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Montesquieu and the Modern Experience*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Pierre Manent
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Extract

The First Chapter of Book xx of L'esprzt Des Lois, entitled simply Du Commerce, begins by contrasting the Old and the New, that is virtue and moral purity on the one hand and commerce on the other:

Commerce heals us of our critical prejudices and it is an almost general rule that wherever good mannen are to be found there we find commerce and that wherever there is commera, there are good manners ( . . .). Commerce has helped knowledge of the customs of all the nations to spread everywhere; they have been compared and the comparisons have been very rewardag. It can be said that the laws governing commerce improve customs, yet it can also be said that thew same laws can cause them to deteriorate. Commerce corrupts moral purity. This was Plato's complaint; but it polishes and softens behaviour, as we see daily.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1994 , pp. 378 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1994

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References

1 It was against these criteria that Rousseau protested in the Discours sur les sciences et les arts. In the debate between ‘Plato’ and ‘us’, he sided with Plato. Here, drawn from the Preface of Narcisse are a few lines which are the exact reversal of Montesquieu’s position: ‘everything which facilitates communication between the nations brings to each not the virtues of the others, but their crimes and alters everywhere the customs which are part of their climate and the constitution of their government’ (Oeuvres compliètes, t. 1, 1961, p. 964, note.) With an exquisite critical Finesse, Rousseau assembles in a single phrase the two great theses of practical politics of his adversary, and obliges us to ask if they are not contradictory, if commerce does not tend precisely to dissolve this ‘general spirit’ which the good legislator according to Montesquieu (Dt ľ Esprit des Lois, XIX, 5) must respect above all.

2 B. Constant, De ľ esprit de conquète et dt ľ usurpation, op. cit., lère partie, II, p. 118.

3 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nolan and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chap. 2.

4 By which Montesquieu meant commerce or trade proper, u contrasted with the ‘commerce de luxe’ which thrived on the purchase of superfluous goods.

5 De ľ Esprit de Lois, VII, 2 … One remembers what Montesquieu said of the virtue of the monks: ‘they an left thus with that passion for the very rule which afflicts them’ (my italics).

6 See Aristotle, Politics, 1252b.

7 De Ľ Esprit des Lois, XXI. 20.

8 ibid., XXII, 19.

9 I will delight myself in thy statutes, I will not forget thy word. Deal bountifully with thy servant that I may live and keep thy word. Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law, I am a stranger in die earth; hide not thy commandments from me. My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgment at all times. King James’s Bible, Psalm 119, 16–20.