion of systems can take hold of the greatest spirits.
Seduced by the institutions of England, you believed you could make the constitutional regime the universal panacea of States; but you have counted without the irresistible movement which today tears societies away from their traditions of the day before. It will not pass two centuries before this form of government, which you admire, is in Europe only a historical memory, something old-fashioned and obsolete like Aristotle’s rule of three units.
Let me first examine your political mechanics in itself: you swing the three powers, and you confine them each in its own department; this one will make the laws, this other will apply them, a third will execute them: the prince will reign, the ministers will govern. What a wonderful thing this constitutional shift is! You have foreseen everything, regulated everything, except movement: the triumph of such a system would not be action; it would be immobility if the mechanism worked with precision; but, in reality, things will not be so.
At the first opportunity, the movement will be produced by the rupture of one of the springs which you have so carefully forged. Do you believe that the powers will remain for a long time within the constitutional limits that you have assigned them, and that they will not manage to exceed them? What is the independent legislature that will not aspire to sovereignty? What is the judiciary that will not flex at the will of public opinion? Who is the prince, especially, sovereign of a kingdom or head of a republic, who will accept without reserve the passive role to which you will have condemned him; who, in the secrecy of his thoughts, will not meditate the overthrow of the rival powers which hamper his action? In reality, you will have brought together all opposing forces, created all enterprises, given arms to all parties.You will have delivered power to the assault of all ambitions, and made the State an arena in which to will unleash the factions. In no time it will be disorder everywhere; inexhaustible rhetoricians will transform deliberative assemblies into oratory jousts; daring journalists, frantic pamphleteers will attack every day the person of the sovereign, discredit the government, the ministers, the men in place.
MONTESQUIEU.
I have known for a long time these reproaches addressed to free governments. They have no value in my eyes: abuses do not condemn institutions. I know many states that live in peace, and for a long time under such laws: I pity those who cannot live there.
MACHIAVELLI.
Wait: In your calculations, you only counted social minorities. There are gigantic populations riveted to work by poverty, as they once were by slavery. What do all your parliamentary fictions matter to their happiness? Your great political movement has ultimately only resulted in the triumph of a privileged minority by chance as the old nobility was by birth. What does it matter to the proletarian bent over his labor, overwhelmed by the weight of his destiny, that a few orators have the right to speak, that a few journalists have the right to write? You have created rights which will remain eternally for the mass of the people in a state of pure faculty, since they cannot use them. These rights, whose ideal enjoyment of which the law recognizes in him and of which necessity denies him the real exercise, are for him only a bitter irony of his destiny. I answer you that one day he will hate them, and that he will destroy them with his own hand in order to confide in despotism.
MONTESQUIEU.
What contempt does Machiavelli have for mankind, and what idea does he have of the baseness of modern peoples? Mighty God, I won’t believe you made them so vile. Machiavelli, whatever he says, ignores the principles and conditions of existence of current civilization. Work today is the common law, as it is divine law; and, far from being a sign of servitude among men, it is the bond of their association, the instrument of their equality.
There is nothing illusory about political rights for the people in States where the law does not recognize privileges and where all careers are open to individual activity. Undoubtedly, and in no society it could be otherwise, the inequality of intelligence and of fortunes involves for individuals inevitable inequalities in the exercise of their rights; but is it not enough that these rights exist for the wish for an enlightened philosophy to be fulfilled, for the emancipation of men to be assured to the extent that it can be?
For those very people whom chance has given birth to in the most humble conditions, is it nothing to live in the feeling of their independence and in their dignity as citizens? But that is only one side of the question; for if the moral greatness of peoples is linked to liberty, they are no less closely linked to it by their material interests.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is where I was waiting for you. The school to which you belong has laid down principles of which it does not seem to perceive the final consequences: you believe that they lead to the reign of reason; I will show you that they bring back to the reign of the force. Your political system, taken in its original purity, consists in giving an almost equal share of action to the various groups of forces of which societies are composed, in making social activities concur in a just proportion; you don’t want the aristocratic element to take precedence over the democratic element. However, the temperament of your institutions is to give more strength to the aristocracy than to the people, more strength to the prince than to the aristocracy, thus proportioning the powers to the political capacity of those who must exercise them.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are telling the truth.
MACHIAVELLI.
You make the different classes of society participate in public functions according to the degree of their aptitude and their knowledge; you emancipate the bourgeoisie by the vote, you contain the people by the cens; popular freedoms create – the power of opinion, the aristocracy gives the prestige of high manners, the throne throws the glory of supreme rank over the nation; you keep all the traditions, all the great memories, the worship of all the great things. On the surface we see a monarchical society, but everything is democratic at bottom; for, in reality, there are no barriers between classes, and work is the instrument of all fortunes. Isn’t that about it?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, Machiavelli; and at least you know how to understand opinions that you do not share.
MACHIAVELLI,
Well, all these beautiful things have passed or will pass like a dream; for you have a new principle with which all institutions are breaking down with lightning rapidity.
MONTESQUIEU.
What then is this principle?
MACHIAVELLI.
It is that of popular sovereignty. We
will find, do not doubt it, the squaring of the circle before arriving to reconcile the balance of the powers with the existence of such a principle among the nations where it is admitted. The people, by an absolutely inevitable consequence, will seize, one day or another, all the powers whose principle has been recognized to be in them. Will it be to keep them? No. After a few days of madness, he will throw them, out of weariness, to the first soldier of fortune who gets in his way. In your country, you saw, in 1793, how the French head-cutters treated the representative monarchy: the sovereign people asserted themselves by the torment of their king, then they littered all their rights; he gave himself to Robespierre, Barras, Bonaparte.
You are a great thinker, but you do not know the inexhaustible cowardice of peoples; I do not mean those of my time, but those of yours: crawling before strength, mercilessly before weakness, implacable for faults, indulgent for crimes, unable to endure the annoyances of a free regime, and patient until martyrdom for all the violence of daring despotism, breaking thrones in moments of anger, and giving each other. masters to whom they forgive attacks for the least of which they would have beheaded twenty constitutional kings.
Seek therefore righteousness; seek the law, the stability, the order, the respect for the so complicated forms of your parliamentary mechanism with violent, undisciplined, uneducated masses, to whom you said: You are the right, you are the masters, you are the arbiters of the state! Oh! I know very well that the prudent Montesquieu, the circumspect politician, who laid down the principles and reserved the consequences, did not write in laws the dogma of popular sovereignty; but, as you said earlier, the consequences flow in themselves from the principles you have laid down. The affinity of your doctrines with those of the Social Contract is quite evident.
Also, since the day when the French revolutionaries, jurantm verba magistri, wrote: “A constitution can only be the work” free of a convention between associates, * the monarchical and parliamentary government has been condemned to death in your homeland. . In vain we tried to restore the principles, in vain your king, Louis XVIII, on returning to France, did he attempt to trace the powers to their source by promulgating the declarations of 89 as proceeding from the royal grant, this pious fiction of the aristocratic monarchy was in too flagrant contradiction with the past: it must have vanished at the noise of the revolution of 1830, like the government of 1830, in its turn …
MONTESQUIEU.
Finish.
MACHIAVELLI.
Let’s not anticipate. What you and I know of the past authorizes me, from now on, to say that the principle of popular sovereignty is destructive of all stability, that it indefinitely consecrates the right of revolutions. It puts societies at open war against all human powers and even against God; he is the very embodiment of strength. He makes the people a ferocious brute who falls asleep when they are satiated with blood, and who are chained; and here is the invariable march followed by societies whose movement is governed by this principle: popular sovereignty breeds demagogy, demagoguery breeds anarchy, anarchy leads back to despotism. Despotism, for you, is barbarism. Well, you see that the people are returning to barbarism by the way of civilization.
But that is not all, and I claim that from still other points of view despotism is the only form of government which is really appropriate to the social condition of modern peoples. You told me that their material interests linked them to freedom; here, you play too good a game for me. Which are, in general, the States which need freedom? They are those who live by great feelings, by great passions, by heroism, by faith, even by honor, as you said in your time when speaking of the French monarchy. Stoicism can make a people free; Christianity, under certain conditions, could have the same privilege. I understand the necessities of freedom in Athens, in Rome, among nations which only breathed by the glory of arms,whose war satisfied all the expansions, which moreover needed all the energies of patriotism, all the civic enthusiasms to triumph over their enemies.
Public freedoms were the natural heritage of states in which servile and industrial functions were left to slaves, where man was useless if he was not a citizen. I still conceive of freedom in certain periods of the Christian era, and in particular in the small states linked together by systems of confederation similar to those of the Hellenic republics, as in Italy and Germany. Here I find part of the natural causes which made freedom necessary. It would have been almost harmless in times when the principle of authority was not in question, when religion had an absolute empire over minds, when the people, placed under the tutelary regime of corporations, walked obediently under the rule. hand of his pastors. If his political emancipation had been undertaken then,it could have been without danger; for it would have been accomplished in conformity with the principles on which the existence of all societies rests. But, with your great States, which no longer live except by industry; with your populations without God and without faith, in times when peoples are no longer satisfied by war, and where their violent activity is necessarily transferred within, freedom, with the principles which serve as its foundation, can only be ‘a cause of dissolution and ruin. I add that it is no more necessary for the moral needs of individuals than it is for States.in times when peoples are no longer satisfied by war, and where their violent activity is necessarily transferred within, freedom, with the principles which serve as its foundation, can only be a cause of dissolution and ruin. I add that it is no more necessary for the moral needs of individuals than it is for States.in times when peoples are no longer satisfied by war, and where their violent activity is necessarily transferred within, freedom, with the principles which serve as its foundation, can only be a cause of dissolution and ruin. I add that it is no more necessary for the moral needs of individuals than it is for States.
From the weariness of ideas and the shock of revolutions have emerged cold and disillusioned societies which have reached indifference in politics as in religion, which have no other stimulus than material pleasures, which no longer live except by interest, which has no other cult than gold, whose mercantile manners dispute it with those of the Jews whom they have taken as models. Do you believe that it is for the sake of freedom itself that the lower classes are trying to assault power? It is out of hatred of those who have; fundamentally, it is to wrest their wealth from them, an instrument of the pleasures they envy.
Those who own cry out from all sides
an energetic arm, a strong power; they ask only one thing, it is to protect the State against agitations which its weak constitution could not resist, to give to themselves the security necessary so that they can enjoy and do their business. What forms of government do you want to apply to societies where corruption has crept in everywhere, where fortune is only acquired through the surprises of fraud, where morality can no longer be guaranteed except in repressive laws, where the feeling of the fatherland itself is extinguished in I do not know what universal cosmopolitanism?
I see no salvation for these societies, true colossi with feet of clay, except in the institution of excessive centralization, which places all the public force at the disposal of those who govern; in a hierarchical administration similar to that of the Roman Empire, which mechanically regulates all the movements of individuals; in a vast system of legislation which takes in detail all the freedoms which have been imprudently given; in a gigantic despotism, finally, which can strike immediately and at any time, all that resists, all that complains. The Caesarism of the Lower Empire seems to me to achieve quite well what I wish for the well-being of modern societies. Thanks to these vast devices which are already working, have I been
said, in addition to a country in Europe, they can live in peace, as in China, as in Japan, as in India. A vulgar prejudice must not make us despise these oriental civilizations, the institutions of which we learn every day to better appreciate. The Chinese people, for example, are very commercial and very well administered.
THE FIFTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU,
I hesitate to answer you, Machiavelli, because there is in your last words I do not know what satanic mockery, which internally leaves me with the suspicion that your speeches do not completely agree with your secret thoughts. Yes, you have the fatal eloquence which destroys the trace of the truth, and you are indeed the dark genius whose name is still the terror of the present generations. I readily admit, however, that with such a powerful mind one would lose too much by keeping quiet; I want to listen to you to the end, and I even want to answer you, although from now on I have little hope of convincing you. You have made a truly grim picture of modern society; I cannot know if it is faithful, but it is at least incomplete, because in everything, alongside evil there is good, and you have shown me only evil; you don’t have me,
besides, not given the means to verify to what point you are in the truth because I do not know neither of which people nor which States you wanted to speak when you made me this gloomy picture of contemporary manners.
MACHIAVELLI.
Well, let us admit that I took as an example that of all the nations of Europe which is the most advanced in civilization, and to whom, I hasten to say it, could the least apply the portrait that I just did …
MONTESQUIEU.
So is it France that you want to talk about? MACHIAVELLI.
Well yes.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are right, for this is where the dark doctrines of materialism have penetrated least. It is France which has remained the center of great ideas and great passions, the source of which you believe has dried up, and it is from there that these great principles of public law started, to which you have no place in the government. States.
MACHIAVELLI.
You can add that this is the dedicated field of experience of political theories.
MONTESQUIEU.
I do not know of any experience which has yet benefited in a lasting manner from the establishment of despotism, in France no more than elsewhere, among contemporary nations; and this is what first of all makes me find very little in conformity with the reality of things, your theories on the necessity of absolute power. Until now, I only know of two states in Europe completely deprived of these liberal institutions, which have changed the pure monarchical element on all sides: these are Turkey and Russia, and even if you look closely at the movements interiors that operate within this last power, perhaps you would find there the symptoms of an approaching transformation. You tell me, it is true, that, in a more or less near future, the peoples, threatened with an inevitable dissolution, will return to despotism as to the ark of salvation; that they will be constituted in the form of great absolute monarchies, analogous to those of Asia; this is only a prediction; in how long will it take place?
MACHIAVELLI.
Before a century.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are a diviner; a century is always so much gained, but let me tell you now why your prediction will not come true. Modern societies should no longer be viewed today with the eyes of the past. Their
Manners, their habits, their needs, everything has changed. We should not, therefore, rely wholeheartedly on the inductions of historical analogy when it comes to judging their destinies. Above all, we must be careful not to take for universal laws facts which are only accidents, and to transform into general rules the necessities of such situations or such times. From the fact that despotism has happened several times in history, as a consequence of social disturbances, does it follow that it must be taken as a rule of government? From what it may have served as a transition in the past, shall I conclude that it is suitable for resolving the crises of modern times? Isn’t it more rational to say that other ailments call for other remedies, other problems other solutions, other social mores other political mores? An invariable law of societies is that they tend to perfection, to progress; eternal wisdom has them, if I may say so, condemned; she refused them movement in the opposite direction. This progress must be achieved.
MACHIAVELLI.
Or that they die.
MONTESQUIEU.
Let’s not go to extremes; societies never die when they are in the process of being born. When they were formed
-Yes
killed in whatever way suits them, their institutions can deteriorate, decay and perish; but they lasted for several centuries. It is thus that the various peoples of Europe have passed, by successive transformations, from the feudal system to the monarchical system, and from the pure manarchic system to the constitutional system. This progressive development, the unity of which is so imposing, is not fortuitous; it happened as the necessary consequence of the movement which took place in ideas before being translated into facts.
Societies cannot have other forms of government than those which are in keeping with their principles, and it is against this absolute law that you register yourself, when you believe despotism compatible with the old civilization. As long as the peoples have regarded sovereignty as a pure emanation of the divine will, they have submitted themselves without a murmur to absolute power; as long as their institutions were insufficient to ensure their progress, they accepted arbitrariness. But, from the day when their rights were recognized and solemnly declared; from the day when more fruitful institutions were able to solve by freedom all the functions of the social body, the policy for the use of princes fell from its heights; power has become like a dependency of the public domain; the art of gou-
Vernement turned into a business of administration. Today things are ordered in such a way, in States, that the leading power appears only as the engine of organized forces.
Certainly, if you suppose these societies infected with all the corruption, all the vices of which you spoke to me only a moment ago, they will march with a rapid step towards decomposition; but how do you not see that the argument that you draw from it is a true begging of principle? Since when does freedom lower souls and degrade characters? These are not the lessons of history; for it attests everywhere in fiery dashes that the greatest peoples have been the freest peoples. If manners have degraded, as you say, in some part of Europe that I do not know, it is because despotism has passed there; it is because freedom would have died out there; we must therefore maintain it where it is, and restore it where it is no longer.
We are, at this moment, do not forget it, on the ground of the principles; and if yours differ from mine, I ask them to be invariable; now, I no longer know where I am when I hear you extolling freedom in antiquity, and proscribing it in modern times, rejecting it or admitting it depending on the time or place. These distinctions, supposing them to be justified, nevertheless leave the principle intact, and it is to the principle alone that I am attached.
MACHIAVELLI.
Like a skilful pilot, I see that you avoid the pitfalls, by staying in the high seas. Generalities are of great help in the discussion; but I confess that I am very impatient to know how the grave Montesquieu will get away with the principle of popular sovereignty. I have not been able to know, until that moment, whether or not it was part of your system. Do you admit it, or don’t you admit it?
MONTESQUIEU.
I cannot answer a question which arises in these terms.
MACHIAVELLI.
I knew very well that your reason itself would be troubled by this phantom.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are wrong, Machiavelli; but, before answering you, I had to remind you of what my writings were and the character of the mission they were able to fulfill. You have made my name supportive of the iniquities of the French Revolution: it is a very severe judgment for the philosopher who has taken such a cautious step in the search for the truth. Born in a century of intellectual effervescence, on the eve of a revolution which de-
The old forms of monarchical government were to be carried away to my homeland, I can say that none of the imminent consequences of the movement which was taking place in ideas escaped my view. I could not fail to recognize that the system of the division of powers would necessarily one day shift the seat of sovereignty.
This principle, poorly understood, poorly defined, poorly applied above all, could generate terrible ambiguities, and upset French society from top to bottom. The feeling of these dangers became the rule of my works. So while imprudent innovators, immediately attacking the source of power, were preparing, without their knowledge, a formidable catastrophe, I applied myself only to study the forms of free government, to identify the principles properly so called which preside over it. their establishment. Statesman rather than philosopher, jurist consult rather than theologian, practical legislator, if the boldness of such a word is permitted to me, rather than a theoretician, I thought I was doing more for my country by teaching it to govern itself, than questioning the very principle of authority. God forbid, however, that I try to make myself a purer merit at the expense of those who, like me, have sought the truth in good faith! We have all made mistakes, but each is responsible for his works.
Yes, Machiavelli, and it is a concession that I do not hesitate to make to you, you were right earlier when you said that the emancipation of the French people should have been made in accordance with higher principles. which presides over the existence of human societies, and this reservation lets you foresee the judgment that I am going to pass on the principle of popular sovereignty.
First of all, I do not accept a designation which seems to exclude the most enlightened classes of society from sovereignty. This distinction is fundamental, because it will make a state a pure democracy or a representative state. If sovereignty resides anywhere, it resides in the whole nation; I will therefore first call it national sovereignty. But the idea of this sovereignty is not an absolute truth, it is only relative. The sovereignty of human power corresponds to a deeply subversive idea, the sovereignty of human rights; it is this materialist and atheistic doctrine which precipitated the French Revolution in blood, and inflicted upon it the opprobrium of despotism after the decree of independence. It is not correct to say that nations are absolute masters of their destinies, for their sovereign master is God himself, and they will never be outside his power. If they had absolute sovereignty, they could do anything, even against justicen eternal justice, even against God; who would dare to go that far? But the principle of divine right, with the meaning which is commonly attached to it “is not a less fatal principle, because it condemns peoples to obscurantism, to arbitrariness, to nothingness, it logically reconstitutes the regime. of the castes, he makes the peoples a herd of slaves, led, as in India, by the hand of the priests, and left under the rod of the master. How could it be otherwise? If the sovereign is the messenger of God, if he is the very representative of the Divinity on earth, he has all power over human creatures subject to his empire, and this power will have no restraint except in general rules. equity, which will always be easy to overcome.
It is in the field which separates these two extreme opinions that the furious battles of party spirit have been fought; some exclaim: No divine authority! the others: No human authority! O Supreme Providence, my reason refuses to accept one or the other of these alternatives; they both seem to me an equal blasphemy against your wisdom! Between divine right which excludes man and human right which excludes God, there is the truth, Machiavelli; both nations and individuals are free in the hands of God. They have all the rights, all the powers, with the charge of using them according to the rules of eternal justice. Sovereignty is human in the sense that it is given by men, and that it is men who exercise it; it is divine in the sense that it is instituted by God, and which can only be exercised according to the precepts he has established.
THE SIXTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I would like to arrive at specific consequences. How far does the hand of God extend over mankind? Who is it that makes sovereigns?
MONTESQUIEU.
The people
MACHIAVELLI.
It is written: Per me reges regnant Which literally means: By me kings reign. God makes kings.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is a translation for the use of the Prince, O Machiavelli. and it was borrowed from you in this century by one of your most illustrious partisans (i), but it is not that of Holy Scripture. God instituted sovereignty, he does not institute sovereignty. His almighty hand stopped there, because
((1) Machiavelli obviously alludes here to Joseph de Maistre, whose name is found further on, [Editor’s Note,] this is where human free will begins. Kings reign according to my commandments, they must reign according to my law, this is the meaning of the divine book. If it were otherwise, it would have to be said that both good and bad princes are established by Providence; it would be necessary to bow before Nero as before Titus, before Caligula as before Vespasian. No, God did not want the most sacrilegious dominations to be able to invoke his protection, that the most vile tyrannies could claim his investiture, To peoples and kings he left the responsibility for their acts.)
MACHIAVELLI.
I very much doubt that any of this is orthodox. Anyway, according to you, it is the people who have sovereign authority?
MONTESQUIEU.
Beware, in contesting it, this means to rise up against a truth of pure common sense. This is not a novelty in history. In ancient times, in the Middle Ages, wherever domination was established apart from invasion or conquest, sovereign power arose through the free will of peoples, in the original form of election. To cite just one example, this is how in France the head of the Carolingian race succeeded the descendants of Clovis, and the dynasty of Hugh Capet to that of Charlemagne (i). No doubt heredity has come to replace the election. The brilliance of the services rendered, the public recognition, the traditions fixed sovereignty in the principal families of Europe, and nothing was more legitimate. But the principle of national omnipotence has constantly been found at the bottom of revolutions, it has always been called for the consecration of new powers. It is an anterior and pre-existing principle which has only been realized more closely in the various constitutions of modern states.
MACHIAVELLI.
But if it is the peoples who choose their masters, can they also overthrow them? If they have the right to establish the form of government that suits them, who prevents them from changing it at will? It will not be the regime of order and liberty which will emerge from your doctrines, it will be the indefinite era of revolutions.
MONTESQUIEU.
You confuse the law with the abuse that can result from its exercise, the principles with their application; these are fundamental distinctions, without which one cannot agree.
MACHIAVELLI.
Don’t hope to escape me, I ask for logical reasons; refuse them to me if you want. I want to know if, according to your principles, the peoples have the right to overthrow their sovereigns?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, in extreme cases and for just causes.
MACHIAVELLI.
Who will be the judge of these extreme cases and of the justice of these extremes?
MONTESQUIEU.
And who do you want to be, if not the people themselves? Have things been different since the world began? This is a formidable sanction, no doubt, but salutary, but inevitable. How do you not see that the contrary doctrine, that which would command men to respect the most odious governments, would make them fall back under the yoke of monarchical fatalism?
MACHIAVELLI.
Your system has only one disadvantage, which is that it supposes the infallibility of reason among peoples; but do they not, like men, have their passions, their errors, their injustices?
MONTESQUIEU.
When peoples make mistakes, they will be punished like men who have sinned against the moral law.
MACHIAVELLI.
And how?
MONTESQUIEU.
They will be punished by the scourges of discord, by anarchy, by despotism itself. There is no other righteousness on earth, pending that of God.
MACHIAVELLI.
You have just pronounced the word despotism, you see that it is coming back to it.
MONTESQUIEU.
This objection is not worthy of your great mind, Machiavelli; I have lent myself to the most extreme consequences of the principles you are fighting, that was enough for the notion of truth to be distorted. God has given people neither the power nor the will to change in this way the forms of government which are the essential mode of their existence. In political societies as in organized beings, the nature of things itself limits the expansion of free forces. The scope of your argument must be limited to what is acceptable for the reason.
You believe that, under the influence of modern ideas, revolutions will be more frequent; they will not be more, it is possible that they will be less. Nations, in fact, as you said earlier, currently live by industry, and what seems to you a cause of servitude is at the same time a principle of order and freedom. Industrial civilizations have wounds that I am not unaware of, but we must not deny their benefits, nor distort their tendencies. Societies which live by work, by exchange, by credit are essentially Christian societies, whatever one may say, for all these so powerful and so varied forms of industry are basically only the application of some great moral ideas borrowed from Christianity, the source of all force as of all truth.
Industry plays such a considerable part in the movement of modern societies, that one cannot make, from the point of view in which you place yourself, any exact calculation without taking into account its influence; and this influence is not at all what you thought you could assign to it. Science which seeks the relations of industrial life and the maxims which emerge from it are all that is most contrary to the principle of the concentration of powers.
The tendency of political economy is to see in the political organism only a necessary but very costly mechanism, the springs of which must be simplified, and it reduces the role of government to functions so elementary that its more the great disadvantage is perhaps to destroy its prestige. Industry is the enemy of revolutions, because without social order it perishes and with it stops the vital movement of modern peoples. It cannot do without freedom, for it lives only through manifestations of freedom; and, notice it well, freedoms in matters of industry necessarily engender political freedoms, so much so that it has been said that the peoples most advanced in industry are also the most advanced in freedom. Leave India there and leave China living under the blind fate of absolute monarchy, take a look at Europe, and you will see the light.
You have just pronounced the word despotism again, well, Machiavelli, you whose dark genius has so deeply assimilated all the subterranean paths, all the occult combinations, all the artifices of law and government with the help of which one can link up the movement of arms and of thought among peoples; you who despise men, you who dream for them of the terrible dominions of the East, you whose political doctrines are borrowed from the terrifying theories of Indian mythology, please tell me, I beg you, how you would go about organizing despotism among peoples whose public law is essentially based on liberty whose morality and religion all develop in the same direction,among Christian nations which live by commerce and by industry, in States whose political bodies are in the presence of press which throws floods of light into the darkest corners of power; call upon all the resources of your powerful imagination, seek, invent, and if you solve this problem, I will declare with you that the modern mind is defeated.
DIALOGUE IN HELL BETWEEN MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU
MACHIAVELLI.
Take care, you are giving me a good game, I could take you at your word.
MONTESQUIEU.
Do it, I implore you.
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not intend to miss it.
MONTESQUIEU.
In a few hours we may be apart. These areas are not known to you, follow me in the detours that I am going to make with you along this dark path, we will be able to avoid for a few more hours the ebb of the shadows that you see there.
THE SEVENTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
We can stop here.
MONTESQUIEU.
I am listening to you.
MACHIAVELLI.
I must tell you first that you were completely wrong in the application of my principles. Despotism always presents itself to you with the obsolete forms of Eastern monarchism, but that is not how I understand it; with new societies, new procedures must be employed. Today, in order to govern, it is not a question of committing violent iniquities, of beheading his enemies, of stripping his subjects of their property, of lavishing punishment; no, death, spoliation and physical torment can only play a rather secondary role in the internal politics of modern states.
MONTESQUIEU.
It’s happy.
MACHIAVELLI.
No doubt I have little admiration, I confess, for your cylinder and pipe civilizations; but I am walking, believe it, with the century; the power of the doctrines to which my name is attached is that they adapt to all times and to all situations. Machiavelli today has grandsons who know the price of his lessons. I am believed to be very old, and every day I am getting younger on earth.
MONTESQUIEU.
Are you making fun of yourself?
MACHIAVELLI.
Listen to me and you will be the judge. Today it is less a question of violating men than of disarming them, of compressing their political passions than of erasing them, of fighting their instincts than of deceiving them, of proscribing their ideas than of giving them the exchange by appropriating them. .
MONTESQUIEU.
And how is that? Because I do not hear this language.
MACHIAVELLI.
Allow; this is the moral part of the policy, we will come to the applications shortly. The main secret of government is to weaken the public mind, to the point of completely disinterested in the ideas and principles with which revolutions are made today. In all times, people as well as men have paid for themselves with words. Appearances are almost always enough for them; they don’t ask for more. It is therefore possible to establish artificial institutions which respond to a language and to ideas which are also artificial; one must have the talent to rob the parties of this liberal phraseology, with which they are arming themselves against the government. The peoples must be saturated with it to the point of weariness, even disgust.
We often talk today about the power of opinion, I will show you that we make it express what we want when we know the hidden springs of power. But before thinking of directing it, we must stun it, strike it with uncertainty by surprising contradictions, operate on it incessant diversions, dazzle it with all kinds of various movements, imperceptibly lead it astray in its ways. . One of the great secrets of the day is knowing how to seize hold of popular prejudices and passions, so as to introduce a confusion of principles which makes impossible any agreement between those who speak the same language and have the same interests.
MONTESQUIEU.
Where are you going with these words whose obscurity has something sinister about?
7
MACHIAVELLI.
If the wise Montesquieu intends to put sentiment in the place of politics, I must perhaps stop here; I did not claim to place myself on the ground of morality. You challenged me to stop the movement in your societies endlessly tormented by the spirit of anarchy and revolt. Will you let me say how I would solve the problem? You can shelter your qualms by accepting this thesis as a matter of pure curiosity.
MONTESQUIEU.
Is.
MACHIAVELLI.
I can imagine, moreover, that you ask me for more precise indications, I will get there; but let me tell you first on what essential conditions the prince can hope today to consolidate his power. It will have to endeavor above all to destroy the parties, to dissolve collective forces wherever they exist, to paralyze individual initiative in all its manifestations; then the level of character will drop of itself, and all arms will soon soften against bondage. Absolute power will no longer be an accident, it will become a need. These political precepts are not entirely new, but, as I told you, it is the procedures that must be.
Many of these results can be achieved by simple police and administrative regulations. In your societies so beautiful, so well ordered, in the place of absolute monarchs, you have put a monster called the State, the new Briarée whose arms extend everywhere, a colossal organism of tyranny in whose shadow the despotism will always be reborn. Well, under the invocation of the State, nothing will be easier than to consume the occult work of which I spoke to you earlier, and the most powerful means of action perhaps will be precisely those that we will have the talent to borrow from this same industrial regime which is your admiration.
With the help of regulatory power alone, I would set up, for example, immense financial monopolies, reservoirs of public wealth, on which the fate of all private fortunes would so closely depend, which would be swallowed up with the credit of the State the day after any political disaster. You are an economist, Montesquieu, weigh the value of this combination.
Head of government, all my edicts, all my ordinances would constantly tend to the same goal: to annihilate collective and individual forces; to develop excessively the preponderance of the State, to make it the sovereign protector, promoter and remunerator.
Here is another combination borrowed from the industrial order: In the present day the aristocracy, as a political force, has disappeared; but the territorial bourgeoisie is still a dangerous element of resistance for governments, because it is of itself independent; it may be necessary to impoverish it or even ruin it completely. It suffices, for this, to increase the charges weighing on land ownership, to maintain agriculture in a state of relative inferiority, to excessively favor trade and industry, but mainly speculation; for the too great prosperity of industry can itself become a danger, by creating too great a number of independent fortunes.
We will react usefully against the big industrialists, against the manufacturers, by the excitement of a disproportionate luxury, by the rise of the false wages, by deep attacks skilfully carried to the sources of the production. I do not need to develop these ideas, you have a wonderful feeling under what circumstances and under what pretexts all this can be done. The interest of the people, and even a kind of zeal for liberty, for the great economic principles, will easily cover, if one wishes, the real goal. It is needless to add that the perpetual maintenance of a formidable army ceaselessly exercised by foreign wars must be the complement.
essential element of this system; it is necessary to arrive at the fact that there are no longer, in the State, anything but proletarians, a few millionaires and soldiers.
MONTESQUIEU.
Keep going.
MACHIAVELLI.
So much for the internal policy of the state. On the outside, from one end of Europe to the other, we must stimulate the revolutionary fermentation that is being squeezed at home. Two considerable advantages result from this: the liberal agitation on the outside leads to the compression of the inside. In addition, by doing so, we keep all the powers in check, among which we can make order or disorder at will. The main point is to entangle all the threads of European policy through cabinet intrigues so as to play in turn the powers with which one deals. Do not think that this duplicity, if it is well supported, can turn to the detriment of a sovereign. Alexander VI never did anything but deceive in his diplomatic negotiations and yet he always succeeded, so much did he have the science of cunning (i).But in what you call official language today, there needs to be a striking contrast, and here one cannot affect too much the spirit of loyalty and conciliation; the peoples who see only the apparatus
(1) Treatise of the Prince, p. 114, c. XVII.
7.
in the face of things, will give a reputation for wisdom to the sovereign who will know how to behave in this way.
To any internal agitation, he must be able to respond with an external war; to any imminent revolution, by a general war; but as, in politics, words must never agree with deeds, it is necessary that, in these various conjunctures, the prince be skilful enough to disguise his true designs under contrary designs; he must always be prepared to yield to the pressure of public opinion when he carries out what his hand has secretly prepared. •
To sum up the whole system in one word, the revolution is contained in the State, on the one hand, by the terror of anarchy, on the other, by bankruptcy, and, on the whole, by the general war.
You have already seen, by the rapid indications that I have just given you, what an important role the art of speech is called upon to play in modern politics. I am far, as you will see, from disdaining the press, and I could use the platform if necessary; the main thing is to use against your adversaries all the weapons they could use against you. Not content with relying on the violent force of democracy, I would like to borrow their most learned resources from the subtleties of law. When we make decisions that may seem
be [unjust or reckless, it is essential to know how to state them in good terms, to support them from the highest reasons of morality and law-
The power that I dream of, far, as you can see, from having barbaric mores, must attract to itself all the strengths and talents of the civilization in which it lives. He will have to surround himself with publicists, lawyers, jurisconsults, men of practice and administration, people who know in depth all the secrets, all the springs of social life, who speak all languages, who have studied man in all walks of life. You have to take them everywhere, anywhere, because these people render amazing services by the ingenious procedures which they apply to politics. It takes, with that, a whole world of economists, bankers, industrialists, capitalists, men with projects, men with millions, because at the bottom will be resolved by a question of figures.
As for the main dignities, the main branches of power, we must arrange to give them to men whose antecedents and character put an abyss between them and other men, each of whom has to wait only for death or death. ‘exile in the event of a change of government and either in the need to defend everything that is to the last breath.
Suppose for a moment that I have at my disposal the various moral and material resources which I have just indicated to you, and now give me some nation of some kind, do you hear! You regard it as a capital point, in the Spirit of Law, not to change the character of a nation (i) when you want to keep it original vigor, well, I wouldn’t ask you twenty years to transform most completely the most indomitable European character and to make it as docile to tyranny as that of the smallest people of Asia.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have just added, by playing yourself, a chapter to the Prince’s treatise. Whatever your doctrines, I do not dispute them; I’m just making one observation to you. It is obvious that you have by no means kept the commitment you made; the use of all these means presupposes the existence of absolute power, and I asked you precisely how you could establish it in political societies which are based on liberal institutions.
MACHIAVELLI.
Your observation is perfectly correct and I
(1) Esp. laws, p, 252ets.> üv. XIX, ch, V,
do not intend to escape it. This beginning was only a preface.
MONTESQUIEU.
I put you in the presence of a State founded on representative institutions, monarchy or republic; I am speaking to you of a nation familiar with freedom for a long time, and I ask you, how, from there, you can return to absolute power.
MACHIAVELLI.
Nothing is easier.
MONTESQUIEU.
Let’s see?
PART II.
THE EIGHTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I take the hypothesis which is the most contrary to me, I take a State constituted as a republic. With a monarchy, the role I propose to play would be too easy. I am taking a Republic, because with such a form of government, I am going to meet resistance, almost insurmountable in appearance, in ideas, in manners, in laws. Does this assumption bother you? I accept from your hands a State whatever its form, large or small I suppose endowed with all the institutions that guarantee freedom, and I address this one question to you: Do you believe that power is immune from a helping hand or what today is called a coup d’etat?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, this is true; but you will grant me at least that such an enterprise will be singularly difficult in contemporary political societies, such as they are organized.
MACHIAVELLI.
And why? Are not these societies, as always, in the grip of factions? Are there not everywhere elements of civil war, parties, suitors?
MONTESQUIEU.
It’s possible ; but I think I can make you feel with a word where your error lies. These usurpations, necessarily very rare because they are full of perils and which are repugnant to modern manners, supposing that they succeed, would not have the importance which you seem to attribute to them. A change of power would not lead to a change of institutions. A pretender to trouble the State, so be it; his party will triumph, I admit; the power is in other hands, that is all; but public law and the very foundations of institutions remain firm. This is what touches me.
MACHIAVELLI.
Is it true that you have such an illusion? MONTESQUIEU.
Establish the opposite.
MACHIAVELLI.
So you grant me, for a moment, the success of an armed enterprise against the established power?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes.
MACHIAVELLI.
Notice then in what situation I find myself placed. I momentarily removed any power other than mine. If the institutions still standing can raise any obstacle before me, it is purely formal; in fact, the acts of my will cannot meet any real resistance; finally I am in that extra-legal condition, which the Romans called with such a beautiful word and so powerfully energetic: dictatorship. That is to say, I can do whatever I want at the present time, that I am a legislator, an executor, a vigilante, and on horseback as an army commander.
Remember this. Now I have triumphed through the support of a faction, which means that this event could only be accomplished in the midst of deep internal dissension. We can say at random, but without being mistaken, what are the causes. It will be an antagonism between the aristocracy and the people or between the people and the bourgeoisie. Basically, it can only be that; on the surface, it will be a jumble of ideas, opinions, influences and opposing currents, as in all states where freedom has been unleashed for a moment. There will be political elements of all kinds there, sections of parties that were once victorious, today.
8 of yesterday vanquished, unbridled ambitions, ardent lusts, implacable hatreds, terrors everywhere, men of all opinion and all doctrine, restorers of old regimes, demagogues, anarchists, utopians, all in the work, all also working on their side to overthrow the established order. What should we conclude from such a situation? Two things: the first is that the country has a great need for rest and that it will not refuse anything to anyone who can give it to it; the second is that in the midst of this division of parties, there is no real force, or rather that there is only one, the people.
I myself am a victorious suitor; I have, I suppose, a great historical name suitable to influence the imagination of the masses. Like Pisistratus, like Caesar, like Nero himself; I will rely on the people; it is the ABC of every usurper. This is the blind power which will give the means to do everything with impunity, this is the authority, this is the name which will cover everything. The people indeed care about your legal fictions and your constitutional guarantees!
I have been silent in the midst of the factions, and now you will see how I am going to march.
Perhaps you remember the rules that I established in the Prince’s Treaty to preserve the conquered provinces. The usurper of a state is in a situation analogous to that of a conqueror. He is condemned to renew everything, to dissolve the State, to destroy the city, to change the face of manners.
This is the goal, but in the present times it should be sought only by oblique ways, roundabout means, skilful combinations, and, as far as possible, free from violence. I will therefore not destroy the institutions directly, but I will touch them one by one with an unnoticed wave of the hand that will disturb the mechanism. Thus I will touch in turn to the judicial organization, to suffrage, to the press, to individual freedom, to education.
Over and above the primitive laws I will pass a whole new legislation which, without expressly repealing the old one, will first mask it, then soon will completely erase it. These are my general designs, now you will see the workmanship details.
MONTESQUIEU.
Why are you still in the gardens of Ruccellai, O Machiavelli, to teach these beautiful lessons, and how regrettable it is that posterity cannot hear you!
MACHIAVELLI.
Rest assured ; for those who can read, all this is in the Prince’s treatise.
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, you are the day after your coup, what are you going to do? *
MACHIAVELLI.
A big thing, then a very small one.
MONTESQUIEU.
Let’s see the big one first?
MACHIAVELLI.
After the success of a coup against the established power, all is not finished, and the parties do not generally consider themselves defeated. We do not yet know exactly what the usurper’s energy is worth, we are going to try it, we are going to rise up against him, arms in hand. The time has come to instill a terror that strikes the entire city and makes the most intrepid souls faint.
MONTESQUIEU.
What are you going to do? You told me you repudiated the blood.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is not about false humanity. Society is threatened, it is in a state of self-defense; the excess of rigors and even cruelty will prevent further bloodshed in the future. Don’t ask me what we’ll do; souls must be terrified once and for all and fear must soak them.
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes I remember ; <> is what you teach-
gnez in the Treaty of the Prince by recounting the sinister execution of Borgia in Cesena (1). You are the same.
MACHIAVELLI.
No, no, you will see it later; I only act out of necessity, and I suffer from it.
MONTESQUIEU.
But who will shed this blood?
DIALOGUE IN HELL BETWEEN MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU
MACHIAVELLI.
The army! this great vigilante of the States; she whose hand never dishonors her victims. Two results of the greatest importance will be achieved by the intervention of the army in the repression. From that moment, on the one hand, it will find itself forever in hostility with the civilian population that it will have punished without consideration, on the other it will be linked in an indissoluble way to the fate of its leader.
MONTESQUIEU.
And you believe that this blood will not fall on you?
MACHIAVELLI.
No, because in the eyes of the people, the sovereign, ultimately, is foreign to the excesses of a soldiery that it is not always easy to contain. Those who can be responsible for it will be the generals, the ministers who will have executed
‘1 ■ i.
(1) Treatise of the Prince, p. 4 * 7, ch. LIVES.
8.
– Sure
my orders. These, I tell you, will be devoted to me until their last breath, because they know well what awaits them after me.
MONTESQUIEU.
So this is your first act of sovereignty! Let us now see the second î
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not know if you have noticed the power of small means in politics. After what I have just told you, I will have all the new money minted in my image, of which I will issue a considerable quantity.
MONTESQUIEU.
But in the midst of the state’s first worries, it would be a childish measure.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do you believe that? You haven’t practiced power. The human effigy printed on the currency is the very sign of power. At first glance there will be proud spirits who will quiver with anger, but we will get used to it; the very enemies of my power will be obliged to have my portrait in their purse. It is quite certain that we gradually get used to looking with softer eyes at the figures which are everywhere imprinted on the material sign of our pleasures. From the day when my effigy is on the coin, I am king.
MONTESQUIEU.
I admit that this preview is new to me;
but let’s move on. You have not forgotten that the new peoples have the weakness to give themselves constitutions which are the guarantees of their rights? With your power resulting from force, with the projects that you reveal to me, you will perhaps find yourself embarrassed in the presence of a fundamental charter whose principles, all the rules, all the provisions are contrary to your maxims of government. .
MACHIAVELLI.
I’ll make another constitution, that’s all.
MONTESQUIEU.
And do you think it won’t be difficult?
MACHIAVELLI.
Where would the difficulty be? For the moment, there is no other will, no other force than mine, and I have the popular element as my basis for action.
MONTESQUIEU.
That is true. However, I have a scrujUe: from what you have just told me, I imagine that your constitution will not be a monument of liberty. Do you think that a single crisis of force, a single happy violence will suffice to rob a nation of all its rights, all its conquests ?, all its institutions, all the principles with which it has become accustomed to live?
MACHIAVELLI.
Allow! I’m not going so fast. I told you, a few moments ago, that peoples were like men, that they were more attached to appearances than to the reality of things; this is a rule in politics, the indications of which I would scrupulously follow; please remind me of the principles you hold most dear and you will see that I am not as embarrassed by them as you seem to think.
MONTESQUIEU.
What are you going to do with it, O Machiavelli?
MACHIAVELLI.
Don’t be afraid, name them for me. MONTESQUIEU.
I don’t trust it, I admit it to you.
MACHIAVELLI.
Well, I’ll remind you of them myself. You would probably not fail to tell me about the principle of the separation of powers, freedom of speech and of the press, religious freedom, individual freedom, the right of association, legality before the law, the inviolability of property and domicile, the right of petition, the free consent of taxation, the proportionality of penalties, the non-retroactivity of laws; is it enough and do you want more?
MONTESQUIEU.
I think it’s a lot more than it takes
Machiavelli, to make your government uncomfortable.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is what deceives you, and this is so true, that I see no objection to proclaiming these principles; I will even make it, if you like, the preamble to my constitution.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have already proved to me that you are a great magician.
MACHIAVELLI.
There is no magic in it, there is only political know-how.
MONTESQUIEU.
But how, having written these principles at the head of your constitution, will you go about not applying them?
MACHIAVELLI.
Ali! take care, I told you that I would proclaim these principles, but I did not tell you that I would inscribe them or even that I would expressly designate them.
MONTESQUIEU.
How do you hear it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I wouldn’t go into any recapitulation; I would limit myself to declaring to the people that I recognize and confirm the great principles of modern law.
Suppose for a moment that I have at my disposal the various moral and material resources which I have just indicated to you, and now give me some nation of some kind, do you hear! You regard it as a capital point, in the Spirit of Law, not to change the character of a nation (i) when you want to keep it original vigor, well, I wouldn’t ask you twenty years to transform most completely the most indomitable European character and to make it as docile to tyranny as that of the smallest people of Asia.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have just added, by playing yourself, a chapter to the Prince’s treatise. Whatever your doctrines, I do not dispute them; I’m just making one observation to you. It is obvious that you have by no means kept the commitment you made; the use of all these means presupposes the existence of absolute power, and I asked you precisely how you could establish it in political societies which are based on liberal institutions.
MACHIAVELLI.
Your observation is perfectly correct and I
(1) Esp. of the laws, p, 252 et seq., liv. XIX, ch, V, do not intend to escape it. This beginning was only a preface.
MONTESQUIEU.
I put you in the presence of a State founded on representative institutions, monarchy or republic; I am speaking to you of a nation familiar with freedom for a long time, and I ask you, how, from there, you can return to absolute power.
MACHIAVELLI.
Nothing is easier.
MONTESQUIEU.
Come?
II ‘PART.
THE EIGHTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I take the hypothesis which is the most contrary to me, I take a State constituted as a republic. With a monarchy, the role I propose to play would be too easy. I am taking a Republic, because with such a form of government, I am going to meet resistance, almost insurmountable in appearance, in ideas, in manners, in laws. Does this assumption bother you? I accept from your hands a State whatever its form, large or small I suppose endowed with all the institutions that guarantee freedom, and I address this one question to you: Do you believe that power is immune from a helping hand or what today is called a coup d’etat?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, this is true; but you will grant me at least that such an enterprise will be singularly
– 8i –
difficult in contemporary political societies, as they are organized.
MACHIAVELLI.
And why? Are not these societies, as always, in the grip of factions? Are there not everywhere elements of civil war, parties, suitors?
MONTESQUIEU.
It’s possible; but I think I can make you feel with one word oti is your mistake. These usurpations, necessarily very rare because they are full of perils and which are repugnant to modern manners, supposing that they succeed, would not have the importance which you seem to attribute to them. A change of power would not lead to a change of institutions. A pretender to trouble the State, so be it; his party will triumph, I admit, the power is in other hands, that is all; but public law and the very foundations of institutions remain firm. This is what touches me.
MACHIAVELLI.
Is it true that you have such an illusion? MONTESQUIEU.
Establish the opposite.
DIALOGUE IN HELL BETWEEN MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU
MACHIAVELLI.
So you grant me, for a moment, the success of an armed enterprise against the established power?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes.
MACHIAVELLI.
Notice then in what situation I find myself placed. I momentarily removed any power other than mine. If the institutions still standing can raise any obstacle before me, it is purely formal; in fact, the acts of my will cannot meet any real resistance; finally I am in that extra-legal condition, which the Romans called with such a beautiful word and so powerfully energetic: dictatorship. That is to say, I can do whatever I want at the present time, that I am a legislator, an executor, a vigilante, and on horseback as an army commander.
Remember this. Now I have triumphed by the support of a faction, that is to say, this event could only be accomplished in the midst of deep internal dissension. We can say at random, but without being mistaken, what the causes are. It will be an antagonism between the aristocracy and the people or between the people and the bourgeoisie. Basically, it can only be that; on the surface, it will be a jumble of ideas, opinions, influences and opposing currents, as in all states where freedom has been unleashed for a moment. . There will be political elements of all kinds there, sections of once victorious parties, aiyour *
8 of yesterday vanquished, unbridled ambitions, ardent lusts, implacable hatreds, terrors everywhere, men of all opinions and all doctrines, restorers of old regimes, demagogues, anarchists, utopians, all in the work, all also working on their side to overthrow the established order. What should we conclude from such a situation? Two things: the first is that the country has a great need for rest and that it will not refuse anything to anyone who can give it to it; the second is that in the midst of this division of parties, there is no real force, or rather that there is only one, the people.
I myself am a victorious suitor; I have, I suppose, a great historical name suitable to influence the imagination of the masses. Like Pisistratus, like Caesar, like Nero himself; I will rely on the people; it is Ca bc of any usurper. This is the blind power which will give the means to do everything with impunity, this is the authority, this is the name which will cover everything. The people indeed care about your legal fictions and your constitutional guarantees!
I have been silent in the midst of the factions, and now you will see how I am going to march.
Maybe you remember the rules that; * i éti. ” Iar.s. Prince to keep
‘The usurper of a
State is in a situation analogous to that of a conqueror. He is condemned to renew everything, to dissolve the State, to destroy the city, to change the face of manners.
This is the goal, but in the present times it should be sought only by oblique ways, roundabout means, skilful combinations, and, as far as possible, free from violence. I will therefore not destroy the institutions directly, but I will touch them one by one with an unnoticed wave of the hand that will disturb the mechanism. Thus I will touch in turn to the judicial organization, to suffrage, to the press, to individual freedom, to education.
Over and above the primitive laws I will pass a whole new legislation which, without expressly repealing the old one, will first mask it, then soon will completely erase it. These are my general designs, now you will see the workmanship details.
MONTESQUIEU.
Why are you still in the gardens of Ruccellai, O Machiavelli, to teach these beautiful lessons, and how regrettable it is that posterity cannot hear you!
MACHIAVELLI.
Rest assured ; for those who can read, all this is in the Prince’s treatise.
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, you are the day after your coup, what are you going to do?
MACHIAVELLI.
A big thing, then a very small one.
MONTESQUIEU.
Let’s see the big one first?
MACHIAVELLI.
After the success of a coup against the established power, all is not finished, and the parties do not generally consider themselves defeated. We do not yet know exactly what the usurper’s energy is worth, we are going to try it, we are going to rise up against him, arms in hand. The time has come to instill a terror that strikes the entire city and makes the most intrepid souls faint.
MONTESQUIEU.
What are you going to do? You told me you repudiated the blood.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is not about false humanity. Society is threatened, it is in a state of self-defense; the excess of rigors and even cruelty will prevent further bloodshed in the future. Don’t ask me what we’ll do; souls must be terrified once and for all and fear must soak them.
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes I remember ; This is what you teach in the Prince’s treatise by recounting the sinister execution of Borgia in Cesena (1). You are the same.
MACHIAVELLI.
No, no, you will see it later; I only act out of necessity, and I suffer from it.
MONTESQUIEU.
But who will shed this blood?
MACHIAVELLI.
The army! this great vigilante of the States; she whose hand never dishonors her victims. Two results of the greatest importance will be achieved by the intervention of the army in the repression. From that moment, on the one hand, it will find itself forever in hostility with the civilian population, which it will have punished without consideration, on the other it will be linked in an indissoluble way to the fate of its leader.
MONTESQUIEU.
And you believe that this blood will not fall on you?
MACHIAVELLI.
No, because in the eyes of the people, the sovereign, ultimately, is foreign to the excesses of a soldiery that it is not always easy to contain. Those who can be responsible for it will be the generals, the ministers who will have executed ‘i
(1) Treatise of the Prince, p. 47, c. VH.
8.
– you
rne orders. These, I all Faffinne, will be devoted to me until their last breath, for they know well what awaits them after me.
MONTESQUIEU.
So this is your first act of sovereignty! Now let’s see the second t
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not know if you have noticed the power of small means in politics. After what I have just told you, I will have all the new money minted in my image, of which I will issue a considerable quantity.
MONTESQUIEU.
But in the midst of the first worries of the state, it would be a childish measure.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do you believe that? You haven’t practiced power. The human effigy printed on the currency is the very sign of power. At first glance there will be proud spirits who will quiver with anger, but we will get used to it; the very enemies of my power will be obliged to have my portrait in their purse. It is quite certain that we gradually get used to looking with softer eyes at the features which are everywhere imprinted on the material sign of our pleasures. From the day when my effigy is on the coin, I am king.
MONTESQUIEU.
I admit that this preview is new to me;
but let’s move on. Have you not forgotten that the new peoples have the weakness to give themselves constitutions which are the guarantees of their rights? With your power resulting from force, with the projects that you reveal to me, you will perhaps find yourself embarrassed in the presence of a fundamental charter of which all the principles, all the rules, all the provisions are contrary to your maxims of government. .
MACHIAVELLI.
I’ll make another constitution, that’s all.
MONTESQUIEU.
And do you think it won’t be difficult?
MACHIAVELLI.
Where would the difficulty be? For the moment, there is no other will, no other force than mine, and I have the popular element as my basis for action.
MONTESQUIEU.
That is true. However, I have a scru ^ je: from what you have just told me, I imagine that your constitution will not be a monument of liberty. Do you think that a single crisis of force, a single happy violence will suffice to rob a nation of all its rights, all its conquests ?, all its institutions, all the principles with which it has become accustomed to live?
MACHIAVELLI.
Allow! I’m not going so fast. I told you, a few moments ago, that peoples were like men, that they were more attached to appearances than to the reality of things; this is a rule in politics, the indications of which I would scrupulously follow; please remind me of the principles you hold most dear and you will find that I am not as embarrassed by them as you seem to think.
MONTESQUIEU.
What are you going to do with it, O Machiavelli!
MACHIAVELLI.
Fear nothing. knot me.
MONTESQUIEU.
I don’t trust it, I admit it to you.
MACHIAVELLI.
Well I will remind you of them myself. You would no doubt be sure to tell me about the principle of the separation of powers, freedom of speech and of the press, and religious freedom. de la hhené indrridneSe. of the right of association, of equality before the law, of the invio-tbbdùé of property and of the doumcde. of the right to
Um; eu “sb <oe asseu and wish” virns again! jrosnsqnmr.
decrease that it is a lot ytas qn3 ncn necessary.
Machiavelli, to make your government uncomfortable.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is what deceives you, and this is so true, that I see no objection to proclaiming these principles; I will even make it, if you like, the preamble to my constitution.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have already proved to me that you are a great magician.
MACHIAVELLI.
There is no magic in it, there is only political know-how.
MONTESQUIEU.
But how, having written these principles at the head of your constitution, will you go about not applying them?
MACHIAVELLI.
Ali! take care, I told you that I would proclaim these principles, but I did not tell you that I would inscribe them or even that I would expressly designate them.
MONTESQUIEU.
How do you hear it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I wouldn’t go into any recapitulation; I would limit myself to declaring to the people that I recognize and confirm the great principles of modern law.
MONTESQUIEU.
The extent of this reluctance escapes me.
MACHIAVELLI.
You will recognize how important it is. If I expressly enumerated these rights, my freedom of action would be enchained vis-à-vis those that I would have declared; that’s what I don’t want. By not naming them, I seem to grant them all and I especially grant none; this will allow me later to exclude, by way of exception, those whom I deem dangerous.
MONTESQUIEU.
I understand.
MACHIAVELLI.
Among these principles, moreover, some belong to political and constitutional law proper, others to civil law. This is a distinction which must always serve as a rule in the exercise of absolute power. It is their civil rights that people value most; I will not touch it, if I can, and in this way at least part of my program will be fulfilled.
MONTESQUIEU.
And what about political rights…?
MACHIAVELLI.
I wrote in the Prince’s treatise the following maxim, which has never ceased to be true: “The governed will always be happy with the prince,
“When he touches neither their property, nor their“ honor, and from then on he only has to fight against the claims of a small number of dissatisfied people, whom he easily overcomes. My answer to your question is there.
MONTESQUIEU.
One might, at a pinch, not find it sufficient; you could be told that political rights are also goods; that it is also important to the honor of peoples to maintain them, and that by touching them you are in reality undermining their property as well as their honor. We could also add that the maintenance of civil rights is linked to the maintenance of political rights through close solidarity. Who will guarantee the citizens that if you strip them of political freedom today, you will not strip them of individual freedom tomorrow; that if you attack their freedom today, you will not attack their fortune tomorrow?
MACHIAVELLI.
Certainly the argument is presented very vividly, but I think you also fully understand the exaggeration. You always seem to believe that modern people are hungry for freedom. Have you foreseen the case when they no longer want her, and can you ask the princes to have more passion for her than the people have? However, in your societies so deeply relaxed, where the individual lives only in the sphere of his egoism and his material interests, question the greatest number, and you will see if, on all sides, you are not answered: What does politics do to me? what do I care about freedom? Are not all governments the same? Shouldn’t a government defend itself?
Notice it well, moreover, it is not even the people who will use this language; it will be the bourgeoisie, the industrialists, the educated, the rich, the literate, all those who are in a position to appreciate your fine doctrines of public law. They will bless me, they will cry out that I saved them, that they are in a minority, that they are incapable of behaving. Here, the nations have I do not know what secret love for the vigorous geniuses of force. With all the violent acts marked with the talent of artifice, you will hear people say with an admiration which will overcome the blame: It is not good, yes, but it is clever, it is well played, it is strong!
MONTESQUIEU.
So you are going to return to the professional part of your doctrines?
MACHIAVELLI.
No, we are in the process of execution. I certainly would have taken a few more steps if you hadn’t forced me to digress. Let’s resume.
THE NINTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
You were the day after a constitution made by you without the consent of the nation.
MACHIAVELLI.
Here I stop you; I have never claimed to offend to this point received ideas of which I know the empire.
MONTESQUIEU.
Really !
MACHIAVELLI.
I speak very seriously.
MONTESQUIEU.
So you intend to associate the nation with the new fundamental work that you are preparing?
MACHIAVELLI.
Probably yes. Does that surprise you? I will do much better: I will first have the coup de force which I have accomplished against the State ratified by popular vote; I will say to the people in appropriate terms: Everything was going badly; I broke everything, I
9 saved you, do you want me? you are free to condemn or absolve me by your vote.
MONTESQUIEU.
Free under the weight of terror and armed force.
MACHIAVELLI.
I will be acclaimed.
MONTESQUIEU.
I believe him.
MACHIAVELLI.
And the popular vote, which I have made the instrument of my power, will become the very basis of my government. I will establish a suffrage without distinction of class or cens, with which absolutism will be organized at one stroke.
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, because at the same time you break the unity of the family at the same time, you depreciate the suffrage, you cancel the preponderance of enlightenment and you make of the number a blind power which directs itself at your will.
MACHIAVELLI.
I am making progress to which all the peoples of Europe ardently aspire today: I organize universal suffrage like Washington in the United States, and the first use I make of it is to submit my constitution to it.
MONTESQUIEU.
What! are you going to have it discussed in primary or secondary assemblies?
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! let us leave there, I beg you, your eighteenth-century ideas; they are no longer present time.
MONTESQUIEU.
Eli well, in what way then will you deliberate on the acceptance of your constitution? how will the organic articles be discussed?
MACHIAVELLI.
But I don’t hear them being discussed at all, I thought I told you.
MONTESQUIEU.
I only followed you on the ground of the principles that you liked to choose. You told me about the United States of America; I don’t know if you are a new Washington, but what is certain is that the current constitution of the United States has been discussed, deliberated and voted on by the representatives of the nation.
MACHIAVELLI.
Please, do not confuse times, places and peoples: we are in Europe; my constitution is presented en bloc, it is accepted en bloc.
MACHIAVELLI.
Allow! I’m not going so fast. I told you a few moments ago that people were like men, that they were more attached to appearances than to the reality of things; this is a rule in politics, the indications of which I would scrupulously follow; please remind me of the principles you hold most dear and you will see that I am not as embarrassed by them as you seem to think.
MONTESQUIEU.
What are you going to do with it, O Machiavelli?
MACHIAVELLI.
Don’t be afraid, name them for me. MONTESQUIEU.
I don’t trust it, I admit it to you.
MACHIAVELLI.
Well, I’ll remind you of them myself. You would no doubt not fail to tell me about the principle of the separation of powers, freedom of speech and of the press, religious freedom, individual freedom, the right of association, equality before law, the inviolability of property and domicile, the right of petition, the free consent of taxation, the proportionality of penalties, the non-retroactivity of laws; is it enough and do you want more?
MONTESQUIEU.
I think it’s a lot more than it takes
Machiavelli, to make your government uncomfortable.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is what deceives you, and this is so true, that I see no objection to proclaiming these principles; I will even make it, if you like, the preamble to my constitution.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have already proved to me that you are a great magician.
MACHIAVELLI.
There is no magic in it, there is only political know-how.
MONTESQUIEU.
But how, having written these principles at the head of your constitution, will you go about not applying them?
MACHIAVELLI.
Ali! take care, I told you that I would proclaim these principles, but I did not tell you that I would inscribe them or even that I would expressly designate them.
MONTESQUIEU.
How do you hear it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I wouldn’t go into any recapitulation; I would limit myself to declaring to the people that I recognize and confirm the great principles of modern law.
MONTESQUIEU.
But by doing so you are not disguising anything for anyone. How, by voting under these conditions, can the people know what they are doing and to what extent they are committed?
MACHIAVELLI.
And where have you ever seen that a constitution truly worthy of the name, truly lasting, has never been the result of popular deliberation? A constitution must emerge fully armed from the head of one man or it is only a work condemned to nothingness. Without homogeneity, without connection in its parts, without practical force, it will necessarily bear the imprint of all the weaknesses of views which presided over its drafting.
A constitution, again, can only be the work of one; Never did things happen otherwise, as can be seen from the history of all the founders of an empire, the example of the Sesos-tris, the Solons, the Lycurgus, the Charlemagne, the Frederick II, the Peter I.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is a chapter from one of your disciples that you are going to develop for me there.
MACHIAVELLI.
And from whom?
MONTESQUIEU.
By Joseph de Maistre. There are general considerations there which are not without truth, but which I find without application. It seems, to hear you, that you are going to pull a people out of chaos or the deep night of its first origins. You do not seem to remember that, in the hypothesis in which we place ourselves, the nation has reached the apogee of its civilization, that its public law is founded, and that it is in possession of regular institutions.
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not say no; so you will see that I do not need to destroy your institutions from top to bottom to achieve my goal. It will suffice for me to modify the economy and change the combinations.
MONTESQUIEU.
Explain yourself?
MACHIAVELLI.
Earlier you gave me a course on constitutional politics, I intend to use it. I am, moreover, not as foreign as it is generally believed in Europe, to all these ideas of political seesaw; you may have noticed it through my speeches on Livy. But back to the point. You noticed with reason, a moment ago, that in the parliamentary states of Europe the public powers were distributed almost everywhere in the same way between a certain number of political bodies whose regular operation constituted the government.
9.
Thus one finds everywhere, under various names, but with more or less uniform attributions, a ministerial organization, a senate, a legislative body, a council of state, a court of Appeals; I must spare you any unnecessary development on the respective mechanism of these powers, the secret of which you know better than I do; it is obvious that each of them fulfills an essential function of government. You will notice that it is the function that I call essential, it is not the institution. So there must be a leading power, a moderating power, a legislative power, a regulatory power, there is no doubt.
MONTESQUIEU.
But, if I understand you correctly, these various powers are one in your eyes and you are going to give all of this to one man by removing the institutions.
MACHIAVELLI.
Again, this is what is fooling you. We could not do this without danger. We could not do it with you especially, with the fanaticism that reigns there for what you call the principles of 89; but please listen carefully: In statics the displacement of a fulcrum causes the direction of the force to change, in mechanics the displacement of a spring causes the movement to change. In appearance, however, it is the same device, it is
the same mechanism. Likewise again in physiology, temperament depends on the state of the organs. If the organs are changed, the temperament changes. Well, the various institutions we just spoke of function in the government economy as real organs in the human body. I will touch the organs, the organs will remain, but the political thinking of the state will be changed. Do you design?
MONTESQUIEU.
It is not difficult, and there was no need for periphrases. You keep the names, you take the things away. This is what Augustus did in Rome when he destroyed the Republic. There was always a consulate, a praetorship, a censorship, a tribunate; but there were no longer any consuls, praetors, censors, or tribunes.
MACHIAVELLI.
Admit that we can choose worse models. Anything can be done in politics, on condition of flattering public prejudices and maintaining respect for appearances.
MONTESQUIEU. .
Do not go into generalities; you are at work, I am with you.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do not forget to which personal convictions each of my actions will take its source.
In my eyes your parliamentary governments are only schools of dispute, only centers of sterile agitation in the midst of which is exhausted the fruitful activity of the nations which the tribune and the press condemn to impotence. Consequently I have no remorse; I start from a high point of view and my purpose justifies my actions.
For abstract theories I substitute practical reason, the experience of centuries, the example of men of genius who have done great things by the same means; I begin by restoring power to its vital conditions.
My first reform immediately dwells on your alleged ministerial responsibility. In countries of centralization, like yours, for example, where public opinion, through an instinctive feeling, reports everything to the Head of State, both good and bad, write down at the head of a charter that the sovereign is irresponsible , it is to lie to public sentiment, it is to establish a fiction which will always vanish at the noise of revolutions.
I therefore begin by erasing from my constitution the principle of ministerial responsibility; the sovereign that I institute will be solely responsible to the people.
MONTESQUIEU.
At the right time, there is no ambiguity there.
MACHIAVELLI.
In your parliamentary system, the representatives
the people of the nation have, as you explained to me, the initiative of the bills alone or concurrently with the executive power; well, it is the source of the most serious abuses, because in such an order of things, each deputy can, at any point, take the place of the government by presenting the bills of laws the least studied, the least thorough; what did I say? with parliamentary initiative, the Chamber will overthrow the government when it wishes. I strike out parliamentary initiative. The proposal of laws will belong only to the sovereign.
MONTESQUIEU.
I see you are entering the career of absolute power by the best route; for in a State where the initiative of laws belongs only to the sovereign, it is more or less the sovereign who is the sole legislator; but before you go any further, I would like to object to you. You want to be firm on the rock, and I find you sitting on the sand.
MACHIAVELLI.
How? ‘Or’ What?
MONTESQUIEU.
Have you not taken popular suffrage as the basis of your power?
MACHIAVELLI.
Without a doubt,
MONTESQUIEU.
The extent of this reluctance escapes me.
MACHIAVELLI.
You will recognize how important it is. If I expressly enumerated these rights, my freedom of action would be enchained vis-à-vis those that I would have declared; that’s what I don’t want. By not naming them, I seem to grant them all and I especially grant none; this will allow me later to exclude, by way of exception, those whom I deem dangerous.
MONTESQUIEU.
I understand.
MACHIAVELLI.
Among these principles, moreover, some belong to political and constitutional law proper, others to civil law. This is a distinction which must always serve as a rule in the exercise of absolute power. It is their civil rights that people value most; I will not touch it, if I can, and in this way at least part of my program will be fulfilled.
MONTESQUIEU.
And what about political rights…?
■ MACHIAVELLI.
I wrote in the Prince’s treatise the following maxim, which has never ceased to be true: “The governed will always be satisfied with the prince,
– when he touches neither their property, nor their honor, and from then on he has no more to fight than the claims of a small number of dissatisfied people, whom he easily overcomes. My answer to your question is there.
MONTESQUIEU.
One might, at a pinch, not find it sufficient; you could be told that political rights are also goods; that it is also important to the honor of peoples to maintain them, and that by touching them you are in reality undermining their property as well as their honor. We could also add that the maintenance of civil rights is linked to the maintenance of political rights through close solidarity. Who will guarantee the citizens that if you strip them of political freedom today, you will not strip them of individual freedom tomorrow; that if you attack their freedom today, you will not attack their fortune tomorrow?
MACHIAVELLI.
Certainly the argument is presented very vividly, but I think you also fully understand the exaggeration. You always seem to believe that modern people are hungry for freedom. Have you foreseen the case when they no longer want her, and can you ask the princes to have more passion for her than the people have? However, in your societies so pro-
to overthrow: it would suffice for that if the legislative assembly systematically rejects all your bills or only that it refuses to vote the tax.
MACHIAVELLI.
You know full well that things cannot be. Any room that would hamper the movement of public affairs by such an act of recklessness would kill itself. I would have a thousand ways, moreover, to neutralize the power of such an assembly. I would reduce the number of representatives by half and I would therefore have half as many political passions to fight. I would reserve the appointment of chairs and vice-chairs to direct the proceedings. Instead of permanent sessions, I would reduce the holding of the assembly to a few months. Above all, I would do something which is of very great importance, and the practice of which is already beginning to be introduced, I have been told: I would abolish the gratuitousness of the legislative mandate; I would like the deputies to receive an emolument, that their functions are,in a way, salaried. I regard this innovation as the surest means of attaching the representatives of the nation to power; I don’t need to elaborate on this for you, the effectiveness of the means is quite understandable. I add that, as head of the executive power, I have the right to
THE NINTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
You were the day after a constitution made by you without the consent of the nation.
MACHIAVELLI.
Here I stop you; I have never claimed to offend to this point received ideas of which I know the empire.
MONTESQUIEU.
Really!
MACHIAVELLI.
I speak very seriously.
MONTESQUIEU.
So you intend to associate the nation with the new fundamental work that you are preparing?
MACHIAVELLI.
Probably yes. Does that surprise you? I will do much better: I will first have the coup de force which I have accomplished against the State ratified by the popular vote; I will say to the people in appropriate terms: Everything was going badly; I broke everything, I
9 is always seen; its action must be able, if necessary, to be covered under the authority of the great magistracies which surround the throne.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is easy to see that it is for this role that you intend the Senate and the Council of State.
MACHIAVELLI.
We can’t hide anything from you.
MONTESQUIEU.
You speak of the throne: I see that you are king and we were in a republic earlier. The transition is hardly spared.
MACHIAVELLI.
The illustrious French publicist cannot ask me to stop at such details of execution: from the moment that I have omnipotence in hand, the hour when I will be proclaimed king is no more than a matter of opportunity. I will be before or after promulgating my constitution, whatever.
MONTESQUIEU.
That is true. Back to the organization of the Senate- ‘
THE TENTH DIALOGUE
MACHIAVELLI.
In the advanced studies that you have had to make for the composition of your memorable work on the Causes of the Greatness and Decadence of the Romans, it is not that you have not noticed the role played by the Senate with the Emperors in from the reign of Augustus.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is, if you allow me to tell you, a point that historical research does not seem to me to have yet completely clarified. What is certain is that until the end of the Republic, the Roman Senate had been an autonomous institution, invested with immense privileges, having its own powers; this was the secret of his power, of the depth of his political traditions and of the greatness which he imparted to the Republic. From Augustus, the Senate is only an instrument in the hand
emperors, but it is not clear by what succession of acts they succeeded in stripping him of his power.
MACHIAVELLI.
It is not precisely to elucidate this point of history that I ask you to refer to this period of the Empire. This question, for the moment, does not concern me; all I wanted to tell you is that the Senate that I conceive should fulfill, alongside the prince, a political role analogous to that of the Roman Senate in the times which followed the fall of the Republic.
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, at that time the law was no longer voted in the popular comitia, it was done by means of senatus-consulta; is that what you want?
MACHIAVELLI.
No: it would not be in accordance with modern principles of constitutional law.
MONTESQUIEU.
What thanks do we not owe you for such a scruple!
MACHIAVELLI.
Besides, I don’t need that to enact what seems to me necessary. No legislative provision, as you know, can emanate except from my proposal, and I am, moreover, making decrees which have the force of laws.
which I find without application. It seems, to hear you, that you are going to pull a people out of chaos or the deep night of its first origins. You do not seem to remember that, in the hypothesis in which we place ourselves, the nation has reached the apogee of its civilization, that its public law is founded, and that it is in possession of regular institutions.
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not say no ; so you will see that I do not need to destroy your institutions from top to bottom to achieve my goal. It will suffice for me to modify the economy and change the combinations.
MONTESQUIEU.
Explain yourself?
MACHIAVELLI.
Earlier you gave me a course on constitutional politics, I intend to use it. I am, moreover, not as foreign as it is generally believed in Europe, to all these ideas of political seesaw; you may have noticed it through my speeches on Livy. But back to the point. You noted with reason, a moment ago, that in the parliamentary states of Europe the public powers were distributed almost everywhere in the same way between a certain number of political bodies whose regular game constituted the government.
9.
in my constitution: * That the Senate regulate, by a senatus-consult, all that was not envisaged by the constitution and which is necessary for its progress; that it fixes the meaning of the articles of the constitution which would give rise to different interpretations; that it maintain or annul all acts referred to it as unconstitutional by the government or denounced by citizens’ petitions; that it can lay the foundations for bills of great national interest; that it can propose modifications to the constitution and that it will be ruled there by a senatus-consulte. “”
MONTESQUIEU.
All this is very beautiful and this is truly a Roman Senate. I am only making a few remarks on your constitution: it will therefore be drafted in very vague and very ambiguous terms so that you judge in advance that the articles it contains may be susceptible to different interpretations.
MACHIAVELLI.
No, but you have to plan everything.
MONTESQUIEU.
I believed that, on the contrary, your principle, in such a matter, was to avoid planning everything and settling everything.
MACHIAVELLI.
The illustrious president did not haunt the palace of Themis without profit, nor wear the cap unnecessarily.
mortar. My words had no other significance than this: We must provide for what is essential.
MONTESQUIEU.
Tell me, please: does your Senate, interpreter and guardian of the fundamental pact, have its own power?
MACHIAVELLI.
Undoubtedly not.
MONTESQUIEU.
Whatever the Senate does, will you do it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m not telling you the opposite.
MONTESQUIEU.
What he will interpret, it will therefore be you who will interpret it; what it will modify, it will be you who will modify it; what it will cancel, it will be you who will cancel it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not pretend to defend myself against it.
MONTESQUIEU.
This means that you reserve the right to undo what you have done, endow what you have given, to change your constitution, either for good or for bad, or even to make it disappear completely if you do so. deem necessary. I do not prejudge anything of your intentions nor of the motives which could make you act in such or such given circumstances; I ask you
In my eyes your parliamentary governments are only schools of dispute, only centers of sterile agitation in the midst of which is exhausted the fruitful activity of the nations which the tribune and the press condemn to impotence. Consequently I have no remorse; I start from a high point of view and my purpose justifies my actions.
For abstract theories I substitute practical reason, the experience of centuries, the example of men of genius who have done great things by the same means; I begin by restoring power to its vital conditions.
My first reform immediately dwells on your alleged ministerial responsibility. In countries of centralization, like yours, for example, where public opinion, through an instinctive feeling, reports everything to the Head of State, both good and bad, write down at the head of a charter that the sovereign is irresponsible , it is to lie to public sentiment, it is to establish a fiction which will always vanish at the noise of revolutions.
I therefore begin by erasing from my constitution the principle of ministerial responsibility; the sovereign that I institute will be solely responsible to the people.
MONTESQUIEU.
At the right time, there is no ambiguity there.
MACHIAVELLI.
In your parliamentary system, the representatives
the people of the nation have, as you explained to me, the initiative of the bills alone or concurrently with the executive power; well, it is the source of the most serious abuses, because in such an order of things, each deputy can, at any point, take the place of the government by presenting the bills of laws the least studied, the least thorough; what did I say ? with parliamentary initiative, the Chamber will overthrow the government when it wishes. I strike out parliamentary initiative. The proposal of laws will belong only to the sovereign.
MONTESQUIEU.
I see you are entering the career of absolute power by the best route; for in a State where the initiative of laws belongs only to the sovereign, it is more or less the sovereign who is the sole legislator; but before you go any further, I would like to object to you. You want to be firm on the rock, and I find you sitting on the sand.
MACHIAVELLI.
How? ‘Or’ What?
MONTESQUIEU.
Have you not taken popular suffrage as the basis of your power?
MACHIAVELLI,
Without a doubt,
which is a kind of discretionary power, which can be used, when you want, to make real laws.
The Council of State is moreover invested with you, I am told, with a special attribution which is perhaps even more exorbitant. In contentious matters, he can, I am assured, claim by right of evocation, regain on his own authority, before the ordinary courts, the knowledge of all the disputes which appear to him to have an administrative character. Thus, and to characterize in a word what there is quite exceptional in this last attribution, the courts must refuse to judge when they are in the presence of an act of the administrative authority, and the authority administrative authority may, in the same case, withdraw from the courts to refer to the decision of the Council of State.
Now, once again, what is the Council of State? Does he have a power of his own? is he independent from the sovereign? Not at all. It is only a Editorial Board. When the Council of State makes a regulation, it is the sovereign who does it; when it renders a judgment, it is the sovereign who renders it, or, as you say today, it is the administration, the administration judges and party in its own case. Do you know of anything stronger than this and do you believe that there is much to be done in order to found absolute power in states where there are all organized such institutions?
MONTESQUIEU.
Your criticism is fair enough, I agree; but, as the Council of State is an excellent institution in itself, nothing is easier than to give it the necessary independence by isolating it, to a certain extent, from power. This is probably not what you will do.
MACHIAVELLI.
Indeed, I will maintain the type of unity in the institution where I find it, I will bring it back to where it is not, by tightening the links of a solidarity that I regard as essential.
We did not stay on the way, you see, for here is my constitution made.
MONTESQUIEU.
Already?
MACHIAVELLI.
A small number of cleverly ordered combinations is enough to completely change the course of power. This part of my schedule is fulfilled.
MONTESQUIEU.
I thought you still had to tell me about the Cour de Appeals.
MACHIAVELLI.
What I have to tell you about it will find a better place elsewhere.
to overthrow: it would suffice for that if the legislative assembly systematically rejects all your bills or only that it refuses to vote the tax.
MACHIAVELLI.
You know full well that things cannot be. A room, whatever it is, which would hamper the movement of public affairs by such an act of recklessness would kill itself. I would have a thousand ways, moreover, to neutralize the power of such an assembly. I would reduce the number of representatives by half and I would therefore have half as many political passions to fight. I would reserve the appointment of chairs and vice-chairs to direct the proceedings.
Instead of permanent sessions, I would reduce the holding of the assembly to a few months. Above all, I would do something which is of very great importance, and the practice of which is already beginning to be introduced, I have been told: I would abolish the gratuitousness of the legislative mandate; I would like the deputies to receive an emolument, that their functions are, in a way, salaried. I regard this innovation as the surest means of attaching the representatives of the nation to power; I don’t need to elaborate on this for you, the effectiveness of the means is quite understandable. I add that, as head of the executive power, I have the right to
to convene, to dissolve the legislative body, and that in the event of dissolution, I would reserve the longest time to convene a new representation. I fully understand that the legislative assembly could not, without danger, remain independent of my power, but rest assured: we will soon find other practical means of attaching it to it. Are these constitutional details enough for you? do you want more?
MONTESQUIEU.
This is by no means necessary and you can now move on to the organization of the Senate.
MACHIAVELLI.
I see that you have understood very well that this was the capital part of my work, the keystone of my constitution.
MONTESQUIEU.
I do not really know what you can do yet, because as soon as this is presented you see yourself as completely master of the state.
MACHIAVELLI.
It pleases you to say; but, in reality, sovereignty could not be established on such superficial bases. Beside the sovereign, we need bodies imposing by the brilliance of titles, dignities and by the personal illustration of those who compose it. It is not good that the person of the sovereign is constantly at stake, that his hand
10
is always noticed; its action must be able, if necessary, to be covered under the authority of the great magistracies which surround the throne.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is easy to see that it is for this role that you intend the Senate and the Council of State.
MACHIAVELLI.
We can’t hide anything from you.
MONTESQUIEU.
You speak of the throne: I see that you are king and we were in a republic earlier. The transition is hardly spared.
MACHIAVELLI.
The illustrious French publicist cannot ask me to stop at such details of execution: from the moment that I have omnipotence in hand, the hour when I will be proclaimed king is no more than a matter of opportunity. I will be before or after promulgating my constitution, whatever.
MONTESQUIEU.
That is true. Let us return to the organization of the Senate •
THE TENTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
In the advanced studies that you had to do for the composition of your memorable work on the Causes of the Rise and Fall of the Romans, it is not that you have not noticed the role played by the Senate with the Emperors in from the reign of Augustus.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is, if you allow me to tell you, a point that historical research does not seem to me to have yet completely clarified. What is certain is that until the end of the Republic, the Roman Senate had been an autonomous institution, invested with immense privileges, having its own powers; this was the secret of his power, of the depth of his political traditions and of the greatness which he imparted to the Republic. From Augustus, the Senate is only an instrument in the hand
the foundations of my establishment are laid, the forces are ready, all that is left is to set them in motion. I will do so with all the consideration that the new constitutional mores entail. It is here that the artifices of government and legislation must naturally be placed, which prudence recommends to the prince.
MONTESQUIEU.
I see that we are entering a new phase; I am preparing to listen to you.
THE ELEVENTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
You notice with great reason, in L’Esprit des lois, that the word liberty is a word to which one attaches very different meanings. We read, they say, in your work, the following proposition:
“Freedom is the right to do what the laws“ allow (1). ”
I get along very well with this definition, which I find correct, and I can assure you that my laws will allow only what is necessary. You will see what the spirit is. How do you like us to start?
MONTESQUIEU.
I wouldn’t be sorry to see first how you defend yourself against the press.
(1) Esp. laws, p. 123, book XI, chap. III.
11.
MACHIAVELLI.
You put your finger, in fact, on the most delicate part of my task. The system that I conceive in this regard is as vast as it is multiplied in its applications. Fortunately, here I have my elbow room; I can prune and slice in complete safety and almost without raising any complaints.
MONTESQUIEU.
Why then, please?
MACHIAVELLI.
Because, in most parliamentary countries, the press has the talent to make itself hateful, because it is only ever at the service of violent, selfish, exclusive passions; because it denigrates bias, because it is venal, because it is unjust, because it is without generosity and without patriotism; last but not least, because you will never make the masses of a country understand what it can be used for.
MONTESQUIEU.
Oh! if you are looking for grievances against the press, it will be easy for you to accumulate them. If you are asking what it can be used for, that’s another thing. It simply prevents arbitrariness in the exercise of the provision; it forces people to govern constitutionally; it forces honesty, modesty, respect for themselves
mortar. My words had no other significance than this: We must provide for what is essential.
MONTESQUIEU.
Tell me, please: does your Senate, interpreter and guardian of the fundamental pact, have its own power?
MACHIAVELLI.
Undoubtedly not.
MONTESQUIEU.
Whatever the Senate does, will you do it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m not telling you the opposite.
MONTESQUIEU.
What he will interpret, it will therefore be you who will interpret it; what it will modify, it will be you who will modify it; what it will cancel, it will be you who will cancel it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not pretend to defend myself against it.
MONTESQUIEU.
This means that you reserve the right to undo what you have done, to take away what you have given, to change your constitution, either for good or for bad, or even to make it disappear completely if you deem it necessary. I do not prejudge anything of your intentions nor of the motives which could make you act in such or such given circumstances; I ask you
– H6 –
only where could the weakest guarantee be found for the citizens in the midst of such a vast arbitrariness, and above all, how could they ever bring themselves to submit to it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I realize that the philosophical sensibility returns to you. Rest assured, I would not make any modification to the fundamental bases of my Constitution without submitting these modifications to the acceptance of the people by means of universal suffrage.
MONTESQUIEU.
But it would still be you who would be the judge of the question of knowing whether the modification which you are planning carries with it the fundamental character which should subject it to the sanction of the people. I want to admit, however, that you will not do by decree or by a senatus-consulta what must be done by a plebiscite. Will you leave your constitutional amendments for discussion? will you have them deliberated in popular comitia?
MACHIAVELLI.
Unquestionably no; if ever the debate on constitutional articles were to be engaged before popular assemblies, nothing could prevent the people from taking up the examination of the whole by virtue of their right of evocation, and the next day it would be the Revolution in the street .
you will see it. You ask me how I will neutralize a hostile editorial staff? In the simplest way, indeed; I would add that the government’s authorization is necessary because of any changes in the staff of the editors or managers of the newspaper.
MONTESQUIEU.
But the old newspapers, which have remained enemies of your government and whose writing will not have changed, will speak.
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! wait: I am reaching out to all present and future newspapers with fiscal measures which will properly curb advertising companies; I will submit the political sheets to what you call today the stamp and the bond. The newspaper industry will soon be so unprofitable, thanks to the elevation of these taxes, that it will only be done wisely.
MONTESQUIEU.
The remedy is insufficient, because political parties do not look at money.
MACHIAVELLI.
Rest assured, I have enough to shut their mouths up, because here comes the repressive measures. There are states in Europe where knowledge of press offenses has been referred to the jury. I do not know of a more deplorable measure than this one, because it is to stir up opinion about the least mendicant which is a kind of discretionary power, which can be used, when you want, to make real laws.
The Council of State is moreover invested with you, I am told, with a special attribution which is perhaps even more exorbitant. In contentious matters, he can, I am assured, claim by right of evocation, regain on his own authority, before the ordinary courts, the knowledge of all the disputes which appear to him to have an administrative character. Thus, and to characterize in a word what there is quite exceptional in this last attribution, the courts must refuse to judge when they are in the presence of an act of the administrative authority, and the authority administrative authority may, in the same case, relinquish jurisdiction to the courts to refer to the decision of the Council of State.
Now, once again, what is the Council of State? Does he have a power of his own? is he independent from the sovereign? Not at all. It is only a Editorial Board. When the Council of State makes a regulation, it is the sovereign who does it; when it renders a judgment, it is the sovereign who renders it, or, as you say today, it is the administration, the administration judges and party in its own case. Do you know of anything stronger than this and do you believe that there is much to be done in order to found absolute power in states where there are all organized such institutions?
MONTESQUIEU.
Your criticism is fair enough, I agree; but, as the Council of State is an excellent institution in itself, nothing is easier than to give it the necessary independence by isolating it, to a certain extent, from power. This is probably not what you will do.
MACHIAVELLI.
Indeed, I will maintain the type of unity in the institution where I find it, I will bring it back to where it is not, by tightening the links of a solidarity that I regard as essential.
We did not stay on the way, you see, for here is my constitution made.
MONTESQUIEU.
Already?
MACHIAVELLI.
A small number of cleverly ordered combinations is enough to completely change the course of power. This part of my schedule is fulfilled.
MONTESQUIEU.
I thought you still had to tell me about the Cour de Appeals.
MACHIAVELLI.
What I have to tell you about it will find a better place elsewhere.
to trade on these things. My administration would therefore strike, as I have just told you, without of course prejudice to the sentences handed down by the courts. Two convictions in the year would automatically entail the suppression of the newspaper. I would not stop there, I would still say to the newspapers, in a decree or in a law means: Reduced to the strictest circumspection as far as you are concerned, do not hope to agitate the opinion by comments on the debates of my chambers; I forbid you the report, I even defend you the report of legal debates in the press. Do not expect to impress the public mind any more with so-called news from outside; I would punish false news with corporal punishment, whether published in good or bad faith.
MONTESQUIEU.
It seems a little hard to me, because after all the newspapers can no longer, without the greatest perils, indulge in political assessments, will hardly live any longer except through news. Now, when a newspaper publishes a short story, it seems to me very difficult to impose its truthfulness on it, because, most often, it will not be able to answer in a certain way, and when it is morally sure of the truth, the truth. physical evidence will fail him.
MACHIAVELLI.
We will look at it twice before disturbing public opinion, that is what is needed.
MONTESQUIEU.
But I see something else. If you can no longer be fought with the newspapers inside, you will be fought with the newspapers without. All discontent, all hatred will write at the gates of your Kingdom; newspapers and fiery writings will be thrown over the frontier.
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh! you are reaching a point here which I intend to regulate in the most rigorous manner, because the press outside is indeed very dangerous. First of all, any introduction or circulation in the Kingdom, of unauthorized newspapers or writings, will be punished by imprisonment, and the penalty will be severe enough to remove the envy of it. Then those of my subjects convinced of having written, abroad, against the government, will, on their return to the kingdom, be sought and punished. It is a real indignity to write abroad against your government.
MONTESQUIEU.
It depends. But the foreign press in the border states will speak.
MACHIAVELLI.
You think? We assume that I rule in
42
The very day after the promulgation of my constitution, I will issue a succession of decrees having the force of law, which will suddenly suppress freedoms and rights, the exercise of which would be dangerous.
MONTESQUIEU.
The timing is indeed right. The country is still under the terror of your coup. Nothing has been denied to you for your constitution, since you could take everything; for your decrees we have nothing to allow you, since you do not ask for anything and you take everything.
MACHIAVELLI.
You have the word lively.
MONTESQUIEU.
A little less, however, than you have the action, admit. Despite your strength of hand and your glance, I confess that I can hardly believe that the country will not rise up in the presence of this second coup d’etat held in reserve behind the scenes.
MACHIAVELLI.
The country will voluntarily close its eyes; for, in the hypothesis in which I have placed myself, he is weary of agitation, he longs for rest like the sand of the desert after the downpour which follows the storm.
MONTESQUIEU.
You make beautiful rhetorical figures with that; it’s too much.
MACHIAVELLI.
I hasten to tell you, moreover, that the freedoms that I am suppressing, I will solemnly promise to return them after the parties have calmed down.
MONTESQUIEU.
I think we’ll always wait.
MACHIAVELLI.
It’s possible.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is certain, because your maxims allow the prince to break his word when it is in his interest.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do not hurry to pronounce; you will see the use which I will be able to make of this promise; I will soon take it upon myself to pass for the most liberal man in my kingdom.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is an astonishment for which I am not prepared; in the meantime, you are directly removing all freedoms.
MACHIAVELLI.
Directly is not the word of a statesman; I do not delete anything directly; this is where the skin of the fox must be sewn to the skin of the lion. Of what use would politics be if we could not gain by oblique ways the goal which cannot be reached by the straight line? Journalism appendices; on the other, I force those who want to escape the timbre to throw themselves into long and expensive compositions which will hardly be sold or will hardly be read in this form. It is hardly any more but the poor devils, today, who have the conscience to write books; they will give it up. The tax authorities will discourage literary vanity and the penal law will disarm the printing press itself, for I make the publisher and the printer criminally responsible for what the books contain. It is necessary that,if there are writers daring enough to write works against the government, they cannot find anyone to edit them. The effects of this salutary intimidation will indirectly restore a censorship that the government could not exercise itself, because of the discredit to which this preventive measure fell. Before giving birth to new works, printers and publishers will consult, they will come to inquire, they will produce the books of which they are asked to print, and in this way the government will always be usefully informed of the publications which are in preparation. against him ; he will have them seized beforehand when he sees fit and will refer the perpetrators to the courts.The effects of this salutary intimidation will indirectly restore a censorship that the government could not exercise itself, because of the discredit to which this preventive measure fell. Before giving birth to new works, printers and publishers will consult, they will come to inquire, they will produce the books of which they are asked to print, and in this way the government will always be usefully informed of the publications which are in preparation. against him ; he will have them seized beforehand when he sees fit and will refer the perpetrators to the courts.The effects of this salutary intimidation will indirectly restore a censorship that the government could not exercise itself, because of the discredit to which this preventive measure fell. Before giving birth to new works, printers and publishers will consult, they will come to inquire, they will produce the books of which they are asked to print, and in this way the government will always be usefully informed of the publications which are in preparation. against him ; he will have them seized beforehand when he sees fit and will refer the perpetrators to the courts.they will come to inform themselves, they will produce the books of which they are asked to print, and in this way the government will always be usefully informed of the publications which are being prepared against it; he will have them seized beforehand when he sees fit and will refer the perpetrators to the courts.they will come to inform themselves, they will produce the books of which they are asked to print, and in this way the government will always be usefully informed of the publications which are being prepared against it; he will have them seized beforehand when he sees fit and will refer the perpetrators to the courts.
MONTESQUIEU.
You told me you wouldn’t touch any civil rights. You do not appear by you
to doubt that it is the freedom of industry that you have just struck down by this legislation; the right of property is itself engaged there, it will pass there in its turn.
MACHIAVELLI.
These are words.
MONTESQUIEU.
So you have, I think, finished with the press.
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! that not.
MONTESQUIEU.
What is left?
MACHIAVELLI.
The other half of the job.
12.
MACHIAVELLI.
You put your finger, in fact, on the most delicate part of my task. The system that I conceive in this regard is as vast as it is multiplied in its applications. Fortunately, here I have my elbow room; I can prune and slice in complete safety and almost without raising any complaints.
MONTESQUIEU.
Why then, please?
MACHIAVELLI.
Because, in most parliamentary countries, the press has the talent to make itself hateful, because it is only ever at the service of violent, selfish, exclusive passions; because it denigrates bias, because it is venal, because it is unjust, because it is without generosity and without patriotism; last but not least, because you will never make the masses of a country understand what it can be used for.
MONTESQUIEU.
Oh! if you are looking for grievances against the press, it will be easy for you to accumulate them. If you are asking what it can be used for, that’s another thing. It simply prevents arbitrariness in the exercise of the provision; it forces people to govern constitutionally; it forces honesty, modesty, respect for themselves
and of others the depositaries of the public authority. Finally, to put it in a nutshell, it empowers anyone who is oppressed to complain and be heard. We can forgive a lot of an institution which, through so much abuse, necessarily provides so many services.
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, I know this plea, but make it understood, if you can, to as many people as possible; count those who will be interested in the fate of the press, and you will see.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is why it is better that you move immediately to the practical means of muzzling her; I believe that is the word.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is the word, indeed; moreover, it is not only journalism that I intend to curb.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is the printing press itself.
MACHIAVELLI.
You start to use irony.
MONTESQUIEU.
In a moment you will take it away from me since in all forms you will chain the press.
MACHIAVELLI.
One does not find weapons against a playful variety which you deploy in front of me; I am quite curious, I confess, to see how you will go about achieving this new program.
MACHIAVELLI.
It will take a lot less imaginative expense than you might think. I will count the number of newspapers that will represent what you call the opposition. If there are ten for the opposition, I will have twenty for the government; if there are twenty, I will have forty; if there are forty, I will have eighty. This is what will be of use to me, you understand it perfectly now, the faculty which I reserved for myself of authorizing the creation of new political sheets.
MONTESQUIEU.
In fact, it is very simple.
MACHIAVELLI.
Not as long as you think, however, because the mass of the public should not suspect this tactic; the combination would be missed and public opinion would detach itself from the newspapers which openly defended my policy.
I will divide the leaves devoted to my power into three or four categories. In the first row I will put a certain number of newspapers whose nuance will be frankly official, and which, in all meetings, will defend my acts excessively. This you will see. You ask me how I will neutralize a hostile editorial staff? In the simplest way, indeed; I would add that the government’s authorization is necessary because of any changes in the staff of the editors or managers of the newspaper.
MONTESQUIEU.
But the old newspapers, which have remained enemies of your government and whose writing will not have changed, will speak.
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! wait: I am reaching out to all present and future newspapers with fiscal measures which will properly curb advertising companies; I will submit the political sheets to what you call today the stamp and the bond. The newspaper industry will soon be so unprofitable, thanks to the elevation of these taxes, that it will only be done wisely.
MONTESQUIEU.
The remedy is insufficient, because political parties do not look at money.
MACHIAVELLI.
Rest assured, I have enough to shut their mouths up, because here comes the repressive measures. There are states in Europe where knowledge of press offenses has been referred to the jury. I do not know of a measure more deplorable than this, for it is to stir up opinion about the slightest
Mine will be there, those who believe they are agitating their party will agitate mine, those who believe they are walking under their flag will walk under mine.
MONTESQUIEU.
Are these feasible designs or phantasmagorias? It makes you dizzy.
MACHIAVELLI.
Spare your head, because you are not at the end of it.
MONTESQUIEU.
I’m just wondering, how you will be able to lead and rally all these clandestine advertising militias hired by your government.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is only a matter of organization, you must understand that; I will set up, for example, under the title of the printing and press division, a common center of action where one will come to seek the instructions and from which the signal will be part. So, for those who are only half in the secret of this combination, there will be a bizarre spectacle; we will see leaves, devoted to my government, which will attack me, which will cry out, which will cause me a host of troubles.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is beyond my reach, I don’t understand anymore.
It is mainly newspapers, as advertising companies, that I would attack. I would just tell them this language: I was able to suppress you all, I did not; I can still do it, I let you live, but it goes without saying that it is on one condition, and that is that you will not come to hamper my progress and discredit my power. I do not want to have to put you on trial every day, nor to have to constantly comment on the law in order to punish your offenses; Nor can I have an army of censors charged with examining the day before what you publish the next day. You have feathers, write; but remember this well; I reserve for myself and for my agents the right to judge when I am attacked. No subtleties. When you attack me,I will feel it well and you yourselves will feel it well; in that case, I will do myself justice with my own hands, not immediately, for I want to be careful; I will warn you once, twice; the third time I will delete you.
MONTESQUIEU.
I see with astonishment that it is not precisely the journalist who is struck by this system, it is the newspaper, whose ruin involves that of the interests which have grouped themselves around it.
MACHIAVELLI.
Let them go and gather elsewhere; we don’t trade in those things. My administration would therefore strike, as I have just told you, without of course prejudice to the sentences handed down by the courts. Two convictions in the year would automatically entail the suppression of the newspaper. I would not stop there, I would still say to the newspapers, in a decree or in a law means: Reduced to the strictest circumspection as far as you are concerned, do not hope to agitate the opinion by comments on the debates of my chambers; I forbid you the report, I even defend you the report of legal debates in the press. Do not expect to impress the public mind any more with so-called news from outside; I would punish fake news with corporal punishment,whether published in good or bad faith.
MONTESQUIEU.
It seems a little hard to me, because after all the newspapers can no longer, without the greatest perils, indulge in political assessments, will hardly live any longer except through news. Now, when a newspaper publishes a short story, it seems to me very difficult to impose its truthfulness on it, because, most often, it will not be able to answer in a certain way, and when it is morally sure of the truth, the truth. physical evidence will fail him.
MONTESQUIEU.
These various combinations appear to me to be ideally perfect. However, I submit one more observation to you, but very timid this time: If you break the silence of China, if you allow the militia of your newspapers to make, for the benefit of your designs, the false opposition which you have just come from. to speak to me, I do not really see how you will be able to prevent the unaffiliated newspapers from responding, with real blows, to the annoyances whose merry-go-round they will guess. Don’t you think they will eventually lift some of the veils that cover so many mysterious springs? When they know the secret of this comedy, will you be able to prevent them from laughing about it? The game seems very difficult to me.
MACHIAVELLI.
Not at all ; I will tell you that I have spent, here, a large part of my time in examining the strengths and weaknesses of these combinations, I have learned a great deal about what affects the conditions of existence of the press in parliamentary countries. You should know that journalism is a kind of Freemasonry: those who make a living from it are all more or less linked to each other by the bonds of professional discretion; like the ancient omens, they do not easily divulge the secret of their oracles. They would gain nothing by betraying each other, because they have
13 for most wounds more or less shameful. It is quite likely, I agree, that in the center of the capital, within a certain radius of people, these things will not be a mystery; but, everywhere else, we will not suspect it, and the great majority of the nation will walk with the utmost confidence in the footsteps of the guides that I have given it.
What does it matter to me that, in the capital, a certain world may be aware of the artifices of my journalism? Most of its influence is reserved for the province. There I will always have the temperature of opinion that will be necessary for me, and each of my attacks will surely lead to it. The provincial press will belong to me entirely, because there, there is no contradiction or possible discussion; from the administrative center where I will sit, we will regularly send to the governor of each province the order to make the newspapers speak in such and such a direction, so that at the same time, over the entire surface of the country, such influence will be produced, such an impulse will be given, very often even before the capital suspects it. You see by this that the opinion of the capital is not made to worry me. She will be latewhen necessary, on the external movement which would envelop him, if necessary, without his knowledge.
MONTESQUIEU.
The flow of your ideas leads to everything with
MACHIAVELLI.
This worries me less, because in a time when journalism has taken such a prodigious extension, one hardly reads any more books. However, I do not intend to leave the door open to them. First, I will oblige those who want to practice the profession of printer, publisher or bookseller to obtain a patent, that is to say an authorization that the government can always withdraw from them, either directly or by fair decisions.
MONTESQUIEU.
But then, these industrialists will be a kind of public functionary. The instruments of thought will become the instruments of power!
MACHIAVELLI.
You won’t complain, I imagine, for things were like that in your day, under parliaments; we must keep the old uses when they are good. I will go back to tax measures; I will extend to books the stamp which strikes newspapers, or rather I will impose the weight of the stamp on books which will not have a certain number of pages. A book, for example, which will not have two hundred pages, three hundred pages, will not be a book, it will only be a pamphlet. I believe you fully understand the advantage of this combination; on the one hand, through taxes, I make this swarm of little writings rare
MONTESQUIEU.
And how will you go about it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I will oblige the newspapers to receive at the head of their columns the corrections which the government will communicate to them; the agents of the administration will send them notes in which they will be told categorically: You have put forward such and such a fact, it is not correct; you have allowed yourself such criticism, you have been unfair, you have been improper, you have been wrong, take it for granted. It will be, as you can see, a fair and open censorship.
MONTESQUIEU.
In which, of course, we will not have the answer.
MACHIAVELLI.
Obviously no; the discussion will be closed.
MONTESQUIEU.
In this way you will always have the last word, you will have it without using violence, it is very ingenious. As you told me very well earlier, your government is journalism incarnate.
MACHIAVELLI.
Just as I do not want the country to be agitated by noises from outside, so I do not want it to be agitated by noises from within, even by the simple news that it is doubting. is the freedom of the industry that you have just struck down by this legislation; the right of property is itself engaged there, it will pass there in its turn.
MACHIAVELLI.
These are words.
MONTESQUIEU.
So you have, I think, finished with the press.
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! that not.
MONTESQUIEU.
What is left?
MACHIAVELLI.
The other half of the job.
12.
each of my newspapers, according to its shade, will endeavor to persuade each party that the resolution which has been taken is that which favors it the most. What will not be written in an official document will be taken out by way of interpretation; what will only be indicated, the unofficial newspapers will translate it more openly, the democratic and revolutionary newspapers will shout it from above the rooftops; and while people will argue, and give the most diverse interpretations to my actions, my government will always be able to respond to each and everyone: You are mistaken about my intentions, you misread my statements; I never meant that this or that. The main thing is never to contradict yourself.
MONTESQUIEU.
How? ‘Or’ What ! After what you have just told me, do you have such a claim?
MACHIAVELLI.
No doubt, and your astonishment proves to me that you did not understand me. It is the words much more than the acts that it is a question of making accord. How do you expect the great mass of a nation to judge if this is the logic that drives its government? You just have to tell him. I therefore want the various phases of my policy to be presented as the development
THE TWELFTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I have only shown you as yet the somewhat defensive part of the organic regime that I would impose on [the press; I now have to show you how I could use this institution for the benefit of my power. I dare say that no government has had, to this day, a more daring conception than the one I am going to tell you about. In parliamentary countries, it is almost always through the press that governments perish, well, I see the possibility of neutralizing the press through the press itself. Since journalism is such a great force, do you know what my government would do? He would become a journalist, it would be journalism incarnate.
MONTESQUIEU.
Really, you give me some strange surprises! It is a panopnmà perpetually
their eyes by novelties, by surprises, by drama; this is weird perhaps, but, again, it is.
I would follow these indications point by point; consequently, I would, in matters of commerce, industry, arts and even administration, study all kinds of projects, plans, combinations, changes, rearrangements, improvements whose repercussions in the the press would cover the voices of the most numerous and fruitful publicists. Political economy has, they say, made a fortune with you, well, I would leave nothing to invent, nothing to publish, nothing to say even to your theorists, to your utopians, to the most passionate declaimers of your schools. The well-being of the people would be the sole, invariable object of my public confidences. Whether I speak myself, or whether I have my ministers or my writers speak, we would never run dry on the greatness of the country, on prosperity,on the majesty of its mission and its destinies; we would never stop talking to him about the great principles of modern law, about the great problems which agitate humanity. The most enthusiastic, the most universal liberalism would breathe in my writings. The peoples of the West love the oriental style, so the style of all official speeches, of all official manifestos should always be pictorial, con-
stirringly pompous, full of uplifting and reflections. People do not like atheistic governments, in my communications with the public, I would never fail to place my acts under the invocation of the Divinity, associating, with skill, my own star with that of the country.
I would like the acts of my reign to be compared at every moment to those of past governments. It would be the best way to bring out my blessings and to excite the recognition they deserve.
It would be very important to bring out the faults of those who preceded me, to show that I have always known how to avoid them. One would thus maintain, against the regimes to which my power succeeded, a sort of antipathy, even aversion, which would end up becoming irreparable like an expiation.
Not only would I give a certain number of newspapers the mission of incessantly exalting the glory of my reign, of throwing on other governments than mine the responsibility for the faults of European policy, but I would like part of this praise would seem clear than an echo of foreign papers, of which one would reproduce articles, true or false, which would render a brilliant homage to my own policy. In addition I would have, abroad, discounted newspapers, the support of which would be all the more effective if I
Mine will be there, those who believe they are agitating their party will agitate mine, those who believe they are walking under their flag will walk under mine.
MONTESQUIEU.
Are these feasible designs or phantasmagorias? It makes you dizzy.
MACHIAVELLI.
Spare your head, because you are not at the end of it.
MONTESQUIEU.
I’m just wondering, how you will be able to lead and rally all these clandestine advertising militias hired by your government.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is only a matter of organization, you must understand that; I will set up, for example, under the title of the printing and press division, a common action center where we will come and get the instructions and from which the signal will come. So, for those who will only be half in the secret of this combination, a bizarre spectacle will take place; we will see leaves, devoted to my government, which will attack me, which will cry out, which will cause me a host of troubles.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is beyond my reach, I don’t understand anymore.
fishing the course, the platitude of writers and politicians who would be in possession of journalism, would not fail to form a repulsive contrast with the dignity of language that would fall from the steps of the throne, with the vivid and colorful dialectic that we would take care of. support all manifestations of power. You understand, now, why I wanted to surround the prince with this swarm of publicists, administrators, lawyers, businessmen and jurisconsults who are essential to the writing of this quantity of official communications. of which I have spoken to you, and of which the impression would always be very strong on the minds.
Such, in short, is the general economy of my regime on the press.
MONTESQUIEU.
So are you done with her?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, and with regret, because I was much shorter than it should have been. But our moments are numbered, we must walk quickly.
for the most part more or less shameful wounds. It is quite likely, I agree, that in the center of the capital, within a certain radius of people, these things will not be a mystery; but, everywhere else, we will not suspect it, and the great majority of the nation will walk with the utmost confidence in the footsteps of the guides that I have given it.
What does it matter to me that, in the capital, a certain world may be aware of the artifices of my journalism? Most of its influence is reserved for the province. There I will always have the temperature of opinion that will be necessary for me, and each of my attacks will surely lead to it. The provincial press will belong to me entirely, because there, there is no contradiction or possible discussion; from the administrative center where I will sit, we will regularly send to the governor of each province the order to make the newspapers speak in such and such a direction, so that at the same time, over the entire surface of the country, such influence will be produced, such an impulse will be given, very often even before the capital suspects it. You see by this that the opinion of the capital is not made to worry me. She will be latewhen necessary, on the external movement which would envelop him, if necessary, without his knowledge.
MONTESQUIEU.
The flow of your ideas leads to everything with
THE THIRTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
I need to recover a little from the emotions that you have just made me go through. What fertility of resources, what strange conceptions! There is poetry in all of this and I know not what fatal beauty that modern Byrons would not disown; here we find the scenic talent of the author of the Mandragore.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do you think so, Monsieur de Secondât? Something tells me, however, that you are not reassured in your irony; you are not sure that these things are not possible.
MONTESQUIEU.
If you are concerned about my opinion, you will get it; I am waiting for the end.
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m not there yet.
14
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, keep going.
MACHIAVELLI.
I am at your service.
MONTESQUIEU.
When you started out, you have just published a formidable piece of legislation in the press. You have turned off all voices except your own. Here are the parties dumb in front of you, are you not afraid of conspiracies?
MACHIAVELLI.
No, because I would not be very far-sighted if, with the back of my hand, I did not disarm them all at once.
MONTESQUIEU.
So what are your means?
MACHIAVELLI.
I would begin by deporting by the hundreds those who welcomed, arms in hand, the advent of my power. I have been told that in Italy, Germany and France, it is through secret societies that the men of disorder who conspire against governments are recruited; I would shatter in my house these dark threads which weave themselves in the lairs like spider webs.
MONTESQUIEU.
After?
vées. When there is some extraordinary suicide, some big money business too shady, some misdeed of a public official, I will send the papers to forbid to speak of it. Silence about these things respects public honesty better than noise.
MONTESQUIEU.
And in the meantime, will you be doing excessive journalism?
MACHIAVELLI.
It must be so. To use the press, to use it in all forms, such is, today, the law of the powers which want to live. It is very singular, but it is. So I would embark on this path far beyond what you can imagine.
To understand the extent of my system, it is necessary to see how the language of my press is called to concur with the official acts of my policy: I want, I suppose, to bring out a solution of such exterior or interior complication; this solution, indicated by my newspapers, which, for several months, each practice in their direction the public spirit, occurs one fine morning, like an official event: You know with what discretion and what ingenious care must be written the documents of authority in important conjunctures: the problem to be solved in such a case is to give a sort of satisfaction to all parties. Well, 15.
MONTESQUIEU.
And how will you go about it?
MACHIAVELLI.
I will oblige the newspapers to receive at the head of their columns the corrections which the government will communicate to them; the agents of the administration will send them notes in which they will be told categorically: You have put forward such and such a fact, it is not correct; you have allowed yourself such criticism, you have been unfair, you have been improper, you have been wrong, take it for granted. It will be, as you can see, a fair and open censorship.
MONTESQUIEU.
In which, of course, we will not have the answer.
MACHIAVELLI.
Obviously no; the discussion will be closed.
MONTESQUIEU.
In this way you will always have the last word, you will have it without using violence, it is very ingenious. As you told me very well earlier, your government is journalism incarnate.
MACHIAVELLI.
Just as I do not want the country to be agitated by noise from outside, so I do not want it to be agitated by noise from within, even by simple private news.
Moreover. But let’s come back. You destroyed the secret societies.
MACHIAVELLI.
Don’t go so fast; I didn’t do that, you’re going to cause some confusion.
MONTESQUIEU.
What and how?
MACHIAVELLI.
I have banned secret societies, the character and activities of which would escape the surveillance of my government, but I have not intended to deprive myself of a means of information, of an occult influence which can be considerable if the ‘we know how to use it.
MONTESQUIEU.
What can you ponder on this?
MACHIAVELLI.
I foresee the possibility of giving, to a certain number of these companies, a sort of legal existence or rather of centralizing them all into one, of which I will name the supreme leader. In this way I will hold in my hand the various revolutionary elements which the country contains. The people who make up these societies belong to all nations, to all classes, to all ranks; I will be acquainted with the most obscure intrigues of politics. It will be like an annex to my policy which I will soon have to tell you about.
This underground world of secret societies is
14. Each of my newspapers, according to its nuance, will endeavor to persuade each party that the resolution which has been taken is that which favors it the most. What will not be written in an official document will be taken out by way of interpretation; what will only be indicated, the unofficial newspapers will translate it more openly, the democratic and revolutionary newspapers will shout it from above the rooftops; and while people will argue, and give the most diverse interpretations to my actions, my government will always be able to respond to each and everyone: You are mistaken about my intentions, you misread my statements; I never meant that this or that. The main thing is never to contradict yourself.
MONTESQUIEU.
How? ‘Or’ What ! After what you have just told me, do you have such a claim?
MACHIAVELLI.
No doubt, and your astonishment proves to me that you did not understand me. It is the words much more than the acts that it is a question of making accord. How do you expect the great mass of a nation to judge if this is the logic that drives its government? You just have to tell him. I therefore want the various phases of my policy to be presented as the development
of a single thought attached to an immutable goal. Each planned or unforeseen event will be a result wisely brought about, the deviations in direction will only be the different sides of the same question, the various paths which lead to the same goal, the various means of an identical solution pursued relentlessly through obstacles. . The last event will be given as the logical conclusion of all the others.
MONTESQUIEU.
In truth, we must admire you! What strength of mind and what activity!
MACHIAVELLI.
Every day my journals would be filled with official speeches, reports, reports to ministers, reports to the sovereign. I will not forget that I live in a time when people believe they can solve, through industry, all the problems of society, where they are constantly concerned with improving the lot of the working classes. I would focus all the more on these questions, which are a very happy diversion for the preoccupations of internal politics. Among the peoples of the south, governments must appear ceaselessly occupied; the masses consent to be inactive, but on one condition, which is that those who govern them give them the spectacle of incessant activity, of a kind of fever; that they constantly attract
their eyes by novelties, by surprises, by drama; this is weird perhaps, but, again, it is.
I would follow these indications point by point; consequently, I would, in matters of commerce, industry, arts and even administration, study all kinds of projects, plans, combinations, changes, rearrangements, improvements whose repercussions in the the press would cover the voices of the most numerous and fruitful publicists. Political economy has, they say, made a fortune with you, well, I would leave nothing to invent, nothing to publish, nothing to say even to your theorists, to your utopians, to the most passionate declaimers of your schools. The well-being of the people would be the sole, invariable object of my public confidences. Whether I speak myself, or whether I have my ministers or my writers speak, we would never run dry on the greatness of the country, on prosperity,on the majesty of its mission and its destinies; we would never stop talking to him about the great principles of modern law, about the great problems which agitate humanity. The most enthusiastic, the most universal liberalism would breathe in my writings. The peoples of the West love the oriental style, so the style of all official speeches, of all official manifestos should always be pictorial, con-
stirringly pompous, full of uplifting and reflections. People do not like atheistic governments, in my communications with the public, I would never fail to place my acts under the invocation of the Divinity, associating, with skill, my own star with that of the country.
I would like the acts of my reign to be compared at every moment to those of past governments. It would be the best way to bring out my blessings and to excite the recognition they deserve.
It would be very important to bring out the faults of those who preceded me, to show that I have always known how to avoid them. One would thus maintain, against the regimes to which my power succeeded, a sort of antipathy, even aversion, which would end up becoming irreparable like an expiation.
Not only would I give a certain number of newspapers the mission of incessantly exalting the glory of my reign, of throwing on other governments than mine the responsibility for the faults of European policy, but I would like that a large part of these praises seemed to be only an echo of foreign papers, of which articles, true or false, would be reproduced, which would render a brilliant homage to my own policy. In addition I would have, abroad, discounted newspapers, the support of which would be all the more effective if I
would give an opposition color on some points of detail.
My principles, my ideas, my actions would be represented with the halo of youth, with the prestige of new law in opposition to the decrepitude and obsolescence of old institutions.
I am not unaware that the public mind needs valves, that intellectual activity, driven back on one point, necessarily transfers to another. This is why I would not be afraid to throw the nation into all the theoretical and practical speculations of the industrial regime.
Apart from politics, moreover, I will tell you that I would be a very good prince, that I would allow philosophical or religious questions to be agitated in peace. In matters of religion, the doctrine of free examination has become a sort of monomania. We must not thwart this tendency, we could not do so without danger. In the most advanced countries of Europe in civilization, the invention of the printing press ended up giving birth to a mad, furious, unbridled, almost filthy literature, it is a great evil. Well, that is sad to say, but it will almost be enough not to hamper it, for this rage to write, which possesses your parliamentary countries, to be more or less satisfied.
This plagued literature which cannot be
fishing the course, the platitude of writers and politicians who would be in possession of journalism, would not fail to form a repulsive contrast with the dignity of language that would fall from the steps of the throne, with the vivid and colorful dialectic that we would take care of. support all manifestations of power. You understand, now, why I wanted to surround the prince with this swarm of publicists, administrators, lawyers, businessmen and jurisconsults who are essential to the drafting of this quantity of official communications of which I spoke to you, and of which the impression would always be very strong on the spirits.
Such, in short, is the general economy of my regime on the press.
MONTESQUIEU.
So are you done with her?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, and with regret, because I was much shorter than it should have been. But our moments are numbered, we must walk quickly.
MACHIAVELLI.
Perhaps. Be sure of one thing, it is that, in this new organization, the magistrates will not deviate more than before, when it comes to purely civil interests?
MONTESQUIEU.
What do I know? because, from your words, I can already see that they will deviate when it comes to political interests.
MACHIAVELLI.
They will not deviate; they will do their duty as they should, for, in political matters, it is necessary, in the interest of order, that judges always be on the side of power. It would be the worst of things, if a sovereign could be affected by factious decrees which the whole country would seize, instantly, against the government. What would be the use of having imposed silence on the press, if it were to be found in the judgments of the courts?
MONTESQUIEU.
Under appearances modest, your means is thus very powerful, that you attribute to him such a reach?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, because it eliminates this spirit of resistance, this esprit de corps which is always so dangerous in legal companies which have preserved the memory, perhaps the cult, of governments.
THE THIRTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
I need to recover a little from the emotions that you have just made me go through. What fertility of resources, what strange conceptions! There is poetry in all of this and I know not what fatal beauty that modern Byrons would not disown; here we find the scenic talent of the author of the Mandragore.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do you think so, Monsieur de Secondât? Something tells me, however, that you are not reassured in your irony; you are not sure that these things are not possible.
MONTESQUIEU.
If you are concerned about my opinion, you will get it; I am waiting for the end.
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m not there yet.
I don’t pretend to escape criticism; it doesn’t matter to me, as long as I don’t hear it. I would have as a principle, in all things, the irrevocability of my decisions, in spite of the murmurs. A prince who acts in this way is always sure to command respect for his will.
THE FOURTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I have already told you many times, and I repeat it to you again, that I do not need to create everything, to organize everything; that I find in the already existing institutions a large part of the instruments of my power. Do you know what the constitutional guarantee is?
‘ MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, and I regret it for you, because I am taking away, unwittingly, a surprise that you would perhaps not have been sorry to spare me, with the skill of setting in scene which is proper to you.
MACHIAVELLI.
What do you think ?
MONTESQUIEU.
I think what is true, at least for France which you seem to want to talk about, is that it is a law of circumstance which must be modified, if not completely disappear, under a regime of constitutional freedom.
‘MACHIAVELLI.
I find you very moderate on this point. It is simply, according to your ideas, one of the most tyrannical restrictions in the world. What! when individuals are wronged by government agents in the exercise of their functions, and they bring them before the courts, the judges will have to answer them: We cannot do you right, the door of the courtroom is closed: go ask to the administration authorization to prosecute its officials. But it is a real denial of justice. How often will the government allow such prosecutions?
MONTESQUIEU.
What are you complaining about? It seems to me that this suits your business very well.
MACHIAVELLI.
I have told you this only to show you that, in States where the action of justice encounters such obstacles, a government has little to fear from the courts. It is always as transitional provisions that such exceptions are inserted in the laws, but once the transition periods have passed, the exceptions remain, and it is with good reason, because when order reigns, they are not in the way, and when it is disturbed, they are necessary.
There is another modern institution which does not serve the action of the central power with less efficiency: it is the creation, before the courts, of a great magistracy which you call the public prosecutor and which was formerly called, with much more reason, the ministry of the King, because this function is essentially removable and revocable at the will of the prince. I do not need to tell you what is the influence of this magistrate on the courts near which he sits; it is considerable. Remember all this. Now I am going to talk to you about the Court of Appeals, about which I reserved myself to tell you something and which plays such a considerable role in the administration of justice.
The court of appeals is more than a judicial body: it is, in a way, a fourth power in the State, because it is up to it to determine in the last resort the meaning of the law. So I will repeat here what I believe I told you about the Senate and the Legislative Assembly: a similar court of justice which would be completely independent of the government could, by virtue of its sovereign and almost discretionary power of interpretation, spill it whenever she wants. It would suffice for that to restrict or extend systematically, in the sense of the freedom, the provisions of laws that regulate the exercise of political rights.
MONTESQUIEU.
And is it appears the opposite that you are going to ask him?
MACHIAVELLI.
I won’t ask her for anything, she will do whatever it takes on her own. For it is here that the various causes of influence of which I spoke to you above will compete most powerfully. The closer the judge is to power, the more it belongs to him. The conservative spirit of the reign will develop there to a higher degree than anywhere else, and the laws of high political police will receive, in the bosom of this great assembly, an interpretation so favorable to my power, that I will be exempt from a host of restrictive measures which would otherwise become necessary.
MONTESQUIEU.
It really seems, to hear you, that the laws are susceptible to the most fantastic interpretations. Are the legislative texts not clear and precise, can they lend themselves to extensions or restrictions such as those you indicate?
MACHIAVELLI.
It is not to the author of L’Esprit des lois, to the experienced magistrate who must have rendered so many excellent judgments, that I can claim
will exist under the conditions I just said or they will not exist.
MONTESQUIEU.
The sic volo sic jubeo finale is never long overdue with you. I believe that, decidedly, you are well guarded against conjurations.
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, because it is good to tell you again that the legislation will not allow meetings, meetings which will exceed a certain number of people.
MONTESQUIEU.
How?
MACHIAVELLI.
Do you stick to these details? We won’t allow a meeting of more than fifteen or twenty people, if you will.
MONTESQUIEU.
What! friends will not be able to dine together beyond this number?
MACHIAVELLI.
You are already alarmed, I can see it, in the name of Gallic gaiety. Well, yes, we can, because my reign will not be as fierce as you think, but on one condition, which is that we will not talk about politics.
MONTESQUIEU.
Can we talk about literature?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, but on the condition that under the pretext of literature we will not meet for a political purpose, because we can still not talk about politics at all and nevertheless give a feast a character of manifestation that would be understood by the public. You don’t have to.
MONTESQUIEU.
Alas! how, in such a system, it is difficult for citizens to live without causing offense to the government!
MACHIAVELLI.
It is a mistake, it will only be the factions who will suffer from these restrictions; no one else will feel them.
It goes without saying that I am not here concerned with acts of rebellion against my power, nor with attacks aimed at overthrowing it, nor with attacks either against the person of the prince, or against his authority or his institutions. These are real crimes, which are punished by the common law of all legislations. They would be foreseen and punished in my kingdom according to a classification and according to definitions that would not allow the slightest direct or indirect attack against the established order of things.
MONTESQUIEU.
Allow me to trust you in this regard, and not inquire into your means. It is not enough
“Must be provided with an authorization, etc. ”
Well, the court of Appeals, if the question is put to it, will be able to say: It is not only the professional fact that the law in question had in view. It is any sort of distribution or peddling. Consequently, the very author of writing or of a work who delivers one or more copies, even as a tribute, without prior authorization, acts of distribution and peddling; consequently it falls within the scope of the penal provision.
You see immediately what results from such an interpretation; instead of a simple police statute, you have a law restricting the right to publish one’s thoughts through the press.
MONTESQUIEU.
All you needed was to be a lawyer.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is absolutely necessary. How do we overthrow governments today? By legal distinctions, by subtleties of constitutional law, by using against the power of all means, all the weapons, all the combinations which are not directly prohibited by the law. And these legal devices, which parties use so fiercely against power, you would not want power to use them against parties? But the fight would not be
not equal, resistance would not even be possible; it would be necessary to abdicate.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have so many pitfalls to avoid, that its a miracle if you anticipate them all. The courts are not bound by their judgments. With a case law such as that which will be applied under your reign, I can see you having trials on your hands. The litigants will never tire of knocking on the doors of the courts to ask them for other interpretations.
MACHIAVELLI.
In the early days, it is possible; but when a certain number of judgments will have definitively established the jurisprudence, no one will allow himself what it defends, and the source of the lawsuits will be dried up. Public opinion will even be so appeased that we will rely, on the meaning of the laws, on the unofficial opinions of the administration.
MONTESQUIEU.
And how, please?
MACHIAVELLI.
In such or such given circumstances, when there is reason to fear that some difficulty arises on such or such point of legislation, the administration, in the form of an opinion, will declare that such or such fact falls under the application of the law. , that the law extends to such and such a case.
MONTESQUIEU.
But these are only statements which do not bind the courts in any way.
MACHIAVELLI.
Without a doubt, but these declarations will none the less have a very great authority, a very great influence on the decisions of justice, starting from an administration as powerful as that which I have organized. Above all, they will have a very great sway over individual resolutions, and in a multitude of cases, not to say always, they will prevent unfortunate trials; we will abstain.
MONTESQUIEU.
As we move forward, I see that your government is becoming more and more paternal. These are almost patriarchal judicial mores. It seems to me impossible, in fact, that you do not take account of a solicitude which is exercised in so many ingenious forms.
MACHIAVELLI.
You are, however, obliged to admit that I am very far from the barbarous procedures of government which you seemed to attribute to me at the beginning of this interview. You see that in all this violence plays no role; I take my fulcrum where everyone takes it today, in the right.
MONTESQUIEU.
In the right of the strongest.
MACHIAVELLI.
The right which is obeyed is always the right of the strongest; I don’t know of any exception to this rule.
THE FIFTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
Although we have gone through a very wide circle, and you have already organized almost everything, I must not conceal from you that you still have much to do to reassure me completely as to the duration of your power. The thing in the world that amazes me the most is that you have given it popular suffrage, that is to say, the most inconsistent element of its nature that I know of. Let’s get along well, I beg you; you told me you were king?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, king.
MONTESQUIEU.
Lifetime or hereditary?
MACHIAVELLI.
I am king, as one is king in all the kingdoms of the world, hereditary king with descendants called to succeed me from male to male, because I believe that would not stop you, Machiavelli.
I do not pretend to escape criticism; it doesn’t matter to me, as long as I don’t hear it. I would have as a principle, in all things, the irrevocability of my decisions, in spite of the murmurs. A prince who acts in this way is always sure to command respect for his will.
THE FOURTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I have already told you many times, and I repeat it to you again, that I do not need to create everything ”to organize everything; that I find in the already existing institutions a large part of the instruments of my power. Do you know what the constitutional guarantee is?
‘ MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, and I regret it for you, because I unwittingly take away a surprise that you would perhaps not have been sorry to spare me, with the skill of directing which is proper to you.
MACHIAVELLI.
What do you think?
MONTESQUIEU.
I think what is true, at least for France which you seem to want to talk about, is that it is a law of circumstance that must be amended,
I will impose on the candidates the solemnity of the oath. There is no question here of an oath taken to the nation, as understood by your revolutionaries of 89; I want an oath of fidelity taken to the prince himself and to his constitution.
MONTESQUIEU.
But since in politics you are not afraid of violating your own, how can you hope that people will be more scrupulous on this point than yourself?
MACHIAVELLI.
I rely little on the political conscience of men; I am counting on the power of public opinion: no one will dare to degrade himself before it by openly failing to uphold the sworn faith. We will dare it all the less, since the oath that I will impose will precede the election instead of following it, and we will be without excuse to come and seek the suffrage, under these conditions, when we are not at ‘advance decided to serve me. The government must now be given the means to resist the influence of the opposition, to prevent it from deserting the ranks of those who want to defend it. At the time of the elections, the parties have the habit of proclaiming their candidates and posing them in front of the government; I will do like them, I will have declared candidates and I will pose them in front of the parties, order reigns, they are not in the way, and when it is disturbed, they are necessary.
There is another modern institution which does not serve the action of the central power with less efficiency: it is the creation, before the courts, of a great magistracy which you call the public prosecutor and which was formerly called, with much more reason, the ministry of the King, because this function is essentially removable and revocable at the will of the prince. I do not need to tell you what is the influence of this magistrate on the courts near which he sits; it is considerable. Remember all this. Now I am going to talk to you about the Court of Appeals, about which I reserved myself to tell you something and which plays such a considerable role in the administration of justice.
The court of Appeals is more than a judicial body: it is, in a way, a fourth power in the State, because it is up to it to determine in the last resort the meaning of the law. So I will repeat here what I believe I told you about the Senate and the Legislative Assembly: a similar court of justice which would be completely independent of the government could, by virtue of its sovereign and almost discretionary power of interpretation, spill it whenever she wants. It would suffice for that to restrict or extend systematically, in the sense of 15.
MACHIAVELLI.
Public order needs less talented men than men devoted to government. Great capacity sits on the throne and among those around it elsewhere it is useless; it is even almost harmful, for it can only be exercised against power.
MONTESQUIEU.
Your aphorisms cut like the sword; I have no arguments to oppose you. So resume, I beg you, the rest of your electoral regulations.
MACHIAVELLI.
For the reasons that I have just deduced, I do not want either a list system which distorts the election, which allows the coalition of men and principles. I will also divide the electoral colleges into a certain number of administrative constituencies, in which there will be only room for the election of a single deputy, and where, consequently, each elector can bear only one name. on his ballot.
We must, moreover, be able to neutralize the opposition in constituencies where it would be too keenly felt. So I assume that in previous elections one constituency either stood out with the majority of its hostile votes, or is expected to vote against candidates to learn what it is. than case law. There is no text, however clear it may be, which cannot receive the most contrary solutions, even in pure civil law; but please note that we are here in political matters. Now, it is a habit common to legislators of all times, to adopt, in some of their provisions, a wording sufficiently elastic so that it can, depending on the circumstances,to be used to govern cases or to introduce exceptions on which it would not have been prudent to explain oneself in a more precise manner.
I know perfectly well that I must give you examples, because otherwise my proposal would appear too vague to you. The embarrassment for me is to present to you some which have a character of sufficient generality to dispense me from entering into long details. Here is one that I prefer, because earlier we touched on this matter.
Speaking of the constitutional guarantee, you said that this exceptional law should be amended in a free country.
Well, I guess this law exists in the state that I govern, I guess it has been changed; thus I imagine that before me there was * promulgated a law, which, in electoral matters, made it possible to prosecute the agents of the government without the authorization of the Council of State.
besides so many other resources! Without buying the vote directly, that is to say with uncovered money, nothing will be easier for him than to make the populations vote at will by means of administrative concessions, by promising here a port, there a market, further afield. a road, a canal; and conversely, by doing nothing for towns and villages where the vote will be hostile.
MONTESQUIEU.
I have nothing to reproach with the depth of these combinations; but do you not fear that it will be said that sometimes you corrupt and sometimes you oppress popular suffrage? Are you not afraid of compromising your power in struggles in which it will always be so directly involved? The slightest success that we will achieve over your candidates will be a resounding victory which will put your government in check. What never ceases to worry me about you is that I still see you obliged to succeed in all things, under pain of disaster.
MACHIAVELLI.
You hold the language of fear; rest assured. At the point where I have arrived, I have succeeded in so many things, that I cannot perish by the infinitely [small. Bossuet’s grain of sand is not made for real politicians. I am so advanced in my career that I could, without danger, even brave thunderstorms; than
“Must have an authorization, etc.” ”
Well, the court of Appeals, if the question is put to it, will be able to say: It is not only the professional fact that the law in question had in view. It is any sort of distribution or peddling. Consequently, the very author of a writing or of a work who delivers one or more copies, be it as a tribute, without prior authorization, acts of distribution and peddling; consequently it falls within the scope of the penal provision.
You see immediately what results from such an interpretation; instead of a simple police statute, you have a law restricting the right to publish one’s thoughts through the press.
MONTESQUIEU.
All you needed was to be a lawyer.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is absolutely necessary. How do we overthrow governments today? By legal distinctions, by subtleties of constitutional law, by using against the power of all means, all the weapons, all the combinations which are not directly prohibited by the law. And these legal devices, which parties use so fiercely against power, you would not want power to use them against parties? But the fight would not be that, that one comes to make fine speeches: they will enter the ears of my deputies as the wind enters the hole of a keyhole. Now do you want me to tell you about my Senate?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, I know from Caligula what it can be.
THE SIXTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
One of the salient points of your policy is the annihilation of parties and the destruction of collective forces. You have not failed in this program; however, I still see things around you that you have not touched. So you still laid hands on neither the clergy, nor the university, nor the bar, nor the national militias, nor the commercial corporations; it seems to me, however, that there is more than one dangerous element here.
MACHIAVELLI.
I cannot tell you everything at the same time. Let us come immediately to the national militias, because I should not have to deal with them any more; their dissolution was necessarily one of the first acts of my power. The organization of a citizen guard cannot be reconciled with the existence of a regular army, because armed citizens could, at
MONTESQUIEU.
In the right of the strongest.
MACHIAVELLI.
The right which is obeyed is always the right of the strongest; I don’t know of any exception to this rule.
THE FIFTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
Although we have gone through a very wide circle, and you have already organized almost everything, I must not conceal from you that you still have much to do to reassure me completely as to the duration of your power. The thing in the world that amazes me the most is that you have given it popular suffrage, that is to say, the most inconsistent element of its nature that I know of. Let’s get along well, I beg you; you told me you were king?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, king.
MONTESQUIEU.
Lifetime or hereditary?
MACHIAVELLI.
I am a king, as one is king in all the kingdoms of the world, a hereditary king with descendants called to succeed me from male to male, by order of offspring, with the perpetual exclusion of women.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are not gallant.
MACHIAVELLI.
Allow me, I am inspired by the traditions of the Frankish and Salic monarchy.
MONTESQUIEU.
You will no doubt explain to me how you think you can make heredity, with the democratic suffrage of the United States?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes.
MONTESQUIEU.
How? ‘Or’ What ! you hope, with this principle, to bind the will of future generations?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes.
MONTESQUIEU.
What I would like to see now is how you will do with this suffrage, when it comes to applying it to the appointment of public officers?
MACHIAVELLI.
Which public officers? You know very well that in monarchical states it is the government which appoints officials of all ranks.
Universities contain armies of professors whose leisure time can be used outside the classroom for the propagation of good doctrines. I would make them open free courses in all the important cities, I would thus mobilize the instruction and the influence of the government.
MONTESQUIEU.
In other words, you absorb, you confiscate for your own benefit even the last glimmers of independent thought.
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m not confiscating anything at all.
MONTESQUIEU.
Do you allow professors other than yours to popularize science by the same means and that without a patent, without authorization?
MACHIAVELLI.
What! do you want me to authorize clubs?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, go to another object.
MACHIAVELLI.
Among the multitude of regulatory measures that the salvation of my government calls for, you have called my attention to the bar; it is to extend the action of my hand beyond what is necessary for the moment; I am touching here on civil interests, and you know that this matter, my rule of conduct is to abstain as much as possible. In States where the bar is incorporated, the litigants regard the independence of this institution as an inseparable guarantee of the right of defense before the courts, whether it is about their honor, their interest or their life. . It is very serious to intervene here, because public opinion could be alarmed by a cry that the entire corporation would not fail to throw out. However, I am aware that this order will be a hotbed of influences constantly hostile to my power. This profession, you know better than I, Montesquieu, develops cold and obstinate characters in their principles, minds whose tendency is to seek in acts of power the element of pure legality. The lawyer does not have to the same degree as the magistrate a high sense of social necessities; he sees the law too closely, and from sides too small to have the correct feeling, while the magistrate …
MONTESQUIEU.
Spare the apology.
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, because I do not forget that I am in front of a descendant of those great magistrates who supported with so much brilliance, in France, the throne of the monarchy.
MONTESQUIEU.
And who rarely proved easy to register edicts, when they violated state law.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is how they ended up overthrowing the state itself. I do not want my courts to be parliaments and the lawyers, under the immunity of their dress, to play politics there. The greatest man of the century, to whom your country had the honor to give birth, said: I want the tongue to be cut off to a lawyer who speaks ill of the government. Modern manners are gentler, I wouldn’t go that far. On the first day, and under appropriate circumstances, I will limit myself to doing one very simple thing: I will issue a decree which, while respecting the independence of the corporation, will nevertheless submit the lawyers to receive from the sovereign the investiture of their profession. In the explanatory memorandum to my decree, it will not, I believe, very difficult to demonstrate to the litigants that they will find in this mode of appointment a more serious guarantee than when the corporation recruits itself, that is to say with elements necessarily a little confused.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is only too true that one can lend to the most detestable measures, the language of the real and declared reason is to represent it. Custodian of all the powers that he has delegated to me, it is I alone, ultimately, who am his real representative. What I want he wants, what I do he does. Consequently, it is essential that during the elections the factions cannot substitute their influence for that of which I am the armed personification. So I found other ways to cripple their efforts. You should know, for example, that the law that prohibits meetings will naturally apply to those that may be formed for elections. In this way, the parties will not be able to consult or come to an agreement.
MONTESQUIEU.
Why do you always put the parties first? Under the pretext of imposing barriers on them, aren’t you imposing them on the voters themselves? Parties, ultimately, are only collections of voters; if voters cannot enlighten themselves through meetings, through talks, how will they be able to vote knowingly?
MACHIAVELLI.
I see that you do not know with what infinite art, with what cunning political passions thwart prohibitive measures. Don’t worry about voters, those with good intentions will always know who to vote for yours, he obeys a constitution which is neither settled by law nor by sword. If you reign over a Catholic nation and have the clergy as your enemy, sooner or later you will perish, even though the whole people are on your side.
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m not sure why you like to make the priest an apostle of freedom. I never saw that, neither in ancient times, nor in modern times; I have always found in the priesthood a natural support of absolute power.
Observe well, if, in the interest of my establishment, I had to make concessions to the democratic spirit of my time, if I took universal suffrage as the basis of my power, it is only ‘an artifice ordered by the times, I nonetheless claim the benefit of divine right, I am nonetheless king by the grace of God. As such, the clergy must therefore support me, because my principles of authority are in accordance with theirs. If, however, he was factious, if he took advantage of his influence to wage a silent war on my government…
MONTESQUIEU.
Well?
MACHIAVELLI.
You who speak of the influence of the clergy, do you not know how unpopular it has made itself in some Catholic states? In
MACHIAVELLI.
Public order needs less talented men than men devoted to government. Great capacity sits on the throne and among those around it, elsewhere it is, useless; it is even almost harmful, for it can only be exercised against power.
MONTESQUIEU.
Your aphorisms cut like the sword; I have no arguments to oppose you. So resume, I beg you, the rest of your electoral regulations.
MACHIAVELLI.
For the reasons that I have just deduced, I do not want either a list system which distorts the election, which allows the coalition of men and principles. I will also divide the electoral colleges into a certain number of administrative constituencies, in which there will be only room for the election of a single deputy, and where, consequently, each elector can bear only one name. on his ballot.
We must, moreover, be able to neutralize the opposition in constituencies where it would be too keenly felt. So I suppose that in previous elections one constituency stood out with the majority of its hostile votes, or that there is reason to predict which one will vote against the candidates.
government, nothing is easier than to remedy it: if this constituency has only a small population, it is attached to a neighboring or remote constituency, but much larger, in which its votes are drowned and where his political spirit is lost. If the hostile constituency, on the contrary, has a large population, it is divided into several parts which are annexed to neighboring constituencies, in which it is completely annihilated.
I pass, you understand it well, on a host of points of detail which are only the accessories of the whole. Thus, if necessary, I divide the colleges into sections of colleges, to give, when necessary, more influence in the action of the administration and I have the colleges and sections of colleges presided over by the municipal officers whose appointment depends on the government.
MONTESQUIEU.
I notice, with a certain surprise, that you are not using here a measure which you indicated in time to Leo X, and which consists in the substitution of the suffrage tickets by the tellers after the vote.
MACHIAVELLI.
It would perhaps be difficult today, and I believe that this means should only be used with the greatest caution. A clever government has, moreover, so many other resources! Without buying the vote directly, that is to say with uncovered money, nothing will be easier for him than to make the populations vote at will by means of administrative concessions, by promising here a port, there a market, further afield. a road, a canal; and conversely, by doing nothing for towns and villages where the vote will be hostile.
MONTESQUIEU.
I have nothing to reproach with the depth of these combinations; but do you not fear that it will be said that sometimes you corrupt and sometimes you oppress popular suffrage? Are you not afraid of compromising your power in struggles in which it will always be so directly involved? The slightest success that we will achieve over your candidates will be a resounding victory which will put your government in check. What never ceases to worry me about you is that I still see you obliged to succeed in all things, under pain of disaster.
MACHIAVELLI.
You hold the language of fear; rest assured. At the point where I have arrived, I have succeeded in so many things, that I cannot perish by the infinitely [small. Bossuet’s grain of sand is not made for real politicians. I am so advanced in my career that I could, without danger, even brave thunderstorms; than
I would keep in check, on the part of the neighboring States, any enterprise against the sovereignty of the Holy See, but if, unfortunately, it was attacked, if the Pope were to be driven from the Papal States, as has already been seen. , my bayonets alone would bring it back and keep it there always, me during.
MONTESQUIEU.
Indeed, it would be a masterstroke, because if you kept a perpetual garrison in Rome, you would almost dispose of the Holy See, as if it resided in some province of your kingdom.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do you believe that after such a service rendered to the papacy, it would refuse to support my power, that the Pope himself, if necessary, would refuse to come and consecrate me in my capital? Are such events without an example in history?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, it all shows in the story. But after all, if instead of finding in the pulpit of Saint-Pierre a Borgia or a Dubois, as you seem to expect, you had in front of you a pope who resisted your intrigues and defied your anger, what would you do?
MACHIAVELLI.
So, we would have to resolve it, under the pretext to defend temporal power and so I would determine its fall.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have what is called a genius!
THE SEVENTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
I said you have genius; it takes, really, of some sort, to design and execute so many things. I now understand the apologue of the god Wishnou; you have a hundred arms like the Indian idol, and each of your fingers touches a spring. Just as you touch everything, will you also be able to see everything?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, because I will make the police such a vast institution that at the heart of my kingdom half the men will see the other. Can you allow me a few details on the organization of my police?
MONTESQUIEU.
Do.
MACHIAVELLI.
I will start by creating a police ministry, which will be the most important of my ministries and which will centralize, both for the exterior and
for the interior, the many services with which I will provide this part of my administration.
MONTESQUIEU.
But if you do this, your subjects will immediately see that they are enveloped in a terrible network.
MACHIAVELLI.
If this ministry displeases, I will abolish it and call it, if you will, Ministry of State. Besides, I will organize in the other ministries corresponding services, most of which will be merged, quietly, in what you now call the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You understand perfectly well that here I am not concerned with diplomacy, but only with the means of ensuring my security against factions, both outside and inside. Well, believe it, in this respect I will find most of the monarchs in much the same position as myself, that is to say, very disposed to second my views, which would consist in creating police services. international in the interest of mutual security. If, as I hardly doubt, I managed to achieve this result, here are some of the forms in which my police would perform abroad: Men of pleasure and good company in foreign courts, to keep an eye on the intrigues of princes and pretend exiles,
outlawed revolutionaries, of whom, at a cost of money, I would not despair of getting some to use me as agents of transmission with regard to the schemes of dark demagoguery; establishment of political newspapers in the great capitals, printers and booksellers placed under the same conditions and secretly subsidized to follow more closely, by the press, the movement of thought.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is no longer against the factions of your kingdom, it is against the very soul of humanity that you will end up conspiring.
MACHIAVELLI.
You know, I don’t get very scared of big words. I want any politician who wants to go cabal abroad, to be able to be observed, signaled from distance to distance until he returns to my kingdom, where he will indeed be imprisoned so that he is not able to start over. To have better control of the thread of revolutionary intrigues, I dream of a combination that would be, I believe, quite clever.
MONTESQUIEU.
And what then, great God!
MACHIAVELLI.
I would like to have a prince of my house, seated on the steps of my throne, who would play discontented. Its mission would be to pose as a liberal, detractor of my government and thus rally, to observe them more closely, those who, in the highest ranks of my kingdom, could do a little demagoguery. Straddling internal and external intrigues, the prince to whom I would entrust this mission would thus play a fool’s game to those who are not in the secret of the comedy.
MONTESQUIEU.
What! is it to a prince of your household that you would entrust duties that you yourself classify in the police?
MACHIAVELLI.
And why not? I know reigning princes who, in exile, were attached to the secret police of certain cabinets.
MONTESQUIEU.
If I continue to listen to you, Machiavelli, it is to have the last word on this appalling challenge.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do not be indignant, Monsieur de Montesquieu; in the spirit of the laws, you called me a great man (1).
MONTESQUIEU.
You make me expiate it dearly; it is for my punishment that I am listening to you. Spend the most
(1) Esp. des Ms, p. 68, Book VI, chap. V.
can not directly outlaw. Universities contain armies of professors whose leisure time can be used outside the classroom for the propagation of good doctrines. I would make them open free courses in all the important cities, I would thus mobilize the instruction and the influence of the government.
MONTESQUIEU.
In other words, you absorb, you confiscate for your own benefit even the last glimmers of independent thought.
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m not confiscating anything at all.
MONTESQUIEU.
Do you allow professors other than yours to popularize science by the same means and that without a patent, without an authorization?
MACHIAVELLI.
What! do you want me to authorize clubs?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, go to another object.
MACHIAVELLI.
Among the multitude of regulatory measures that the salvation of my government calls for, you have called my attention to the bar; it is to extend the action of my hand beyond what is necessary for the moment; I am touching here on civil interests, and you know that
17.
tense, it should only be used with the greatest measure, have yet another advantage: it is that they allow discovering the real plots, giving rise to searches which lead to seeking everywhere the trace of what one suspects.
Nothing is more precious than the life of the sovereign: it must be surrounded by innumerable guarantees, that is to say innumerable agents, but it is at the same time necessary that this secret militia be cleverly enough concealed to that the sovereign does not appear to be afraid when he shows himself in public. I have been told that in Europe the precautions in this regard were so perfected that a prince who went out into the streets could have the air of a private individual, who walks, without guard, in the crowd, while he is surrounded by two or three thousand protectors.
I hear, from here, that my police force is scattered throughout all the ranks of society. There will be no meeting, no committee, no living room, no intimate home where there is no ear to hear what is being said anywhere, at any time. Alas, for those who have wielded power, it is an astonishing phenomenon that the ease with which men are denouncing each other. What is even more astonishing is the faculty of observation and analysis which develops in those who report
political police; you have no idea of their wiles, their disguises, their instincts, the passion they bring to their research, their patience, their impenetrability; there are men of all ranks who do this job, how shall I tell you? by a kind of love of art.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ah! draw the curtain!
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, because there is power there, secrets that terrify the eye. I spare you darker things than you have heard. With the system that I will organize, I will be so completely informed that I will be able to tolerate even culpable acts, because every minute of the day I will have the power to stop them.
MONTESQUIEU.
Tolerate them, and why?
MACHIAVELLI.
Because in European states the absolute monarch must not indiscreetly use force; because there are always, at the bottom of society, underground activities over which nothing can be done when they are not formulated; because great care must be taken to avoid alarming public opinion on the security of power; because parties are content with whispers, teasing
harmless, when they are reduced to helplessness and pretend to disarm up to their bad mood would be foolishness. We will therefore hear them complaining, here and there, in the newspapers, in books; they will try allusions against the government in some speeches or in some pleadings; they will, under various pretexts, make some small manifestations of existence; it will all be very timid, I swear to you, and the public, if informed, will hardly be tempted but to laugh at it. I will be found very good to put up with this, I will pass for too easygoing; that is why I will tolerate what, of course, denies it can be done without any danger: I do not even want anyone to say that my government is skittish.
MONTESQUIEU.
This language reminds me that you left a gap, and a very serious gap, in your decrees.
MACHIAVELLI.
Which ?
MONTESQUIEU.
You haven’t touched individual freedom.
MACHIAVELLI.
I won’t touch it.
MONTESQUIEU.
Do you believe it? If you have reserved the
– 21:> –
faculty to tolerate, you have mainly reserved the right to prevent anything that seems dangerous to you. If the interest of the State, or even a little urgent care, requires that a man be arrested, at the very moment, in or even kingdom, how can we do it if there is in the legislation some A’habeas corpus law; if the individual arrest is preceded by certain formalities, certain guarantees? While we do it, time will pass.
MACHIAVELLI.
Allow; if I respect individual liberty, I do not forbid myself in this respect some useful modifications to the judicial organization.
MONTESQUIEU.
I knew it well.
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh! do not triumph, it will be the simplest thing in the world. Who is it that rules in general on individual liberty, in your parliamentary states?
MONTESQUIEU.
It is a council of magistrates, whose number and independence are the guarantee of litigants.
MACHIAVELLI.
It is undoubtedly a vicious organization, because, how do you expect that with the slowness of the deliberations of a council, justice can have the
speed of apprehension necessary on the criminals?
MONTESQUIEU.
What criminals?
MACHIAVELLI.
I am talking about people who commit murders, thefts, crimes, and common law offenses. This jurisdiction must be given the unity of action it needs: I replace your council with a single magistrate, responsible for deciding on the arrest of criminals.
MONTESQUIEU.
But we are not talking about criminals here; with this provision, you threaten the freedom of all citizens; make at least one distinction on the title of the charge.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is exactly what I do not want to do. Isn’t someone who does something against the government as much and more guilty than someone who commits an ordinary crime or misdemeanor? Passion or misery alleviates many faults, but what forces people to get involved in politics? So I no longer want to distinguish between common law offenses and political offenses. Where, then, do modern governments have the mind of raising species of criminal forums to their detriments?
teurs? In my kingdom, the insolent journalist will be confused, in prisons, with the simple thief and will appear, next to him, before the correctional jurisdiction. The conspirator will sit before the criminal jury, side by side with the forger, with the murderer. This is an excellent legislative change, notice it, for public opinion, seeing the conspirator treated as the equal of the ordinary criminal, will end up confusing the two genres in the same contempt.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are ruining the very basis of the moral sense; but what do you care? What surprises me is that you keep a criminal jury.
MACHIAVELLI.
In centralized states like mine, it is the public officials appoint the members of the jury. In matters of simple political offense, my Minister of Justice will always be able, when necessary, to compose the chamber of judges called upon to hear them.
MONTESQUIEU.
Your internal legislation is irreproachable; it’s time to move on to other items.
MACHIAVELLI.
It would suffice for me to indicate the moral state of my people, trembling yoke of the Church, aspiring to break it, capable of dismembering in turn from the bosom of Pontificate, of throwing itself into the schism of the Greek or Protestant.
MONTESQUIEU.
Threat instead of action!
MACHIAVELLI.
How much you are mistaken, Montesqu, how much do you not disregard me for the papal throne! The only role to play, the only mission which belongs to me as a Catholic faithful, would be precisely to be the defender of the Church. In the times you know it, the temporal power is threatened, and by the irreligious hatred, and particular in the countries north of Italy. Well, to the Holy Father: I will support you against every foe, I will save you, it is my duty, it is Zion, but at least do not attack me with your moral influence; Would it be asking when I myself would expose our existence by standing as the defender of Church which is now completely discredited in the eyes of what I call the plebians. it wouldn’t stop me
PART III.
THE EIGHTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
So far you have only dealt with the forms of your government and the strict laws necessary to maintain it. It’s a lot ; it is still nothing. It remains for you to solve the most difficult of all problems, for a sovereign who wants to assign absolute power in a European state, shaped by representative mores.
MACHIAVELLI.
So what is this problem?
MONTESQUIEU.
It’s about your finances.
text to defend temporal power, I would determine its fall.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have what Ion calls genius!
without imposing heavy sacrifices on a nation? Your thesis can be true in Turkey, in Persia, what do I know! among small peoples without industry, who, moreover, would not have the means to pay taxes; but in European societies, where wealth overflows from the sources of labor, and presents itself in so many forms to taxation, where luxury is a means of government, where the maintenance and expenditure of all public services are centralized into the hands of the State, where all the high offices, all the dignities are paid at great expense, how can you once again limit ourselves to modest tributes, as you say, when, with that, are we sovereign master?
MONTESQUIEU.
This is very correct and I am leaving my thesis to you, the true meaning of which has escaped you. So your government will be expensive; it is obvious that it will cost more than a representative government.
MACHIAVELLI.
It’s possible.
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, but this is where the difficulty begins. I know how representative governments provide for their financial needs, but I have no idea of the livelihoods of absolute power in modern societies. If I ask for the past, I see very clearly that it can only exist under the following conditions: it is necessary, in the first place, that the absolute monarch be a military chief, you undoubtedly recognize it,
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes.
MONTESQUIEU.
He must, moreover, be a conqueror, for it is in a war that he must ask for the main resources which are necessary for him to maintain his pomp and his armies. If he demanded them from the tax, he would crush his subjects. You see by this that it is not, because the absolute monarch spends less, that he must spare the tributes, but because the law of his subsistence is elsewhere. However, today, war no longer brings profits to those who make it: it ruins the victors as well as the vanquished. This is a source of income that escapes you.
There remain taxes, but, of course, the absolute prince must be able to do without the consent of his subjects in this regard. In despotic states, there is a legal fiction that allows them to tax them at their discretion: in law, the sovereign is supposed to own all the property of his subjects. When he takes something from them, he only takes back what belongs to him. In this way, there is no resistance.
Finally, the prince must be able to dispose of.
proscribed revolutionaries of whom, at a cost of money, I would not despair of getting some to use me as agents of transmission against the schemes of dark demagoguery; establishment of political newspapers in the great capitals, printers and booksellers placed under the same conditions and secretly subsidized to follow more closely, by the press, the movement of thought.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is no longer against the factions of your kingdom, it is against the very soul of humanity that you will end up conspiring.
MACHIAVELLI.
You know, I don’t get very scared of big words. I want any politician who wants to go cabal abroad, to be able to be observed, signaled from distance to distance until he returns to my kingdom, where he will indeed be imprisoned so that he is not able to start over. To have better control of the thread of revolutionary intrigues, I dream of a combination that would be, I believe, quite clever.
MONTESQUIEU.
And what then, great God!
MACHIAVELLI.
I would like to have a prince of my house, seated on the steps of my throne, who would play discontented. Its mission would be to ask the prince, and therefore to annihilate him by himself, if necessary.
MACHIAVELLI.
You are categorical. Keep going. MONTESQUIEU.
Those who vote for the tax are themselves taxpayers. Here their interests are closely linked to those of the nation, to a point where it will necessarily have its eyes open. You will find its representatives as uncompromising on legislative appropriations as you have found them easy on the chapter on freedoms.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is where the weakness of the argument is revealed: I ask you to take note of two considerations that you have forgotten. In the first place the representatives of the nation are employees; taxpayers or not, they are personally disinterested in the tax vote.
MONTESQUIEU.
I agree that the combination is practical, and the remark wise.
MACHIAVELLI.
You see the downside of looking at things too systematically; the slightest skillful modification changes everything. You would perhaps be right if I rested my power on the aristocracy, or on the bourgeois classes who might, at some point, refuse me their advice.
fast as you can on so many sinister details.
MACHIAVELLI.
Inside, I am obliged to reestablish the dark cabinet.
MONTESQUIEU.
Restore.
MACHIAVELLI.
Your best kings used it. The secrecy of letters must not be used to cover up plots.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is what makes you tremble, I understand that.
MACHIAVELLI.
You are mistaken, for there will be plots under my reign: there must be some.
MONTESQUIEU.
What else?
MACHIAVELLI.
There will perhaps be true plots, I do not answer for them; but for sure there will be simulated plots. At times this can be a great way to arouse popular sympathy for the prince when his popularity wanes. By intimidating the public spirit one obtains, if necessary, by doing so, the austerity measures that one wants, or one maintains those which exist. False conspiracies, of which, of course
fictitious gifts and, in a given time, one appeals even those who do not have.
MACHIAVELLI. ‘
They are fine theories, but I have made up my mind to oppose you with equally beautiful ones, if you will.
MONTESQUIEU.
No, because you have not yet solved the problem I asked you. First, get enough to meet the expenses of absolute sovereignty. It will not be as easy as you think it will be, even with a legislative chamber in which you will have the majority assured, even with the omnipotence of the popular mandate with which you are invested. Tell me, for example, how you can bend the financial mechanism of modern states to the demands of absolute power. I repeat, it is the very nature of things that resists here. The civilized peoples of Europe have surrounded the administration of their finances with guarantees so narrow, so jealous, so multiplied, that they leave no more room for the perception than for the arbitrary use of public funds.
MACHIAVELLI.
What then is this wonderful system? MONTESQUIEU.
I can tell you in a few words.
The perfection of the financial system, in
modern times, is based on two fundamental bases, control and publicity. This is where the guarantee of taxpayers resides. A sovereign could not touch it without saying indirectly to his subjects: You have order, I want disorder, I want obscurity in the management of public funds; I need it because there are a host of expenses that I want to be able to make without your approval, deficits that I want to be able to hide, revenues that I want to have the means to disguise or to increase according to the circumstances.
MACHIAVELLI.
You are starting out well.
MONTESQUIEU.
In free and industrial countries, everyone knows finances, out of necessity, out of self-interest, and out of state, and your government in this regard could not fool anyone.
MACHIAVELLI.
Who tells you that we want to cheat? MONTESQUIEU.
The whole work of financial administration, however vast and complicated in its details, results, in the final analysis, in two very simple operations, receiving and spending.
It is around these two orders of financial facts that revolves the multitude of laws and special regulations, which still have as their object
harmless, when they are reduced to powerlessness and pretending to disarm even their bad temper, would be foolishness. We will therefore hear them complaining, here and there, in the newspapers, in books; they will try allusions against the government in some speeches or in some pleadings; they will, under various pretexts, make some small manifestations of existence; it will all be very timid, I swear to you, and the public, if informed, will hardly be tempted but to laugh at it. I will be found very good to put up with this, I will pass for too easygoing; that is why I will tolerate what, of course, seems to me to be possible without any danger: I do not even want anyone to say that my government is skittish.
MONTESQUIEU.
This language reminds me that you left a gap, and a very serious gap, in your decrees.
MACHIAVELLI.
Which?
MONTESQUIEU.
You haven’t touched individual freedom.
MACHIAVELLI.
I won’t touch it.
MONTESQUIEU.
Do you believe it? If you have reserved the right to tolerate, you have mainly reserved the right to prevent anything that seems dangerous to you. If the interest of the State, or even a little urgent care, demands that a man be arrested, at the very moment, in your kingdom, how can it be done if there is in the legislation some A’habeas corpus law; if the individual arrest is preceded by certain formalities, certain guarantees? While we do it, time will pass.
MACHIAVELLI.
Allow; if I respect individual liberty, I do not forbid myself in this respect some useful modifications to the judicial organization.
MONTESQUIEU.
I knew it well.
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh! do not triumph, it will be the simplest thing in the world. Who is it that rules in general on individual liberty, in your parliamentary states?
MONTESQUIEU.
It is a council of magistrates, whose number and independence are the guarantee of litigants.
MACHIAVELLI.
It is undoubtedly a vicious organization, because, how do you expect that with the slowness of the deliberations of a council, justice can have the
MACHIAVELLI,
Your sobriety on this point deserves all the more to be praised, as you could have spoken of it very competently. Please continue, please, I follow you with the greatest interest.
teurs? In my kingdom, the insolent journalist will be confused, in prisons, with the simple thief and will appear, next to him, before the correctional jurisdiction. The conspirator will sit before the criminal jury, side by side with the forger, with the murderer. This is an excellent legislative change, notice it, for public opinion, seeing the conspirator treated as the equal of the ordinary criminal, will end up confusing the two genres in the same contempt.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are ruining the very basis of moral sense; but what do you care? What surprises me is that you keep a criminal jury.
MACHIAVELLI.
In centralized states like mine, it is the public officials who appoint the members of the jury. In matters of simple political offense, my Minister of Justice will always be able, when necessary, to compose the chamber of judges called upon to hear them.
MONTESQUIEU.
Your internal legislation is irreproachable; it’s time to move on to other items.
19
rapidity makers
What
I] des a du dr dicté I re char teui
AT
about you
THE EIGHTEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU. ‘
So far you have only dealt with the forms of your government and the strict laws necessary to maintain it. It’s a lot ; it is still nothing. It remains for you to solve the most difficult of all problems, for a sovereign who wants to assign absolute power in a European state, shaped by representative mores.
MACHIAVELLI.
So what is this problem?
MONTESQUIEU.
It’s about your finances.
We went further still; we wanted that once the resources voted for such and such services, they could return to the treasury if they were not used; it was thought that the government should not, while remaining within the limits of the allocated credits, be able to use the funds of one service to allocate them to another, to cover this one, to discover that one, by means of of transfers of funds operated from ministry to ministry, by way of ordinances; for that would be to elude their legislative destination and return, by an ingenious detour, to financial arbitrariness.
For this purpose, what is called the specialty of appropriations by chapters, that is to say, that the vote of expenditure takes place by special chapters containing only correlative services and of the same nature for all, has been imagined. the ministers. Thus, for example, chapter A will include, for all departments, expenditure A, chapter B expenditure B and so on. The result of this combination is that the appropriations not used must be canceled in the accounts of the various ministries and carried over to revenue in the budget for the following year. I do not need to tell you that ministerial responsibility is the sanction of all these measures. What forms the crowning achievement of financial guarantees is the establishment of a chamber of accounts, a sort of court of Appeals of its kind, responsible for exercising,
– Î55 –
permanently, the functions of jurisdiction and control over the account, the handling and the use of public funds, even having the mission of pointing out the parts of the financial administration which can be improved from the double point of view of expenditure and recipes. These explanations are sufficient. Don’t you find that with an organization like this, absolute power would be in a hurry?
MACHIAVELLI.
I am still appalled, I admit, by this financial foray. You took me by my weak side: I told you that I understood very little in these matters, but I would have, believe it well, ‘ministers who would know how to retort all this and demonstrate the danger of most. of these measures.
MONTESQUIEU.
Couldn’t you do it a little yourself?
MACHIAVELLI.
If done. It is up to my ministers to formulate beautiful theories; this will be their main occupation; As for me, I will talk to you about finances rather in politics than in economics. There is one thing you are too inclined to forget, which is that the matter of finance is, of all parts of politics, that which lends itself most easily to the maxims of the Prince’s Treaty. These states which have such methodically ordered budgets and
official records, so well in order, have the effect of these traders who have perfectly kept books and do indeed ruin themselves in the end. Who has bigger budgets than your parliamentary governments? What costs more than the Democratic Republic of the United States, than the Royal Republic of England? It is true that the immense resources of this last power are put at the service of the deepest and best-understood policy.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are not in the question. What are you getting at?
MACHIAVELLI.
To this: it is that the rules of the financial administration of the States have no relation to those of the domestic economy, which seems to be the type of your conceptions.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ah! ah! the same distinction as between politics and morality?
MACHIAVELLI.
Well yes, is it not universally recognized, practiced? Things were clear thus even in your time, much less advanced in this respect, however, and was it not yourself who said that the States allowed themselves in finances to deviations of which the most son of a family would blush? out of order?
without imposing heavy sacrifices on a nation? Your thesis can be true in Turkey, in Persia, what do I know! among small peoples without industry, who would not have moreover the means of paying the tax; but in European societies, where wealth overflows from the sources of labor and presents itself in so many forms to taxation, where luxury is a means of government, where the maintenance and expenditure of all public services are centralized into the hands of the State, where all the high offices, all the dignities are paid at great expense, how can you once again limit ourselves to modest tributes, as you say, when, with that, are we, sovereign master?
MONTESQUIEU.
This is very correct and I am leaving my thesis to you, the true meaning of which has escaped you. So your government will be expensive; it is obvious that it will cost more than a representative government.
MACHIAVELLI.
It’s possible.
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, but this is where the difficulty begins. I know how representative governments provide for their financial needs, but I have no idea of the livelihoods of absolute power in modern societies. If I ask
19.
official records, so well in order, have the effect of these traders who have perfectly kept books and do indeed ruin themselves in the end. Who has bigger budgets than your parliamentary governments? What costs more than the Democratic Republic of the United States, than the Royal Republic of England? It is true that the immense resources of this last power are put at the service of the deepest and best-understood policy.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are not in the question. What are you getting at?
MACHIAVELLI.
To this: it is that the rules of the financial administration of the States have no relation to those of the domestic economy, which seems to be the type of your conceptions.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ah! ah! the same distinction as between politics and morality?
MACHIAVELLI.
Well yes, is it not universally recognized, practiced? Things were clear thus even in your time, much less advanced in this respect, however, and was it not yourself who said that the States allowed themselves in finances to deviations of which the most son of a family would blush? out of order?
MONTESQUIEU.
It is true, I said that, but if you draw an argument favorable to your thesis from it, it is a real surprise for me.
MACHIAVELLI.
You mean, no doubt, that we must not take advantage of what is being done, but of what must be done.
MONTESQUIEU.
Precisely.
MACHIAVELLI.
I answer that we must want the possible, and that what is done universally can not be done.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is pure practice, I agree. MACHIAVELLI.
And I have some idea that if we did the balancing of accounts, as you say, my government, absolute as it is, would cost less than yours; but let us leave this dispute which would be without interest. You are very much mistaken if you believe that I am grieved by the perfection of the financial systems which you have just explained to me. I am delighted with you about the regularity of the collection of the tax, of the entirety of the receipt; I rejoice in the accuracy of the accounts, I rejoice in it very sincerely. So do you believe that it is, for the absolute sovereign,
– you –
prince, and therefore to annihilate him himself, if necessary.
MACHIAVELLI.
You are categorical. Keep going.
MONTESQUIEU.
Those who vote the tax are themselves taxpayers. Here their interests are closely linked to those of the nation, to a point where it will necessarily have its eyes open. You will find its representatives as uncompromising on legislative appropriations as you have found them easy on the chapter on freedoms.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is where the weakness of the argument is revealed: I ask you to take note of two considerations that you have forgotten. In the first place the representatives of the nation are employees; taxpayers or not, they are personally disinterested in the tax vote.
MONTESQUIEU.
I agree that the combination is practical, and the remark wise.
MACHIAVELLI.
You see the downside of looking at things too systematically; the slightest skillful modification changes everything. You would perhaps be right if I rested my power on the aristocracy, or on the bourgeois classes who might, at some point, refuse me their advice.
Classes; but, in the second place, I have for base of action the proletariat, of which the mass has nothing. State burdens hardly weigh on her, and I will even make sure that they do not weigh at all. The tax measures will not worry the working classes much; they will not reach them.
MONTESQUIEU.
If I understood correctly, this is very clear: you make those who possess pay, by the sovereign will of those who do not. It is the ransom that numbers and poverty impose on wealth.
MACHIAVELLI.
Isn’t that fair?
MONTESQUIEU.
This is not even true, because in today’s societies, from an economic point of view, there is neither rich nor poor. The craftsman of the day before is the bourgeois of the next day, by virtue of the labor law. If you reach the territorial or industrial bourgeoisie, do you know what you are doing?
In reality, you make emancipation through work more difficult, you keep a greater number of workers in the bonds of the proletariat. It is an aberration to believe that the proletariat can profit from the attacks on production. By impoverishing by fiscal laws those who own, one creates only situa – I will decree it extraordinarily, I will open the necessary credits dictatorially and I will have them approved by my Council of State.
MONTESQUIEU.
And will you continue like this?
MACHIAVELLI.
Not. From the following year I will return to legality; because I do not intend to destroy anything directly, I have told you this several times already. We regulated before me, I regulate my own. tower. You told me about the vote on the budget, by two separate laws: I consider that a bad measure. We are much more aware of a financial situation, when we vote at the same time the budget of receipts and the budget of expenditure. My government is a hard-working government; the precious time of public deliberations must not be wasted in unnecessary discussions. From now on, the revenue and expenditure budget will be included in a single law.
MONTESQUIEU.
Good. And the law which prohibits opening additional appropriations, other than by a preliminary vote of the House?
MACHIAVELLI.
I am repealing it; you understand enough why.
modern times, is based on two fundamental bases, control and publicity. This is where the guarantee of taxpayers resides. A sovereign could not touch it without saying indirectly to his subjects: You have order, I want disorder, I want obscurity in the management of public funds; I need it because there are a host of expenses that I want to be able to make without your approval, deficits that I want to be able to hide, revenues that I want to have the means to disguise or to increase according to the circumstances.
MACHIAVELLI.
You are starting out well.
MONTESQUIEU.
In free and industrial countries, everyone knows finances, out of necessity, out of self-interest, and out of state, and your government in this regard could not fool anyone.
MACHIAVELLI.
Who tells you that we want to cheat? MONTESQUIEU.
The whole work of financial administration, so vast and so complicated as it is in its details, ends, in the last analysis, in two very simple operations, receiving and spending.
It is around these two types of financial facts that revolves the multitude of laws and special regulations, which still have as their object a very simple thing: to ensure that the taxpayer pays only the necessary and regularly established tax, ensure that the government can only apply public funds to nationally approved expenditures.
I leave aside everything relating to the base and the method of tax collection, to the practical means of ensuring the completeness of the receipt, order and precision in the movement of public funds; these are accounting details which I do not have to tell you about. I just want to show you how advertising works with control, in the best organized political finance systems in Europe.
One of the most important problems to be solved was to bring out completely from obscurity, to make visible to all eyes the elements of revenue and expenditure on which the use of public wealth in the hands of governments is based.
This result was achieved by the creation of what is called, in modern language, the state budget, which is the overview or estimated statement of income and expenditure, not planned for a period of remote time, but every year for the following year’s service. The annual budget is therefore the capital point, and in a way generator, of the financial situation, which is improving.
really hates that one thing is the wealth of its equals.
MONTESQUIEU.
Don’t escape yet; you are not at the end; I bring you back with an adamant hand to the budget. Whatever you say, its very organization compresses the development of your power. It is a framework that one can cross, but one does not cross it at one’s own risk. It is published, we know the elements, it remains there as the barometer of the situation.
MACHIAVELLI.
So let’s finish on this point, since you want to.
MACHIAVELLI.
Your sobriety on this point deserves all the more to be praised, as you could have spoken of it very competently. Please continue, please, I follow you with the greatest interest.
THE NINETEENTH DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
It can be said that the creation of the budgetary system brought with it all the other financial guarantees which are today the share of well-regulated political societies.
Thus, the first law which is necessarily imposed by the economy of the budget, is that the credits requested are in relation to the existing resources. This is a balance which must be constantly reflected in the eyes by real and authentic figures, and to better ensure this important result, so that the legislator who votes on the proposals made to him does not undergo any training, we have recourse to to a very wise measure. The general state budget has been divided into two separate budgets: the expenditure budget and the revenue budget, which must be voted on separately, each by a special law.
only after the completion of the expenses which the necessity has given rise to during the course of the year. We recognize, in your budgets, I do not know how many types of appropriations that meet all possible contingencies: complementary, supplementary, extraordinary, provisional, exceptional, what do I know? And each of these credits forms, on its own, as many separate budgets. Now, this is how things are done: the general budget, the one that is voted at the beginning of the year, carries a total of, I suppose, an appropriation of 800 millions. When we have reached the middle of the year, the financial facts no longer correspond to the first forecasts; then one presents to the Chambers what is called an amending budget, and this budget adds 100 millions, 150 millions to the original figure. Then comes the additional budget: he adds 50 or 60 million; finally comes the liquidation which adds 15, 20 or 30 million. In short, in the general balance of accounts, the total difference is a third of the planned expenditure. It is on this last figure that the legislative vote of the Chambers takes place, in the form of approval. In this way, after ten years, we can double and even triple the budget.
MONTESQUIEU.
That this accumulation of expenses could be the result of your financial improvements is what I have no doubt, but nothing similar
He will arrive in the States where you will avoid your mistakes. What is more, you are not at the end of the day: ultimately, expenditure must be in balance with income; how will you go about it?
MACHIAVELLI.
Everything here consists, it may be said, in the art of grouping the figures and in certain distinctions of expenditure, with the aid of which the necessary latitude is obtained. So, for example, the distinction between the regular budget and the extraordinary budget can be of great help. Thanks to this extraordinary word, certain questionable expenses and certain more or less problematic receipts are quite easily passed. I have, for example, here 20 million in expenses; we have to face it by 20 million in receipts: I carry in receipts a war indemnity of 20 million, not yet received, but which will be later, or even I carry in receipts an increase of 20 million in the product of taxes, which will be carried out next year. So much for the recipes; I do not multiply the examples. For expenses,we can resort to the opposite process: instead of adding, we deduce-. Thus, for example, tax collection costs will be detached from the expenditure budget.
MONTESQUIEU.
And under what pretext, please?
MACHIAVELLI.
One can say, and with reason, in my opinion, that it is not an expenditure of the State. It is also possible, for the same reason, not to include in the expenditure budget what the provincial and municipal service costs.
MONTESQUIEU.
I am not discussing any of this, you can see it; but what do you do with the revenues that are deficits, and the expenses that you eliminate?
MACHIAVELLI.
The main point in this matter is the distinction between the ordinary budget and the extraordinary budget. The expenses you are concerned about should refer to the extraordinary budget.
MONTESQUIEU.
But finally, these two budgets are totaled and the final figure of the expenditure appears.
MACHIAVELLI.
You don’t have to totalize; on the contrary. The ordinary budget appears alone; the extraordinary budget is an annex that is provided for by other means.
MONTESQUIEU.
And what are they?
MACHIAVELLI.
Don’t make me anticipate. So you see first of all that there is a particular way of permanently, the functions of jurisdiction and control over the account, the handling and the use of public funds, even having the mission of pointing out the parts of the financial administration which can be improved from the double point of view of expenditure and recipes. These explanations are sufficient. Don’t you find that with an organization like this, absolute power would be in a hurry?
MACHIAVELLI.
I am still appalled, I admit, by this financial foray. You took me by my weak side: I told you that I understood very little in these matters, but I would have, believe it well, ‘ministers who would know how to retort all this and demonstrate the danger of most. of these measures.
MONTESQUIEU.
Couldn’t you do it yourself a little? MACHIAVELLI.
If done. It is up to my ministers to formulate beautiful theories; this will be their main occupation; As for me, I will talk to you about finances rather in politics than in economics. There is one thing you are too inclined to forget, which is that the matter of finance is, of all parts of politics, that which lends itself most easily to the maxims of the Prince’s Treaty. These states which have such methodically ordered budgets and
official records, so well in order, have the effect of these traders who have perfectly kept books and do indeed ruin themselves in the end. Who has bigger budgets than your parliamentary governments? What costs more than the Democratic Republic of the United States, than the Royal Republic of England? It is true that the immense resources of this last power are put at the service of the deepest and best-understood policy.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are not in the question. What are you getting at?
MACHIAVELLI.
To this: it is that the rules of the financial administration of the States have no relation, with those of the domestic economy, which seems to be the type of your conceptions.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ah! ah! the same distinction as between politics and morality?
MACHIAVELLI.
Well yes, is it not universally recognized, practiced? Weren’t things so even in your time, much less advanced in this respect, however, and was it not you yourself who said that States allowed themselves in finances to deviate from which the son of the family would blush? the most disordered?
MONTESQUIEU.
It is true, I said that, but if you draw an argument favorable to your thesis from it, it is a real surprise for me.
MACHIAVELLI.
You mean, no doubt, that we must not take advantage of what is being done, but of what must be done.
MONTESQUIEU.
Precisely.
MACHIAVELLI.
I answer that we must want the possible and that what is done universally can not be done.
MONTESQUIEU.
This is pure practice, I agree. MACHIAVELLI.
And I have some idea that if we did the balancing of accounts, as you say, my government, absolute as it is, would cost less than yours; but let us leave this dispute which would be without interest. You are very much mistaken if you believe that I am grieved by the perfection of the financial systems which you have just explained to me. I am delighted with you about the regularity of the collection of the tax, of the entirety of the receipt; I rejoice in the accuracy of the accounts, I rejoice in it very sincerely. Do you think that it is a question, for the absolute sovereign, of using the funds which he produces; this combination will have a great advantage. When presenting the budget, from time to time, the proceeds of depreciation for the following year may be included in the receipts.
MONTESQUIEU.
And the following year it will appear in expenses. MACHIAVELLI.
I don’t know, it will depend on the circumstances, because I will very much regret that this financial institution cannot operate more regularly. My ministers will explain themselves in this regard in an extremely painful manner. My God, I am not claiming that, from a financial point of view, my administration will not have some criticism sides, but, when the facts are well presented, we pass on a lot of things. Remember, the Administration of Finances is also a big deal in the press.
MONTESQUIEU.
What is this?
MACHIAVELLI.
Did you not tell me that the very essence of the budget was advertising?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes.
MACHIAVELLI.
Well, don’t budgets come with minutes, reports, doc-
MONTESQUIEU.
No.
MACHIAVELLI.
It is therefore a purely administrative body. I suppose it is perfectly irreproachable. But the good lead when he checked all the accounts! Does it prevent credits from being voted on, and spending from happening? Its audit stops tell no more about the situation than the budgets. It’s a recording chamber without admonition, it’s an ingenuous institution, so let’s not talk about it, I maintain it, without worry, as it may be.
MONTESQUIEU.
You maintain it, you say! So you plan to touch other parts of the financial organization?
MACHIAVELLI.
You didn’t doubt it, I imagine. After a political coup, isn’t a financial coup inevitable? Will I not use omnipotence for this as for the rest? So what is the magical virtue that would preserve your financial settlements? I am like this giant of I do not know what tale, that pygmies had loaded with shackles during his sleep; getting up, he broke them without noticing it. The day after my accession, it will not even be a question of voting the budget; I will decree it extraordinarily, I will dictatorially open the necessary credits and I will have them approved by my Council of State.
MONTESQUIEU.
And will you continue like this?
MACHIAVELLI.
Not. From the following year, I will return to legality; because I do not intend to destroy anything directly, I have told you this several times already. We regulated before me, I regulate my own. tower. You told me about the vote on the budget, by two separate laws: I consider that a bad measure. We are much more aware of a financial situation, when we vote at the same time the budget of receipts and the budget of expenditure. My government is a hard-working government; the precious time of public deliberations must not be wasted in unnecessary discussions. From now on, the revenue and expenditure budget will be included in a single law.
MONTESQUIEU.
Good. And the law which prohibits opening additional appropriations, other than by a preliminary vote of the House?
MACHIAVELLI.
I am repealing it; you understand enough why.
“That the upward movement of the public – fortune has never slowed down. ”
Is it well dictated?
MONTESQUIEU.
Carry on.
MACHIAVELLI.
In this regard, we will talk about depreciation, which concerned you earlier, and we will say: Depreciation will work soon. If the project that we designed in this regard came to be achieved if state revenues continued to grow it would not be impossible that, in the budget which will be presented in »five years», the public accounts did not show an excess revenue. *
MONTESQUIEU.
Your expectations are long-term; but about the depreciation, if, after having promised to put it into operation, nothing is done with it, what will you say?
MACHIAVELLI.
We will say that the moment had not been well chosen, that we must still wait. We can go much further: recommendable economists dispute real efficiency in depreciation. These theories, you know them; I can remind you of them.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is pointless.
MACHIAVELLI.
We publish these theories in unofficial newspapers, we insinuate them ourselves, finally one day we can admit them more loudly.
MONTESQUIEU.
How? ‘Or’ What! after having previously recognized the effectiveness of damping, and having extolled its benefits!
MACHIAVELLI.
But, aren’t the facts of science changing? Shouldn’t an enlightened government follow, little by little, the economic progress of its century?
MONTESQUIEU.
Nothing more peremptory. Let us leave the depreciation. When you have not been able to keep any of your promises, when you find yourself overwhelmed with expenses, after having foreseen excess receipts, what will you say?
MACHIAVELLI.
If need be, we will boldly agree. This frankness honors governments and touches people when it emanates from a strong power. But, on the other hand, my Minister of Finance will endeavor to remove all significance from the increase in the figure for expenditure. He will say, which is true: “It is because financial practice shows that“ overdrafts are never fully armed; that a certain amount of resources
really hates that one thing is the wealth of its equals.
MONTESQUIEU.
Don’t escape yet; you are not at the end; I bring you back with an adamant hand to the budget. Whatever you say, its very organization compresses the development of your power. It is a framework that one can cross, but one does not cross it at one’s own risk. It is published, we know the elements, it remains there as the barometer of the situation.
MACHIAVELLI.
So let’s finish on this point since you want to.
bourgeois. When the balance of budgets is upset and we want, for the following year, to prepare the public mind for some misunderstanding, we say in advance, in a report, next year the overdraft will only be so much.
If the overdraft is lower than expected, it is a real triumph; if it is higher, we say: “the deficit was larger than expected, but it had risen to a higher figure * • the previous year; in fact, the situation is better, because we spent less and i- however, we went through “exceptionally difficult circumstances: war, rebelions, epidemics, unforeseen food crises, etc. .
“But next year the increase in ‘receipts will, in all likelihood,’ achieve a long-desired equilibrium: the debt will be reduced, the budget properly balanced. This progress will continue, “one can hope, and, except for“ extraordinary events, the balance will become the habit ”of our finances, as it is the rule. ”
MONTESQUIEU.
It is high comedy; the habit will be like the rule, it will never be taken, because I imagine that, under your reign, there will always be some extraordinary circumstance, some war, some crisis of subsistence.
MACHIAVELLI.
I don’t know if there will be subsistence crises; what is certain is that I will hold the flag of national dignity very high.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is the least you can do. If you collect glory, we should not be grateful to you, because it is, in your hands, only a means of government: it is not this which will amortize the debts of your State.
only after the completion of the expenses which the necessity gave rise during the course of the year. We recognize, in your budgets, I do not know how many types of appropriations that meet all possible contingencies: complementary, supplementary, extraordinary, provisional, exceptional, what do I know? And each of these credits forms, on its own, as many separate budgets. Now, this is how things are done: the general budget, the one that is voted at the beginning of the year, carries a total of, I suppose, an appropriation of 800 million. When we have reached the middle of the year, the financial facts no longer correspond to the first forecasts; then one presents to the Chambers what is called an amending budget, and this budget adds 100 millions, 150 million to the original figure. Then comes the additional budget: he adds 50 or 60 million; finally comes the liquidation which adds 15, 20 or 30 million. In short, in the general balance of accounts, the total difference is a third of the anticipated expenditure. It is on this last figure that the legislative vote of the Chambers takes place, in the form of approval. In this way, after ten years, we can double and even triple the budget.
MONTESQUIEU.
That this accumulation of expenses could be the result of your financial improvements is what I have no doubt, but nothing similar
THE TWENTY-FIRST DIALOGUE. ‘
MACHIAVELLI.
I am afraid that you have some prejudice with regard to borrowing; they are precious in more than one way: they tie families to government; they are excellent investments for individuals, and modern economists formally recognize today that, far from impoverishing States, public debts enrich them. Will you allow me to explain how?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, because I think I know these theories. Since you always talk about borrowing and never repaying, I would like to know first from whom you will be asking for so much capital, and what you will be asking for it about.
MACHIAVELLI.
Foreign wars are of great help to this. In large states, they per-
MACHIAVELLI.
We can say, and with good reason, in my opinion, that it is not an expenditure of the State. It is also possible, for the same reason, not to include in the expenditure budget what the provincial and municipal service costs.
MONTESQUIEU.
I am not discussing any of this, you can see it; but what do you do with the revenues that are deficits, and the expenses that you eliminate?
MACHIAVELLI.
The main point in this matter is the distinction between the ordinary budget and the extraordinary budget. The expenses you are concerned about should refer to the extraordinary budget.
MONTESQUIEU.
But finally, these two budgets are added together and the final figure of the expenditure appears.
MACHIAVELLI.
You don’t have to totalize; on the contrary. The ordinary budget appears alone; the extraordinary budget is an annex which is provided for by other means.
MONTESQUIEU.
And what are they?
MACHIAVELLI.
Don’t make me anticipate. So you see first of all that there is a particular way of presenting the budget, of concealing, if necessary, the increasing increase. There is no government which is not in the necessity of doing so; there are inexhaustible resources in the industrialized countries, but, as you noticed, these countries are stingy, suspicious: they dispute over the most necessary expenses. The financial policy cannot play its cards on the table any more than the other: we would be stopped at every step; but ultimately, and thanks, I agree, to the improvement of the budgetary system, everything is found, everything is classified, and if the budget has its mysteries, it also has its clarities.
MONTESQUIEU.
But for the initiated only, no doubt. I see that you will make of financial legislation a formalism as impenetrable as the judicial procedure among the Romans, at the time of the twelve tables. But let’s continue. Since your expenses are increasing, your resources must grow in the same proportion. Will you find, like Julius Caesar, a value of two billion francs in the coffers of the State, or will you discover the sources of Potose?
MACHIAVELLI.
Your features are very ingenious; I’ll do what every government can do, I’ll borrow from the government to the State 100 and 200 millions at the ordinary rate; big cities can lend too. Among these same nations, there are other institutions called provident institutions: they are savings banks, relief funds, pension funds. The state is in the habit of requiring that their capital, which is immense, which can sometimes amount to 5 or 600 million, be paid into the public treasury where they operate with the common mass, for low interest paid to those who deposit them.
In addition, governments can raise funds just like bankers. They issue sight bonds for amounts of two or three hundred millions on their cashier, a sort of bill of exchange which we throw ourselves into before they enter into circulation.
MONTESQUIEU.
So allow me to stop you: you only speak of borrowing or drawing bills of exchange; will you never worry about paying for something?
MACHIAVELLI.
It is good to tell you again that we can, in case of need, sell State domains.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ah, you are selling yourself now! but won’t you worry about paying at last?
MACHIAVELLI.
Without a doubt; it’s time to tell you now how to deal with liabilities.
MONTESQUIEU.
You say, we face the liabilities: I would like a more exact expression.
MACHIAVELLI.
I use this expression because I believe it to be truly correct. We cannot always extinguish the passive, but we can face it; the word is even very energetic, for the passive is a formidable enemy.
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, how will you face it?
MACHIAVELLI.
In this respect the means are very varied: first there is the tax.
MONTESQUIEU.
That is, the liabilities used to pay the liabilities. MACHIAVELLI.
You speak to me as an economist and not as a financier. Do not confuse. With the proceeds of a tax one can actually pay. I know the tax makes people cry; if the one we have established is inconvenient, we find another, or we re-establish the same under another name. There is a great art, you know, in finding the vulnerable points of taxable matter. Use the funds it generates; this combination will have a great advantage. When presenting the budget, from time to time, the proceeds of depreciation for the following year may be included in the receipts.
MONTESQUIEU.
And the following year it will appear in expenses.
MACHIAVELLI.
I don’t know, it will depend on the circumstances, because I will very much regret that this financial institution cannot operate more regularly. My ministers will explain themselves in this regard in an extremely painful manner. My God, I am not claiming that, from a financial point of view, my administration will not have some criticism sides, but, when the facts are well presented, we pass on a lot of things. Remember, the Administration of Finance is also a matter of the press for many.
MONTESQUIEU.
What is this?
MACHIAVELLI.
Did you not tell me that the very essence of the budget was advertising?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes.
MACHIAVELLI.
Well, are not the budgets accompanied by accounts, reports, docu-rasse by this means of a liability of several hundreds of millions.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is an immoral expedient, whatever one may say; a forced loan that depresses public confidence.
MACHIAVELLI.
You don’t know the annuitants. Here is another combination relating to a different kind of debt. I told you earlier that the State had at its disposal the funds of the provident funds and that it used them by paying the rent, except to return them at first requisition. If, after having handled them for a long time, he is no longer in a position to return them, he consolidates the debt that is floating in his hands.
MONTESQUIEU.
I know what this means; the state tells depositors. : You want your money, I don’t have it anymore; here is the rent.
MACHIAVELLI.
Precisely, and it consolidates, in the same way, all the debts which it can no longer suffice. It consolidates the Treasury bills, the debts contracted towards the cities, towards the banks, finally all those which form what is very – picturesquely called the floating debt, because it is composed of debts which have no ‘determining base and which are more or less soon.
MONTESQUIEU
You have unique ways of liberating the State.
Machiavelli
What can you blame me for if I only do what others do?
MONTESQUIEU.
Oh! if everyone does it, one would have to be very hard indeed to blame Machiavelli for it.
MACHIAVELLI.
I am not only telling you the thousandth part of the combinations that can be used. Far from dreading the increase in perpetual annuities, I would like the entire public fortune to be in annuities; I would make sure that the towns, the communes, the public establishments convert their buildings or their movable capital into rent. It is the very interests of my dynasty which would order me to take these financial measures. There would not be in my kingdom a shield which did not hold a thread to my existence.
MONTESQUIEU.
But from this very point of view, from this fatal point of view, will you achieve your goal? Are you not walking, in the most direct way, to your ruin through the ruin of the State? Don’t you know that in all the nations of Europe there are vast markets for public funds, where prudence,
wisdom, the probity of governments is put up for auction? The way you run your finances, your funds would be pushed back with loss from foreign markets and they would fall to the lowest prices, even on your kingdom’s stock exchange.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is a glaring mistake. A glorious government like mine can only enjoy great credit abroad. Inside, his vigor would dominate apprehensions. What is more, I would not want the credit of my State to depend on the trances of a few tallow merchants; I would dominate the Stock Exchange by the Stock Exchange.
MONTESQUIEU.
What again? ,
MACHIAVELLI.
I would have gigantic credit establishments set up apparently to lend to industry, but whose most real function would be to support rent. Capable of throwing away 400 or 500 million titles on the market, or of scarce the market in the same proportions, these financial monopolies would still be masters of the courts. What do you say about this combination?
MONTESQUIEU.
The good deals that your ministers, your favorites, your masters are going to do in these houses!
So your government is going to play the stock market with state secrets?
MACHIAVELLI.
What do you say?
MONTESQUIEU.
So explain the existence of these houses differently. As long as you were only in the field of doctrines, one could be mistaken on the true name of your policy, since you are in applications, one cannot anymore. Your government will be unique in history; we can never slander him.
MACHIAVELLI.
If anyone in my kingdom took it into his head to say what you imply, he would disappear completely as by the effect of lightning.
MONTESQUIEU.
Lightning is a good argument; you are happy to have it at your disposal. Are you done with the finances?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes.
MONTESQUIEU.
The hour is fast approaching.
IV * PART.
THE TWENTY-SECOND DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
Before hearing from you, I was not familiar with the spirit of laws or the spirit of finance. I am indebted to you for teaching me both. You have in your hands the greatest power of modern times, money. You can get pretty much as many as you want. With such prodigious resources, you are going to do great things, without dough; this is the case for finally showing that good can come out badly.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is what I hear show you indeed,
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, let’s see.
MACHIAVELLI.
The greatest of my benefits will first be to have given inner peace to my people. During my reign the bad passions are suppressed, the good are reassured and the wicked tremble. I returned to a country torn before me by factions, freedom, dignity, strength.
MONTESQUIEU.
After changing so many things, wouldn’t you have come to change the meaning of words?
MACHIAVELLI.
Freedom does not consist of a license, any more than dignity and strength consist of insurrection and disorder. My empire peaceful within, will be glorious without.
MONTESQUIEU.
How? ‘Or’ What?
MACHIAVELLI.
I will wage war in all four parts of the world. I will cross the Alps, like Annibal; I will fight in India, like Alexander; in Libya, like Scipio; I will go from the Atlas to the Tau-rus, from the banks of the Ganges to the Mississippi, from the Mississippi to the Amur river. The great wall of China will fall before my name; my victorious legions will defend the tomb of the Savior in Jerusalem; in Rome, the vicar of Jesus Christ;
MACHIAVELLI.
I don’t know if there will be subsistence crises; what is certain is that I will hold the flag of national dignity very high.
MONTESQUIEU.
It is the least you can do. If you collect glory, we should not be grateful to you, because it is, in your hands, only a means of government: it is not this which will amortize the debts of your State.
imposes itself invincibly, for, whatever you have said about the sterility of victories, force never abdicates its rights. We simulate wars of ideas, we display disinterestedness and, one fine day, we end very well by seizing a province which we covet and by imposing a tribute of war on the vanquished.
MONTESQUIEU.
But, allow, in this system, one does perfectly well to act thus if one can; without it, the military profession would be too stupid.
MACHIAVELLI.
All in good time! you see our ideas are starting to come together a bit.
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes, like the Atlas and the Taurus. Let’s see the other great things about your reign.
MACHIAVELLI.
I do not disdain as much as you seem to think a parallel with Louis XIV. I would have more than one trait with this monarch like him; I would make gigantic constructions; however, in this respect, my ambition would go much further than his and that of the most famous potentates; I would like to show the people that the monuments, the construction of which once required centuries, I will rebuild them in a few years. The palaces of kings my predecessors would fall under the hammer of demolishers to rise up
THE TWENTY-FIRST DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I am afraid that you have some prejudice with regard to borrowing; they are precious in more than one way: they tie families to government; they are excellent investments for individuals, and modern economists formally recognize today that, far from impoverishing States, public debts enrich them. Will you allow me to explain how?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, because I think I know these theories. Since you always talk about borrowing and never repaying, I would like to know first from whom you will be asking for so much capital, and what you will be asking for it about.
MACHIAVELLI.
Foreign wars are of great help to this. In large states, they per-
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh! it will all happen. You can see that, according to yourself, absolute sovereigns have good things.
MONTESQUIEU.
Alas! not too much. Try to prove me wrong, though.
Do you have something good to tell me?
MACHIAVELLI.
I would give the entrepreneurial spirit a prodigious boost; my reign would be the reign of business. I would launch speculation in new and hitherto unknown avenues. My administration would even loosen some of its rings. I would free a host of industries from regulation: butchers, bakers, and theaters would be free.
MONTESQUIEU.
Free to do what?
MACHIAVELLI.
Free to bake bread, free to sell meat, and free to organize theatrical enterprises, without the permission of the authorities.
MONTESQUIEU.
I don’t know what that means. The freedom of industry is a common right among modern peoples. Have you nothing better to teach me?
– 277 –
MACHIAVELLI.
I would constantly take care of the fate of the people. My government would provide him with work.
MONTESQUIEU.
Let the people find it for themselves, it will be better. The political powers do not have the right to make popularity with the funds of their subjects. Public revenues are nothing more than a collective contribution, the product of which should only be used for general services; the working classes, which we are accustomed to counting on the state, fall into degradation; they lose their energy, their momentum, their intellectual industry fund. Salariedness by the state throws them into a sort of serfdom, from which they can only recover by destroying the state itself. Your constructions swallow up enormous sums in unproductive expenditure; they scarce capital, kill small industries, destroy credit in the lower strata of society. Hunger is at the end of all your combinations.Save money, and you’ll build afterward. Govern in moderation, with justice, rule as little as possible and the people will have nothing to ask you because they will not need you.
MACHIAVELLI.
Ah! how you look with cold eyes on the miseries of the people! The principles of my government. Give to the State 100 and 200 million at the ordinary rate; big cities can lend too. Among these same nations there are other institutions called provident institutions: they are savings banks, relief funds, pension funds. The state is in the habit of requiring that their capital, which is immense, which can sometimes amount to 5 or 600 million, be paid into the public treasury, where they operate with the common mass, at low interest paid to those who deposit them.
In addition, governments can raise funds just like bankers. They issue sight bonds for amounts of two or three hundred million on their cashier, a sort of bill of exchange which we throw ourselves into before they enter into circulation.
MONTESQUIEU.
So allow me to stop you: you only speak of borrowing or drawing bills of exchange; will you never worry about paying for something?
MACHIAVELLI.
It is good to tell you again that we can, in case of need, sell State domains.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ali, you are selling yourself now! but won’t you worry about paying at last?
MACHIAVELLI.
Without a doubt; it’s time to tell you now how to deal with liabilities.
MONTESQUIEU.
You say, we face the liabilities: I would like a more exact expression.
MACHIAVELLI..
I use this expression because I believe it to be truly correct. We cannot always extinguish the passive, but we can face it; the word is even very energetic, for the passive is a formidable enemy.
MONTESQUIEU.
Well, how will you face it?
MACHIAVELLI.
In this respect the means are very varied: first there is the tax.
MONTESQUIEU.
That is, the liabilities used to pay the liabilities. MACHIAVELLI.
You speak to me as an economist and not as a financier. Do not confuse. With the proceeds of a tax one can actually pay. I know the tax makes people cry; if the one we have established is inconvenient, we find another, or we re-establish the same under another name. There is a great art, you know, in finding the vulnerable points of taxable matter.
23
MONTESQUIEU.
What do you know about it? If the people are above you, by what right do you subordinate their will to yours? If you are freely accepted, if you are not just, but only necessary, why do you expect everything from strength and nothing from reason? You do well to tremble incessantly for your reign, for you are one of those who last a day.
MACHIAVELLI.
One day! I will last all my life, and my descendants maybe after me. You know my political, economic, financial system. Do you want to know the last means by which I will push the roots of my dynasty to the last layers of the soil?
MONTESQUIEU.
No. .
MACHIAVELLI.
You refuse to hear me, you are defeated; you, your principles, your school and your century.
MONTESQUIEU.
You insist, speak, but let this interview be the last.
TWENTY-THIRD DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I am not responding to any of your oratorical movements. The training of rhetoric have nothing to do here. To say to a sovereign: would you like to come down from your throne for the happiness of your people, is not that folly? Tell him again: since you are an emanation of popular suffrage, entrust yourself to these fluctuations, let yourself be discussed, is it possible? Does not all constituted power have as its first law to defend itself, not only in its interest but in the interest of the people it governs? Have I not made the greatest sacrifice possible to make to modern-day equality principles? Isn’t a government resulting from universal suffrage, ultimately, the expression of the will of the greatest number? you will tell me that this principle is destructive of public freedoms; what can I do about it? When this principle is 24.
You have the state.
MONTESQUIEU.
singular means of liberating
MACHIAVELLI.
What can you blame me for if I only do what others do?
MONTESQUIEU.
Oh! if everyone does it, one would have to be very hard indeed to blame Machiavelli for it.
MACHIAVELLI.
I am not only telling you the thousandth part of the combinations that can be used. Far from dreading the increase of perpetual annuities, I would like the entire public fortune to be in annuities; I would make sure that the towns, the communes, the public establishments convert their buildings or their movable capital into rent. It is the very interests of my dynasty which would order me to take these financial measures. There would not be in my kingdom a crown which does not hold a thread to my existence.
MONTESQUIEU.
But from this very point of view, from this fatal point of view, will you achieve your goal? Are you not walking, in the most direct way, to your ruin through the ruin of the State? Don’t you know that among all the nations of Europe there are vast markets for public funds, and with prudence, my power, can they, therefore, ignore the real services I render, my genius, and ignore even my greatness?
I am the arm, I am the sword of Revolutions which mislaid the harbinger of final destruction. I contain insane forces which have no other motive, at bottom, than the brutality of instincts, which run to plunder under the veil of principles. If I discipline these forces, if I stop their expansion in my homeland, even for a century, have I not deserved it well? Can I not even claim the recognition of the European States which turn their eyes towards me, as towards the Osiris which, alone, has the power to captivate these quivering crowds? So carry your wishes higher and bow before the one who bears on his forehead the fatal sign of human predestination.
MONTESQUIEU.
The exterminating Angel, you, grandson of Tamerlane, reduce the peoples to islandism, you will not prevent that there are somewhere free souls who will brave you, and their disdain would be enough to safeguard the rights of human conscience made imperceptible by God.
MACHIAVELLI.
God protects the strong.
MONTESQUIEU.
Come, therefore, I pray you, to the last years
So your government is going to play on the stock market with state secrets?
MACHIAVELLI.
What do you say!
MONTESQUIEU.
So explain the existence of these houses differently. As long as you were only in the field of doctrines, one could be mistaken on the true name of your policy, since you are in applications, one cannot anymore. Your government will be unique in history; we can never slander him.
MACHIAVELLI.
If anyone in my kingdom took it into his head to say what you imply, he would disappear codified by the effect of lightning.
MONTESQUIEU.
Lightning is a good argument; you are happy to have it at your disposal. Are you done with the finances?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes.
MONTESQUIEU.
The hour is fast approaching.
PART IV.
TWENTY-SECOND DIALOGUE.
MONTESQUIEU.
Before hearing from you, I was not familiar with the spirit of laws or the spirit of finance. I am indebted to you for teaching me both. You have in your hands the greatest power of modern times, money. You can get pretty much as many as you want. With such prodigious resources, you will no doubt do great things; it is the case of finally showing that good can come out of evil.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is what I intend to show you indeed. abandoned, no more work; the people are on strike and are mounting an assault on the rich classes. We are in the middle of Jacquerie: industrial disruption, destruction of credit, insurrection in my State, uprising around it; Europe is on fire. I stop. Tell me if the privileged classes, which naturally tremble for their fortune, will not make common cause, and the closest cause with the working classes, to maintain me, me or my dynasty; if, on the other hand, the interests of European tranquility will not bind all the powers of the first order to it.
The seemingly thin question of constructions is therefore in reality, as you can see, a colossal question. When it comes to an object of this importance, we must not spare the sacrifices. Have you noticed that almost all of my political views are coupled with a financial combination? This is still what happens to me here. I will set up a public works fund which I will endow with several hundred million, with the help of which I will provoke construction over the entire surface of my kingdom. You have guessed my goal: I keep the workers’ jakey upright; this is the other army I need against the factions. But this mass of proletarians which is in my hand, it must not now be able to turn against me on the day when it would be without bread.
This is what I provide for by the constructions themselves, for what is special about my combinations is that each of them provides its corollaries at the same time. The worker who builds for me at the same time builds against him the means of defense that I need. Without knowing it, he drives himself out of the big centers where his presence would worry me; it makes forever impossible the success of the revolutions which take place in the street. The result of large constructions, in fact, is to defy the space where the craftsman can live, to drive him back to the suburbs, and soon to make them abandon them; for the high cost of subsistence increases with the rise in the rental rate.
My capital will hardly be habitable, for those who live from daily work, except in the part closest to its walls. It is therefore not in the neighborhoods near the headquarters of the authorities that insurrections can form. Undoubtedly, there will be around the capital an immense working population, formidable in a day of anger; but the constructions that I would erect would all be designed according to a strategic plan, that is to say, which would give way to major roads or, from one end to the other, could circulate the cannon. The end of these great ways would connect with a number of barracks, species of bastilles, full of weapons, soldiers, and ammunition. My success should lead to ceasefire, it was an imbecile old man or a child to let himself fall in the face of an insurrection, for, on an order from his hand, a few grains of powder would sweep the riot as far as twenty leagues from the capital. But the blood flowing through my veins is hot and my race has all the signs of strength. Are you listening to me?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes.
MACHIAVELLI.
But you will understand that I do not intend to make material life difficult for the working population of the capital, and I encounter a pitfall there, it is indisputable; but the fruitfulness of resources which my government must have would suggest an idea to me; it would be to build for the common people vast cities where lodgings would be cheap, and where their masses would be united in cohorts as in large families.
MONTESQUIEU.
Mousetraps!
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! the spirit of denigration, the relentless hatred of parties will not fail to denigrate my institutions. We will say what you say. It doesn’t matter to me, if the means don’t work, we’ll find another.
I must not give up the chapter of constructions without mentioning a seemingly insignificant detail, but what is insignificant in politics? The innumerable buildings that I will build must be marked with my name, that there are attributes, bas-reliefs, groups that recall a subject in my history. My arms, my figure must be intertwined everywhere. Here, it will be angels who will support my crown, further, statues of justice and wisdom which will support my initials. These points are of the last importance, I really care about them.
It is through these signs, through these emblems that the person of the sovereign is always present; we live with him, with his memory, with his thought. The feeling of its absolute sovereignty enters the most rebellious minds like the drop of water which incessantly falls from the rock hollow the granite foot. For the same reason, I want my statue, my bust, my portraits to be in all public establishments, especially in court audiences; whether I am represented in royal costume or on horseback.
MONTESQUIEU.
Next to the image of Christ.
MACHIAVELLI.
No, no doubt, but opposite; for sovereign power is an image of power 25
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! it will all happen. You can see that, according to yourself, absolute sovereigns have good things.
MONTESQUIEU.
Alas! not too much. Try to prove me wrong, though.
Do you have something good to tell me?
MACHIAVELLI.
I would give the entrepreneurial spirit a prodigious boost; my reign would be the reign of business. I would launch speculation in new and hitherto unknown avenues. My administration would even loosen some of its rings. I would free a host of industries from regulation: butchers, bakers, and theaters would be free.
MONTESQUIEU.
Free to do what?
MACHIAVELLI.
Free to bake bread, free to sell meat, and free to organize theatrical enterprises, without the permission of the authorities.
MONTESQUIEU.
I don’t know what that means. The freedom of industry is a common right among modern peoples. Have you nothing better to teach me?
How many things have I not yet to add! I must limit myself. Because who could say it all without mortal boredom? (1).
Here I am arrived at the small means; I regret it, because these things may not be worthy of your attention, but, for me, they are vital.
Bureaucracy is said to be a plague of monarchical governments; I don’t believe it. These are thousands of servants who are naturally attached to the existing order of things. I have an army of soldiers, a year of judges, an army of workers, I want an army of employees.
MONTESQUIEU.
You no longer bother to justify anything.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do I have time?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, come on.
MACHIAVELLI.
In states that have been monarchical, and they have all been monarchical at least once, I have found that there is a real frenzy for the cords,
(1) This sentence is found in the preface to YEsprit des lois, p. 1. (Editor’s Note.) For the ribbons. These things cost the prince next to nothing, and he can make people happy, better than that, faithful, by means of a few pieces of cloth, a few silver or gold rattles. In truth, I would hardly have to decorate without exception those who ask for it. A decorated man is a given man. I would make these marks of distinction a rallying point for devoted subjects; I would have, I believe, at this price, the eleven-twelfths of my kingdom. I thereby realize, as far as I can, the instincts of equality of the nation.
Notice this: the more a nation in general values equality, the more passionate individuals have for distinctions. This is therefore a means of action which it would be too clumsy to do without. So far from renouncing the titles, as you advised me, I would multiply them around me at the same time as the dignities. I want in my court the etiquette of Louis XIV, the domestic hierarchy of Constantine, a severe diplomatic formalism, an imposing ceremonial; these are infallible means of government on the minds of the masses. Through it all, the sovereign appears as a God.
I am assured that in States apparently the most democratic in terms of ideas, the old monarchical nobility has lost almost nothing of its prestige. I would give myself for chamberlains
the gentlemen of the oldest rock. Many ancient names would no doubt be extinct; by virtue of my sovereign power, I would revive them with the titles, and one would find at my court the greatest names in history since Charlemagne.
It is possible that these designs strike you as odd, but what I am telling you is that they will do more for the consolidation of my dynasty than the wisest laws. The cult of the prince is a kind of religion, and, like all possible religions, this cult imposes contradictions and mysteries above reason (1). Each of my acts, however inexplicable it may appear, proceeds from a calculation whose sole object is my salvation and that of my dynasty.
As I say, moreover, in the Treatise of the Prince, what is really difficult is to acquire power; but it is easy to preserve it, for it suffices, in short, to endow what harms and to establish what protects. The essential feature of my policy, as you have seen, has been to make me indispensable (2); I destroyed as many organized forces as was necessary so that nothing could go on without me so that the very enemies of my power tremble to overthrow it.
MONTESQUIEU.
What do you know about it? If the people are above you, by what right do you subordinate their will to yours? If you are freely accepted, if you are not just, but only necessary, why do you expect everything from strength and nothing from reason? You do well to tremble incessantly for your reign, for you are one of those who last a day.
MACHIAVELLI.
One day! I will last all my life, and my descendants maybe after me. You know my political, economic, financial system. Do you want to know the last means by which I will push the roots of my dynasty to the last layers of the soil?
MONTESQUIEU.
No. .
MACHIAVELLI.
You refuse to hear me, you are defeated; you, your principles, your school and your century.
MONTESQUIEU.
You insist, speak, but let this interview be the last.
will not resist the money. Seeing those who were believed to be the purest fall in turn, public opinion will weaken to such an extent that it will eventually abdicate completely. How can we finally complain? I will only be rigorous with regard to politics; I will only persecute this passion; I will even secretly favor the others by the thousand underground ways which absolute power has at its disposal.
MONTESQUIEU.
After having destroyed the political conscience, you had to undertake to destroy the moral conscience; you killed the company, now you kill the man. Would to God that your words resound even on the earth; never would a more striking refutation of your own doctrines have struck human ears.
MACHIAVELLI.
Let me finish.
What remains for me to f more than in the drafts which are in My reign is not to be defended by parties: We cannot be a luxury century ruin in the memories
my power, then can they ignore the real services I render, my genius, and even my greatness?
I am the arm, I am the sword of Revolutions which mislaid the harbinger of final destruction. I contain insane forces which have no other motive, at bottom, than the brutality of instincts, which run to plunder under the veil of principles. If I discipline these forces, if I stop their expansion in my homeland, even for a century, have I not deserved it well? Can I not even claim the recognition of the European States which turn their eyes towards me, as towards the Osiris which, alone, has the power to captivate these quivering crowds? So raise your eyes higher and bow before him who wears the fatal sign of human predestination on his forehead.
MONTESQUIEU.
Exterminating angel, grandson of Tamerlane, reduce the peoples to islandism, you will not prevent that there are somewhere free souls who will brave you, and their disdain would be enough to safeguard the rights of human conscience made imperceptible by God.
MACHIAVELLI.
God protects the strong.
MONTESQUIEU.
Come, therefore, I pray you, to the last years
the ends of the chain you have forged. Tighten it well, use the anvil and the hammer, you can do anything. God protects you, it is he himself who guides your star.
MACHIAVELLI.
I can hardly understand the animation that reigns in your words now. Am I then so hard, I who have taken for final policy, not violence, but erasure? Rest assured, I bring you more than one unexpected consolation. Only allow me to take a few more precautions which I believe necessary for my safety, you will see that with those with which I surround myself, a prince has nothing to fear from events.
Our writings have more than one connection, whatever you may say, and I believe that a despot who wants to be complete should not refrain from reading you either. Thus, you notice very well in the Spirit of the Laws that an absolute monarch must have a numerous praetorian guard (1); the opinion is good. I will follow him. My guard would be about a third of my army’s strength. I am a great fan of conscription, which is one of the finest inventions of French genius, but I believe that this institution must be perfected by trying to keep under arms as many as possible of those who have completed the time of their service.
ai Esp. of laws, liv. X, ch. XV, p. 127. vice. I would achieve this, I believe, by resolutely seizing the kind of trade which takes place in some States, as in France for example, on voluntary commitments at a price of money. I would do away with this hideous business and exercise it myself honestly in the form of a monopoly by setting up an army endowment fund which I would use to summon up for the flag with the bait of money and put it there. to retain by the same means those who would like to devote themselves exclusively to the military state.
MONTESQUIEU.
So these are kinds of mercenaries that you aspire to train in your own homeland!
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, party hatred will say that, when I am only moved by the good of the people and by the interest, moreover so legitimate, of my preservation which is the common good of my subjects.
Let’s move on to other objects. What will amaze you is that I return to constructions. I warned you that we would be brought back there. You will see the political idea that arises from the vast system of constructions that I undertook thereby realizes an economic theory that has caused many disasters in the certain States of Europe, the theory of the organization of permanent work for working classes. My reign promises them indefinite wages. Me dead, my system
abandoned, no more work; the people are on strike and rise to Passant from the rich classes. We are in the middle of Jacquerie: industrial disruption, destruction of credit, insurrection in my State, uprising around it; Europe is on fire. I stop. Tell me if the privileged classes, who naturally tremble for their fortune, will not make common cause, and the closest cause with the working classes, to maintain me, me or my dynasty; if, on the other hand, the interests of European tranquility will not bind all the powers of the first order to it.
The seemingly thin question of constructions is therefore in reality, as you can see, a colossal question. When it comes to an object of this importance, we must not spare the sacrifices. Have you noticed that almost all of my political views are coupled with a financial combination? This is still what happens to me here. I will set up a public works fund which I will endow with several hundred million, with the help of which I will provoke construction over the entire surface of my kingdom. You guessed my goal: I hold the workers’ jacquerie upright; this is the other army I need against the factions. But this mass of proletarians which is in my hand, it must not now be able to turn against me on the day when it would be without bread.
This is what I provide by the constructions themselves, for what is peculiar in my combinations is that each of them provides at the same time its corollaries. The worker who builds for me at the same time builds against him the means of defense that I need. Without knowing it, he drives himself out of the great centers where his presence would worry me; it makes forever impossible the success of the revolutions taking place in the street. The result of large constructions, in fact, is to refrain from the space where the craftsman can live, to push him back to the suburbs, and soon to make him abandon them; because the high cost of subsistence “Grows with the rise in the rental rate.
My capital will hardly be habitable, for those who live ‘Sun daily work, then in the part closest to its walls. It is therefore not in the neighborhoods near the headquarters of the authorities that insurrections can form. Undoubtedly, there will be around the capital an immense working population, formidable in a day of anger; but the constructions which I would raise would all be conceived according to a strategic plan, that is to say, which would give way to large roads or, from one end to the other, could circulate the cannon. The end of these great ways would connect with a number of barracks, species of bastilles, full of weapons, soldiers, and ammunition. My success should
ceasefire was an imbecile old man or a child to let himself fall in the face of an insurrection, for, on an order from his hand, a few grains of powder would sweep the riot as far as twenty leagues from the capital. But the blood flowing through my veins is hot and my race has all the signs of strength. Are you listening to me?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes.
MACHIAVELLI.
But you will understand that I do not intend to make material life difficult for the working population of the capital, and I encounter a pitfall there, it is indisputable; but the fruitfulness of resources which my government must have would suggest an idea to me; it would be to build for the common people vast cities where lodgings would be cheap, and where their masses would be united in cohorts as in large families.
MONTESQUIEU.
Mousetraps!
MACHIAVELLI.
Oh ! the spirit of denigration, the relentless hatred of parties will not fail to denigrate my institutions. We will say what you say. It doesn’t matter to me, if the means don’t work, we’ll find another.
I must not give up the chapter of
constructions without mentioning a seemingly insignificant detail, but what is insignificant in politics? The innumerable buildings that I will build must be marked with my name, that there are attributes, bas-reliefs, groups that recall a subject in my history. My arms, my figure must be intertwined everywhere. Here, it will be angels who will support my crown, further, statues of justice and wisdom which will support my initials. These points are of the last importance, I really care about them.
It is through these signs, through these emblems that the person of the sovereign is always present; we live with him, with his memory, with his thought. The feeling of its absolute sovereignty enters the most rebellious minds like the drop of water which incessantly falls from the rock hollow the granite foot. For the same reason I want my statue, my bust, my portraits to be in all public establishments, especially in court audiences; whether I am represented in royal costume or on horseback.
MONTESQUIEU.
Next to the image of Christ.
MACHIAVELLI.
No, no doubt, but opposite; for sovereign power is an image of divine power. My image is thus allied with that of Providence and justice.
MONTESQUIEU.
Justice itself must wear your livery. You are not a Christian, you are a Greek Emperor of the Late Empire.
MACHIAVELLI.
I am a Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Emperor. For the same reasons as those I have just deduced from you, I want my name, the Royal name, to be given to public establishments of whatever nature. Royal Tribunal, Royal Court, Royal Academy, Royal Legislature, Royal Senate, Royal Council of State; as far as possible this same word will be given to civil servants, agents, and official personnel who surround the government. Lieutenant of the king, archbishop of the king, actor of the king, judge of the king, lawyer of the king. Finally, the name of royal will be imprinted on whoever, men or things represents a sign of power. My feast alone will be a national feast and not a royal one. I would add that it is necessary, as much as possible, that the streets, the public places, the crossroads bear names that recall the historical memories of my reign. If we follow these indications well, were we Caligula or Nero, we are certain to imprint ourselves forever in the memory of peoples and to transmit our prestige to the most posterity. How many things have I not yet to add! I must limit myself. Because who can! to say everything without mortal boredom? (1).
Here I am arrived at the small means; I regret it, because these things may not be worthy of your attention, but, for me, they are vital.
Bureaucracy is said to be a plague of monarchical governments; I don’t believe it. These are thousands of servants who are naturally attached to the existing order of things. I have an army of soldiers, an army of judges, an army of workers, I want an army of employees.
MONTESQUIEU.
You no longer bother to justify anything.
MACHIAVELLI.
Do I have time?
MONTESQUIEU.
No, come on.
MACHIAVELLI.
In the states that have been monarchical, and they have all been monarchical at least once, I have found that there is a real frenzy for the cords,
(1) This sentence is found in the preface to V Esprit des lois, p. 1. (Editor’s Note.) For the ribbons. These things cost the prince next to nothing, and he can make people happy, better than that, faithful, by means of a few pieces of cloth, a few silver or gold rattles.
In truth, I would hardly have to decorate without exception those who ask for it. A decorated man is a given man. I would make these marks of distinction a rallying point for devoted subjects; I would have, I believe, at this price, the eleven-twelfths of my kingdom. I thereby realize, as far as I can, the instincts of equality of the nation. Notice this: the more a nation in general values equality, the more passionate individuals have for distinctions. This is therefore a means of action which it would be too clumsy to do without. So far from renouncing the titles, as you advised me, I would multiply them around me at the same time as the dignities. I want in my court the etiquette of Louis XIV, the domestic hierarchy of Constantine, a severe diplomatic formalism, an imposing ceremonial; these are infallible means of government on the minds of the masses. Through it all, the sovereign appears as a God.
I am assured that in States apparently the most democratic in terms of ideas, the old monarchical nobility has lost almost nothing of its prestige. I would give myself for chamberlains
the gentlemen of the oldest rock. Many ancient names would no doubt be extinct; by virtue of my sovereign power, I would revive them with the titles, and one would find at my court the greatest names in history since Charlemagne.
It is possible that these designs strike you as odd, but what I am telling you is that they will do more for the consolidation of my dynasty than the wisest laws. The cult of the prince is a kind of religion, and, like all possible religions, this cult imposes contradictions and mysteries above reason (1). Each of my acts, however inexplicable it may appear, proceeds from a calculation whose sole object is my salvation and that of my dynasty. As I say, moreover, in the Treatise of the Prince, what is really difficult is to acquire power; but it is easy to preserve it, for it suffices, in short, to endow what harms and to establish what protects. The essential feature of my policy, as you have seen, has been to make me indispensable (2);I destroyed as many organized forces as was necessary so that nothing could go on without me, so that the very enemies of my power tremble to overthrow it.
What remains for me to do now consists only in the development of the moral means which are germinating in my institutions. My reign is a reign of pleasures; you do not forbid me to enliven my people with games, with feasts; it is by this that I soften manners. We cannot hide from ourselves that this century is not a century of silver; needs have doubled, luxury ruins families; on all sides, we aspire to material pleasures; it would be necessary that a sovereign was hard of his time not to know how to turn to his profit this universal passion for money and this sensual fury which consumes men today. Poverty squeezes them as in a vice, lust presses them; ambition devours them, they are mine. But when I speak like this, it is ultimately the interests of my people that guide me. Yes,I will bring good out of evil; I will exploit materialism for the benefit of concord and civilization; I will extinguish the political passions of men by appeasing ambitions, desires, and needs. I claim to have as servants of my reign those who, under previous governments, will have made the most noise in the name of freedom. The most austere virtues are like that of Mona Lisa’s wife; it suffices to always double the price of defeat. Those who resist money will not resist honors; those who resist honors will not resist the money. Seeing those who were believed to be the purest fall in their turn, public opinion will weaken to such an extent that it will eventually abdicate completely. How can we ultimately complain? I will only be rigorous with regard to politics; I will only persecute this passion; I will even secretly favor the others by the thousand underground ways which absolute power has at its disposal.
MONTESQUIEU.
After having destroyed the political conscience, you had to undertake to destroy the moral conscience; you killed the company, now you kill the man. Would to God that your words resound even on the earth; never would a more striking refutation of your own doctrines have struck human ears.
MACHIAVELLI.
Let me finish.
MACHIAVELLI.
It only remains for me now to indicate to you certain peculiarities of my way of acting, certain habits of conduct which will give my government its last appearance.
First and foremost, I want my designs to be impenetrable even to those who come closest to me. In this respect, I would be like Alexander VI and the Duke of Valenti-nois, of whom it was said proverbially at the court of Rome, of the former, “that he never did what he said; the second, that he never said what he did. * I would only communicate my plans to order their execution and I would only give my orders at the last moment. Borgia never used it otherwise; his ministers themselves knew nothing and people around him were always reduced to simple conjectures. I have the gift of immobility, my goal is there; I watch from a
MACHIAVELLI.
It only remains for me now to indicate to you certain peculiarities of my way of acting, certain habits of conduct which will give my government its last appearance.
First and foremost, I want my designs to be impenetrable even to those who come closest to me. In this respect, I would be like Alexander VI and the Duke of Valenti-nois, of whom it was said proverbially at the court of Rome, of the former, “that he never did what he said; the second, that he never said what he did. * I would only communicate my plans to order their execution and I would only give my orders at the last moment. Borgia never used it otherwise; his ministers themselves knew nothing and people around him were always reduced to simple conjectures. I have the gift of immobility, my goal is there; I look the other way, and when he’s within my reach, I suddenly turn around and swoop down on my prey before it has had time to cry out.
You would not believe what prestige such a power of dissimulation gives to the prince. When she is joined to the vigor of the action, a superstitious respect surrounds her, her advisers wonder in a low voice what will come out of her head, the people place their trust only in him; in his eyes he personifies Providence, the ways of which are unknown. When the people saw him pass, they thought with involuntary terror what they could with a nod from the neck; the neighboring states are always in awe and shower him with marks of deference, for they never know if some ready-made business will not fall on them overnight.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are strong against your people because you hold them below your knee, but if you cheat the states you deal with as you cheat your subjects, you will soon be suffocated in the arms of a coalition.
MACHIAVELLI.
You take me out of my subject, for I am only concerned here with my internal politics; but if you want to know one of the main means by which I would hold in check the coalition of foreign hatreds, here it is: I reign over a powerful kingdom, I told you; well ! I would seek around my States some great fallen country which aspired to rise again, I would raise it up entirely by means of some general war, as has been seen for Sweden, for Prussia, as can be seen from one day to another for Germany or for Italy, and this country, which would live only through me, which would only be an emanation of my existence, would give me, as long as I was standing, three hundred thousand more men against armed Europe.
MONTESQUIEU.
And the salvation of your State, beside which you would thus raise a rival power and consequently enemy in a given time?
MACHIAVELLI.
Above all, I preserve myself.
MONTESQUIEU.
So you have nothing, not even concern for the destinies of your kingdom (1)?
MACHIAVELLI.
Who told you that? To provide for my salvation, is it not at the same time to provide for the salvation of my kingdom!
(1) We cannot hide from ourselves that here Machiavelli is not in contradiction with himself, because he says formally, ch. IV, p. 26, “let the Prince who makes another powerful work for his own ruin.” ”
(Editor’s note.)
on the other side, and when it is within my reach, I suddenly turn around and I rush on my prey before it has had time to cry out.
You would not believe what prestige such power of dissimulation gives to the prince. When she is joined to the vigor of the action, superstitious respect surrounds her, her advisers wonder in a low voice what will come out of her head, the people place their trust only in him; in his eyes, he personifies Providence, the ways of which are unknown. When the people saw him pass, they thought with involuntary terror what they could with a nod from the neck; the neighboring states are always in awe and shower him with marks of deference, for they never know if some ready-made business will not fall on them overnight.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are strong against your people because you hold them below your knee, but if you cheat the states you deal with as you cheat your subjects, you will soon be suffocated in the arms of a coalition.
MACHIAVELLI.
You take me out of my subject, for I am only concerned here with my internal politics; but if you want to know one of the main means by which I would hold the coalition of foreign hatreds in check, here it is: I rule over a mighty kingdom, I told you; well, I would seek around my States some great fallen country which aspired to rise again, I would raise it up entirely by means of some general war, as has been seen for Sweden, for Prussia, as can be seen from one day to another for Germany or for Italy, and this country, which would live only through me, which would only be an emanation of my existence, would give me, as long as I was standing, three hundred thousand more men against armed Europe.
MONTESQUIEU.
And the salvation of your State, beside which you would thus raise a rival power and consequently enemy in a given time?
MACHIAVELLI.
Above all, I preserve myself.
MONTESQUIEU.
So you have nothing, not even concern for the destinies of your kingdom (1)?
MACHIAVELLI.
Who told you that? To provide for my salvation is it not at the same time to provide for the salvation of my kingdom!
(1) We cannot hide from ourselves that here Machiavelli is not in contradiction with himself, because he says formally, ch. IV, p. 26, <let the Prince who makes another powerful work for his own ruin. ”
(Editor’s note.)
MONTESQUIEU.
Your royal physiognomy emerges more and more; I want to see it all.
MACHIAVELLI.
So try not to interrupt me.
It is far from a prince, whatever his strength of mind, always finds in him the necessary resources of spirit. One of the statesman’s greatest talents is to appropriate the advice he hears around him. One very often finds luminous notices in his entourage. I would therefore very often assemble my advice, I would have it discussed and debated in front of me the most important questions.
When the sovereign distrusts his impressions or does not have enough language resources to disguise his true thought, he must remain silent or speak only to engage further in the discussion. It is very rare that, in a well-composed council, the true course to be taken in a given situation is not formulated in one way or another. He is seized and very often one of those who has given his opinion very obscurely is quite astonished the next day to see him executed.
You have seen in my institutions and in my actions, how much attention I have always paid to create appearances; it is necessary for words as well as in deeds. The height of skill is to make people believe in one’s frankness when one has a Punic faith. Not only will my designs be impenetrable, but my words will almost always mean the opposite of what they seem to indicate. Only initiates will be able to penetrate the meaning of the characteristic words that at certain times I will drop from the height of the throne: when I say: My reign is peace, it will be war; when I say that I appeal to moral means, it is because I am going to use the means of force. Are you listening to me?
MONTESQUIEU.
Yes.
MACHIAVELLI.
You have seen that my press has a hundred voices and that they speak incessantly of the greatness of my reign, of the enthusiasm of my subjects for their sovereign; which at the same time put in the mouths of the public the opinions, the ideas and even the formulas of language which must pay for its discussions; you have also seen that my ministers relentlessly amaze the public with the indisputable testimony of their work. As for me, I would speak rarely, once a year only, then here and there in some great circumstances. So each of my manifestations would be welcomed, not only in my kingdom, but throughout Europe, as an event.
A prince whose power is based on a democratic foundation, must have a neat, yet popular language. If need be, he should not be afraid to speak like a demagogue, for after all he is the people, and he must have their passions. It is necessary to have for him certain attentions, certain flattery, certain demonstrations of sensitivity which will find place on occasion. No matter how small or childish these means appear to the world, the people will not look so closely at them and the effect will be produced.
In my work I recommend that the prince take as a type some great man of the past, whose footsteps he should as far as possible follow (1). These historical assimilations still have a great effect on the masses; we grow in their imagination, we give ourselves during our lifetime the place that posterity reserves for you. Moreover, in the history of these great men, we find reconciliations, useful indications, sometimes identical situations, from which we draw valuable lessons, because all the great political lessons are in history. When you have found a great man with whom you have analogies, you can do even better: You know that people like a prince to have a cultivated mind, that he has a taste for letters, that he even have the talent. Well the prince would not know better to use his leisure than to write, for example, the story of the great man of times past, whom he took as a model. A harsh philosophy can tax these things with weakness. When the sovereign is strong, they are forgiven him, and they even give him I know not what grace.
Certain weaknesses, and even certain vices, moreover serve the prince as much as virtues. You have been able to recognize the truth of these observations from the use I must have made sometimes of duplicity, and sometimes of violence. We must not believe, for example, that the vengeful character of the sovereign can harm him; quite the contrary. While it is often opportune to use clemency or magnanimity, at certain times his anger must be terribly heavy.
Man is the image of God, and the divinity has no less rigor in his blows than in mercy. When I had resolved the loss of my enemies, I would therefore crush them until there was nothing left but dust. Men take revenge only for slight insults; they can do nothing against the big ones (1). This is what I expressly say in my book. The prince has only the choice of the instruments which should serve his wrath; he will always find judges ready to sacrifice their science to his plans for revenge or hatred.
Do not fear that the people will ever be moved by the blows that I will deal. First, he likes to feel the vigor of the arm that commands, and then he naturally hates what rises, he instinctively rejoices when someone strikes above him. Perhaps you do not know very well how easily one forgets.
When the time of hardship has passed, those very people who have been struck can hardly remember. In Rome, at the time of the Lower Empire, Tacitus reports that the victims ran with I do not know what pleasure in the face of torture. You fully understand that there is nothing like this in modern times; morals have become very gentle: a few proscriptions, imprisonments, the deprivation of civic rights, these are very light punishments. It is true that, in order to achieve sovereign power, it was necessary to shed blood and violate many rights; but, I repeat, everything is forgotten. The least cajoling of the prince, a few good practices on the part of his ministers or his agents, will be greeted with the marks of the greatest recognition.
While it is essential to punish with inflexible rigor, it is necessary to reward with the same punctuality: that’s what I would never fail to do. Anyone who would have rendered a service to my government would be rewarded the next day. The places, the distinctions, the greatest dignities, would form so many stages certain for whoever would be in possession of usefully serving my policy. In the army, in the magistracy, in all public offices, advancement would be calculated on the shade of opinion and the degree of zeal for my government. You are mute.
MONTESQUIEU.
Keep going.
MACHIAVELLI.
I come back to certain vices and even certain quirks of mind, which I regard as necessary for the prince. The wielding of power is a great thing. However skillful a sovereign may be, however infallible his glance and however vigorous his decision may be, there is still an immense hazard in his existence. You have to be superstitious. Be careful not to believe that this is of slight consequence. There are situations so difficult in the life of princes, moments so grave, that human prudence no longer counts. In these cases, you almost have to play to the dice of your resolutions. The course that I am indicating, and that I would follow, consists, in certain circumstances, of relating to historical dates, of consulting happy birthdays, of putting this or that bold resolution under the auspices of a day when we won a victory, help out,
can. I must tell you that superstition has another very big advantage; the people know this tendency. These auspicious combinations often succeed; we must also use them when we are sure of success. The people, who judge only by results, get used to believing that each of the acts of the sovereign corresponds to heavenly signs, that historical coincidences force the hand of fortune.
MONTESQUIEU.
The last word is said, you are a gamer. MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, but I have incredible happiness, and my hand is so sure, my head so fertile that fortune cannot turn.
MONTESQUIEU.
Since you are painting your portrait, you must still have other vices or other virtues to convey.
MACHIAVELLI.
I beg your mercy for lust. The passion of women serves a ruler more than you might think. Henry IV owed part of his popularity to his incontinence. Men are so made that this inclination pleases them in those who govern them. The dissolution of manners has always been a fury, a gallant career in which the prince must precede his equals, as he precedes his soldiers.
before the enemy. These ideas are French, and I do not think they too displease the illustrious author of the Persian Letters. I am not allowed to fall into too vulgar considerations, however I cannot dispense with telling you that the most real result of the prince’s gallantry is to win him the sympathy of the most beautiful half of his subjects. .
MONTESQUIEU.
You turn to the madrigal.
MACHIAVELLI.
One can be serious and gallant: you have provided the proof. I do not turn down anything of my proposal. The influence of women on the public mind is considerable. In good politics, the prince is condemned to be gallant, even though at bottom he would not care; but the case will be rare.
I can assure you that if I follow the rules that I have just drawn up, we will care very little about freedom in my kingdom. We will have a vigorous, dissolute sovereign, full of the spirit of chivalry, adept at all the exercises of the body: we will love him. Austere people will do nothing about it; we will follow the torrent; moreover, independent men will be blacklisted: we will move away from them. We will not believe in their character or their disinterestedness. They will pass for dissatisfied people who want to be bought. If here and there I did not encourage talent, it would be repelled from all sides, it would be treading on people’s conscience as on the pavement.
But deep down, I will be a moral prince; I will not allow that we go beyond certain limits. I will respect public decency, wherever I see it wants to be respected. The insults will not reach me, for I will unload on others the odious parts of the administration. The worst that can be said is that I am a good prince in bad company, that I want the good, that I want it ardently, that I will always do it, when it is indicated to me.
If you only knew how easy it is to rule when you have absolute power. There, no contradiction, no resistance; you can follow your designs at your leisure, you have time to right your mistakes. One can without opposition make the happiness of his people, because that is what always concerns me. I can tell you that people will not be bored in my kingdom; minds will be ceaselessly occupied there by a thousand different objects. I will give the people the spectacle of my equipments and the pumps of my court, great ceremonies will be prepared, I will plot gardens, I will offer hospitality to kings, I will bring in embassies from the most remote countries.
Sometimes there will be rumors of war, sometimes diplomatic complications on which we will gloss over for months on end; I will go very far, I will give satisfaction even to the monomania of freedom. The wars which will be waged under my reign will be undertaken in the name of the freedom of peoples and the independence of nations, and while on my passage the peoples will acclaim me, I will say secretly in the ear of absolute kings: nothing, I am one of yours, I wear a crown like you and I want to keep it: I embrace European freedom, but it is to stifle it.
Only one thing could perhaps, for a moment, compromise my fortune: that would be the day when it would be recognized on all sides that my policy is not straightforward, that all my actions are marked in the corner of the calculation.
MONTESQUIEU.
Who will be the blind who will not see this?
MACHIAVELLI.
My entire people, except a few coteries that I will care little about. I have also formed around me a school of politicians of very great relative strength. You wouldn’t believe how contagious Machiavellianism is, and how easy its precepts are to follow. In all branches of government there will be men of nothing, or of very little consequence, who will be true Machiavelli with small feet who will cunning, who will conceal, who will lie with imperturbable coolness; nowhere can the truth come to light.
MONTESQUIEU.
If all you have done is mockery throughout this interview, as I believe, Machiavelli, I regard this irony as your most magnificent work.
MACHIAVELLI.
An irony! You are wrong if you think so. Don’t you understand that I spoke without a veil, and that it is the terrible violence of the truth that gives my words the color you think you see!
MONTESQUIEU.
You have finished.
MACHIAVELLI.
Not yet.
MONTESQUIEU.
So finish.
TWENTY-FIFTH DIALOGUE.
MACHIAVELLI.
I will reign ten years under these conditions, without changing anything in my legislation; definitive success is only at this price. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should make me vary during this interval; the boiler cover should be of iron and lead; It is during this time that the phenomenon of the destruction of the factious mind develops. You may think that we are unhappy, that we are complaining. Ah! I would be inexcusable if it were so; but when the springs are the most violently strained, when I will weigh the most terrible weight on the breasts of my people, this is what they will say: We only have what we deserve, we suffer.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are quite blind if you take that for an apology for your reign; if you do not understand that the expression of these words is a violent message from the past. This is a stoic word that announces to you the day of punishment.
MACHIAVELLI.
You confuse me. The time has come to relax the springs, I am going to give back some freedoms.
MONTESQUIEU.
Better a thousand times the excess of your oppression; your people will answer you: keep what you have taken.
MACHIAVELLI.
Ah! that I clearly recognize there the implacable hatred of parties. Grant nothing to his political opponents, nothing, not even the benefits.
MONTESQUIEU.
No, Machiavelli, nothing with you, nothing! the immolated victim does not receive benefits from his torturer.
MACHIAVELLI.
Ah! that in this respect I would easily penetrate the secret thoughts of my enemies. They flatter themselves, they hope that the force of expansion that I compress will sooner or later launch me into space. The fools! They won’t know me well until the end. In politics what is needed to prevent any danger with the greatest possible compression? an imperceptible opening. We’ll get it.
I will not give back considerable freedoms, for sure; well, yet see to what extent absolutism will have already penetrated mores.
I can bet that at the first noise of these freedoms, rumors of terror will rise around me. My ministers, my advisers will cry out that I am relinquishing the rudder, that all is lost. I will be conjured, in the name of the salvation of the State, in the name of the country, to do nothing; the people will say: what is he thinking? his genius is declining; the indifferent will say: there he is at his end; the haters will say: He is dead.
MONTESQUIEU.
And they will all be right, for a modern publicist (1) has said with great truth: “Do we want to take away their rights from men? we must “do nothing by half.” What we leave to them, is used to them “to reconquer what one takes away from them.” The hand which remains free releases the other from its shackles. ”
MACHIAVELLI.
It is very well thought out; it is very true; I know I expose myself a lot. You can see that people are unfair to me, that I love freedom more than people say. You asked me earlier if I had self-denial, if I could sacrifice myself for my people, descend from the throne if necessary: you now have my answer, I can descend through martyrdom.
MONTESQUIEU.
You are very moved. What freedoms do you have? •
(1) Benjamin Constant. (Editor’s vote.)
27
MACHIAVELLI.
I allow my legislative chamber to bear witness to me year after year, at New Year’s Day, the expression of its wishes in an address.
MONTESQUIEU.
But since the vast majority of the room is devoted to you, what can you collect except thanks and testimonies of admiration and love?
MACHIAVELLI.
Well yes. Are these testimonies not natural?
MONTESQUIEU.
Are these all freedoms?
MACHIAVELLI.
But this first concession is considerable, whatever you may say about it. I will not stop there, however. There is today in Europe a certain movement of mind against centralization, not among the masses, but among the enlightened classes. I will decentralize, that is to say I will give my provincial governors the right to decide many small local questions previously submitted for the approval of my ministers.
MONTESQUIEU.
You only make tyranny more unbearable if the municipal element is for nothing in this reform.
– 51b –
MACHIAVELLI.
This is the fatal haste of those who demand reforms: we must tread cautiously on the path to freedom. However, I do not stop there: I give commercial freedoms.
MONTESQUIEU.
You have already spoken about it.
MACHIAVELLI.
This is because the industrial point always touches me: I do not want people to say that my legislation goes, through an excess of distrust towards the people, to the point of preventing them from providing for their own subsistence. It is for this reason that I have laws presented to the chambers which aim to derogate a little from the prohibitive provisions of the association. Moreover, the tolerance of my government made this measure perfectly useless, and as, in the end, we must not disarm, nothing will be changed in the law, except the wording of the drafting. Today we have deputies in the chambers who lend themselves very well to these innocent stratagems.
MONTESQUIEU.
Is that all?
MACHIAVELLI.
Yes, because it is much, perhaps too much; but I think I can reassure myself: my army is enthusiastic, my magistracy faithful, and my legislation
penal works with the regularity and precision of those all-powerful and terrible mechanisms that modern science has invented.
MONTESQUIEU.
So you don’t touch the laws of the press?
MACHIAVELLI.
You wouldn’t want to.
MONTESQUIEU.
Or to municipal legislation?
MACHIAVELLI.
Is it possible ?
MONTESQUIEU.
Or to your system of the suffrage protectorate?
MACHIAVELLI.
No.
MONTESQUIEU.
Neither to the organization of the Senate, nor to that of the Legislative Body, nor to your internal system, nor to your external system, nor to your economic regime, nor to your financial regime?
MACHIAVELLI.
I’m only touching what I told you. Strictly speaking, I am leaving the period of terror, I am entering the path of tolerance; I can do it without danger; I could even make freedoms real, because it would be necessary to be quite devoid of political spirit not to recognize that at the imaginary hour that I suppose, my legislation bore all its fruits. I have fulfilled the goal I announced to you; the character of the nation is changed; the slight faculties which I have rendered have been for me the probe with which I have measured the depth of the result. Everything is done, everything is consumed, there is no more resistance possible. There is no more pitfall, there is nothing! And yet I will not return anything. You said it, that is where the practical truth lies.
MONTESQUIEU.
Hurry to finish, Machiavelli. May my shadow never meet you, and may God erase from my memory even the last trace of what I have just heard!
MACHIAVELLI.
Take care, Montesquieu; before the minute which begins falls into eternity you will seek my steps with anguish and the memory of this interview will eternally mourn your soul.
MONTESQUIEU.
Speak !
MACHIAVELLI.
So let’s come back. I did everything you know; by these concessions to the liberal spirit of my time, I have disarmed party hatred.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ah! you will not therefore let fall this mask of hypocrisy with which you have covered crimes that no human tongue has described. So you want me to get out of eternal night for 27. wither you! Ah! Machiavelli! you yourself had not taught how to degrade humanity to such an extent! You were not conspiring against conscience, you had not conceived the thought of making the human soul into a sludge in which the divine creator himself would no longer recognize anything.
MACHIAVELLI.
It’s true, I am overwhelmed.
MONTESQUIEU. .
Run away ! do not prolong this interview for a moment longer.
MACHIAVELLI.
Before the shadows that tumble over yonder reach that dark ravine that separates them from us, I’ll be done; before they have reached it you will never see me again and you will call me in vain.
MONTESQUIEU.
Complete then, it will be atonement for the temerity I committed by accepting this sacrilegious challenge!
MACHIAVELLI.
Ah! freedom! this then is with what force you hold in some souls when the people despise you or console themselves for you with rattles. Let me tell you a very short apologue on this subject:
Dion relates that the Roman people were indignant at Augustus because of some too harsh laws he had made, but that as soon as he had
brought back the comedian Pilade, whom the factions had driven out of the city, the discontent ceased.
This is my apologue. Now here is the conclusion of Fauteur, because it is an author that I quote: •
“Such a people felt tyranny more keenly when Ion drove out a baladin than when all his laws were taken away from him (1). ”
Do you know who wrote this?
MONTESQUIEU.
I do not care !
MACHIAVELLI.
So recognize yourself, it is yourself. I only see low souls around me, what can I do about it? The strollers will not fail under my reign and they will have to behave very badly for me to take the party to drive them out.
MONTESQUIEU.
I do not know if you have accurately reported my words; but here is a quote that I can guarantee you: it will eternally avenge the peoples you slander:
“The manners of the prince contribute as much to freedom as the laws. He can, like her, make “men out of beasts, and out of beasts into men;
(1) Esp. of laws, liv. XIX, chap. He, p. 253.
* if he loves free souls, he will have subjects, if he “loves low souls, he will have slaves (1). ”
This is my answer, and if I had something to add to that quote today, I would say:
“When public honesty is banished from the bosom of the courts, when corruption spreads out there“ without shame, it never penetrates ”except in the hearts of those who approach a“ bad prince; the love of virtue continues to “live in the bosom of the people, and the power of“ this principle is so great that the bad prince “has only to disappear so that, by the very force“ of things, the honesty returns to the practice of government along with freedom. ”
MACHIAVELLI.
It is very well written, in a very simple form. There is only one misfortune to what you have just said, which is that, in the minds as well as in the souls of my peoples, I personify virtue, much better, I personify freedom, hear- you, as I personify the revolution, progress, the modern spirit, all that is best in the bottom of contemporary civilization. I am not saying that I am respected, I am not saying that I am loved, I am saying that I am venerated, I am saying that the people adore me; that, if I wanted to, I would raise myself altars, because, explain this, I have the fatal gifts which act on the masses. In your country, Louis XVI was guillotined who wanted only the good of the people, who wanted it with all the faith, all the ardor of a sincerely honest soul, and, a few years before, they had raised altars to Louis XIV who cared less for the people than for the last of his mistresses; who, at the slightest whim, would have had the rabble strafed while playing dice with Lauzun. But I myself am much more than Louis XIV, with the popular suffrage which serves as my basis; I’m ‘Washington, I’m Henry IV, I’m Saint Louis, Charles the Wise, I take your best kings, to do you honor.
I am a king of Egypt and Asia at the same time, I am Pharaoh, I am Cyrus, I am Alexander, I am Sardanapalus; the soul of the people blossoms when I pass; he runs with drunkenness on my steps; I am an object of idolatry; the father points the finger at her son to me, the mother invokes my name in her prayers, the young girl looks at me with a sigh and thinks that if my gaze fell on her, by chance, she could perhaps rest for a moment on my bed .
When the poor man is oppressed, he says: If the king knew it; when we want revenge, when we hope for help, we say: The king will sully him. Besides, no one ever approaches me unless I find my hands full of gold. Those around me, it is true, are harsh, violent, sometimes they deserve the stick, but it has to be so; for their hateful, contemptible character, their base cupidity, their excesses, their shameful waste, their filthy avarice contrast with the sweetness of my character, my simple demeanor, my inexhaustible generosity. I am invoked, I tell you, like a god; in hail, in famine, in fires, I run, the population throws itself at my feet, it would carry me to heaven in its arms, if God gave it wings.
MONTESQUIEU.
Which wouldn’t prevent you from crushing it with grape at the slightest sign of resistance.
MACHIAVELLI.
It is true, but love does not exist without fear.
MONTESQUIEU.
Is this dreadful dream over?
MACHIAVELLI.
A dream ! Ah! Montesquieu ! you will cry for a long time: tear the Spirit from the laws, ask God to give you oblivion for your part in heaven; for here comes the terrible truth of which you already have a presentiment; there is no dream in what I have just told you.
MONTESQUIEU.
What will you teach me!
MACHIAVELLI.
What I have just described to you, this set of monstrous things before which the mind recoils in terror, this work that even hell alone could accomplish, all of this is done, all of this exists, all of this thrives in the face of the sun, at the present time, on a point of this globe that we have left.
MONTESQUIEU.
Or?
, MACHIAVELLI.
No, that would inflict a second death on you.
MONTESQUIEU.
Ah! speak, in the name of heaven!
MACHIAVELLI.
Well !…
MONTESQUIEU.
What?…
MACHIAVELLI.
The hour has passed! Can’t you see that the whirlwind is sweeping me away!
MONTESQUIEU.
Machiavelli! !
MACHIAVELLI.
See these shadows which pass away from you, covering their eyes; do you recognize them? these are glories that have made the envy of the whole world. At the present time, they are asking God for their homeland again! …
MONTESQUIEU.
Eternal God, what have you allowed!…
END.
ANALYTICAL TABLE
OF CONTENTS.
PART 1. – first dialogue… ..Page 1
Meeting of Machiavelli and Montesquieu in the underworld.
Machiavelli praises the posthumous life. He complains of the reprobation which posterity has attached to his name, and justifies himself.
His only crime was to speak the truth to peoples as well as to kings; Machiavellianism predates Machiavelli.
Its philosophical and moral system; theory of force. – Negation of morality and law in politics.
Great men do the good of societies by breaking all laws. Good comes out of evil.
Causes of the preference given to absolute monarchy. – Inability of democracy. – Despotism favorable to the development of great civilizations.
SECOND DIALOGUE ………. Page 15
Response from Montesquieu. – Machiavelli’s doctrines have no philosophical basis. – Strength and cunning are not principles.
The most arbitrary powers are obliged to rely on the law. The reason of state is only the particular interest of the Prince or of his favorites.
Law and morals are the foundations of politics. Inconsistency of the contrary system. If the Prince breaks the rules of morality, the subjects will do the same.
Great men who break laws under the pretext of saving the state do more harm than good. Anarchy is often much less fatal than despotism.
Incompatibility of despotism with the present state of institutions
38
tutions among the principal peoples of Europe. – Machiavelli invites Montesquieu to justify this proposition.
third dialogue ……… Page 23
Development of Montesquieu’s ideas. – The confusion of powers is the root cause of despotism and anarchy.
Influence of political mores under the empire of which the Treaty of the Prince was written. Progress of social science in Europe.
Vast system of guarantees with which nations have surrounded themselves. Treaties, constitutions, civil laws.
Separation of the three legislative, executive and judicial powers. It is the generating principle of political freedom, the main obstacle to tyranny.
That the representative system is the most appropriate mode of government in modern times. Reconciliation of order and freedom.
Justice, the essential basis of government. The Monarch who would practice today the maxims of the Treaty of the Prince would be ostracized from Europe.
Machiavelli maintains that his maxims have not ceased to prevail in the politics of the princes. – He offers to prove it.
FOURTH DIALOGUE ……… Page 37
Machiavelli criticizes the constitutional regime. The powers will either stand still or violently come out of their orbit.
Mass of the people indifferent to public freedoms whose real enjoyment escapes them.
Representative regime irreconcilable with the principle of popular sovereignty and the balance of powers. .
Revolutions. That popular sovereignty leads to anarchy and anarchy to despotism.
Moral and social state of modern peoples incompatible with freedom.
Salvation is in centralization.
Caesarism of the Lower Empire. India and China.
FIFTH DIALOGUE ……… Page 51
The fatality of despotism is an idea that Montesquieu continues to fight.
Machiavelli took for universal laws facts which are only accidents.
Progressive development of liberal institutions from the feudal system to the representative regime.
Institutions only become corrupt with the loss of freedom. It is therefore necessary to maintain it with care in the economy of powers.
Montesquieu does not fully admit the principle of popular sovereignty. How he understands this principle. Of divine right, of human right.
sixth dialogue ………. Page 63
Continuation of the same subject. – Antiquity of the elective principle. It is the primary basis of sovereignty.
Extreme consequences of the sovereignty of the people. – Revolutions will not be more frequent under the empire of this principle.
Considerable role of industry in modern civilization. Industry is as irreconcilable with revolutions as with despotism.
Despotism is so out of character in the most advanced societies of Europe that Montesquieu challenges Machiavelli to find a way to bring it back.
Machiavelli accepts the challenge, and dialogue begins on this point.
SEVENTH DIALOGUE ………. Page 71
Machiavelli first generalizes the system he proposes to use.
Its doctrines are of all time; in the same century, he has grandsons who know the value of his lessons.
It is only a question of bringing despotism into harmony with modern manners. – Main rules that he deduces to stop the movement in contemporary societies.
Domestic policy, foreign policy.
New rules borrowed from the industrial regime.
How we can use the press, the platform and the intricacies of the law.
Who must be given the power.
Let by these various means change the character of the most indomitable nation and make it as docile to tyranny as a small people of Asia.
Montesquieu urges Machiavelli to get out of generalities; he puts him in the presence of a state founded on representative institutions and asks him how he will be able to return from there to absolute power.
PART 2, – EIGHTH dialogue. – The policy of
Machiavelli in action …… ..Page 83
We are right, by a coup d’etat, of the order of things established.
We rely on the people and during the dictatorship we rework all the legislation.
Need to instill terror in the aftermath of a coup d’état. Blood pact with the army. That the usurper must strike all the money on his efligic.
He will make a new constitution and will not be afraid to give it the main principles of modern law as a basis.
How he will go about not applying these principles and rejecting them successively.
ninth dialogue. – The Constitution. . . . Page 97
Continuation of the same subject. We get the people to ratify the coup.
Universal suffrage is established; absolutism emerges from it.
The constitution must be the work of one man; submitted to the vote without discussion, presented en bloc, accepted en bloc.
To change the political makeup of the state, it suffices to change the arrangement of the organs; Senate, Legislative Body, Council of State, etc.
Of the Legislative Body. Abolition of ministerial responsibility and parliamentary initiative. The proposal of laws belongs only to the Prince.
We are guaranteed against the sovereignty of the people by the right of appeal to the people and the right to declare a state of siege.
Removal of the right of amendment. Restriction of the names of deputies. – Salary of deputies. Shortening of sessions. – Discretionary power to convene, extend and dissolve.
tenth dialogue. – The Constitution. (After.) . Page reads
Of the Senate and its organization. The Senate should be no more than a simulacrum of a political body intended to entertain the action of the Prince and to transmit to him absolute and discretionary power over all laws.
Of the Council of State. It must play in another sphere the same role as the Senate. He transfers regulatory and judicial power to the Prince.
The Constitution is done. Recap of the various ways the Prince rules in this system. He does it in seven ways.
Immediately after the Constitution, the Prince must decree a series of laws which will set aside, by way of exception, the principles of public law recognized as a whole in the constitution.
eleventh dialogue. – Laws …… Page 123
Of the press. Spirit of the laws of Machiavelli. His definition of freedom is borrowed from Montesquieu.
Machiavelli first deals with the legislation of the Press in his kingdom. It will extend to newspapers as well as books.
Government authorization to found a newspaper and for any changes in editorial staff.
Tax measures to curb the newspaper industry. Abolition of the press jury. – Penalties by administrative and judicial route. Warning system. Prohibition of legislative reports and press trials.
Suppression of false news, – belt cords against foreign newspapers. Do not import unauthorized writings. – Laws against nationals who write abroad against the government. – Laws of the same kind imposed on small frontier States against their own nationals. — Foreign correspondents must be in the pay of the government.
Means of restraining books. – Patents issued by the
28.
government printers, publishers and booksellers. – Optional withdrawals of these patents. – Criminal liability of printers. It obliges the latter to police the books themselves and to refer them to the agents of the administration.
twelfth dialogue. – From the Press (continued). . Page 139
How Machiavelli’s government will annihilate the Press by becoming a journalist.
The leaves devoted to government will be twice as numerous as the independent leaves. Official, semi-official, unofficial, semi-unofficial journals.
Liberal, democratic, revolutionary newspapers held in the pay of the government without the knowledge of the public. Mode of organization and management.
Handling of opinion. Tactics, rides, test balls.
Provincial newspapers. Importance of their role.
Administrative censorship on newspapers. – Press releases. – Prohibition to reproduce certain private news.
Speeches, reports and official records are an annex of the Government Press. – Procedures of language, artifices and style necessary to seize public opinion.
Perpetual praise of the government. – Reproduction of alleged foreign newspaper articles which pay homage to government policy. – Criticism of old governments. – Tolerance in terms of religious discussions and light literature.
thirteenth dialogue. – Plots…. Page 157
Account of victims to be made to ensure peace.
Secret societies. Their danger. – Deportation and mass proscription of those who have been part of it.
Optional deportation of those who will remain in the territory.
Criminal laws against those who join in the future.
Legal existence given to certain secret societies whose heads the government will appoint, in order to know everything and to direct everything.
Laws against the right of assembly and association.
Modification of the judicial organization. Means of acting on the judiciary without expressly repealing the irremovability of judges.
fourteenth dialogue. – Previously existing institutions ……… ..Page 171
Resources that Machiavelli borrows from them.
Constitutional guarantee. That it is an absolute immensity, but necessary, granted to the agents of the government.
Of the public prosecutor. Party that we can draw from this institution.
Court of. Appeals; danger that this jurisdiction would present if it were too independent.
Resources presented by the art of jurisprudence in the application of laws affecting the exercise of political rights.
How we supplement a text of law by a judgment. Examples.
Means of preventing as far as possible, in certain delicate cases, the recourse of citizens to the courts. Unofficial declarations of the administration that the law applies to such and such a case or in such and such a sense. Result of these statements.
fifteenth dialogue. – Suffrage…. Page 181
Difficulties to be avoided in the application of universal suffrage.
It is necessary to remove from the election the nomination of the heads of body in all the boards of directors which result from the suffrage.
That universal suffrage could not, without the greatest peril, be left to itself for the election of deputies.
Candidates must be bound by a prior oath. – The government must pose its candidates in front of the voters, and make contribute to their nomination all the agents at its disposal.
Voters should not be able to meet to concert their vote. We must avoid making them vote in urban centers.
Elimination of the list system: Dismemberment of electoral constituencies where opposition is felt. “How we can win the vote without buying it directly.
Opposition in the Chambers. On parliamentary strategy and the art of removing the vote.
sixteenth dialogue. – Certain corporations. Page 195
The danger presented by collective forces in general.
National guards. Need to dissolve them. Optional organization and disorganization.
From the University. That it must be entirely dependent on the state, so that the government can lead the minds of the youth. – Abolition of the chairs of constitutional law. – That the teaching and the apology of contemporary history would be very useful to imprint the love and veneration of the Prince in future generations. —Mobilization of government influence through free courses given by university professors.
From the Bar. Desirable reforms. Lawyers must practice their profession under the supervision of the government and be appointed by it.
Of the Clergy. The possibility for a Prince to combine spiritual sovereignty with political sovereignty. Danger that the independence of the priesthood poses to the State.
Of the policy to be held with the sovereign pontiff. Perpetual threat of a schism very effective in containing it.
That the best way would be to be able to garrison Rome, unless one decides to destroy the temporal power.
Deventeenth dialogue. – Police. . . , Page 207
Vast development that must be given to this institution.
Ministry of Police. Change of name if the name displeases. – Internal police, external police. – Corresponding services in all ministries. – International police services.
Role that can be played for a Blood Prince.
Restoration of the dark cabinet necessary.
False conspiracies. Their usefulness. Means of arousing popularity in favor of the Prince and of obtaining exceptional state laws.
Invisible squads who must surround the Prince when
He goes out. Improvements of modern civilization in this regard.
Dissemination of the police in all ranks of society.
That it is appropriate to use a certain tolerance when you have in your hands all the power of the armed force and the police.
It just goes to show that the right to rule on individual freedom must belong to a single magistrate and not to a council.
Assimilation of political offenses to ordinary offenses. Beneficial effect.
Criminal jury lists compiled by government agents. Jurisdiction in matters of simple political offense.
PART 3. – eighteenth dialogue. Finance and
of their minds ……… .Page 219
Objections from Montesquieu. Despotism can only ally itself with the system of conquests and military government.
Obstacles in the economic regime. Absolutism undermines the right to property.
Obstacles in the financial regime. Arbitrariness in politics implies arbitrariness in finance. Tax vote, fundamental principle.
Machiavelli’s response. It relies on the proletariat which is disinterested in financial combinations, and its deputies are salaried.
Montesquieu replies that the financial mechanism of modern states itself resists the demands of absolute power. Budgets. Their fashion.
nineteenth dialogue. The biidgetary system (smle) Paÿe. 251
Guarantees presented by this system according to Montesquieu. Necessary balance of income and expenditure. Separate vote on the revenue budget and the expenditure budget. Prohibition to open additional and extraordinary credits. Budget vote by chapter. Court of Audit.
Machiavelli’s response. Of all parts of politics, finances are the one that best lends itself to the doctrines of Machiavellianism.
He will not touch the Court of Auditors, which he regards as an ingenuous institution. He rejoices in the regularity of the collection of public funds and the marvels of accounting.
It repeals the laws which guarantee the balance of the budgets, the control and the limitation of the expenses.
twentieth dialogue. Continuation of the same subject. Page 261
That budgets are just elastic frameworks that must expand at will. The legislative vote is basically only an approval pure and simple.
The art of presenting the budget, of grouping the figures. Importance of the distinction between the regular budget and the extraordinary budget. Tricks to hide spending and deficit. That financial formalism must be impenetrable.
Loans. Montesquieu explains that depreciation is an indirect obstacle to spending. Machiavelli will not amortize; reasons he gives.
That financial administration is largely a matter of the press. Party that we can draw official reports and reports.
Phrases, formulas and procedures of language, promises, hopes which one must use either to give confidence to the taxpayers, or to prepare in advance a deficit, or to attenuate it when it occurs.
That sometimes we have to boldly admit that we are too committed and announce severe resolutions to save money. Party that we draw from these statements.
twenty-first dialogue. – Loans (continued) Page 261
Machiavelli defends borrowing. New methods of borrowing by the States. Public subscriptions.
Other ways to raise funds. Goods of treasure. Loans from public banks, provinces and cities. Mobilization in annuities of the goods of municipalities and public establishments. Sale of national domains.
Credit and provident institutions. Are a means of disposing of all the public fortune and of linking the fate of the citizens to the maintenance of the established power.
How we pay. Increase in taxes. Conversion. Consolidation. Wars.
How we support public credit. Large credit institutions whose ostensible mission is to lend to industry, whose hidden goal is to support the course of public funds.
PART IV. – twenty-second dialogue. – Grandeurs of the reign ………. Page 271
Machiavelli’s actions will be commensurate with the extent of the resources at his disposal. – He will justify the theory that good comes out of evil.
Wars in the four parts of the world. He will follow in the footsteps of the greatest conquerors.
Inside, gigantic constructions. Growth has given to the spirit of speculation and enterprise. Industrial freedoms. Improvement of the lot of the working classes.
Montesquieu’s reflections on all these things.
Twenty-third dialogue. – Various other means that Machiavelli will employ to consolidate his empire and perpetuate his dynasty …… Page 281
Establishment of a Praetorian Guard ready to swoop down on the shaky parts of the Empire.
A look back at the constructions and their political utility. Realization of the idea of the organization of work. – Jacquerie prepared in the event of the overthrow of power.
Strategic routes, bastilles, workers’ cities in the forecast of insurrections. The people building fortresses against themselves.
Small means. – Trophies, emblems, images, and statues which recall from all sides the greatness of the Prince.
The Royal name given to all institutions and all offices.
Streets, public places and crossroads must bear the historical names of the reign.
Bureaucracy. – That we must increase the number of jobs.
Decorations and their use. Means of making countless followers inexpensively.
Creation of titles and restoration of the biggest names from then Charlemagne.
Usefulness of ceremonial and etiquette. Pumps and parties. – From excitement to luxury and sensual pleasures as a diversion from political concerns.
Moral means. Impoverishment of characters. Of moral misery and its usefulness.
Like what, moreover, none of these means harms the consideration of the Prince and the dignity of his reign.
twenty-fourth dialogue. – Particularities of the phy
Zionomy of the Prince as Machiavelli conceives it. Page 297
Impenetrability of his designs. Prestige she gives to the Prince. – Word on Borgia and Alexander VI.
Means of preventing the coalition of deceived foreign powers in turn. Reconstitution of a fallen state which gives three hundred thousand more men against armed Europe.
Advice and use that the Prince should make of it.
That certain vices are virtues in the Prince. Duplicity. How much it is needed. Everything consists in creating appearances in all things.
Words which will mean the opposite of what they seem to indicate.
Language that the Prince must use in a democratic state.
That the Prince must offer himself as a model a great man from times past and write his life.
Like what it is necessary that the Prince be vindictive. How easily victims forget: Word from Tacitus.
That the rewards must immediately follow the service rendered.
Usefulness of superstition. She gets the people used to counting on the Prince’s star. Machiavelli is the happiest of players and his luck can never change.
Necessity of gallantry. She attaches the most beautiful half of the subjects.
How easy it is to rule with absolute power. Joys of all kinds that Machiavelli will give to his people. – Wars in the name of European independence. It will embrace the freedom of Europe, but to stifle it.
School of politicians trained by the Prince. The state will be filled with Machiavelli on the small foot.
twenty-fifth and final dialogue. – The last word. 311
Twelve years of reign under these conditions. Machiavelli’s work is consummated. The public spirit is destroyed. The character of the nation is changed.
Restitution of certain freedoms. Nothing is changed in the system. Concessions are only appearances. We have only emerged from the period of terror.
Stigma inflicted by Montesquieu. He doesn’t want to hear anything anymore.
Dion’s anecdote on Augustus. Vengeful quote from Montesquieu.
Apology of crowned Machiavelli. He is taller than Louis XIV, Henri IV and Washington. The people adore him.
Montesquieu treats the system of government that Machiavelli has just constructed with visions and chimeras.
Machiavelli replies that everything he has just said exists identically on one point of the globe.
Montesquieu urges Machiavelli to name him the kingdom where things are happening like this.
Machiavelli will speak; a whirlwind of souls wins.
END OF THE TABLE.
ERRATA.
Page 55. 5th line, instead of: we could apply, read: we could, and so on.
Page 55. 8 * line, instead of: deprived of these liberal institutions, read: deprived of institutions, and so on.
Page 58. 17 “line, instead of: proper, read: proper.
Page 65. 17 “line, instead of: who prevents them, read: who will prevent them.
Page 75. 24 “line, instead of: which makes any agreement impossible, read: which makes any agreement impossible.
Page 102. last line, instead of: c’es, read: c’est.
Page 205. 5 “line, instead of: in like order, read: in like order.
Ibid. 18 ‘line, instead of: before you go, read: as you go.
Page 58. 6 “line, instead of: you have just edited, read: you have just enacted.
Page 180. 6 “line, instead of: where his political spirit is lost, read: where his political spirit is lost.
Page 94. 5 “line, instead of: I will not be able to prevent there being here and there, read: I will not be able to prevent there being, etc.
Ibid. 14 “line, instead of: counting without the necessity of their time, read: without the necessities, etc.
Ibid. 16 ‘line, instead of: to oppose like to like, read: to oppose like.
Page 265. 4 “line, instead of: it looks like it’s delirium, read: it says it is, and so on.
Dialogue in the Underworld. Machiavellianism. Florence.
Internal link to the article about the Protocols
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