Benjamin Disraeli - "The Young Duke"

James Mark Baldwin - "The Story of the Mind"

Various - "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445"

Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD - "The American Judiciary"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Eve of the French Revolution

E >> Edward J. Lowell >> The Eve of the French Revolution




Rica has seen the young king, Louis XV. His countenance is majestic and
charming; a good education, added to a good natural disposition, gives
promise of a great sovereign. But Rica is informed that you cannot tell
about these western kings until you know of their mistress and their
confessor. "Under a young prince these exercise rival powers; under an
old one, they are united. The strength of a young king makes the dervish
weak; but the mistress turns both strength and weakness to account."
[Footnote: Montesq., i. 339, Letter cvii.]

The Christian princes long ago freed all the slaves in their states;
saying that Christianity made all men equal. This religious action was
very useful to them, for it abridged the power of their chief lords.
Since then, they have conquered new countries where slavery was
profitable. They have forgotten their religion and allowed slaves to be
bought and sold.[Footnote: Ibid., i. 252, Letter lxxv.]

The French are more governed by the laws of honor than the Persians,
because they are more free. But the sanctuary of honor, reputation, and
virtue seems to be built in republics, where a man may feel that he has
indeed a country. In Greece and Rome a crown of leaves, a statue, the
praise of the state, were recompense enough for a battle won or a city
taken. Switzerland and Holland, with the poorest soil in Europe, are
the most populous countries for their area. Liberty--and opulence,
which always follows it--draws strangers to the country. Political
equality among citizens generally produces equality of fortune, and
scatters abundance and life.

But under an arbitrary government, the prince, his courtiers, and a few
individuals, possess all the wealth, while the rest of the country
suffers from extreme poverty.[Footnote: Montesq., i. 291, Letter
lxxxix. See also pp. 381, 386, Letters cxxii., cxxiv.]

The satirical character of the "Persian Letters" is sufficiently evident
from the extracts given above. But Montesquieu is far more widely and
justly known as a wise and learned writer on government than as a
satirist. The book we have been considering was by far the lightest, as
it was the earliest, of his considerable writings. The good sense,
caution, and conservatism of his nature appear in the "Persian Letters"
less conspicuously than in his later works; yet, even there, are in
marked contrast to the haste and shallowness of many of the
Philosophers. "It is true'," he says, "that laws must sometimes be
altered, but the case is rare; and when it happens, they should be
touched with a trembling hand; and so many solemnities should be
observed, and so many precautions used, that the people may naturally
conclude that the laws are very sacred, since so many formalities are
necessary to abrogate them."[Footnote: Ibid., i. 401, Letter cxxix.]

Here is an opinion, overstated perhaps, but not without its frequent
illustrations since he wrote it. "It seems ... that the largest heads
grow narrow when they are assembled, and that where there are, most wise
men, there is least wisdom. Large bodies are always deeply attached to
details, to vain customs; and essential matters are always postponed. I
have heard that a king of Aragon, having assembled the Estates of Aragon
and Catalonia, the first meetings were taken up in deciding in what
language the deliberations should be held. The dispute was lively, and
the Estates would have broken up a thousand times, had not an expedient
been hit upon, which was that the questions should be put in Catalonian
and the answers given in Aragonese."[Footnote: Montesq., i. 344, Letter
cix. See several of the principal deliberative bodies of the world so
bound by their own rules that they can scarcely move; and compare with
them in point of efficiency the small legislatures and boards which
manage many important and complicated interests promptly, sitting with
closed doors.]

"I have never heard people talk about public law," he says in another
letter, "that they did not inquire carefully what was the origin of
society; which strikes me as absurd. If men did not form a society, if
they separated and fled from each other, we should have to ask the
reason of it, and to seek out why they kept apart. But they are created
all bound to each other, the son is born near his father and stays
there; this is society, and the cause of society."[Footnote: Ibid., i.
301, Letter xciv.]

A satirical book, like the "Persian Letters," could not have been openly
published in France under Louis XV. The first edition was in fact
printed at Amsterdam, although Cologne appeared on the title-page as the
place of publication. The book was anonymous, but Montesquieu was well
known to be the author, and speedily acquired a great reputation. After
several years, for things did not move fast in Old France, he was
proposed for election to the Academy. To be one of the forty members of
that body is the legitimate ambition of the literary Frenchman. The
Cardinal de Fleury, who was prime minister, is said to have announced
that the king would never consent to the election of the author of the
"Persian Letters." He added that he had not read the book, but that
people in whom he had confidence assured him that it was dangerous.
According to Voltaire, Montesquieu thereupon had a garbled edition of
the Letters hastily printed, himself took a copy to the Cardinal,
induced His Eminence to read a part of it, and, with the help of
friends, prevailed on him to alter his decision. Such a trick is more
worthy of Voltaire, who continually denied his own works, than of
Montesquieu, who, I believe, never did so. D'Alembert tells the story in
a way entirely creditable to the latter. He says that Montesquieu saw
the minister, told him that for private reasons he did not give his name
to the "Persian Letters," but that he was far from disowning a book of
which he did not think he had cause to be ashamed. He then insisted that
the Letters should be judged after reading them, and not on hearsay.
Thereupon the Cardinal read the book, was pleased with it and with its
author, and withdrew his opposition to the latter's election to the
Academy.[Footnote: _Nouvelle Biographie Universelle. Voltaire (Siecle
de Louis XIV. liste des ecrivains)_. D'Alembert, vi. 252. The date of
Montesquieu's election was Jan. 24, 1728. See a discussion of the whole
story in Vian, 100. Montesquieu is there said to have threatened to
leave France, and to have declined a pension at this time. Montesquieu
tells the story of the pension, but without fixing a date: "Je dis que
n'ayant pas fait de bassesse, je n'avais pas besoin d'etre console par
des graces," vii. 157. Voltaire was always jealous of Montesquieu's
reputation; and also, at this time, out of temper with the Academy, to
which he was elected only in 1746.]

A little before this time Montesquieu resigned his place as one of the
presidents of the Parliament of Bordeaux, selling the life estate in it,
but reserving the reversion for his son. Having thus obtained leisure,
he set out on a long course of travel, lasting three years. "In France,"
said he later, "I make friends with everybody; in England with nobody;
in Italy I make compliments to every one; in Germany I drink with every
one." "When I go into a country, I do not look to see if there are good
laws, but whether they execute those they have; for there are good laws
everywhere."[Footnote: Vian, 90. Montesq. vii. 186, 189.]

Montesquieu arrived in England in the autumn of 1729, sailing from
Holland in the yacht of Lord Chesterfield, whose acquaintance he had
made on the Continent. He spent seventeen months in the country, and, in
spite of his epigram about making friends with nobody, saw some of the
most eminent men, including Swift and Pope, was received by the Royal
Society, and presented at Court. At a time when England and the English
language were little known in France, he studied them in a way which
deeply influenced all his views of government. "In London," he says,
"liberty and equality. The liberty of London is the liberty of the best
people,[Footnote: _Honnestes gens,_ which cannot be exactly
translated. Montesq., vii. 185. Vian, 112.] in which it differs from the
liberty of Venice, "which is the liberty of debauchery." The equality of
London is also the equality of the best people, in which it differs from
the liberty of Holland, which is the liberty of the populace."

"England is at present the most free country in the world; I do not
except any republic. I call it free because the prince can do no
conceivable harm to anybody; because his power is controlled and limited
by a law. But if the lower chamber should become them mistress, its
power would be unlimited and dangerous, because it would have executive
power also; whereas now unlimited power is in the parliament and the
king, and the executive power in the king, whose power is limited. A
good Englishman must, therefore, seek to defend liberty equally against
the attacks of the crown and those of the chamber."[Footnote: Montesq.,
vii. 195 (_Notes sur l'Angleterre_).]

Montesquieu brought back from England an admiration of what he had seen
there as genuine, and far more discriminating than that of Voltaire.
While the studies of Montesquieu were principally directed to the
political institutions of the country, those of Voltaire embraced the
philosophy and social life of England. Through these two great men, more
perhaps than through any others, English ideas were spread in France in
the middle of the eighteenth century.[Footnote: Voltaire returned from
England a few months before Montesquieu went there in 1729.]

Montesquieu now went on with his studies with an enlarged mind. He would
appear, before he started on his travels, to have already formed the
project of writing a great work on the Spirit of the Laws. But in 1784
he published a smaller book, the "Greatness and Decadence of the
Romans." It is said that this essay was composed of a part of the
material collected for the Spirit of the Laws, and was published
separately in order not to give the Romans too large a place in the more
important work. This has been doubted, but there is nothing either in
the subject or in the treatment to make it improbable. Nor is it
important, so long as between the two books there is unity of purpose
and agreement of method.

The "Greatness and Decadence of the Romans" is a study of philosophic
history. In form it is not unlike Machiavelli's Discourses on the first
ten books of Livy. That remarkable work would have been most profitable
reading for Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, as it must be in all
times for students of the science of politics. Of republics Machiavelli
had more experience than Montesquieu. Both considered the republican
form of government the most desirable; both thought it impossible
without the preservation of substantial equality of property among the
citizens. Montesquieu, who knew more of monarchy than Machiavelli, had
also more faith in it. Both hated the Rule of the Roman Church.
[Footnote: Machiavelli, ii. 210. Montesq., ii. 136, 140. Mach., ii.
130.] The Frenchman excels the Italian in practical wisdom; he is also
more brilliant. By his brilliancy he may sometimes have been led away,
but I think not often. While we feel in reading Voltaire that the
sparkling point is often the cause of the saying, with Montesquieu we
are generally struck with the weight of thought in what we read.

"The tyranny of a prince," says Montesquieu, "does not bring him
nearer to ruin, than indifference to the public good brings a
republic. The advantage of a free state is that the revenues are
better administered--but how if they are worse? The advantage of a
free state is that there are no favorites; but when that is not the
case, and when instead of enriching the prince's friends and
relations, all the friends and relations of all those who share in the
government have to be enriched, all is lost; the laws are evaded more
dangerously than they are violated by a prince, who, being always the
greatest citizen of a state, has the most interest in its
preservation."[Footnote: Montesq., ii. 139.]

Kings, as Montesquieu points out, are less envied than aristocracies;
for the king is too far above most of his subjects to excite
comparisons, while the nobility is not so placed. Republics, where birth
confers no privileges, are, he thinks, happier in this respect than
other countries; for the people can envy but little an authority which
it grants and withdraws at its pleasure. Montesquieu forgets that every
chance to rise which excites in the strong and virtuous a noble
emulation, will cause in the weak and sour the corresponding base
passion of envy. Complete despotism he believes to be impossible. There
is in every nation a general spirit on which all power is founded.
Against this, the ruler is powerless. It is wise not to disturb
established forms and institutions, for the very causes which have made
them last hitherto may maintain them in the future, and these causes are
often complicated and unknown. When the system is changed, theoretic
difficulties may be overcome, but drawbacks remain which only use can
show. It is folly in conquerors to wish to make the conquered adopt new
laws and customs, and it is useless; for under any form of government,
subjects can obey. Men are never more offended than when their
ceremonies and customs are interfered with. Oppression is sometimes a
proof of the esteem in which they are held; interference with their
customs is always a mark of contempt.[Footnote: Montesq., ii. 181, 315,
316, 266, 174, 209.]

Such are some of the general opinions of Montesquieu, found in the
"Greatness and Decadence of the Romans." In the same book occurs the
expression of an idea (afterwards repeated and worked out), which was to
be perhaps the most fruitful of his teachings. "The laws of Rome," he
says, "had wisely divided the public power among a great number of
offices, which sustained, arrested, and moderated each other; and as
each had but a limited power, every citizen was capable of attaining to
any one of them; and the people, seeing several persons pass before it
one after the other, became accustomed to none of them."[Footnote:
Ibid., ii. 200.]

This idea that the division of power was highly desirable, that a system
of checks and balances in government would tend to secure freedom, never
took firm root in France. Indeed, Montesquieu, as he himself had partly
foreseen, was more praised than read in his own country.[Footnote:
Ibid., vii. 157 (Pensees diverses. Portrait de M par lui-meme).] But in
the distant colonies of America the "Greatness and Decadence of the
Romans" and the "Spirit of the Laws" found eager students. The thoughts
of Montesquieu were embodied in the constitutions of new states, whose
social and economic condition was not far removed from that which he
considered the most desirable. In these states the doctrine of the
division of powers was consciously and carefully adopted, with the most
beneficent results. This division was not a new idea to the American
colonists: it was already in a measure a part of their institutions. But
there can be little doubt that the idea was enforced in their minds by
being clearly stated by one of the writers on political subjects whom
they most admired.[Footnote: We have seen that Montesquieu had arrived
at this idea from the study of the English Constitution as it existed in
his day. In respect to the division of powers, the government of the
United States conforms far more nearly to his idea than does the present
government of England, in which the system of balanced powers has been
superseded by that of government by the Lower Chamber, of which he
pointed out the danger. The full results of this change will be known
only to future generations.]

Fourteen years had passed from the time of the publication of the
"Greatness and Decadence of the Romans," when in 1748 appeared the great
work of Montesquieu, the "Spirit of the Laws." The book is announced by
its author as something entirely original, "a child without a mother."
[Footnote: _Prolem sine matre creatam_, on the title-page.] Nor is
the claim altogether unfounded, although any reader familiar with the
"Politics" of Aristotle can hardly fail to observe the resemblance
between that great book and the other. Nor is it a detraction from the
genius of Montesquieu to say that the comparison will not be altogether
in his favor.

Montesquieu's scheme is announced in the title originally given to his
book. "Of the Spirit of the Laws, or of the relation which the laws
should have to the constitution of every government, manners, climate,
religion, commerce, etc. To which the author has added new researches
into the Roman laws concerning inheritance, into French laws, and into
feudal laws." Thus we see that the principal subject of the book is the
relation of laws to the circumstances of the country in which they
exist. In this also is its chief value and its claim to originality.
The Philosophers of the eighteenth century, following the example of the
churches, believed that there was an absolute standard of justice to
which all laws could easily be referred, independently of the country in
which the laws existed. If the laws of Naples differed from those of
Prussia, the laws which governed the phlegmatic Dutchman from those
which contained the excitable inhabitant of Marseilles, one or the other
set of laws, or both of them, must be wrong. The Civil Law of the Latin
races, the Common Law of England, each claimed to be the expression of
perfect abstract reason. The church with its canon, the same for all
races and climates, confirmed the theory. To all these came Montesquieu
with a teaching that would reconcile their claims.

"Law in general is human reason, in so far as it governs all the nations
of the earth; and the political and civil laws of each nation should be
but the particular cases to which that human reason is applied."

"They should be so adapted to the people for whom they are made, that it
is a very great chance if those of one nation will apply to another."

"They must be in relation to the nature and the principle of the
government which is established, or about to be established; whether
they form it, as do political laws; or maintain it, as do civil laws."

"They must be in relation to the _physical_ nature of the country;
to the frozen, burning, or temperate climate; to the quality of the
soil, the situation and size of the country; to the style of life of the
people, as farmers, hunters, or shepherds; they should be in relation to
the amount of liberty which the constitution may allow; to the religion
of the inhabitants, their inclinations, their wealth, their numbers,
their customs, their morals, and their manners. Finally, they have
relations to each other; they have them to their own origin, to the
object of the legislator, to the order of things on which they are
established. They should be considered from all these points of view."

"This is what I undertake to do in this work. I will examine all these
relations. They form together what is called `the Spirit of the Laws.'"
[Footnote: Montesq., iii. 99 (liv. i. c. 3).]

It will be noticed that Montesquieu by no means denies that there are
general principles of justice. On the contrary, he positively asserts
it.[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 91 (liv. i. c. 1).] But the great value of
his teaching consists in the other lesson. "It is better to say that the
government most in conformity with nature is that whose particular
disposition is most in relation to the disposition of the people for
which it is established." This principle may certainly be deduced from
Aristotle; but it was none the less necessary to teach it in the
eighteenth century; it is none the less necessary to teach it to-day.
[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 99; Aristotle, _Politics_, liv. vii. c. ii.]

The conception was a great one, so simple that it seems impossible that
it could ever have been missed; but it was combated with violence on its
announcement, and many brilliant and learned men have failed to grasp
it.[Footnote: Montesq., iv. 145 _n_] Such are the persons in our
own time who praise despotism in France, or who would set up
parliamentary government in India. Montesquieu probably carried his
theories too far. To the north he assigned energy and valor, as if the
most widely conquering nations that Europe had then known had been the
Norwegian and the Finn, instead of the Macedonian, the Italian, and the
Spaniard. Sterility of soil he considered favorable to republics,
fertility to monarchies. It was natural that a man in revolt against the
long spiritual tyranny that had oppressed thought in Europe should have
attributed excessive importance to material causes. Not the less did the
idea contain its share of truth. Nor was his statement of this, which we
may call his favorite theory, always excessive. "Several things," he
says, "govern man; climate, religion, laws, the maxims of government,
the examples of things past, morals, manners; whence comes a general
spirit which is their result. Sometimes one of these forces dominates
and sometimes another."[Footnote: Montesq., iv. 307 (liv. xix. c. 4).]

It may be noted of Montesquieu, and as often of Voltaire, that each of
them is constantly led astray by imperfect knowledge of foreign, and
especially of barbarous and savage nations. Since the voyages and
conquests of the Renaissance, accounts of strange countries had abounded
in Europe, written in many cases by men anything but accurate, if not,
in the words of Macaulay, "liars by a double right, as travellers and as
Jesuits."[Footnote: _Essay on Machiavelli_.] The writers of a
hundred and fifty years ago could use no better material than was to be
had. They wished to draw instruction from distant objects, and their
spy-glasses distorted shapes and modified colors. Imperfect knowledge of
foreign countries sometimes led Montesquieu into curious mistakes; yet
these affected his illustrations oftener than his theories.

Having stated his general doctrine, Montesquieu proceeds to apply it. As
laws should be adapted to the nature of the government of each country,
it is essential to study that nature, and to consider what is the
_principle_, or motive force of each form of government. "There is
this difference," he says, "between the nature of the government and its
principle: that its nature is what makes it such as it is, and its
principle what makes it act. One is its especial structure, and the
other the human passions which cause it to operate."[Footnote:
Montesq., iii, 120 (liv. iii. c. 1).]

Four kinds of government are recognized by Montesquieu: democratic,
aristocratic, monarchical, and despotic. The principle of democracy he
holds to be _virtue_, without which popular government cannot
continue to exist.[Footnote: Montesq., iii. 122 (liv. iii. c. 3).] An
aristocratic state needs less virtue, because the people is kept in
check by the nobles. But the nobility can with difficulty repress the
members of their own order, and do justice for their crimes. In default
of great virtue, however, an aristocratic state can exist if the ruling
class will practice _moderation_.[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 126 (liv.
c. 4).] In monarchies great things can be done with little virtue, for
in them there is another moving principle, which is honor.[Footnote:
Ibid., iii. 128 (liv. iii. c. 5, 6, and 7).] This sort of government is
founded on the prejudice of each person and each sort of men; it rests
on ranks, preferences, and distinctions, so that emulation often
supplies the place of virtue. In a monarchy there will be many tolerable
citizens, but seldom a very good man, who loves the state better than
himself. The motive principle of a despotism is _fear_[Footnote:
Ibid., iii. 135 (liv. iii. c. 9).]; for in despotic states virtue is
unnecessary, and honor would be dangerous. These qualities of virtue,
honor, and fear, may not exist in every republic, monarchy, and
despotism; but they should do so, if the government is to be perfect of
its kind.[Footnote: Ibid., iii. 140 (liv. iii. c. 11).]

It is worth while to remember, when considering the "Spirit of the
Laws," that Montesquieu oftenest had in his mind, when speaking of
democratic republics, those of Greece; when speaking of aristocratic
republics, early Rome and Venice; of monarchies, France and England; of
despotisms, the East.[Footnote: But he sometimes refers to England as a
country where a republic is hidden under the forms of a monarchy.
Montesq, iii. 216 (liv. V. c. 19).]

Under each form of government, education and the laws should work
together to strengthen the motive principle belonging to that form.
Especially is this necessary in republics, for honor, which sustains
monarchies, is favored by the passions; but virtue, on which democracies
depend, implies renunciation of self. Virtue, in a republic, is love of
the republic itself, which leads to good morals; the public good is set
above private gratification. Thus we see that monks love their order the
more, the more austere is its rule. The love of the state, in a
democracy, becomes the love of equality, and thus limits ambition to the
desire to render great services to the republic. The love of equality
and frugality are principally excited by equality and frugality
themselves, when both are established by law. The laws of a democratic
state should encourage equality in every way; as by forbidding last
wills, and preventing the acquisition of large landed estates. In a
democracy all men contract an enormous debt to the state at their birth,
and, do what they may, they can never repay it. There should be no great
wealth in the hands of private persons, because such wealth confers
power and furnishes delights which are contrary to equality. Domestic
frugality should make public expenditure possible. Even talents should
be but moderate. But if a democratic republic be founded on commerce,
individuals may safely possess great riches; for the spirit of commerce
brings with it that of frugality, economy, moderation, labor, wisdom,
tranquillity, and order.

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