Aristocracy: Theory and Practice 45
a body chosen to represent the people, with the two bodies having separate assem-
blies and deliberations apart, and separate views and interests.” And, he adds, since
the judiciary is in a sense “null,” it is the nobles who are especially suited to balance
the executive and legislative powers. This telling passage suggests a number of elu-
cidations. First, Montesquieu was no believer in one- class rule; he really thought
that the “people,” i.e., persons not noble, should have a role in the state.^4 Second,
he wanted to keep the classes distinct, with “separate views and interests.” Third, by
abstract analysis of the prerequisites of a free society, Montesquieu produces the
Lords and Commons of England, with the noblesse and roture of France also pres-
ent in his mind. Fourth, when he thinks of the separation or balance of powers in
government, he is not thinking of the balance of executive, legislative, and judicial
function, for the judicial power is in a sense “null”; he is thinking of the balance
between King, nobility, and Commons, and nobility is the key element in this bal-
ance. If the French parlements serve as a balance, they are able to do so not because
they are judges but because they are nobles—and hereditary nobles at that. Fifth,
the later influence of Montesquieu in America should not be exaggerated. The idea
of the judiciary as an equal third member in a system of government seems to have
been developed by the Americans more than by Montesquieu, who saw no such
staying- power in judicial office itself, unfortified by hereditary position or noble
rank. Nor did all American partisans of an upper legislative chamber, during the
formative years after the American Revolution, think that the role of a senate was
to give proportionately greater political influence to men who already had a great
share of social and economic power. Many did think so; but John Adams, at least,
gave precisely the opposite reasons for creating an upper chamber, namely to pre-
vent aristocracy by segregating the big people, “ostracizing” them to a separate
chamber so that they could not infiltrate and pervert the popular house.^5 Adams,
too, had read the history of Europe, and had learned from it what Montesquieu
had not learned, but what is now the commonplace of our textbooks and the view
more congenial to the modern mind, namely, that a strong executive is necessary to
defend the many against the few. Nothing could be more remote from the think-
ing of Montesquieu.
In Montesquieu’s system it was “honor” that supported free monarchies, and
“virtue” that supported republics, whereas despotism, the third of his three catego-
ries of states, was maintained by “fear.” By “virtue” he meant civic spirit, a lack of
personal ambition, a certain self- effacement when necessary for the public welfare.
By “honor,” on the other hand, he meant a kind of self- assertion, a consciousness
4 Not that Montesquieu was without an extreme class consciousness. Cf. the note he made in
1729 on arriving in London from Holland, on a journey made in company with the Earl of Chester-
field: “A Londres, liberté et égalité. La liberté de Londres est la liberté des honnêtes gens, en quoi elle
diffère de celle de Venise, qui est la liberté de vivre obscurement avec des p----- et de les épouser:
l’egalité de Londres est aussi l’egalité des honnêtes gens, en quoi elle diffère de la liberté de Hollande,
qui est la liberté de la canaille.” Oeuvres (1955), III, 284–85. It is hard to see what Montesquieu could
have meant by his reference to the Dutch, except that he preferred the English aristocracy (honnêtes
gens) to the Dutch patricians, whom he seems to have regarded as canaille. As for the reference to the
Venetians, p----- means w----- s.
5 Defense of the Constitutions of the United States (1786) in Work s (1851), IV, 290–91. See also below,
pp. 200–203.