In Our Time - Montesquieu

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) whose works on liberty, monarchism, despotism, republicanism and the separation of powers were devoured by intellectuals across Europe and New England in the eighteenth century, transforming political philosophy and influencing the American Constitution. He argued that an individual's liberty needed protection from the arm of power, checking that by another power; where judicial, executive and legislative power were concentrated in the hands of one figure, there could be no personal liberty. With Richard Bourke Professor in the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary, University of LondonRachel Hammersley Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at Newcastle UniversityAndRichard Whatmore Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual HistoryProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, by the 18th century, France was sinking under its sun king Louis XIV, who was too keen on wall and exercising its power over everything and everybody. That at least was the view of the political philosopher Montesquieu,

who set about diagnosing the problem of the declaration. of France and finding ways to reinvigorate the French Constitution. He looked to Britain for its example, where he saw a long tradition of liberty in which the powers were held by different groups who could check each other. He set his theory out in 1748 in his major work, the spirit of the laws, warning against despotism and the weakness of republics and his ideas galvanized political thinkers across Europe and America inspiring essential parts of the US Constitution. With me to discuss Montesquieu and his ideas are Richard Burke, Professor in the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary, University of London.

Rachel Hammersley, Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at Newcastle University, and Richard Wartmore, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History. Richard Wartonmore. What was Montesquieu's background? Montesquieu was born into a provincial family of nobles. He, well, members of his family, generations. after generation had served as soldiers fighting for the crown, as ecclesiastics, but more especially

as magistrates in the Parliament of Bordeaux. So he's a Gascon, he is a person who has a long lineage of service, but you have to remember that the Parliament of Bordeaux was one of many provincial juridical bodies which were responsible for registering royal law. It was an appeals court. It's responsible for local justice. But it also claimed the right to remonstrate against the crown. And that's profoundly important for Montesquia because it's the relationship between the nobility and the crown

that's so important for him. He's also a polymath. He was involved in the Academy of Bordeaux. That's a group of people who gather weekly to listen to papers, to undertake scientific experiments. He's obsessed, for example, with freezing the tongues of animals, which may sound mad, but it's actually significant for his politics, as we will discover.

He's also fascinated by foreign lands and the customs and laws, laws that you find abroad. He tracks down natives of China who are found in France. He's fascinated by Islamic civilization. And he collects information about the world.

That's great. He was also given a very thorough education and his family was thoroughly Roman Catholic and very quickly, with no influence whatsoever, in his mid-20s, became head of the Palomor, which is a family contributed a great deal too. Louis the 14th,

died in 1715. What was Montesquieu's opinion of him? No, a better question, what were his concerns about his rule? If you were born at Montesquieu's time, politics is perplexing. In many respects, it doesn't make sense. If we go back to the final decades of the 17th century, most commentators were arguing that the future was going to be French. The Islamic civilizations have declined, they're no longer challenging Europe. Europe's on the rise. France is the dominant power. Spain has declined, so is the Holy Roman Empire. The parallel really would be with the rise of China today, but then you have a disaster. Louis XIVs undertakes a series of expensive wars. He seeks to reunite Christendom, so this aggressive militant Catholicism, persecuting the Huguenots,

etc. And France declines. And the additional problem is the rise of what was really considered the puny state of England, obviously united with Scotland. So what was this concern about France? So France, it's to explain French decline and it's to work out why what was called the natural order of things, large, powerful states should be dominant, culturally sophisticated, etc. But they're not. So you have to explain the decline and you have to try and work out what you're going to do about it. Thank you very much, Richard Buck. He published a book called Persian Letters in 1721,

which caused eight editions, published in Amsterdam to avoid censorship. What was that about? Well, first of all, it's worth saying that the work was published anonymously in 1721, as you say, and by this stage, Montesquieu was, of course, 32. It made a very large impact, as you're all, implying in France, largely because it was seen as, in effect, a coded critique of partly Louis the 14th France, but also Regency France. It's an unusual work, partly because it's a novel. I mean, it's not a dissertation, it's not a tract. More specifically, it's an epistolary novel,

which is to say it takes the form of a series of letters which were putatively written by Persian travellers in France. Two Persian gentlemen going through France. Indeed, yeah. So it brings together the genres of letter-based novels and travel literature and takes the form of a sort of light satire. And the way it works is by presenting these

Persian gentlemen, Uzbek and Rika, presenting them as observing local French customs. and so it, by a sort of distancing device, that's to say foreigners looking at a culture, presents it in a sort of critical light. If it was a light satire, your words, why was it so slammed? Well, I'm saying light satire because it was a coded satire, so it didn't look like a sort of,

didn't look like a rampaging attack in bold, conspicuous prose on the established regime. It operates by indirection. So you might say that it's satirements. is savage but protected and alleviated in a sense because it's not a head-on assault because it for instance I mean the best thing is to give examples so for instance clearly the Pope is criticized in the work by presenting him as a magician who can turn three into one which is clearly a reference to the Trinity so it's sort of light

heartedly presented, but none of this is of course deeply consequential. And there's also the comparison with the eunuchs and the nuns and priest. Would you tell people about that? Well, that's essential. So whilst one is following this narrative of Persian travellers in France, at the same time, one is getting reportage about what is happening, the Harim back in Persia. And that over the course of the novel is in the process of disintegration.

What's described, therefore, is particularly the relationship between eunuchs and women in the absence of the household master. And it's a dramatization in effect of the nakedness of directly applied tyranny, or, to use Montesquist's preferred word, which we'll possibly come to later, despotism. So it's a sort of dramatization of the despotism of the East in the form of the East, the sort of politics of the Harim. By that time he settled down with his political job down to Palermo, building a great library, he was rich enough to get on with that. And his next book was about the decline of Rome, which we think we own through Gibbon, but no, he was there first and given pinched a lot from him.

But anyway, what was his view of the decline of Rome? Yes, it's worth saying that the discussion of the rise to greatness and then decline of Rome was a great theme in European literature, going back obviously to the Renaissance. So Montesquieu is taking up in 1734 when the work is published, an established historiographical topos, if you like. He departs from predecessors in very much being interested in not only the rise to greatness, but also the causes of the decline.

He sees it very much as a philosophical history, which means specifically that he's interested in not the sort of accidents of personality, of personalities and rulers. He's more interested in the fundamental underlying structural causes of greatness. and decline. And the cause of decline ultimately is, if ones to get to the core, the purpose of the work,

is the extent to which Roman militarism sort of spirals out of control and ends up extending the empire beyond manageable proportions, which inevitably leads to corruption and then the inability of the Roman Empire to sustain

itself. Thank you very much. Rachel, Reaches Hamerley. There was his Persian lectures, and then, Persian letters, very sorry. And he came to Britain, which has already been mentioned, and spent two years here, finding out a great deal about the Constitution, which he wrote about, and about the culture, which he wrote about. How did that affect him? Why did he come here?

And what did he find that impressed him? Montesquieu came to Britain, as you say, as part of his grand tour. So he set off on the grand tour. and he'd visited Vienna, German states, Italy, and he eventually arrives in England in the autumn of 1729. By November 1729, he's in Britain. He's introduced into Britain by a series of aristocratic connections that he has. So he's at school with James Fitz-James, who is the son of the exiled king, James V.

And James Fitz-James introduces him to Lord Waldergrave, who sets out on the grand tour with him, And Wildgrove then introduces him to Lord Chesterfield, who's a Francophile aristocrat at the time. And it's in Lord Chesterfield's yacht that Montesquieu sails across to England. But when does he get out of it, apart from the yacht? So one of the things that is quite useful about his visit to England is that he keeps some notes and things. So we know a little bit of his observations. So he picks up some observations.

One of the ones I like is the idea that there are two kinds of English. gentleman, some are knowledgeable and therefore awkward, some are not knowledgeable, but these people become the height of fashion. So he's observing very closely what he can see in England. He's observing the manners, but really, let's get to the basis of it. What he's after is the core reason why he thinks this is a working state where France isn't, and because of what? Because of liberty. Right. So France is of interest. So England is of interest to France in the early 18th century to French people because of this notion of it being a free state.

And that's based on the experience of the 17th century, the execution of the king, regicide in the middle of the 17th century, the glorious revolution. England has this reputation for liberty. And so Montesquieu, just like Voltaire, is very interested in English liberty and where that liberty comes from. And watch his analysis in a very good chapter, which is held up still today about English constitution.

Indeed. So he thinks that it is all to do with the way in which the constitution is constructed and the balance of powers between those different elements at the constitution. Which is? So that you have a legislative, an executive and judicial power, that the judicial power is completely separate from the legislative and the executive. And indeed he thinks that it ought to be grounded in the people. So I think he's thinking there about juries and things like that.

though it's not necessarily an accurate vision of the system as it operated. But in terms of the legislative and the executive, he thinks that they need to check each other. His whole idea is that power needs to check power. Was this perception and writing out of the state of Britain, England, was this received as a revelation? Were people dubious about it? Did his become the definitive idea?

what was going on? His view very much did become influential. So the book in the spirit of the laws, book 11 really does set the tone for an understanding of the English Constitution. But he's not the first person to put this idea forward. Probably he got his ideas. Montesquieu is slightly careful about where he got the ideas from, but probably it came from Lord Bollingbroke, who's a leading opposition figure in England. at the time, who's also a great, Frank Fowell spends time in France and probably Montesquieu already

knew him in France. But when he's in England, we know that Montesquieu was reading Bolingbrook's journal, The Craftsman, where Bolingbrook is setting out his opposition ideas against Walpole's government. And he puts forward some of these notions of separations of powers, balancing powers in that work. So in his mission to discover what was wrong with France and how the decline could be arrested, this was a bit of, this was a big piece of evidence for him. Look what's happening there. We ought to do something like that. It's certainly a big piece of evidence for him. It's certainly useful for him.

But Montesquieu isn't somebody who simply says, well, here's a good model. Let's lift it and impose it in France. It's about learning from that model, learning how it works, and then maybe thinking about what you might be able to do in France. He's against models. He's against one fits all, isn't it completely? Absolutely. Thank you very much. Richard Wartmore.

Let's turn to the spirit of the laws. he spent 14 years working on it, we're told. He covered ancient Europe and what then was more than Europe. Can you give us 880 pages? I'm sure he can do this. And with a snap of the fingers, Richard. Many people have said that that is impossible. Voltaire called it a labyrinth without a thread.

It is divided into 31 books. there are, initially there's a discussion of the nature of law in general and law arising from the nature of things. So it looks like initially a standard treaties of what you might call natural law, natural jurisprudence. But then he's fascinated by the relations of laws with moral causes and physical causes. And really what the book is is a series of reflections on the moral and the physical causes that influence the nature of law in different places. So we move from political constitutions to liberty, civil liberty, political liberty, to commerce, money, religion, climate.

Obviously, he's fascinated by geographical factors. And then the book ends with a discussion of the origins of feudal law in France, and he's still interested in the influence of Roman law. It's really about the difference between feudal law and Roman law as the foundation of the French nobility. Within the background, he's thinking about the relationship between the nobles and the monarch in France, particularly, because that's what obsesses him.

You seem to have refuted Voltaire's accusation of it being a laboratory thread. You've given us a very good thread. Thank you. Would you like to go on from that, Richard Burke? Let's begin to break that down a bit. It's an immense book. It was immensely influential.

We can say that without being a spoiler, and still is in many areas, but certainly for the next century too. Right. How did republics fill in, because he went to many different republics, large and small. How did they fit into his thesis? Okay. Well, I think it's important to recognise that Montesquieu is very interested in forms of government and the different forms of government that have been discovered or applied in the history of the world.

So it's got a world historical perspective. Amongst those forms of government, one key. form of government is of course the Republic. Republics come in two forms, not one, however. There are aristocratic republics and democratic republics. Now, as Richard Wapmore already indicated, Montague is actually particularly interested in the fate of monarchies in modern Europe, but there are also modern republics and the Dutch and Swiss would provide examples

and also... In his day. Indeed, and not to mention Venice. So there are examples of other republics. And then there's a debate, incidentally, picking up on something that Rachel Hammondi said, a debate about to what extent England is a republic or a monarchy. So there are these complicating factors. But above all, in the relevant sections of the spirit of the laws,

when Montesquieu is tackling republics head on, he's particularly interested in ancient republics. And therefore, he's, I think, fundamentally in the book, interested in the extent to which this ancient culture is, in fact, not revivable in modern Europe. because ancient republics are driven by what Montesquieu calls a principle. So I think it's important to state that Montesquieu, whilst being interested in the forms of government, is also their nature, their types, he's also interested in what he calls that the principle,

their sort of driving principles, which means the sort of passion that animates them. And in the case of the ancient republics, this is what he calls virtue. But by virtue, he doesn't mean Christian virtue, and he doesn't really mean moral virtue in some straightforward sense, he really means the sort of mores which animated the Romans, the Spartans, the Carthaginians, the Athenians, the sort of spirit of self-sacrifice in the interest of the Republic. So above all he's... Did public service enter into it? Is that too tepid appraise? Well, it's the ability to lay yourself down for the common wheel. I mean, that's essentially

what it is. So of course, public service, but in a very deep and comprehensive sense, basically you're not only a citizen, but also a soldier, and therefore you're, you know, you're very much consumed by the culture of the polity. And that's what attracted most to the republics. Well, I think rather than being attracted, he thinks they're there. They dominated Europe for a considerable period of history, and they have to be understood, especially what has to be understood is how they're not like the modern world

and they're not like the modern world because they're driven by frugality which is a prerequisite of virtue, whereas modern politics is driven by commerce and wealth generation. So this is a fundamental parting of the ways. Yes. Rachel, Rachel Hamasley, we obviously went back to Athens

and to Greece and to Rome. What did you get there? So he picks up very much this notion of the republics, this notion of these very frugal states based on equality. And I think he does have a certain admiration for them. And he very much in line with his approach wants to understand how they work. But he absolutely doesn't think that you can simply just lift them up and apply them to solve the problems of France at the time. He doesn't really believe that republics are suitable in the modern world. he thinks there are a model of the past

and he doesn't believe because of his arguments about fitting the laws, fitting the constitution to the nature of the state, he doesn't really think you can have republics in large states. He thinks they need to be small states, otherwise you're going to end up with problems. So in terms of what he gains, he gains the understanding of how they worked,

but in terms of what he wants to do in France and what he's proposing for the modern world, he wants to take account of some of these other things that Richard Montmore was talking about when he gave us the overview of the spirit of the laws. Does the word democracy enter into his vocabulary at all? Democracy does enter into his vocabulary. So he distinguishes, as Richard Brooks said, between aristocratic republics and democratic republics, whereby an aristocratic republic part of the people have sovereign power,

whereas in a democratic republic, all of the people, in theory, have sovereign power. But he doesn't really think that that's ever a good form of government. That's not the kind of system of government that he wants to apply. So there's nothing he thinks he can lift from that to apply to heal the condition, as it were, to staunch the wound in France? No, because in order to deal with the situation in France, you have to understand the nature of the French constitution and the French system, and you need to develop laws that fit with that system

with things like its climate, with things like the nature of the state, the physical circumstances of the state, those kinds of things. And you can learn things from looking at past states, but you can't just lift ideas from them and impose them in the present. And as you said, I think it was you, Richard Wattmore, who said, we have to keep using the full names, because we have two Richards. I'm sure everybody's already clocked that, but still.

Can we talk about despotism, according to Montesquieu? Where did he find it? What did he say about it? And did he think that was what was going on, had been going on in France? He does. It's his obsession. If there's a theme of all of its works, it's a profound hatred of despotism. His son calls him Uzbek, the character from the Persian letters, which gives a sense of the worries of the man.

When he visits Venice, he thinks the inquisitors are after him and he throws all of his papers into the lagoon. And he thinks that despotism is a state of mind. It's being worried that civil authorities are going to come and take your property, take your life. And that worry is something that you find everywhere. One of the things that fascinated him is the extent of despotism across the world. Why are there not more free states?

Why do you only find rare examples? in the ancient world, obviously, England in the modern world. And why is despotism so attractive? And he certainly thinks that Louis XIV was becoming a despot. He always has, in the back of his mind, Spain. Spain, obviously, with the wealth of Spanish America, all of the gold and the silver, what is the consequence? The state becomes more corrupt.

The nobility declines or falls for luxury. and despots rise and this concern about despots rising is an obsession throughout his life. And despotism bred fear. You use the word worry, which is sort of nice. I'm worried about catching the train.

It wasn't. That was fear, wasn't it? It certainly is it. It's fear. Fear is the principle, as Richard Burke said. What is the principle behind a form of government? It's fear for despotism.

And fear in some ways, even fear is too weak. It's a perpetual worry about your own future and it's a making yourself weak and concerned and not living an active life because you're so concerned about the potential consequences of people coming and taking your property and your liberty away. And did he see the France that he lived in then to be subject to to be a despotic state? I mean it was it was a monarchy. He was absolute in everything. He made all the decisions. Would that come within his idea of a despot? At times in his life he thought France was on a knife edge.

It can go in two different ways. And in some ways, the spirit of the laws is a compendium with a message for France. It's an attempt to make France into a state which will not decline into a despotism. It will be a state where you have French forms of liberty in the forms of intermediary powers. that combat the monarch and prevent the monarch from turning into a despot. These being these other things that he'd pound in Britain. Can we develop that, Richard Burke?

So the way to stop the king being a despot or the spread of despots were these intermediary powers. There had to be other powers there. Can you develop how strongly he thought that ought to be there and what remedy he was offering France here? Okay, well, this is very interesting. area of Montesquieu's thought and one of the parts of his writing which becomes highly influential

and it's often identified with a particular doctrine called the doctrine of the separation of powers. Now to understand Montesquieu's interest in this, it's perhaps worth saying that he's very keen to distinguish as he puts it himself, the power of the people is often confused with the liberty of the people. This is a statement which he makes early on and

book 11, which is the chapter which deals precisely with this phenomenon. To understand the liberty of the people as opposed to the power of the people, it's essential to understand how the powers within a state relate to one another. Now, what do we mean by the powers within the state? The different branches of government, how they interact with one another. for a government to be, or system of rule, to be moderate, therein must obtain this relationship of power-checking power, as we've already talked about, and as Rachel invoked in connection with England. Now, when he's setting out his account of the separation of powers,

his example is England, so perhaps it's worth retracing some of that ground just a little bit. historically of course states in the world by analysts previously have been categorized in terms of the relationship between as it were three constituencies if you like democracy monarchy and aristocracy montesquieu amongst others but but importantly him adds to this a new distinction you don't just distinguish the different numerical constituents of rule you must also distinguish the functional types of rule and that's to say the different functions of branches of government and Rachel already mentioned these. That's to say

legislative power, executive power and judicial power. So these must be as a were conceptually distinguished and then in order to understand how a healthy state might work it's important to look at how they interact and how one, to come back to the phrase again

how one checks the other. Now this is sometimes called the doctor as I say of the separation of powers, it's important to recognise that from Montesquil, they're not actually entirely separate, thus to say, in again the English case, for instance, the House of Lords has a judicial role. It did then, it does now.

The veto role of the monarchy in the 18th century in relationship to the House of Commons and Lords also involved, therefore, the executive power of the monarch in legislation, so it's not a clear-cut distinction. But that's what he's talking about. Richard, want more.

We've left out religion, which nobody living in France at the time in Montesia could ignore for more than about seven minutes. It was religion with the slaughter of the Protestants. There we are. What did he think about the place of religion in the New France, or the Reformed France, that he was trying to promote?

Can I say one thing else? I'm sorry to it, because it's really important. He married a Protestant, which must have been so bold and excellent. They were outlawed. The Protestants at the time. He was from a good Catholic family. He didn't seem to put a foot wrong in terms of his behaviour, but he married a Protestant. That meant what? There are Protestants in his family from previous generations as well, Bordeaux is renowned for having a large Huguenot contingent, which has been persecuted.

it's it really sends the message that montesquire is a catholic as you said he abides by the the normal practices of the church he does that throughout his life but he's unhappy with catholicism in france he thinks that with figures such as boss away who's one of his great enemies the archbishop who supported louis the 14th in the in the in the aspiration to reunite christendom and and to undertake war on Protestants. He hates that. He hates Catholicism as a form of despotism. But he doesn't think it can be directly challenged. He thinks that you have to be very careful

because there's no point in saying Catholicism is dreadful in itself. He doesn't believe that. He does believe in natural religion. He thinks religion is necessary. What does he mean in a natural religion? He's a daist. He believes in a blind watchmaker,

who has created the earth and that it functions marvelously but you don't have to have an idea of an intervening God or that individuals have a personal relationship with God that then directs their politics. They're not told by God to do particular things. He thinks that's mad. Rachel, this book was very in pleasure

and let's go straight to America where they're trying to set up a new constitution the founding fathers. They took on Montesquo, as I understand it. What did they take from him? Montesquieu is very interesting for the Americans. Obviously, they're interested in him because he's provided a kind of guide to laws

and constitutions and things like that. But what's interesting is he's picked up on both sides of the argument because one of the things he suggests is that Republic should only exist in small states. So those people who are very unhappy, the anti-federalists who are very unhappy about the constitution,

can use him to say, actually, we can't have this great big republic in the kind of way you're suggesting because it doesn't fit with what Montesquieu is suggested. And they quote him directly in their works. But the people who are then supporting the Constitution, the Federalists, particularly in the Federalist papers, rather than simply ignoring Montesquieu, actually Madison describes him as the celebrated Montesquieu and almost turns it upside down and argues why actually a large state republic can, can be a good thing. And they're able to draw very directly on Montesquieu himself in order to make that argument. In particular, because one of the things that Montesquieu talked about was the problem with a republic, that if a republic is small, then it's in danger from external

forces that might kind of overtake it, overthrow it. But once it becomes larger, it's in danger of becoming corrupt, that the civic virtue that has guided it can't sustain in exactly the way Richard Bork was talking about in relation to Rome, it gets larger, it becomes corrupt and it can't operate. But Montesquieu says there's a solution to this problem. If you have a federal or a federated republic, then it can have the benefits of a large state being strong and powerful externally, but because it still operates in terms of smaller states within, it can maintain its virtue and not become corrupt. And so Madison and the federalists pick up on this idea of a federal repederal. public and use it to push that kind of system in America.

Richard one more, if you could join in as well. He expressed that he was very interesting in the aristocracy not to being commercial with the landed aristocracy and the commercialized aristocracy. Now, we haven't got all the time in the world, but it's a fascinating thing. Can you have a go at it? And then can you add to that with? It's really coming back to a point that we've already covered, which is that he doesn't think that English liberty or English models of politics can be applied to France. France has a

powerful monarch who makes the laws. It has an aristocracy that can limit, that can put the laws into practice. So you have a distinction between sovereignty and government and the monarch makes the laws, the nobility put them into practice. He's very worried about the negative effects of commerce, the capacity of commerce itself to corrupt individuals to make them obsessed with money. Coming back to this idea of the public good, he has an idea of aristocrats of a nobility that is honourable, that behaves honourably. And he thinks it can only do that if it avoids the corruptions associated with commerce. Although it's also perhaps in that context worth saying,

very interestingly, of course, he is directly exposed in his own life to commercial aristocracy because, of course, in his own Bordeaux, looking at the window of his chateau, he sees vineyards and therefore is very familiar with the conduct of the wine trade and so on and forth. But at the same time, as Richard Whatmore has been implying, I mean, historically, there's a strong interest in the extent to which commerce breeds luxury and luxury breeds corruption. So there's both an admiration for an expanding world of commerce and an alarm about its potential negative consequences. Can we move back to France and having been to America and say there was a seven years war,

which was a sort of bomb in the way of Monteschi's easy access to the future, but he bolted the work after his death bolted that and fed the French revolutions, as I understand it. How did it do that? What did it bring to the French Revolution, his work? Well, that's an enormously complicated question. Sorry about it. No, no, that's okay. We have to deal with these things.

Of course, he dies in 1755, so on the eve of the seven years' war. And France then enters into a period of turmoil in the aftermath of the seven years' war, basically because it loses badly. And then, of course, becomes involved in the American War of Independence, which adds to the same fundamental problem, which is that it is risking, facing... bankruptcy and to resolve difficulties

in relation to financial crisis, Louis XVIth, revives, if you like, the Estates General, which had been in a state of desiritude since approximately 1614, revised them as a sort of advisory council to think about how the

French state finances might be resolved. But in many ways this plan backfires because after the summoning of the estates, General of May 789, in due course, the estates in effect abolish themselves

and reconstruct themselves as a national assembly. Now, the point I'd want to make about this is, in many ways, at that very moment, Montesquurian political philosophy becomes, you might almost say irrelevant, because Montesquieu's

interest is in intermediary powers. But, of course, that's an estate-based system or conception of a country or a state, a polity. But once you're dealing with a national assembly, rather than distinguish the states, you're no longer dealing with that world.

So I'm not saying Montesquieu's world disappears then, but there is a sense in which it's not a perfect reflection of the revolutionary programme. Richard Wartmore and then you're Rachel. The Seven Years' War ruins Montesquieu's conception of the likely future of France. It also in some ways ruins his idea of the likely future of Britain.

Britain becoming a much more aggressive commercial empire. That's something that really changes the world. So as Rachel has described, people draw on Montesquieu. They use particular elements of his work, but the overall design, as Richard has said, it's gone. I think that's absolutely right but I think one of the interesting things is who draws on him in France

because the people in some ways who are most interested in Montesquieu are the people associated with the Jacqueline Club so Saint-Just, Marat and Robespierre and in fact Robespierre when he talks about his Republic of Virtue the notion of a Republic of Virtue tends to be associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau rather than with Montesquieu

but if you look at what Robespier actually says about it. Firstly, he thinks that a republic must have virtue as its principle, which absolutely comes from Montesquieu. And secondly, he understands virtue in that very political sense that Richard was talking about in terms of sacrificing your own interests to the common good.

So on that particular point, they're drawing out Montesquieu very directly. Is this massive... Yes, sorry, Richard. Well, I think there's one thing perhaps that, I mean, if one is talking about the major impact of Montesquieu in the 18th century, and it is worth recovering the fact that it is enormous, it's worth bearing in mind his influence in Britain, which is, you know, enormous.

Hume was a correspondent of his. Adam Smith was deeply influenced. Adam Ferguson, for instance, another Scottish Enlightenment political philosopher, is fundamentally structured around the thought of Montesquieu. So he does have a massive... afterlife, largely in terms, I think it's arguable, in terms of his vision of an approach to politics rather than necessarily his constitutional recommendations. It continues as the alignment continues, doesn't it? Would you like to answer that, Richard Wormor?

I think that Montesquire had a vision for France and he had a particular idea of saving France. and the fact is that the commercial world and the world of empire and war changes but he was so brilliant especially in his description of the British Constitution that everybody can use him and actually into the 19th century you still go to Montesquire in some ways the irony is

why read a gigantic tome like Blackstone on the English constitution or other works when you've just got Montesquieu's wonderful description. In one chapter? In one chapter. It's quite a relief, isn't it? So does he have a continuing legacy then? Has he? Rachel?

Yeah, I think he does. I think there are two ways in which we can kind of continue to gain things from him today. One is that he's got, as we've heard, this quite complex attitude to looking at other past and present political states. So the idea that you want to understand how they work, but that you can't simply then pick up ideas and impose them. You have to, it's about understanding the laws, understanding how those things operate.

In some ways, it's a kind of science of politics, if you like. And I think that's still very influential today. He's also, I think, in many ways, interested in the politics of moderation, if you like. And I think moderation is a really important word for him. I think now in a time where we're concerned about extremism of various kinds, the politics of moderation and a politics of moderation and a politics of toleration is something that is of interest and have used to us.

Yes. We're at this crucial stage. I've got so little time left. If I ask you a question, we'll over on. But I'd like to ask you another question, but there's no time left, as I said at the beginning, about sentence, which gets me out of a problem, I hope. Thank you very much to Richard Wartmore, Rachel Hammersley and Richard Burke. Next week we'll discuss echolocation,

how bats find their prey in the dark of the bat cave, and dolphins track bears in the murky oceans. Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Here we go. Sorry about that, but it was... It's fine. It's not going to ask us about echolocation. That's fine. We're just looking. We got it and we actually got away one second to spare, so all known was clumsy, did the trick.

That's fine. Thank you all very much. I hope you enjoyed that. Yes, thanks very much. Well, what did we miss out any big things? One area of impact that we didn't cover, well, it's interesting to me anyway, which is the conception of despotism as this Montesquieu's conception of despotism attempts to apply it specifically to India. As the British East India Company expanded its foothold on the subcontinent, the interesting thing is the extent to which they discovered Montesquieu was inapplicable and that the image or vision, of Oriental despotism simply had no traction. Really?

That he had depended on travel literature, i.e. people passing at some speed through the territory and therefore not absorbing actually how it functioned. But as soon as East India Company officials found themselves based from the 1750s onwards in places like Bengal, therefore more deeply understanding its history and constitutional makeup, they began to see actually it's not a technical despotism in the way that Montesquieu, had imagined, and they had to basically reconstruct from the ground up how the thing actually works. So that seems to me an interesting chapter in the history of his reception.

As I understand from note, you have a very high opinion of the book's value still, Richard Wottmore. I do, but I think, in some ways, coming back to this point about moderation, and being worried about politics being governed by enthusiasts and projectors, And Montesquieu wants to prevent people from being enthusiasts and projectors. He thinks that it's so easy in politics for somebody to say, everything will be all right if we step off a cliff because there's a trampoline at the bottom and it'll take us even higher. To him, that's dreadful.

And he wants, so this coming back to Rachel's point about moderation, the tragedy for me is that the Enlightenment Science of the States, and all legislator that Montesquere and Smith and Hume and so many others contributed to, it really gets hammered by the French Revolution. Yes, we've talked about a lot of continuities, but actually the place of history in political science, which is something that obsesses Montesquieu, is something that really it's much harder to do in the 19th century.

Can I make a point about something else we've missed? Go on. Which is climate. Yes, I was also going to have that. Because. I wanted to talk about the sheets time. When we did this add-on, this post script, which was suggested to be my friend of mine at Trace Union's.

Seeing the Lord said, what happened when the programme finishes? And I said, oh, I said, well, I asked them, what did I miss? And what it's turned out now to be? You incompetently, you miss, oh, yes, we miss Clam. Okay, where you go? He says some mad things about climate, if you're going to have a go to climate. It's fantastic. Yeah.

No, you started. You've got to finish. So he thinks that the human body is made up of fibres and the movement of the liquids within the body have to be monitored and measured. And that in southern climes, you get a simple way of putting it is say that you get overstimulated. Now, the consequences are that you become obsessed with luxury or sex or laziness, idleness. and you lose a sense of the public good, I think is the fundamental point, whereas in the north, he's very positive about northerners

because he thinks that cold makes them... Northern Europeans, this is, Richard. That's right. That's exactly right. It is northern Europeans rather than North Britons. And he thinks that they are more capable of courage. He also has a lot of mad ideas about... melancholy being associated with cold and the depression that accompanies dreadful climates so he thinks they drink more and then one of the consequences of drinking

more men in the north in northern Europe means that the women have greater liberty because unlike the south where they are much more likely to be oppressed partly because they they grow up too quickly in the south so you have an endless number of examples based on on climate Is this excellent resume? Thank you very much. Do people go along with that? Do you go along with that?

I mean, the notion of climate had been, Montescu's not the first. He's the person we tend to associate with it, but he's not the first to suggest that climate has an influence on that. You go along with Richard's summary, then. I certainly accept Richard's summary. I wanted to bring the sheep's tongue in because supposedly his evidence for the idea of these fibres

is to do, you know, I've observed a sheep's tongue and I've made it cold and this is what happens to the fibres. And then he kind of assumes that this then tells us what human beings. The freezing of tongues. I mean, that seems, I'm presenting it in a frivolous way. Of course, what it shows you is his very scientific approach. We might be critical of it, but he's trying to draw his conclusions from evidence that he's observed,

experiments that he's performed very much in the manner of the Enlightenment. So he's making it an Enlightenment theory. He seems to think the splicing of the arrow. and the Enlightenment would solve a lot of things. Is that right? Yes. I think it's also interesting to think about the fact that, you know, what is the life of Montesquieu after the French Revolution?

And I think it probably has more teeth, if you like, if one looks at it in a sort of longer time frame rather than the immediate time frame. So the self-conception of the revolution as a sort of egalitarian upsurge in the context of which Montesquere with his aristocratic intermediary powers looks like history

but of course in due course the reassertion of very intermediate powers is variously conceived is a powerful one such that you know fundamental to Hegel is Montesquieu because he's still thinking in terms of a corporate organisation of society

so the world of the 18th century doesn't simply expire between 7089 and 1815, but, you know, bounces back quite powerfully over the next hundred years. And of course, America is a good example of that as well, that system that in some ways can be seen to pick up on ideas of separation of powers of a federal republic, actually survives, unlike the French Revolution, it supposedly ends in success rather than failure. And I think that's that, looking at it from a different perspective, if you like, shows you exactly the same point. Yes. Especially if you admit that, America has an aristocracy in the through the 19th century and into the 21st century.

So it looks less like, you know, antiquated social organisation. I mean, Rockefeller would have made Montescula compoverished. Yeah. So the producers are about to enter with. Hopper you can't refuse. Tea or coffee in case your tongues are frozen? Tea, coffee. Oh, I'll go for the coffee now.

Yeah, coffee would be lovely. Thank you. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. And there's lots more where that particular podcast came from, so why not download the News Quiz as part of the Friday Night Comedy Podcast. You can find it wherever you found this.