It must be got to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the good road it is in search of, secured from the seductive influences of individual wills, taught to see times and spaces as a series, and made to weigh the attractions of present and sensible advantages against the danger of distant and hidden evils.The individuals see the good they reject; the public wills the good it does not see.All stand equally in need of guidance.The former must be compelled to bring their wills into conformity with their reason; the latter must be taught to know what it wills.If that is done, public enlightenment leads to the union of understanding and will in the social body: the parts are made to work exactly together, and the whole is raised to its highest power.This makes a legislator necessary.7.THE LEGISLATOR I N order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed.This intelligence would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it through and through; its happiness would have to be independent of us, and yet ready to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would have, in the march of time, to look forward to a distant glory, and, working in one century, to be able to enjoy in the next.11 It would take gods to give men laws.
What Caligula argued from the facts, Plato, in the dialogue called the Politicus , argued in defining the civil or kingly man, on the basis of right.But if great princes are rare, how much more so are great legislators?
The former have only to follow the pattern which the latter have to lay down.The legislator is the engineer who invents the machine, the prince merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes it go."At the birth of societies,"says Montesquieu, "the rulers of Republics establish institutions, and afterwards the institutions mould the rulers." 12He who dares to undertake the making of a people's institutions ought to feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which he in a manner receives his life and being; of altering man's constitution for the purpose of strengthening it; and of substituting a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence nature has conferred on us all.He must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and give him instead new ones alien to him, and incapable of being made use of without the help of other men.The more completely these natural resources are annihilated, the greater and the more lasting are those which he acquires, and the more stable and perfect the new institutions; so that if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing without the rest, and the resources acquired by the whole are equal or superior to the aggregate of the resources of all the individuals, it may be said that legislation is at the highest possible point of perfection.
The legislator occupies in every respect an extraordinary position in the State.If he should do so by reason of his genius, he does so no less by reason of his office, which is neither magistracy, nor Sovereignty.
This office, which sets up the Republic, nowhere enters into its constitution;it is an individual and superior function, which has nothing in common with human empire; for if he who holds command over men ought not to have command over the laws, he who has command over the laws ought not any more to have it over men; or else his laws would be the ministers of his passions and would often merely serve to perpetuate his injustices: his private aims would inevitably mar the sanctity of his work.
When Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he began by resigning the throne.
It was the custom of most Greek towns to entrust the establishment of their laws to foreigners.The Republics of modern Italy in many cases followed this example; Geneva did the same and profited by it.13 Rome, when it was most prosperous, suffered a revival of all the crimes of tyranny, and was brought to the verge of destruction, because it put the legislative authority and the sovereign power into the same hands.
Nevertheless, the decemvirs themselves never claimed the right to pass any law merely on their own authority."Nothing we propose to you," they said to the people, "can pass into law without your consent.Romans, be yourselves the authors of the laws which are to make you happy."He, therefore, who draws up the laws has, or should have, no right of legislation, and the people cannot, even if it wishes, deprive itself of this incommunicable right, because, according to the fundamental compact, only the general will can bind the individuals, and there can be no assurance that a particular will is in conformity with the general will, until it has been put to the free vote of the people.This I have said already;but it is worth while to repeat it.
Thus in the task of legislation we find together two things which appear to be incompatible: an enterprise too difficult for human powers, and, for its execution, an authority that is no authority.
