Ameritopia_ The Unmaking of America - Mark R. Levin [53]
It follows that virtue is mostly impossible in a monarchy and nonexistent under despotism, but is crucial to sustain a republican government. “Virtue, in a republic, is a very simple thing: it is love of the republic; it is a feeling and not a result of knowledge; the lowest man in the state, like the first, can have this feeling.” However, virtue alone is not enough. “Despotic government has fear as its principle; and not many laws are needed for timid, ignorant, beaten-down people” (1, 5, 13), but republican government requires fixed, established laws adopted by the representatives of the people, which create a culture of support for the republic. “Laws must relate to the nature and the principle of the government that is established or that one wants to establish, whether those laws form it as do political laws, or maintain it, as do civil laws” (1, 1, 3).
Montesquieu warns of the tyranny of concentrated power resulting from either unjust laws or the application of laws unjustly, and the anarchy of radical egalitarianism that leads to despotism. He wrote, “The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is lost but also when the spirit of extreme equality is taken up and each one wants to be the equal of those chosen to command. So the people, finding intolerable even the power they entrust to the others, want to do everything themselves: to deliberate for the senate, to execute for the magistrates, and to cast aside all judges” (1, 8, 2). As a result, Montesquieu observed, “democracy has to avoid two excesses: the spirit of inequality, which leads it to aristocracy or to the government of one alone, and the spirit of extreme equality, which leads it to the despotism of one alone, as the despotism of one alone ends by conquest” (1, 8, 2).
Montesquieu also fears the destructive consequences of excessive taxation on liberty. He wrote, “These great advantages of liberty have caused the abuse of liberty itself. Because moderate government has produced remarkable results, this moderation has been abandoned; because large taxes have been raised, one has wanted to raise excessive ones; and, disregarding the hand of liberty that gave this present, one has turned to servitude, which refuses everything. Liberty has produced excessive taxes, but the effect of these excessive taxes is to produce servitude in their turn, and the effect of servitude is to produce a decrease in taxes” (2, 13, 15). Montesquieu argued that in “moderate states” the outright confiscation of property is destructive of the individual. “Confiscations would render the ownership of goods uncertain; they would despoil innocent children; they would destroy a family man when it was only a question of punishing a guilty man. In republics, confiscations would have the ill effect of taking away the equality which is their soul, by depriving a citizen of his physical necessities” (1, 5, 15). Montesquieu considered excessive taxation and the confiscation of private property an assault on equality—that is, the individual’s liberty and rights. Montesquieu’s view of equality, therefore, is consistent with Locke’s.
Montesquieu also viewed commerce as essential to the character of republican government. “[T]he spirit of commerce brings with it the spirit of frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquility, order, and rule.…” (1, 5, 6) Furthermore, commerce helps promote republican mores in other countries. “Commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores.…” (4, 20, 1) Commerce also encourages prosperity. “In short, one’s belief that one’s prosperity is more certain in these states makes one undertake everything, and because one believes that what one has acquired is secure, one dares to expose it in order to acquire more; only the means for acquisition are at risk; now, men expect much of their fortune.…” Conversely, despotism begets hardship and poverty. “As for the despotic state,