Montesquieu and England: Enlightened Exchanges 1689-1755 (The Enlightenment World Series)

MONTESQUIEU AND ENGLAND: ENLIGHTENED EXCHANGES, 1689–1755

The Enlightenment World: Political and Intellectual History of the Long Eighteenth Century Series Editor: Series Co-Editors:

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Titles in this Series 1 Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment David Worrall 2 The Cosmopolitan Ideal in the Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1776–1832 Michael Scrivener 3 Writing the Empire: Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism Carol Bolton 4 Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle (eds) 5 Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism Jacqueline H. Labbe (ed.) 6 The Scottish People and the French Revolution Bob Harris 7 The English Deists: Studies in Further Enlightenment Wayne Hudson 8 Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics and Society Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle (eds) 9 Rhyming Reason: The Poetry of Romantic-Era Psychologists Michelle Faubert

10 Liberating Medicine, 1720–1835 Tristanne Connolly and Steve Clark (eds) 11 John Thelwall: Radical Romantic and Acquitted Felon Steve Poole (ed.) 12 The Evolution of Sympathy in the Long Eighteenth Century Jonathan Lamb 13 Enlightenment and Modernity: The English Deists and Reform Wayne Hudson 14 William Wickham, Master Spy: The Secret War against the French Revolution Michael Durey 15 The Edinburgh Review in the Literary Culture of Romantic Britain: Mammoth and Megalonyx William Christie

Forthcoming Titles The Language of Whiggism: Liberty and Patriotism, 1802–1830 Kathryn Chittick The Sublime Invention: Ballooning in Europe, 1783–1820 Michael R. Lynn Romantic Localities: Europe Writes Place Christoph Bode and Jacqueline M. Labbe (eds) William Godwin and the Theatre David O’Shaughnessy Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap and the American Revolution Russell M. Lawson The Spirit of the Union: Popular Politics in Scotland Gordon Pentland British Visions of America, 1775–1820: Republican Realities Emma Vincent Macleod www.pickeringchatto.com/enlightenmentworld

Published by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited 21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH 2252 Ridge Road, Brookfield, Vermont 05036-9704, USA www.pickeringchatto.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of the publisher. © Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd 2010 © Ursula Haskins Gonthier 2010 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Haskins Gonthier, Ursula, 1979– Montesquieu and England: enlightened exchanges 1689 – 1755. – (The Enlightenment world) 1. Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1689 – 1755 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1689 – 1755 – Contemporaries. 3. French literature – 18th century – History and criticism. 4. French literature – English influences. 5. Enlightenment--France. I. Title II. Series 848.5’09-dc22 ISBN-13: 9781851969975 e: 9781851966912

∞

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MONTESQUIEU AND ENGLAND: ENLIGHTENED EXCHANGES, 1689–1755

BY

Ursula Haskins Gonthier

london PICKERING & CHATTO 2010

For Juliette

‘We were born in a flourishing kingdom; but we did not mistake its borders for the frontiers of our knowledge.’ Montesquieu, Lettres persanes

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction: Anglo–French Relations in the Early Enlightenment 1 Importing Good Sense: Lettres persanes (1721) 2 In Search of Enlightenment: Voyages en Europe (1728–31) 3 Reconsidering Rome: Considérations sur les … Romains (1734) 4 Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism: L’Esprit des lois (1748) 5 Aesthetic Allegiances: Essai sur le goût (c. 1753–5) Conclusion: Spheres of Influence

1 13 43 75 107 143 169

Notes Works Cited Index

175 209 227

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My work has benefited greatly from the advice and guidance provided by Nicholas Cronk, Jonathan Mallinson, Ted Nye, Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, Peter Jones and John Robertson, among others. I am also very grateful for the financial support provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Worcester College and the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, who all helped to fund the research on which this book is based. Lastly, thank you Rémi for your understanding, tolerance, and love.

– viii –

INTRODUCTION: ANGLO–FRENCH RELATIONS IN THE EARLY ENLIGHTENMENT

In February 1755 the following obituary, composed by Lord Chesterfield, was published in the London Evening-Post: Died at Paris, M. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu … esteemed through all the Nations of Europe, where his Work … had extended itself, by numerous Editions, and Translations into several Languages, but mostly by his own Country, which he endeavoured, successfully, to free from many Prejudices and Errors, both Civil and Ecclesiastical … he is, and ought to be revered by us, whose Constitution he thought the best that Reason could have, and that Human Passions could admit of.1

Chesterfield here articulates what is now a widely held view among political and intellectual historians. From the eighteenth century to the present day, commentators on both sides of the Channel have recognized the special status enjoyed by England and the English in Montesquieu’s thought and writing.2 Yet whilst the influence of the English constitutional model on Montesquieu’s political philosophy is well attested, there has to date been no general study that considers the author’s relations with England in the context of his work as a whole. Montesquieu famously extolled the benefits of England’s balanced constitution in his best-known work, L’Esprit des lois (1748). Since its publication, this text has been taken as providing conclusive proof of the author’s admiration for English culture and institutions. Consequently, scholars investigating the connection between Montesquieu and England have rarely looked further than L’Esprit des lois when seeking evidence to substantiate their claims. A case in point is Joseph Dedieu, whose study of Montesquieu’s use of English sources in L’Esprit des lois is still, over a century after its publication, considered the authoritative work on the subject.3 In his enumeration of Montesquieu’s source-texts, Dedieu presents the author as a more or less passive receptor of English ideas. This view also dominates in J. B. Sturges’s anecdotal account of Montesquieu’s experiences as a traveller in England in 1729–31.4 More recently, however, Robert Shackleton’s well-known biography of Montesquieu has revealed that the author was engaged in a dynamic dialogue with English intellectuals and states–1–

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Montesquieu and England

men for much of his life; thus hinting at a relationship that goes far beyond the pages of L’Esprit des lois.5 The present study will explore the broader dimensions of this relationship by evaluating the impact of the ideas and ideals of the English Enlightenment on Montesquieu’s whole body of work. This will include the Lettres persanes (1721), the Considérations sur les … Romains (1734), L’Esprit des lois (1748) and the Essai sur le goût (c. 1753–5), along with the private travel journals written by the author during his visit to England (1729–31). These works bear witness to the significant progress of Enlightenment thought in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This has recently been highlighted by Jonathan Israel, whose history of Enlightenment ideas foregrounds what he terms the ‘early Enlightenment’ (1680–1750) as a crucial period of change. Israel’s chronological framework thus focuses attention on Montesquieu’s lifetime (1689–1755) as ‘the most decisively formative period of the Enlightenment’.6 This is just one of the recent developments in the intellectual history of the Enlightenment that can shed new light on Montesquieu’s relations with England, and which will be explored in more detail in this introduction. The methodology employed in this study, namely, the exploration of each of Montesquieu’s major works in turn within a chronological framework, is designed to allow the texts’ links with an evolving historical context to emerge. One aspect of this context is of particular importance to this study: the evolution of Anglo–French relations during Montesquieu’s lifetime, which corresponds to the eventful years between the Glorious Revolution and the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. Significantly, this study takes not only a contextual but also a comparative approach. As well as addressing Montesquieu’s deployment of English sources and ideas, the reception of Montesquieu’s work in England is also explored here in detail for the first time. This contextual and comparative approach is rooted in recent developments in the intellectual history of the Enlightenment. In the last few years the work of Jonathan Israel and John Robertson, among others, has drawn attention to the complex dynamics in the transmission and reception of ideas across national borders in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.7 This tendency is not new, owing much to Paul Hazard’s classic analysis of Europe’s period of intellectual ‘crisis’ (1680–1715).8 Nevertheless, it marks an important departure from previous studies by Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton and Keith Michael Baker, which concentrate on intellectual and cultural developments in France after 1750 and tend to define the Enlightenment as the ideological prelude to the French Revolution.9 While influential and fruitful in many respects, this interpretation reduces Montesquieu to a thinker with only a posthumous involvement in the elaboration of enlightened ideas. While many important ideas did of course take shape in the second half of the eighteenth century, the

Introduction

3

early Enlightenment is now increasingly recognized as a time of ‘philosophical revolution’.10 This is an invitation to re-examine Montesquieu’s status as an active participant in the debates and controversies which acted as a crucible for Enlightenment thought up to the 1750s. Reacting against another recent strain of scholarship that has sought to examine the separate preoccupations of the plural ‘enlightenments’ taking place in different nations, both Israel and Robertson are keen to stress that these debates and controversies transcended national borders.11 In a European context at least, Enlightenment thinkers could claim commonality with the concerns of fellow intellectuals in other nations, and frequently saw themselves as communicating with a broad readership within the international Republic of Letters. Even Roy Porter, whose work epitomizes the study of Enlightenment thought in different national contexts, acknowledges the trans-national movement of people and texts as being of fundamental importance to the history of ideas in this period.12 To examine Montesquieu’s relationship with the ideas and ideals of the English Enlightenment is therefore to study one aspect of the multi-dimensional networks of influence, diffusion, reception, assimilation and appropriation of ideas that characterized the European Enlightenment. Current interpretations of the Enlightenment have evolved in part in response to the critique of Enlightenment thought initiated by Horkheimer and Adorno in the mid-twentieth century and continued by postmodernist commentators.13 Faced with accusations that Enlightenment secular rationalism had ultimately become a source of domination and oppression, intellectual historians of the period have sought to reassess and rehabilitate the movement. Where Montesquieu is concerned, those aspects of his work perceived as more obviously radical and modern – such as his condemnation of slavery and theorization of cultural diversity – have been brought to the fore.14 This is all to the good providing that, as Daniel Brewer has argued, the rest of Montesquieu’s thought is not branded ‘archaic’ and ‘conservative’ as a result.15 Overall, the reaction to postmodernism has had the positive effect of reconfiguring the Enlightenment as a vibrant, powerful, trans-national force for change.16 Traditional understandings of Enlightenment thought have also been significantly broadened. Where scholars such as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay had depicted a largely franco-centric phenomenon embodied in the works of a small group of philosophes,17 the Enlightenment is now understood as extending beyond the borders of particular nations and is associated with a wide range of intellectual interests, pursued in differing cultural contexts, involving diverse social groups and diffused through a variety of media.18 Jürgen Habermas, who was one of the first thinkers to challenge Horkheimer and Adorno’s indictment of the Enlightenment, has been an influential proponent of this view. Rewriting the history of the Enlightenment in terms of the evolution of the ‘public sphere’, Habermas created a compelling narrative. He describes how in

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Europe from the late seventeenth century onwards there emerged an arena of rational, critical debate on all matters relating to society and the state. Existing in concrete terms in the shape of the coffee-houses, clubs and societies that grew up as the royal courts’ domination of social intercourse began to decline, the free, rational debate that characterized the public sphere was reflected in the pages of the press, pamphlets and other printed media as well as in the works of well-known literary figures. The wide circulation of such publications increased awareness of intellectual and political developments among the general population.19 The great revolution of the eighteenth century was the transformation, as William Outhwaite puts it, of the ‘reading public’ into a ‘political public’.20 Having cut their teeth on the discussion of literature and other cultural products, private citizens began collectively to demand that state decisions be taken according to rational, transparent criteria. This would lead to the demise of arbitrary, absolutist governments in Europe. 21 There has been widespread debate as to the validity and scope of Habermas’s theories, but it is undeniable that his narrative of the transformation of the public sphere has definitively changed the way in which scholars discuss the circulation of texts and ideas within the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters.22 Where relations between Montesquieu and England are concerned, Habermas’s insights can provide interesting starting points for enquiry. Firstly, as Margaret Jacob has stressed, the public sphere must be seen as a trans-national phenomenon which developed throughout Europe and encouraged communication between nations.23 Habermas significantly contrasts the speed and scope of its evolution in England and France. Studying what he terms ‘the model case of British development’ Habermas maintains that the public sphere first emerged in England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, whereas its mechanisms were not functioning in France before 1750.24 Although certain aspects of this argument are now being questioned, there is broad agreement that the political and cultural structures supporting the public sphere first emerged in England in the late 1600s and on the continent during the first half of the eighteenth century.25 As a result, during this period free, rational, critical debate was seen throughout Europe as an English prerogative. In the context of Montesquieu’s work, the emphasis placed on the original ‘Englishness’ of the public sphere is highly suggestive. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the civil and clerical authorities of absolutist France imposed strict regulations in order to stifle public debate on controversial political, social and religious issues. In contrast, following the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695 a comparative lack of censorship allowed English writers and journalists to criticize state policy more openly. The books and periodicals produced in England at this time were intended not only to influence opinion but to involve the reading public in debates on subjects such as civil liberties, the separation of powers, patriotism

Introduction

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and ministerial corruption. As England was the only nation in Europe where these questions were being discussed openly on a daily basis, the freedoms of the public sphere were recognised by many as being uniquely English.26 It is therefore interesting to examine whether this association is reflected in the way in which England and the English are represented in Montesquieu’s works. Whilst Habermas’s original account of the transformation of the public sphere was underpinned by a Marxist framework, scholars have subsequently argued that the development of open, critical debate in England cannot simply be attributed to economic factors such as the precocious expansion of the nation’s capitalist market. In David Zaret’s view, it was in reaction to the bloody conflicts of the mid-seventeenth century that a desire to discuss religious and other issues freely and rationally grew up in English intellectual circles. This combined with the advances of the scientific revolution to produce ‘critical habits of thought based on appeals to public reason, which subsequently became conflated with specifically political issues’.27 Zaret identifies a connection between the emergence of the English public sphere, the scientific pursuit of reason, an opposition to religious dogmatism and a readiness to think critically and rationally about politics. This nexus is particularly relevant in the context of Montesquieu’s work. Similarly, Keith Michael Baker does not give undue weight to economic factors in his discussion of the public sphere in ancien régime France. He places emphasis instead on the increasing struggle for legislative supremacy between the Crown and the parlements.28 Baker claims that a public engaged in critical political debate evolved in France during the first half of the eighteenth century, and that by the 1750s those in favour of the reform of France’s absolutist regime were already openly exchanging views on matters of policy and the practice of government. In other words, during the time that Montesquieu was writing, the public sphere grew and strengthened in England, and a similar evolution began in France. Could Montesquieu have played a role in this development? He is certainly singled out by Habermas as one of the first French Enlightenment thinkers to engage the public in political debate.29 This suggests a need to assess Montesquieu’s contribution to the emergence of an English-style public sphere – an arena of scientifically-inspired rational debate on politics and religion – in eighteenth-century France. When examining the influence of English thought and writing on Montesquieu’s works and his reciprocal impact within an English context, the author should be seen as a participant in an evolving public sphere in which ideas circulated freely in a variety of media. Previously, the analysis of Montesquieu’s sources has been conducted by identifying in his works the presence of ideas seemingly taken from canonical texts of the English Enlightenment. This has proved a valuable exercise, but one which underestimates the complex dynamics of the circulation of ideas in the eighteenth century. Habermas’s study of the public

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Montesquieu and England

sphere has stimulated analyses of all areas of early modern print culture and the press, as well as social and intellectual networks of influence.30 The necessity of examining closely the context in which ideas were received and interpreted, as well as the means and ends of their transmission, is now better understood. To take one relevant example, England’s status as a tolerant, Protestant state was recognized by the French Huguenots forced to leave France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Exiled Huguenot journalists such as Jean Le Clerc and Henri Basnage de Beauval settled in the Netherlands and produced periodicals aimed at a French-speaking audience, looking to England for inspiration when it came to content. Their publications were instrumental in promoting English Enlightenment ideas to a French readership.31 This makes it apposite to broaden the range of Montesquieu’s potential source materials to include items from both francophone Huguenot journals and English publications with a European circulation, such as the Spectator.32 Where all sources are concerned, the aim of this study will be to contextualize Montesquieu’s encounter with the ideas and ideals of the English Enlightenment, and to understand the mechanisms by which they are re-deployed in his own works. It is evident that Montesquieu’s relations with England form part of a wider cross-Channel intellectual and cultural dialogue in the age of Enlightenment. The two nations had of course been involved in similar exchanges for centuries previously, but with the emergence of the public sphere the traffic of ideas intensified its flow.33 The work of Gabriel Bonno and Georges Ascoli remains the reference for those studying Anglo–French cultural relations in this period.34 Both Bonno and Ascoli sought to explain the origins of anglomanie, the fascination for all things English (particularly English novels) which developed in pre-revolutionary France.35 Subsequent scholarship has however revealed the inadequacy of this term to express the complex fluctuations in Anglo–French cultural relations during the eighteenth century. Edmond Dziembowski prefers to discuss the ‘anglophilia’ of the French political classes whilst Jonathan Israel, quoting the French philosophe D’Alembert, talks of the ‘anglicisme’ of French intellectuals.36 Richard Whatmore, meanwhile, significantly emphasizes that the French response to English ideas – as indeed England’s response to France – was more frequently characterized by phobia than mania in the eighteenth century.37 This is certainly the impression given by more general studies of Anglo–French relations in this period, which highlight the troubled geopolitical situation and the socioeconomic rivalry that divided the two nations.38 Clearly, the remarkable nature of the connection between Montesquieu and England cannot be appreciated unless seen against the backdrop of the evolution in relations between England and France during the author’s lifetime (1689–1755). 1689, the year of Montesquieu’s birth, is seen as marking a watershed in the interaction between the two nations. On the one hand the

Introduction

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beginning of what historians have termed the Second Hundred Years’ War (1689–1815), saw animosity between England and France reach new heights.39 On the other, the Bill of Rights signed in England the same year established the nation’s exceptional status as a modern parliamentary democracy where a national representative assembly could act to guarantee the liberties of citizens.40 Edmond Dziembowski remarks that for French observers of the Glorious Revolution ‘the coincidence between this event and England’s international revival was decisive’.41 In contrast to England, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries France endured financial crisis and military defeat, leading to international decline. This combined with the growth of political opposition in France to create conditions that encouraged some French intellectuals to look to England as a model of liberty, tolerance and successful government. However, this always represented a minority view. From Montesquieu’s birth in the year following the Glorious Revolution, to his death on the eve of the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, England was generally viewed with fear, suspicion and hostility by his compatriots. In this context, it is important to reflect on whether Montesquieu’s work confirmed or questioned conventional conceptions of the relationship between England and France, and how contemporary events determined the impact of his ideas. One important reason for avoiding terms such as anglomanie when describing Anglo–French relations in the eighteenth century is that they depict a one-sided relationship. It is far more fruitful to envisage a process of intellectual cross-fertilisation, whereby the influence of English thinking overseas was counterbalanced by the reciprocal uptake of ideas emanating from France.42 To investigate Montesquieu’s relations with England is to acknowledge the reality of a two-way traffic in ideas across the Channel in the Enlightenment period.43 By examining each of Montesquieu’s major works in turn, the present study reveals his continuous engagement with English thought and writing throughout his career as an author. Alongside the social and political theories of Hobbes and Locke, Montesquieu interacts on a textual and ideological level with thinkers such as Harrington, Sidney, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Developments in English Enlightenment historiography had a marked impact on Montesquieu’s writing, and his work can also be linked to essays that appeared in Addison and Steele’s Spectator (1711–14) and Bolingbroke’s Craftsman (1726–37), works that are singled out by Habermas as incarnating the aims and values of the English public sphere.44 Whilst previous studies of Montesquieu’s reception in an English context have concentrated on the way isolated writers developed his ideas in the late eighteenth century,45 relations between Montesquieu and England are here envisaged as a mutual exchange of ideas during the author’s lifetime. To examine this question in detail, a significant part of this study will be given over to following the dialogue between Montesquieu and his English readership, car-

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ried out directly through correspondence, or indirectly through the reception, imitation, translation and adaptation of his work in an English context. Chapter 1 explores the representation of England and the deployment of English Enlightenment ideas in the Lettres persanes. This involves addressing the question of how ideas from and connected with England were diffused in France in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, prior to the publication of Montesquieu’s first work in 1721. The importance of the Huguenot periodical press as a vector of enlightened opinion conveying English ideas to a francophone audience is highlighted. When the Lettres persanes appeared, England and France were enjoying an uneasy peace following an extended period of conflict encompassing the Nine Years’ War (1689–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13). In wartime France, the circulation of hostile propaganda had reinforced the stereotypical image of England as a chaotic, uncivilized and extremist state, popularized in the mid-seventeenth-century. Significantly, the letters concerning England and the English in the Lettres persanes reveal that Montesquieu seeks to challenge this image. He depicts England in a manner that emphasizes the positive effects of increased popular involvement in the political process, thus indirectly indicting the French absolutist system of government. The work as a whole echoes Shaftesbury and Addison’s call for a new form of open, rational communication between equals in a social sphere free from courtly influence. Locke and Shaftesbury’s stipulation that this open, rational communication should be extended to the discussion of religious issues is also upheld in the Lettres persanes, whilst the Persians’ experience of Europe functions as a demonstration of Locke’s theories regarding the acquisition of knowledge, and the conflict between reason and prejudice. Montesquieu’s Voyages en Europe, the record of his Grand Tour (1728–31), form the initial focus of Chapter 2. This text reveals the extent to which Montesquieu’s experiences as traveller and travel writer were informed by the ideas of the English Enlightenment. In particular, the influence of Lockean philosophy is observable in the method the author employs to survey and record the world around him. Montesquieu’s Grand Tour can be seen not only as a prolonged empirical experiment but also as a search for political liberty, which he eventually locates in his final destination, England. Montesquieu’s stay in England (1729–31) allowed him to observe the success of the Lettres persanes, translated into English in 1722 and frequently re-edited thereafter. The first fulllength English version of the Lettres persanes, George Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan (1735), is relatively well known. However, other, earlier English responses to Montesquieu have been largely overlooked. This study examines for the first time a series of imitation ‘Persian Letters’ published in the English press from 1727 onwards. Both Montesquieu’s own impressions of England recorded in the early 1730s, and the English imi-

Introduction

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tations of his work published in the same period, reflect the growing tensions surrounding the collapse of the Anglo–French alliance in 1731. This reveals the complexity of cross-cultural intellectual relations in the age of Enlightenment; an era characterized by cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and increased international rivalry on the other. Chapter 3 considers the Considérations sur les … Romains (1734) as Montesquieu’s response to this climate of international rivalry. At a time when both England and France cited the Roman precedent to justify their claims to cultural and territorial supremacy in Europe and beyond, Montesquieu questions the applicability of the Roman example to early modern European nations. Rather than taking the traditional critical view of the Considérations as a defective history of Rome, this study sees the text as offering a commentary on the geopolitical situation of the 1730s. In the Considérations Montesquieu proposes a new social and political model to replace that of Rome. Comments relating directly or indirectly to English politics and society punctuate the text, and show Montesquieu intervening in contemporary debates relevant to audiences in both England and France. The comparison of the Considérations with previous histories of Rome by the likes of Bossuet and Saint-Évremond reveals both the influence of trends in English historical writing on Montesquieu’s work and the extent to which he seeks to challenge conventional wisdom regarding England, Rome, and France’s cultural superiority. An examination of the different English translations of the text sheds new light on the way in which the Considérations were also used to challenge or correct opinions circulating within the English public sphere. L’Esprit des lois (1748), Montesquieu’s best-known work, is examined in Chapter 4. This study delves deeper into the famous excerpts from the text where Montesquieu describes England’s constitution and the manners, morals and character of the nation’s inhabitants. A new understanding of the place of England in L’Esprit des lois can be gained through following up Montesquieu’s references to Tacitus’s Germania in his description of England’s constitution. This suggests a link between the author’s representation of England and other evocations of Germanic races, including the Franks, in L’Esprit des lois. Further investigation reveals Montesquieu’s sophisticated strategy for convincing the French of the need for political reform by implying that England and France share the same political ancestry, and are hence heirs to the same political legacy. In L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu shows that England’s system of government represents both the survival of ancient Germanic liberties and also the modern freedoms of the public sphere. This argument not only addressed contemporary French concerns but also spoke to different parties within England, most notably to those who sought to defend the legitimacy of the Hanoverian dynasty which had recently withstood the threat of Jacobite Rebellion in 1745. Examining English responses to the text affirms Montesquieu’s role as an active participant

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Montesquieu and England

in the English public sphere. His work was clearly seen as an intervention into both English and French political and cultural debates. A final chapter explores the possibility that the English influences evident elsewhere in Montesquieu’s writing could also have shaped his aesthetic theories, as formulated in the Essai sur le goût (c. 1753–55). The Essai, destined for publication in the Encyclopédie, is best understood in the light of the aesthetic theories elaborated by the encyclopédistes and others in the 1750s. At this time, recent translations of the work of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had brought English Enlightenment ideas to the forefront of French discussions of art and taste. The influence of these and other English thinkers is particularly apparent in Montesquieu’s discussion of taste as an attribute that is both universal and subjective. To examine the impact of English ideas on the Essai sur le goût is also to reassess the text’s relation to Montesquieu’s work as a whole. The close connection between the political and aesthetic thought of writers such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, suggests that Montesquieu’s promotion of universal participation in judgements of taste can finally be linked to the author’s political philosophy and his championing of the English constitution. In the concluding section, Montesquieu’s posthumous status as an Enlightenment public figure is examined. It emerges that the author’s anglophilia was marked out as his defining intellectual characteristic by those who shaped his image for posterity. This is particularly significant given the coincidence between his death in 1755 and the renewal of hostilities between England and France on the eve of the Seven Years’ War. In many ways Montesquieu’s relationship with England and with English constitutionalism has become inseparable from his identity as a prominent Enlightenment figure. It features largely in general studies of his political theory;46 and in the Anglo–American liberal tradition his theorization of the separation of powers in the English constitution remains a reference point in Western political thought.47 This has meant that Montesquieu’s connection with England is commonly seen in terms of his political legacy, rather than as a dynamic intellectual exchange during his lifetime.48 Yet as Jonathan Israel has argued convincingly, the originality and incomparable impact of Montesquieu’s work can only be measured accurately if his work is situated in the context from which it emerged.49 This present study thus refocuses attention on the unique nature of the Enlightenment as a movement, rather than on the afterlife of enlightened ideas. Daniel Gordon also suggests that while the Enlightenment is undoubtedly far more than the ideas of a few great philosophers, there is a need to re-contextualize the work of the period’s most complex and nuanced authors – including Montesquieu – whose ideas are often misinterpreted by modern commentators.50 To examine relations between Montesquieu and England in their contemporary context is therefore to excavate the roots of his thought, and to evaluate his works on their own terms. This is advocated by Quentin Skinner

Introduction

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as the only meaningful approach to intellectual history.51 It is also to embark on a case study of the productive two-way traffic in texts and ideas across the Channel in the long eighteenth century. Undoubtedly, Montesquieu’s deployment of English ideas and ideals in his writing and the reception of his works in England testify to the vibrancy of international intellectual exchanges in the Enlightenment period.

1 IMPORTING GOOD SENSE: LETTRES PERSANES (1721)

In 1721 when Montesquieu’s first published work, the Lettres persanes, was printed anonymously in Amsterdam, England and France had been at peace for eight years and had been allies for five. The Anglo–French alliance of 1716 was a direct result of the deaths of England’s Queen Anne and of the French King Louis XIV in 1714 and 1715 respectively. In England, the accession of Anne’s Hanoverian cousin, George I, was intended to preserve the democratic, Protestant regime established by the Glorious Revolution. This regime was however immediately threatened by the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, in which French collusion was suspected. In France, Philippe d’Orléans took over as Regent during Louis XV’s minority (1715–23). He too was in a weak domestic position, his power threatened by the Spanish faction at court who wished to transfer the regency to Philip V of Spain. The two vulnerable rulers therefore decided to cooperate for mutual benefit, concluding an alliance that saw France guarantee the Hanoverian Succession and England pledge support to France against Spain. The Jacobite Pretender was also expelled from French soil.1 Although the alliance was a matter of political necessity for George I and the French regent it was ‘unpopular and fragile’, and met with significant domestic opposition on both sides of the Channel.2 Cardinal Dubois, the French negotiator, writes of the ‘fury’ expressed in pamphlets and public meetings where the alliance was discussed.3 Yet for some French political thinkers, Montesquieu among them, the alliance with England represented the possibility of rapprochement with a nation that they increasingly saw as a model for France to emulate. Louis XIV’s rule had been synonymous with political absolutism, enforced religious uniformity, and the pursuit of ruinously expensive military campaigns in Europe. His death created a vacuum in French politics that was quickly filled with plans for political and fiscal reform. In the years following the Peace of Utrecht (1713), England’s financial prosperity was in stark contrast with France’s debt-ridden and sclerotic state. French intellectuals of the Regency period began to appreciate the connection between England’s mixed govern– 13 –

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ment, commercial entrepreneurialism and flexible mechanisms of public credit, and the nation’s displacement of France as an international power.4 French attempts to replicate England’s success did not prosper, however. Hopes that more power would be devolved from the French Crown to the nation’s parlements were briefly encouraged by D’Orléans’s restitution of the parliamentary right of remonstrance in 1715, but this was rescinded in 1718 and traditional absolutist rule resumed. Similarly, John Law’s scheme to establish an Englishstyle banking and share-trading system in France foundered with the collapse of the Mississippi Company in 1720.5 As a high-ranking président à mortier of the parlement of Bordeaux from 1716–26, Montesquieu was a keen observer of these developments.6 The Lettres persanes are now generally read as a text reflecting the increased intellectual freedom of the Regency and the frustrations of the aristocratic campaigners for reform who had hoped that Louis XIV’s death would lead to the restructuring of France’s political and financial systems.7 This interpretation dates from the last decades of the twentieth century, when the pioneering scholarship of Jean Starobinski, Robert Laufer and others overturned the then conventional view of the Lettres persanes as a mere rehearsal of the ideas expressed in L’Esprit des lois.8 However, whilst most scholars now acknowledge that the Lettres persanes are firmly rooted in the intellectual and political context of Regency France, many overlook the fact that during this period the Regent and his advisors pursued a policy of entente cordiale with England, a policy welcomed by the more forward-thinking members of the French governing classes.9 This chapter will examine how Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes address the evolution of relations between France and England in the Regency period. The image of England and the English that emerges from the text will be compared with that championed by the French establishment, shedding new light on Montesquieu’s views regarding contemporary political culture and constitutional debates. Despite the fact that scholars are now foregrounding the impact of the circulation of ideas across national borders in the early Enlightenment, the potential significance of the Lettres persanes as a site of Anglo–French intellectual exchange has yet to be adequately explored. This is in part due to the fact that the publication of Montesquieu’s first work is often seen as inaugurating the French Enlightenment as an intellectual tradition,10 a chronology that foreshortens the prehistory of a text which builds on and challenges ideas circulating from the late seventeenth century onwards. This re-examination of the Lettres persanes will analyse how the text acts as a channel for English Enlightenment ideas. This will first involve addressing the question of how ideas from and connected with England were diffused in France in the period prior to the publication of Montesquieu’s first work in 1721.

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Regicide, Revolution and Reason: French Views of England in the Early Eighteenth Century Despite the existence of the Anglo–French alliance, at the time the Lettres persanes appeared English ideas did not benefit from the widespread popularity they later enjoyed in French circles.11 Jeremy Black’s analysis of Anglo–French relations reveals that in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the French generally viewed England with a combination of hostility and ignorance.12 Following the turbulent events of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, England was overwhelmingly associated in French minds with dissent and rebellion. The generalized involvement of the English population in politics was viewed with great suspicion from across the Channel. Jean-Marie Goulemot highlights the fact that the French authorities under the absolutist Louis XIV could not but condemn a nation where the people violated traditional notions of kingship and claimed the right to define the nature of their own government.13 Even after Louis’s death, the improvement of diplomatic relations with England in the Regency period did not meet with widespread approval. Prevailing opinion reflected the long-established view of England propagated by French supporters of Bourbon absolutism from Bossuet onwards. In his 1669 funeral sermon for Charles I’s exiled French widow Henrietta-Maria, Bishop Bossuet had deplored the violent vicissitudes of English history culminating in the beheading of Charles I and the establishment of Cromwell’s Protestant Republic. He portrayed France’s rival as a nation tormented by ‘unruly curiosity and a spirit of revolt’. There was an element of self-congratulation underlying such conventional French vilification of the English as heretics and regicides, which enabled commentators to contrast the disordered state of England with that of France. On one side of the Channel, Catholicism and absolutism guaranteed security and stability, whilst on the other could be observed ‘unbridled libertinism; laws abolished; the throne violated by unprecedented abuses; usurpation and tyranny practised in the name of liberty’.14 Following the deposition of James II by parliament in 1688, England and the English were even more firmly identified in French minds with the idea of popular revolution and destructive regime change.15 Works such as the père d’Orléans’s Histoire des révolutions d’Angleterre (1693–4) reinforced this view, highlighting the dangerous instability of the English political system and praising French absolutism.16 D’Orléans’s Histoire was dedicated to Louis XIV, and presented to the king as: ‘the portrait of a monarchy as subject to change, as your conduct is unchangeable’.17 Reprinted in 1695, 1714 and 1719, his work was evidently still seen as relevant at the time the Lettres persanes were written. Likewise Claude Jordan de Colombier’s eight-volume Voyages historiques de l’Europe, originally published in 1692, achieved its fifth edition in 1721. The vol-

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ume of the Voyages dedicated to England reiterated the view that ‘the [English] people are cruel, harsh and seditious … The ancient Britons were warmongers, and frequently took up arms to defend their liberty. This remains the character of Englishmen today’.18 Colombier presented the Stuarts as the legitimate monarchs of Great Britain; a view propagated by official French sources until the Treaty of Utrecht obliged France to recognize the Protestant succession.19 Anti-Hanoverian propaganda was subsequently diffused by Jacobite refugees who sought exile in France following the failed uprising of 1715. The Jacobite Andrew Ramsay (commonly known as the Chevalier Ramsay due to his French connections), published his Essay de politique in France in 1719. The essay was an attack on what Ramsay saw as England’s illegitimate and anarchic regime. He declared that ‘all government must necessarily be absolute’ if men were not to live in a state of ‘savage liberty’.20 Dedicating his work to the Old Pretender, Ramsay claimed that the existing English political system would soon collapse, allowing the Stuarts to reclaim the throne. The view that England was continually poised on the brink of another bloody civil war was held even by moderately sympathetic commentators such as the Huguenot historian Paul Rapin de Thoyras, whose Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys (1717) stressed the volatility of England’s political regime and the violence of party sentiment.21 Even when reporting contemporary events, French commentators’ views were coloured by English history. For instance, the hard-fought general election of 1715 which saw the triumph of the Whigs was reported in French gazettes as exemplifying the turbulence, violence and corruption endemic in English politics.22 This was typical of reports concerning England in the domestic French press. Analysis of early issues of the Mercure Galant (founded 1672, later renamed Mercure de France) has shown that England was rarely mentioned other than in a hostile context emphasising the nation’s state of apparent lawlessness. Before the 1720s only a dozen or so articles appeared that portrayed English culture in any positive light. Even compliments were frequently double-edged; the reviewer of Joseph Addison’s play Cato praises the English playwright’s style but notes his violation of neo-classical theatrical tenets, commenting: ‘The English will one day have to learn to subdue their wild imagination and submit to the yoke of convention’.23 In late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century France, therefore, accurate knowledge of England and the English was scanty. Neither the scientific and philosophical developments of the nascent English Enlightenment, nor the system of parliamentary democracy established by the Bill of Rights in 1689 were made widely intelligible to the French population. Few attempts were made to alter the longstanding image of the English established in French public opinion. However, if domestic French publications provided little information concerning the new developments in English politics and philosophy, in the

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period following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the periodicals founded by the exiled Protestant journalists of the Refuge provided francophone readers across Europe with a new supply of information on England and the English. The crucial role played by publications such as Jean Le Clerc’s Bibliothèque universelle et historique, Henri Basnage de Beauval’s Histoire des ouvrages des savants and Pierre Bayle’s Nouvelles de la République des Lettres in the diffusion of enlightened ideas is now widely recognized.24 Discussions regarding the importance of the press in the emergence of the public sphere have also drawn attention to Huguenot journalism. There is a view that the development of a fully functioning public sphere in early eighteenth-century France was handicapped by the nation’s lack of a free press. Journals such as the Mercure de France merely reflected official opinion, and French readers who wished to see state policy debated or criticized, or who sought information on intellectual advances outside France, had to turn to the Huguenot periodicals.25 These publications therefore constituted a francophone, if not a French, forum for the free exchange of ideas during the early Enlightenment. Montesquieu is known to have been an avid reader of these periodicals, as evidenced by the holdings of his library at La Brède and the references and press cuttings contained in the his notebooks.26 Despite this, scholars often overlook the fact that the controversial depiction of Regency France in the Lettres persanes could have been informed by the critical ideas and opinions expressed in the francophone periodical press in the early eighteenth century.27 There is moreover much to be gained by including the Huguenot periodicals among the sources of the Lettres persanes. Firstly, they represent a possible answer to questions that have arisen previously regarding the provenance of certain ideas contained in the text. Secondly, an examination of the views expressed by Huguenot journalists provides a new insight into the passages concerning England and the English in the Lettres persanes. Across the range of journals published in Holland in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, several general trends of opinion emerge. Above all, it is noticeable that the Huguenots’ reporting of events in England is far from innocent. Having suffered at the hands of the French authorities who viewed French Protestants – like their co-religionists the English – as heretics and rebels, the exiled Huguenots used their journals to strike back at the absolutist government of Louis XIV.28 Particularly where questions of political liberty or religious tolerance were concerned, the exiled journalists tended to conflate praise for English practices with criticism of the French government.29 According to this logic, English policies and ideas were often explained to francophone readers in terms that highlighted the contrasting injustice of the French state. Even literary journals such as the Bibliothèque angloise, founded to combat the ignorance that prevailed in France where English literature was concerned, retained this polemical function to some extent. In this publication, to which Montesquieu

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subscribed, the writer presents a carefully chosen selection of English texts to the reader, designed to create a particular impression.30 The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society are summarized in every issue, showing England to be at the forefront of scientific progress, and works by English authors are reviewed and excerpts translated. Again, these works are selected with a view to modifying the negative views a francophone reader might harbour towards England. For example, when reviewing a collection of Locke’s works in 1720, the journalist singles out The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina for particular attention. He comments that: ‘One sees throughout this work a clear image of the English character and style of government. He [Locke] extracts from the laws of his native kingdom all that is most conducive to happiness, and to the liberty of the people’. In a clever rhetorical move, the reviewer exhorts readers not to accept unquestioningly his own opinion of Locke’s work, and upholds ‘the liberty that all men have to judge for themselves’.31 This reinforces the impression given throughout the journal that contact with English thought is synonymous with intellectual, and by implication political and religious, independence.

The English Exception Contrary to the views expressed by the French establishment, by exiled Jacobites and by the domestic French press in the early eighteenth century, Huguenot journals presented an image of England that emphasized on the one hand the scientific and philosophical advances of English empiricism and on the other the balanced government and religious tolerance enjoyed by England’s citizens. This alternative view of France’s greatest rival is also evident in the Lettres persanes. Though the presence of English ideas is detectable in many aspects of the text, England is mentioned directly in only a small number of letters (78[80], 99[102], 101[104], 130[136]).32 It soon becomes clear that Montesquieu is using these passages to question the assumptions on which the contemporary French view of England is based. As these assumptions were largely founded on readings of historical events, it is the history of England which appears to dominate in the Lettres. Montesquieu provides little or no information regarding the customs or lifestyle of the contemporary English, which would later become the focus of Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (1733–4).33 In the first two decades of the eighteenth century, the received opinions concerning England established by Bossuet and perpetuated by the likes of the père d’Orléans were challenged only by the writings of Huguenot journalists. The Lettres persanes was one of the first works to appear in which an attempt was made by a domestic French author to consolidate the journalists’ diffuse opinions on English history and politics and to present them in a medium other than the periodical press. Like the Huguenot writers, Montesquieu too was obliged to have his work published

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in Amsterdam. Due to the mechanisms of state censorship in force in France in the early eighteenth century, controversial views could only find free expression beyond France’s borders. Montesquieu’s use of Persian narrators has also been seen as an attempt to bypass the criticism of French censors,34 and it is important to remember that the opinions presented in the Lettres are ostensibly those of Usbek, Rica and others, rather than the author’s own. The passages concerning England should not therefore be read as necessarily revealing Montesquieu’s own personal attitude to that nation. It is rather a question of understanding how and why, within the logic of the Lettres, England is presented as it is, and to what effect. In letter 78[80], Usbek seeks to determine ‘which of all forms of government most conforms to Reason’. He declares that the most reasonable regime is one which ensures the rule of law without oppression, and argues that the threat of harsh, arbitrary punishments does not necessarily make for law-abiding citizens: ‘Moreover, I do not see that the rule of law, justice and equity are better observed in Turkey, Persia or Mongolia, than in the republics of Holland, Venice, and even in England itself ’. Here England, far from being the lawless state described elsewhere, finds a new status as a liberal regime. The notion that a dangerously democratic government (note that England, although a monarchy, is grouped with republican states) could ensure the security of its citizens was highly controversial in absolutist France. So too was the idea that the rebellious, regicidal English had a great respect for the rule of law. When Usbek associates ‘reasonable’ government with republican or democratic government, he suggests that only laws ratified by the rational agreement of all citizens are likely to be respected. This corresponds to the idea that the emergence of the public sphere in early modern Europe transformed the relation between citizen and state from one of coercion to one of participation.35 Usbek suggests that rulers who involve the people in the legislative process will find it easier to enforce the law. This directly contradicts the conventional image of England as a chaotic state poised on the brink of rebellion, and suggests that the establishment of parliamentary democracy in 1688 had brought an end to the country’s constant political upheaval. The first time England is mentioned in the Lettres persanes, therefore, the nation is shown to possess characteristics such as a respect for justice and equity. This is in marked contrast to contemporary Anglophobic propaganda. Declaring England’s government to be among the most ‘reasonable’, Usbek also maintains the tradition established by the Huguenot journalists whereby the benefits of a political system so different to that of the exiles’ former homeland are praised to polemical effect. England does not come in for unreserved praise throughout the Lettres, however. In letter 99[102], where England is numbered, along with France, among ‘the most powerful states in Europe’, both nations find themselves the focus of Usbek’s critical remarks on monarchic government: ‘It is

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a violent state which always degenerates either into despotism or republicanism’. It is clear from Usbek’s previous remarks in letter 78[80] that England has taken the latter path; but what of France? The most obvious use of the passages concerning England in the Lettres persanes to convey a view of that nation at odds with French orthodoxy, is made during Rica’s tour of the history section of a library in letter 130[136]. The librarian presents a revisionist view of English history, emphasizing the fact that the nation has emerged unscathed from its series of revolutions: ‘Here are the historians of England: in their histories we see liberty emerge unscathed from the furnace of discord and sedition; the Prince precariously perched on an unshakable throne; the nation impatient, yet disciplined in its fury’. The fact that the English are able to make their grievances public has led to a certain amount of turmoil, but the end result has been liberty. Moreover, in England, the ‘nation’ has constructed an identity distinct from that of the ‘Prince’. As Blanning notes, in European countries where members of civil society were able to form themselves into a body distinct from the Prince’s household or state authorities, the very principle of absolutism was undermined.36 In this letter, England and the English are identified with the type of free, public debate that allows society to exert pressure on the state. No such mechanism existed in France at the time the Lettres persanes appeared.37 It is noticeable that the librarian’s description of French history in the same letter makes no mention of a French society or nation. Instead, the librarian declares that French historians tell the story of ‘the power of Kings’. Significantly, letter 130[136] highlights not only the liberty but also the prosperity that has resulted from England’s socio-political transformation: ‘Mistress of the seas (a thing hitherto unknown) [England] combines commerce with empire’. The implication of the librarian’s comments is clear. The view of England that has been voiced in France since the late 1600s no longer holds true. Thanks to political and economic developments since 1688, France’s rival is not a chaotic, failing state, but is rich and powerful, and growing more so. Whilst England emerged relatively unscathed from the South-Sea Bubble, the disastrous effects of Law’s financial schemes marked a turning point in France by revealing the weaknesses of an inflexible absolute monarchy.38 Law had backed up the establishment of the French Banque royale in 1718 with widely distributed publications claiming that an absolute monarch was the only reliable guarantor of public credit; but the bank’s collapse in 1720 proved otherwise.39 In the Lettres persanes, Montesquieu challenges the complacent contrast between French stability under an absolutist regime, and an anarchic and uncivilized England. The work points to the efficacy of the English model of a modern commercial economy where citizens hold their rulers to account for political or financial abuses.

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When studying the representation of England and the use of English sources and ideas in the Lettres persanes, it is impossible to overlook the pivotal letter 101[104]. This letter, in which Usbek explains the functioning of English government and society to Ibben, is the only one in the work to be consecrated wholly and explicitly to the description of the English, coupled with the communication of English ideas. It is the culmination of a series of letters which deal with the subject of regime change, a key theme of the Lettres persanes. Previously, in letters 99[102] and 100[103], Usbek has compared the ways in which regime change is effected in Asia and Europe. In contrast to the plots and assassinations marking the succession of a new ruler in Persia, the situation in Europe appears generally stable. Usbek explains that, while Western rulers possess absolute power, they use it wisely: ‘The power of European kings is very great, and one might say that they can have as much as they want of it: but they do not exercise it so extensively as our Sultans do … because it is not in their interest to abuse it’. Europe’s rulers have succeeded in subordinating those who might be tempted to overthrow them by attaching the severest punishment to the crime of lèse-majesté, ‘which means that there are few revolts, and few Princes who meet violent deaths’.40 European Princes guarantee the obedience of their subjects by relying on ‘representation’, the term used to describe the performative functioning of authority prior to the emergence of the public sphere.41 In the realm of ‘representation’, the will of the Prince is outside the sphere of rational debate and his person is sacred. Usbek gives an example of this when he reveals that in France a look from the King is enough to free a condemned criminal: ‘If such a man is fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of his Prince’s face, he no longer deserves to die’.42 The godlike status of the French ruler is such that his subjects never challenge him. There is of course a notable exception to this general rule applicable to all European monarchies: England. As letter 130[136] will go on to show, while the institution of the monarchy is sacred in England the Prince is subject to the will of the people (‘the Prince [is] precariously perched on an unshakable throne’). Whilst revolts might be scarce elsewhere, stability in England is the result of much ‘discord’ and ‘sedition’. England’s violent past is also recalled by the conclusion of letter 100[103], where Usbek reports the words of ‘a European of good sense’, whose cynical commentary on the vulnerability of Princes evokes the destiny of Charles I of England: ‘Unhappy is the King who has only one head’. Having reached some general conclusions regarding the relations between European rulers and their subjects in letters 99[102] and 100[103], Usbek devotes letter 101[104] to the consideration of the exceptional English: Not all the peoples of Europe are equally submissive to the will of their Princes: for example, the impatient character of the English hardly leaves their King time to estab-

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Montesquieu and England lish his authority: submission and obedience are virtues that carry no weight with them.

Usbek’s portrayal of the English so far appears to correspond to the traditional views of the nation’s character that had long been common currency in France. The père d’Orléans, for instance, had similarly qualified the English as a ‘proud, unsettled and troublesome nation’.43 This conventional image is maintained in letter 101[104], though England’s status is more ambiguous here; it is unclear whether the ‘for example’ that singles the English out from among the European peoples posits them as either a model for, or warning to, other more submissive nations. Usbek moves from a depiction of the English to the communication of English ideas on government and society, a transition clearly marked with the phrase ‘[the English] have extraordinary things to say on this matter’. Throughout the letter, markers of indirect speech (‘they say that’, ‘they claim that’, ‘according to them’) continually punctuate Usbek’s words. This is a useful reminder of the fact that the letter contains opinions attributed to the English but reported by a Persian. The viewpoint of Usbek, the domestic despot who tyrannizes the wives and eunuchs in his Persian seraglio, must not be confused with that of the English whose opinions he relays. For instance it is he, not the English, who in the opening paragraph classifies the ‘submission’ and ‘obedience’ rarely found in England as ‘virtues’. The first of the ‘extraordinary’ views relayed by Usbek concerns the English explanation for the origins of society: According to them there is only one sentiment which can unite men, and that is gratitude: husband, wife, father, son, are only united by the love they bear for each other or by the benefits they bring to one another: these different motives for gratitude are at the origin of all kingdoms and of all societies.

Alessandro Crisafulli, one of the few commentators to have analysed Montesquieu’s use of English sources in the Lettres persanes, has established that Usbek here intervenes in a contemporary English philosophical debate.44 In the early eighteenth century, English views on the origins of society were divided. Followers of Hobbes continued to espouse that philosopher’s belief, expressed in De Cive (1642) and the Leviathan (1651) that man’s natural state was one of violence.45 According to Hobbes, only the will of an absolute sovereign could contrive to impose social order on men’s brutal impulses. Shaftesbury explicitly refuted Hobbes’s arguments in the works collected in his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), most notably the Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit (first published 1699) and Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in a Letter to a Friend (1709).46 He maintained that man was

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a naturally sociable being and that under a balanced government people would willingly work for the public good. Crisafulli does not attempt to explain how this philosophical conflict between English intellectuals might have come to Montesquieu’s attention. However, since his article appeared scholars have become better informed as to the mechanisms of intellectual exchange between France and England in the early Enlightenment. French readers who could not access original English texts at this time could nevertheless follow the progress of English Enlightenment thought via the medium of the francophone periodical press.47 True to their role as promoters of rational debate within the public sphere, the Huguenot journalists who reviewed Shaftesbury’s work in their literary periodicals clearly explained his ideological position to French readers. Reviewing Shaftesbury’s work in the Bibliothèque choisie Jean Le Clerc comments that: He [Shaftesbury] attacks Hobbes’s opinions concerning the principles of society, which he established … without acknowledging the existence of any natural affection that men might bear for each other. The author … shows that Hobbes’s description of men as being wild beasts in their natural state is completely unfounded. They naturally hold their fellow men in great affection. 48

Hobbes’s views, readily accepted by supporters of Bourbon absolutism, still prevailed in France in the early eighteenth century.49 It is significant that in the Lettres persanes Montesquieu chooses to support the alternative enlightened thesis on the origins of society that had recently emerged from England. In fact, English views on civil society are debated at several points in the text without their source being acknowledged. Crisafulli argues that the well-known fable of the Troglodytes (letters 11–14) should be read as an allegorical endorsement of Shaftesbury’s views on society in preference to Hobbes’s interpretation.50 In the first letter of the series the Troglodytes are described in Hobbesian terms: ‘They were so brutal and ferocious that not one principle of equity or justice could be found among them. … These people knew no other law than their natural savagery’. Usbek shows that the population cannot survive in this ‘state of nature’, for ‘their very ferocity was the Troglodytes downfall, and they fell victim to their own injustices.’ He thus demonstrates that, were Hobbes’s theories true, the human race would long since have perished. In contrast, the two Troglodyte families who survive and go on to rebuild the nation evolve according to Shaftesbury’s principles: ‘Their greatest care was to raise their children to be virtuous … They taught them above all that the interest of the individual cannot be separated from the common interest … the Troglodyte people saw themselves as one great family’.51 The prosperity and success of the virtuous Troglodytes which make them the envy of all neighbouring peoples, constitute a refutation of Bernard Mandeville’s argument that the practice of virtue cannot lead to a thriving

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society. Mandeville was an arch-opponent of Shaftesbury, and in his Fable of the Bees, or: Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714), he claimed that self-interest, not individual virtue, best served the public good. Historians commonly see Montesquieu as a supporter of Mandeville’s arguments as to the social benefits of self-interest.52 Yet Montesquieu’s fable of the Troglodytes clearly contradicts the message of Mandeville’s own fable, and instead endorses Shaftesbury’s rival thesis. Further on in the Lettres persanes letter 91[94] sees Usbek declaring the origins of society to be so self-evident as to make any further enquiry into the subject ‘ridiculous’: If men … fled from each other in fear, it would be necessary to question this impulse, and to find out why they lived in isolation: but they are connected to each other from the moment of birth: a son is born into his father’s household and there he remains: such is society, and such was the original cause of society.

A comparison of this letter with the Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour reveals that Usbek is again voicing Shaftesbury’s views, and in remarkably similar terms: If any appetite or sense be natural, the sense of fellowship is the same. If there be anything of nature in that affection which is between the sexes, the affection is certainly as natural towards the consequent offspring and so again between the offspring themselves, … there is so apparent a necessity for continuing this good correspondency and union that … how the wit of man should so puzzle this cause as to make civil government and society appear a kind of invention and creature of art, I know not.53

Shaftesbury’s theories have therefore been cited (with no acknowledgement of their source) at several points in the text before Usbek finally, in letter 101[104], attributes them to the English. This is typical of the Lettres persanes in which seemingly disparate letters such as the series on the Troglodytes and that on English government are connected by the presence of similar themes. In this work, the presentation of ideas in a variety of different contexts can either relativize or reinforce their impact. Though Usbek has previously upheld Shaftesbury’s views on man’s natural sociability, in letter 101[104] where faith in man’s innate goodness is associated with an opposition to despotic government, he qualifies such opinions as ‘extraordinary’. When it comes to declaring that rulers and their subjects are connected by bonds of mutual respect and responsibility, Usbek’s dual position as domestic tyrant and proponent of English ideas becomes untenable. If anything, this strengthens the validity of Shaftesbury’s thesis. Usbek’s sceptical attitude towards the English becomes clearer as he next goes on to explain the English belief that the mutual bond linking a Prince to his subjects can be broken if the former resorts to tyranny: ‘If a Prince, rather than

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fostering his subjects’ happiness, seeks to abuse and destroy them, the foundation of obedience crumbles; all bonds of loyalty are broken, they owe nothing to him and can reclaim their natural liberty’. Usbek further notes that Englishmen believe that a Prince who governs absolutely abuses the power that has been delegated to him by the sovereign people on condition that he acts in their interests. The ideas Usbek here ascribes to the English clearly resemble Locke’s reflections on popular sovereignty and princely responsibility, as exposed in the Two Treatises of Civil Government (1690). Faced with the absence of this work from Montesquieu’s library, some critics have struggled to account for Montesquieu’s acquaintance with Lockean political theory, but this is to overlook the important role played by the Huguenot periodical press in transmitting such ideas to French audiences.54 Reviews of the Treatises make explicit Locke’s assertion that a Prince, ‘must pursue no other end end than the tranquillity and security of his people’,55 and that his right to exercise power is conditional on fulfilling this duty: ‘The monarchy having been established by the people, in order to achieve certain ends, the people reserve the right to abolish it, or change it, when it acts against the aim for which it is established’.56 The English, continues Usbek, have redefined the concept of lèse-majesté, which now becomes a crime committed by a tyrannical ruler against his people. They have also reinterpreted the biblical teaching on obedience: ‘They say that the precept of their Koran, which orders them to submit to sovereign authority, is not at all difficult to follow’. This enigmatic remark implies that it is the English people themselves who are sovereign. In early modern Europe, the Apostle Paul’s injunction to obey the governing authorities because they had been established by God was more commonly cited in support of the divine right of kings.57 Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha or the Natural Power of Kings (1680), exemplifies this strain in English thought. Filmer’s argument was notably contradicted by Algernon Sidney in his Discourses concerning Government (1698). Usbek’s reference to English reinterpretations of scripture suggests that Montesquieu was acquainted with Sidney’s controversial work, translated into French in 1702 and subsequently reviewed by Huguenot journalists. Sidney declares specifically that ‘the words of St. Paul enjoining obedience to higher Powers, favour all sorts of Governments no less than Monarchy’, and his Huguenot reviewers did not neglect to point this out’.58 In this crucial letter, therefore, Montesquieu references some of the most groundbreaking ideas developed by English political theorists such as Locke, Shaftesbury and Sidney in the aftermath of the English Revolution, and which continued to play a role in the elaboration of liberal Whig ideology in early eighteenth-century England. There is a notable strain of republicanism present in these theories.59 This links back to Usbek’s association of England with outright republican states in letter 78[80], and his comments regarding the

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degeneration of monarchy into either despotism or republic in letter 99[102]. However critical Usbek appears to be of the ideas he presents, the effect of his enumeration of English opinions is to challenge a series of concepts which the French absolutist authorities had traditionally presented as fixed and unquestionable. According to the English, men have no need of an absolute ruler to impose unity and order; they are drawn together by what Shaftesbury termed man’s sense of ‘fellowship’ and jointly choose to confer their sovereignty on a Prince who is not divinely ordained, but chosen by the people. Rebellion against an unjust Prince is not lèse-majesté or high treason, but civil disobedience; the traitor is the Prince who has betrayed his people’s trust. This letter on English politics and society therefore presents an alternative vision of government from across the Channel that contradicts orthodox French beliefs. The views that Usbek ascribes to the English were rarely discussed freely in early eighteenth-century France. Yet letter 101[104] also evokes a period prior to the imposition of absolutism by Louis XIV when controversial political opinions were openly debated on French soil. At the time when the Lettres persanes appeared, contemporary commentators had begun to draw parallels between the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans (1715–23) and the previous Regency (1643– 51) at the beginning of Louis XIV’s reign.60 After revoking the parliamentary right to remonstrance in 1718, in 1720 the Regent (as Rica reports in letter 134[140]) banished the Parlement de Paris to Pontoise. This recalled the events of the Fronde, the disputes between the French Crown and the parlements that had taken place in the mid-seventeenth-century and which were seen, in turn, as paralleling the events of the concurrent English Civil War.61 This complex chain of historical connections means that when Usbek refers in letter 101[104] to a time when ‘the people of England had the upper hand over one of their Kings’, his comments had a particular resonance for French readers of the 1720s. He implicitly recalls a time when Frenchmen too had sought to limit the power of Kings, before Bourbon absolutism became the norm. The Lettres persanes here embody the richness and complexity of Anglo–French intellectual history in the early modern period; for the grievances expressed by the French parlementaires of the 1650s helped to shape the English political philosophy relayed by Usbek in letter 101[104]. Those who protested against French royal policy during the Fronde sought to redefine the relationship between ruler and subject: ‘The Prince having abandoned all charity and providing neither justice nor protection, the mutual bond is broken … things have returned to their original state’.62 The powerful arguments of the frondeurs influenced thinkers on the other side of the Channel. Historians have demonstrated that English seventeenth-century political theorists such as Locke drew heavily on revolutionary arguments developed in France during the Fronde and the Wars of Religion when formulating their own ideas on popular sovereignty and contract theory.63 Montesquieu’s

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Lettres persanes testify to the extent of this cross-fertilization. The letter that conveys English political philosophy to an eighteenth-century French audience also evokes France’s native anti-absolutist political tradition, which has so far only borne fruit in England. A fresh interpretation of the letters concerning England in the Lettres persanes thus begins to emerge. The lengthy evocation of English ideas in letter 101[104] ultimately leads away from England and back to France, a manoeuvre entirely consistent with the franco-centric optic of Montesquieu’s text, which was written primarily for a French audience. This shift is also in harmony with a tactic employed throughout the work whereby the familiar is made to appear strange, and the foreign frighteningly familiar. The views on the nature of popular sovereignty and tyranny presented in letter 101[104] represent a side of French politics that had been marginalized during the reign of Louis XIV, and had found expression in the Huguenot journals following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the Glorious Revolution. In the Lettres persanes, the device of the Persian narrator and the clear labelling of such theories as ‘English’, facilitate their reappearance in mainstream French culture. As Charles Dédéyan has rightly commented, the evocation of the English in letter 101[104] allows Montesquieu to voice controversial theories that could not otherwise be uttered in a French context.64 The depiction of England and the English in the Lettres persanes gives the lie to the conventional image of England fostered by the supporters of French absolutism. Montesquieu refuses to present England as a land of licence and disorder, the perfect foil to a stable and successful France. Instead, the Lettres persanes show that the English in the early eighteenth century are a civilized and law-abiding people, that England rivals France as a dominant power in Europe and that the radical politics of the English have propelled them towards progress and prosperity.65 England’s increasing political stability, wealth and influence are identified with her citizens’ right to exchange opinions, as well as goods and capital, freely and openly. Letter 101[104], where the ideological basis of England’s socio-political transformation is laid out, also hints that English ideas are not so ‘foreign’ as they might at first appear. The use of Usbek the domestic despot as the mouthpiece of the English is highly ironic. At the end of letter 101[104], Usbek refers to the ‘disloyalty’ and ‘perfidy’ of those who rebel against authority. Wilfully blind to his own faults, he then goes on to define a tyrant as one who ‘demands that his whims and caprices be revered as if they were divine commandments’. This announces the ‘perfidy’ of his own wife Roxane, who reproaches her tyrannical husband with believing her ‘credulous enough to imagine that I exist only to fulfill your caprices’.66 Such lexical echoes enhance the wider political relevance of the Oriental intrigue in the Lettres persanes. When contrasted with the political situation in England, the collapse of Usbek’s seraglio can be seen to represent the fate of any nation

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where an absolute ruler denies his subjects the right to be involved in choosing their own system of government. Montesquieu presents Regency France as just such a nation on the verge of financial and social collapse, ‘a Body afflicted with innumerable ills’. Despite administrative changes following the death of Louis XIV, French citizens had no institutional forum in which to express their discontent. Parliamentarians such as Montesquieu who attempted to communicate ‘the grievances and suffering’ of the people to those in power were banished in favour of ‘a crowd of courtiers who tell them ceaselessly that the people are happy under their government’.67 The depiction of England in the Lettres persanes as a free and wealthy nation, responsive to the demands of its citizens, therefore highlights what was lacking in contemporary France in both social and institutional terms.

The Sociable Spectator The presence of English ideas in the Lettres persanes goes far beyond those letters in which England and the English are represented directly. Of particular relevance to the wider text are the new theories of sociability that were being developed by English Enlightenment thinkers in the early eighteenth century. Shaftesbury was not alone in promoting a new interpretation of social development based on a belief in man’s innate sociability. Human interaction was redefined as open, sincere communication between equals engaged in a process of mutual enlightenment. As Lawrence Klein has described, Shaftesbury used the term ‘politeness’ to denote this type of interaction.68 In a nation that respects the codes of politeness citizens are able to converse and associate freely, and express their feelings on any subject without fear of censure or repression by a higher authority. The aim of ‘polite’ conversation or debate must be the exercise of reason, and the cultivation of civic virtue. Free communication was facilitated in England by a change in the function of the press. In a climate of diminished censorship following the lapse of the Licensing Act (1695), journals which had previously been mere ‘news letters’ began to provide an opinionated commentary on contemporary events and ideas. Journalists adopted a conversational tone in order to enter into a dialogue with their readers and to engage them in instruction and critical reasoning.69 No journal better embodied the ideals of the new public sphere than Addison and Steele’s Spectator (1711–14), which promoted sociability and rational, accessible discussion. In France, where readers relied on the Huguenot periodicals rather than the domestic press to bring them criticism and reviews, the translation of the Spectator essays into French from 1714 onwards opened up a new sphere of reasoned debate.70 This translation also had an impact on Anglo–French relations, allowing the French to see

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the English as a cultivated and rational people, and is credited with initiating a gradual improvement in French views on England.71 Montesquieu owned a copy of the French translation of the Spectator.72 Indeed, an essay that appeared in the paper in 1711 is frequently cited as setting the precedent for the Lettres persanes.73 Addison and his co-writers regularly took on different personæ in their epistolary editorials, and in the essay in question the English are seen through the eyes of a group of Indian Kings who visit London and marvel at the strangeness of the beliefs and customs of the English, including their religious practices. The message of cultural relativism that the reader is meant to draw from the essay is clearly spelt out in typical Addisonian fashion at the end of the Indians’ ‘translated’ remarks: I cannot however conclude this Paper without taking notice, That amidst these wild Remarks there now and then appears something very reasonable. I cannot likewise forbear observing, That we are all guilty in some Measure of the same narrow way of Thinking, which we meet with in this Abstract of the Indian Journal; when we fancy the Customs, Dress, and Manners of other Countries are ridiculous and extravagant, if they do not resemble those of our own.74

Presenting the lessons of Enlightenment philosophy in an accessible, non-erudite fashion was Addison’s stated aim, as laid out in the tenth issue of the Spectator: It was said of Socrates, that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit among Men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee-houses.75

Interestingly, the French translation of the Spectator was subtitled ‘the modern Socrates’. It is rather as having sought to stimulate open discussions of philosophical subjects, rather than having explicitly imitated the episode of the Indian Kings, that Montesquieu should be seen as a follower of Addison. Addison’s epistolary periodical essays, characterized by an intimate, conversational tone, undoubtedly provide an important model for Montesquieu’s work. The Lettres persanes, like the Spectator, introduce the general public to rational debate on subjects such as political liberty, virtue and justice using the device of fiction. For example, Usbek writes the fable of the Troglodytes in response to a request from his friend Mirza, who has asked him to explain whether virtue is a source of happiness. Usbek prefaces the fable with the words: ‘To fulfill the task you set me, I did not think it right to employ abstract reasoning … perhaps this little story will have more effect than subtle philosophy’.76 Usbek’s letters on the Troglodytes demonstrate the principles of communication within the public sphere, as exemplified by the Spectator, in a number of ways. Firstly, Usbek chooses the accessible literary form of the fable over ‘subtle philosophy’, a choice

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frequently made by Addison himself in accordance with his mission to transmit enlightened ideas to a wide, non-scholarly public. Addison more than once chose to transmit these ideas through exploiting the device of the Oriental tale, made fashionable in both England and France following Galland’s translation of the Mille et une nuits (1704–17).77 For instance, Addison uses his allegorical Persian tale entitled The Vision of Mirza to promote the theory that it is not the adherence to any one religion, but the cultivation of humanist virtues, which saves a man’s soul.78 Secondly, in writing the fable of the Troglodytes Usbek is addressing a friend (also interestingly named Mirza) as an equal: ‘You prefer to rely on my Reason rather than on your own … My dear Mirza, there is one thing which flatters me more than your good opinion; it is the friendship that you owe me’.79 Shaftesbury in his Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour described the sphere of free and open debate represented by ‘the liberty of the Club’, in which all sorts of ideas could be discussed thanks to ‘that sort of freedom which is taken among gentlemen and friends who know one another perfectly well’. This freedom was fundamental to Shaftesbury’s ideas on sociability and ‘politeness’, which he defined as ‘a sort of amicable collision’, a process whereby ‘we polish one another and rub off our corners and rough sides’.80 Usbek and Mirza engage in just such a process of free discussion aimed at mutual enlightenment, which is replicated in the many examples of open correspondence between friends that take place throughout the Lettres persanes. In this context it is no coincidence that the content of Usbek’s fable of the Troglodytes should act as a demonstration of Shaftesbury’s theories of sociability. Addison too sought to promote politeness in his periodical writings. Mr Spectator, his most frequently adopted persona, was a member of a fictional Club. In one early issue, he argued that the popularity of such institutions in eighteenth-century England was proof of the assertion that ‘Man is said to be a Sociable Animal’.81 Edward and Lillian Bloom have observed that Addison here presents his readers with a ‘polite’ adaptation of the famous Aristotelian definition of man as a ‘political animal’. The term ‘sociable’ was used in the Spectator essays ‘to connote one who properly discriminates between good and evil, just and unjust’;82 one whose judgement has been ‘polished’, as Shaftesbury would have put it, through contact with others. Rica, in letter 85[87] of the Lettres persanes, exactly echoes Addison’s claim: ‘It is said that man is a sociable animal’. He continues: ‘In that case it seems to me that the Frenchman is more of a man than any other: he is a man par excellence because he seems to be uniquely suited to society’. However, the remainder of the letter reveals that French sociability in no way fosters the conditions of equality and free speech that characterize the English public sphere. Parisians engage in a ritualized process of social interaction devoid of either sincerity or interest. Rica’s concluding portrait of

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a sycophantic Parisian socialite completely lacking in discrimination and good judgement represents the contrary of the Addisonian ‘sociable animal’. When put into practice, Addison and Shaftesbury’s theories of sociability and politeness were intended to bring about changes in society and politics. In his Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour Shaftesbury declares that if people engage in free, ‘polite’ conversation this will lead to ‘the decline and ruin of a false sort of wit’ that might otherwise come to pervade English society. False wit is a dangerous phenomenon because it has infected the political sphere; it has ‘passed from the men of pleasure to the men of business. Politicians have been infected with it, and the grave affairs of state have been treated with an air of irony and banter’.83 In the Lettres persanes Rica makes a strikingly similar observation regarding French society and culture. The ‘witty banter’ so admired in the fashionable Parisian salons ‘has come to form the general character of the nation: one must banter in state meetings; one must banter on the battlefield; one must banter with an ambassador’.84 French social practice is here implicitly contrasted with the values of rational communication in the English public sphere. The pervasive ‘witty banter’ that characterizes French society is shown to be an impediment to reasoned discussion. Rica denounces the arrogance of Frenchmen who ‘talk much but say little which is worthy of note’ and whose judgements discourage rational debate: ‘A man of good sense does not willingly converse with such people’. False sociability has the effect of deadening man’s reasoning faculties, as demonstrated by Rica’s reaction to one particularly witty conversation: ‘I began yawning; yawned still more, and fell by degrees into a sleeplike lethargy’.85 Shaftesbury often explicitly contrasted the social conventions of France and England in his work.86 Significantly, he considered French-style ‘false wit’ to be a symptom of oppressive, absolutist government. He argued that: ‘It is the persecuting spirit has raised the bantering one, and want of liberty may account for a want of true politeness’.87 As Addison’s appropriation of Aristotle also suggests, English theories of sociability possessed a political dimension. This lay in both Addison and Shaftesbury’s insistence that public reason could only be cultivated in a free society, and in a social setting emancipated from the court. Looking back on imperial Rome, Shaftesbury comments that: ‘It was difficult to apprehend what community subsisted among courtiers or what public between an absolute prince and his slave-subjects’.88 His assessment also applies to Bourbon France; no truly ‘polite’ public debate was possible while the Prince and his court set the tone for all social intercourse. In the Lettres persanes Usbek and Rica’s stay in Paris sees them visiting theatres, libraries, coffee-houses and salons; but the one scene of French life which is noticeably absent from the Persians’ itinerary is the royal court. This is consistent with the diminishing role of the court within civil society as the public sphere emerged in early modern Europe. Cultural historians identify the Regency of

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Philippe d’Orléans89 as the period when the royal court lost its status as the focal point of French public life and few texts of the Regency period reflect this transformation more effectively than the Lettres persanes. It is arguably Montesquieu’s attitude towards the court on the one hand and towards the emerging public sphere on the other which sets the Lettres persanes apart from a work such as Giovanni Paolo Marana’s L’Espion dans les Cours des princes chrétiens (1684–6), often cited alongside Addison’s Spectator essay as a predecessor of Montesquieu’s work.90 Mahmut, Marana’s Turkish spy, surveys the courts of Europe on a mission for his royal employer the Sultan. In contrast, Usbek reveals that he has been forced to leave Persia having made himself unpopular at court: ‘I dared to be virtuous there … I spoke a language hitherto unheard; I defied flattery’.91 The majority of the letters written by Mahmut from France contain ‘tales of the most significant intrigues that have taken place in the French court’, whereas Usbek and Rica show little interest in court affairs except to criticize them. Most importantly, Mahmut’s letters are addressed to his royal patron, and his observations of European society are dictated by royal interests. For instance, reporting on a visit to Vienna in his opening letter the spy comments: ‘I noted in the Imperial court all I had been instructed to look out for’.92 Usbek and Rica have far more in common with the figure of the Addisonian spectator than they do with Marana’s spy. They declare themselves ‘the first among the Persian people to have left their homeland to assuage a desire for knowledge’.93 Mr Spectator’s observations of English society are similarly motivated by an ‘insatiable Thirst after Knowledge’ which has previously caused him to travel throughout Europe. An archetypal man of the emerging urban public sphere, Mr Spectator is driven to observe London life in the sort of locations also frequented by Usbek and Rica on their visit to Paris: I have passed my latter Years in this City, where I am frequently seen in most publick Places … I appear on Sunday nights at St. James’s Coffee House and sometimes join the little Committee of Politicks in the Inner-Room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My Face is likewise very well known … in the Theaters both of Drury Lane and the Hay-Market. I have been taken for a Merchant upon the Exchange for above these ten Years … In short, where-ever I see a Cluster of People, I always mix with them.94

In contrast to Mahmut the spy, Mr Spectator has no particular patron to satisfy other than his own curiosity. His impartial vision, which embraces all of society, therefore resembles the naïve gaze of Montesquieu’s Persians: ‘I see Men flourishing in Courts, and languishing in Jayls, without being prejudiced from their Circumstances to their Favour or Disadvantage’.95 Montesquieu’s original introduction to the Lettres persanes embeds his work in the context of the transformation of French culture in the Regency period.

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Marana’s work was dedicated in flattering terms to Louis XIV: ‘I very humbly beg Your Majesty to receive this tribute that I dare to offer … I do not seek public praise for my work … My only thought has been to set down for posterity the history of the reign of Louis the Great’.96 Clearly, the fate of Marana’s work depended as much on the identity of his patron as on the opinion of his readers, for as Shaftesbury declares in his Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour: ‘Where absolute power is, there is no public’.97 In conspicuous contrast Montesquieu published his work without royal authorization, or privilège, and appeals in his introduction to the judgement of the public alone: ‘I am not writing a dedication, and I seek no patronage for this work … I am publishing these few letters to please the public’s taste’.98 This voluntary emancipation from royal protection corresponds to the values of the public sphere established in England and theorized by the likes of Shaftesbury and Addison. In this setting authors responded to the demands of a critical, reasoning audience and wrote primarily with their taste in mind.99 Marana’s ambition to please his royal patron affects every aspect of L’Espion, including his choice of a Turkish narrator. The spy’s identity serves to lend credibility to the author’s apologia of Louis XIV: ‘If you find that this Arab often praises Louis the Great … do not suspect him of flattery; as a Turk and an enemy of France, he could just as easily have condemned what he was obliged by sincerity to praise’.100 Montesquieu’s introduction to the Lettres persanes reveals his intention to exploit the foreignness and frankness of his Persian narrators in a very different way. Usbek and Rica are able to flout the conventions of absolutist France with comparative impunity, and express themselves entirely freely on controversial subjects commonly banned from public discussion. The fictional ‘translator’ of the Lettres persanes declares in his introduction that he has been party to the Persians’ free, open exchanges: ‘The Persians whose words I translate were lodgers in my house. We spent our days together. They saw me as a man from another world, and hid nothing from me. People who have travelled from so far away do not think it necessary to keep secrets’.101 The putative Persians’ status as ‘foreign’ narrators thus allows Montesquieu to subvert the codes and conventions governing the expression of opinions in French society. Through Usbek and Rica’s uninhibited and often satirical dissection of French life Montesquieu attains the ‘freedom of wit and humour’ advocated by Shaftesbury. In her insightful analysis of the Lettres persanes, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook reads the work’s introduction as exposing the societal pressures that stifled the development of a more open cultural space in Regency France. Cook examines the image of the limping woman, employed by the ‘translator’ to illustrate the necessity of his anonymity: ‘If my name was ever to be discovered, from that moment on I would write no more. I know a woman who can walk perfectly well, but who limps whenever anyone is watching her’.102 In Cook’s opinion, this image ‘calls into question the text’s faith in the public sphere’ and reveals the

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dynamic of the work to be instead one of concealment and ‘enforced privacy’.103 However, Cook’s claims should be adjusted to take account of our new reading of the Lettres persanes in the context of Montesquieu’s relations with England. Montesquieu’s work admittedly illustrates the cultural and institutional barriers preventing the establishment of free, critical debate within French society. Yet the representation of England in the text, coupled with the influence of English theories of politeness and sociability, means that the Lettres persanes nevertheless uphold the successful model of the English public sphere. The introduction denounces the constraints under which French authors are forced to write, but the overarching English ideal of open, rational debate is not itself undermined in the Lettres persanes. The Persians’ free, candid correspondence with friends opens up a forum for this type of communication characterized by liberty, reason and equality. Conversely, in Usbek’s letters to Persian clerics and to his wives and eunuchs the critical, conversational tone that links both him and Rica to the Addisonian spectator is strikingly absent. Here the ritualized rhetoric of absolutism returns; demonstrating the impossibility, explained by Shaftesbury, of the development of a public sphere under a tyrannical ruler. English theories of sociability are thus explored through a number of letters and discursive devices in the Lettres persanes. The emblematic figure of Mr Spectator, embodiment of mutual enlightenment through critical dialogue, no doubt provides an important model for Usbek and Rica. The Persian narrators in the text not only expose the trivial, frivolous nature of much social interaction in France but also introduce the possibility of a new type of reasoned communication. Montesquieu’s explicit rejection of protection for his work, whose only patron is ‘the public’, echoes the anti-court sentiment evident elsewhere in the text. The Persians’ criticism of false French wit functions as a demand for the development of a new form of ‘politeness’ in France, perhaps based on the ‘language hitherto unheard’ that Usbek tried without success to introduce to the Persian court. Daniel Gordon’s study of French sociability shows that the reform of language and linguistic usage was an important element of the French Enlightenment’s attack on absolutism. Enlightenment authors endeavoured to put a new vocabulary into circulation through their writings and to reconfigure polite conversation as an activity that took place in a secular urban setting removed from courtly influences.104 In the Lettres persanes, the communication between correspondents who are on friendly, equal terms and who engage in rational debate mirrors the new kind of public sociability that began to flourish in the cafés and salons of Paris from the 1720s onwards.105 Yet in the letters that Usbek writes to Persian clerics or to his wives and eunuchs an oppressive relationship of authority is implied. The ritualised rhetoric that dominates in these letters reveals the extent to which absolute power, whether human or divine, is a barrier to reasoned communication.

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Locke’s Legacy In the long eighteenth century, Britain and Europe were transformed by the emergence of a new public sphere in opposition to the conventional centres of cultural activity, the royal court and the Church. Historians of ideas have traditionally connected this phenomenon with the impact of Lockean ideas on the development of Enlightenment thought. Locke’s epistemological and political theory is seen as having been instrumental in liberating the reasoning individual from the traditional mentors of Prince and cleric.106 Jonathan Israel has recently questioned Locke’s primacy in this field, making the case for Benedict Spinoza as the most radical of Enlightenment thinkers. Yet the ‘moderate’ (to use Israel’s term) nature of Locke’s thought arguably meant that the majority of his contemporaries were receptive to his ideas, just as they were resistant to the challenges of radical Spinozism. Lockean philosophy was certainly so widely diffused in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that even Israel acknowledges Locke’s status as the pioneering figure in the English Enlightenment, particularly in the form in which it was exported to France.107 The detailed exposition of English political theory in letter 101[104] of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes suggests that the author was familiar with Locke’s views on civil government. It is also possible to detect the influence of Locke’s epistemological theory elsewhere in the text. Montesquieu indeed owned a copy of the Huguenot Pierre Coste’s famous translation of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), a work that placed English empirical thought firmly at the centre of French Enlightenment philosophy.108 Most notably, in the Essay Locke refuted Cartesian epistemology, transforming the acquisition of knowledge into an empirical exercise: ‘Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:– How comes it to be furnished? … To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded’.109 Locke declared that the human mind initially formed ideas as a result of direct sensual experience of the world. The more developed mental faculty of reflection was based on the internal collation and comparison of those experiences. For those who accepted Locke’s theories, the search for knowledge therefore became a search for new sensations. Significantly, Locke’s assertion that it was necessary to man to ‘suffer himself to be informed by observation and experience’110 is confirmed by Usbek in the Lettres persanes when he announces his intention to leave Persia ‘to go and seek painstakingly for wisdom’.111 In effect, Usbek and Rica’s encounter with European culture in the Lettres persanes functions as an allegorical demonstration of Locke’s epistemological theories. To illustrate the link between knowledge and experience, Locke explained the way in which a child’s mind develops: ‘Follow a child from its birth, and

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observe the alterations that time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake; thinks more, the more it has matter to think on’.112 Similarly, in the early days of his stay in Paris, Usbek revels in the stimulating novelty of French life: ‘Those who enjoy learning new things are never bored: … everything interests me, everything amazes me: I am like a child whose still tender organs are vividly struck by the most insignificant objects’. Recounting his first impressions of European life, Usbek had previously described his senses awakening to a newness and difference that he was not yet able to articulate: ‘I am not talking about the things which immediately strike the eye, such as the difference in buildings, in clothing, in customs: there is in every aspect of life here something singularly different, which I can sense, but cannot explain’.113 According to Frederick Keener, Montesquieu uses the characters of Usbek and Rica to explore the difference between knowledge born of sensation and of reflection. Keener claims that Rica’s ideas evolve in response to experiential or sensual stimuli, whilst Usbek is more reflective.114 Early on Usbek tells Ibben that, unlike Rica, he has not yet formed a coherent impression of Parisian society: ‘The liveliness of his mind means that he grasps everything with promptitude: as for me, I think more slowly, and I am not yet in a position to tell you anything’.115 Rica’s quick grasp of the workings of French society leads him to make controversial judgements concerning pillars of French culture such as the Catholic Church and the Académie française. Presenting the reader with Rica’s falsely naïve descriptions of French beliefs and institutions allows Montesquieu to put the founding principles of French society to the test. This method is consistent with what Ross Hutchinson considers to be Locke’s major contribution to French Enlightenment thought: the necessity of empirical enquiry into all aspects of human activity; or in Locke’s own words, ‘not entertaining any Proposition with greater assurance than the Proofs it is built upon will warrant’.116 Rica also adapts more quickly to French culture and customs, to the extent that Usbek is ultimately unable to convince him to return home to Persia: ‘He has a thousand pretexts for keeping me here: he seems to have forgotten his homeland entirely’.117 Usbek’s own position is far more complex. He is at once a rational enlightened thinker and a polygamous domestic despot, and cannot therefore feel at home in either France or Persia.118 His ambivalent attitude illustrates the perpetual struggle between rational knowledge and unfounded prejudice which Locke also explores in his Essay. Locke describes the phenomenon whereby an intelligent man will invoke ‘the authority of reason’ to devise philosophical theories and to correct others’ judgements, ‘though he be guilty of much greater unreasonableness in his own tenets and conduct, which he never perceives’.119 Locke’s diagnosis of this state as a form of ‘madness’ aptly corresponds to Usbek’s position towards the end of the Lettres persanes when anxieties about the secu-

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rity of his harem compromise his pursuit of reason in France: ‘I am overcome by sombre sadness; I am sinking into a terrible depression; I feel as if I am destroying myself ’.120 In the Essay Locke explores the possibility – unthinkable in Cartesian epistemology – of the divided self; the cogito separated from the sum. According to the terms of Lockean psychology Usbek becomes alienated by his lack of consciousness, defined as the ability to attribute one’s own thoughts and actions to oneself.121 Usbek certainly appears to represent a divided consciousness in the Lettres persanes. His philosophical speculations on justice, liberty and tolerance are utterly dislocated from his identity as abusive tyrant in the seraglio. Thus Lockean epistemology leads to a deeper understanding of Montesquieu’s work. Usbek and Rica’s journey to France represents the empirical path to enlightenment posited by Locke in the Essay, whilst Locke’s psychological theories shed light on Usbek’s ultimate inability to apply the political and philosophical lessons he has learnt in Europe to his own domestic situation. Whereas Rica’s naïve observations interrogate the fundamental propositions underlying French society, Usbek is unable to turn his own rationalist criticism of philosophical issues into self-knowledge. His final melancholy reveals him to be suffering from Lockean ‘madness’. The evidence of Locke’s influence on the Lettres persanes does not end here. In his ‘Quelques Réflexions sur les Lettres persanes’ (c. 1754–5), a supplementary preface added to later editions of the text, Montesquieu defended himself against the accusations made by the abbé Gaultier in his recent pamphlet Les Lettres persanes convaincues d’impiété (1751). This denunciation of Montesquieu’s work was an epilogue to the debates that raged in 1748–51 regarding the religious views expressed in L’Esprit des lois (1748).122 These debates refocused attention on the controversial aspects of Montesquieu’s earlier work that had escaped censure in the more liberal climate of the 1720s. In 1752 the editors of the Encyclopédie (1751–72) were similarly accused of printing seditious content in their articles on religion. The French censors were at their most active in mid-century and all works published in France at this time were subject to severe restriction, particularly where religion was concerned.123 Secular authors who attempted to discuss doctrinal issues could expect condemnation from the clerical authorities. In England, by contrast, critical discussion of religious questions had long been permitted in the secular public sphere. This can be linked to another one of Locke’s bequests to Enlightenment thought. Arguing in the Essay that human reason must constitute a God-given faculty, Locke had concluded that reason and revelation were in no way incompatible: ‘God when he makes the prophet does not unmake the man. He leaves all his faculties in the natural state, to enable him to judge of his inspirations, whether they be of divine original or no.’ This meant that religious truths were not to be considered sacrosanct but should be submitted to rational discus-

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sion: ‘Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything’.124 David Zaret notes that Locke’s theories were instrumental in bringing an end to ‘the clerical monopoly on religious discourse’ that had prevailed in England up until the late seventeenth century. Locke inaugurated a tradition of the free discussion of religion which was fundamental to the development of the English public sphere.125 In the Lettres persanes, Usbek’s theological enquiries to Persian clerics show him struggling to reconcile reason with revelation. When the obscurantist responses he receives prove unsatisfactory, Usbek goes on in his free, open correspondence with friends to assert his own reasoned views on issues such as divine justice and religious pluralism.126 In the underdeveloped public sphere of ancien régime France, the religious views expressed in the Lettres persanes were permissible only when uttered by a ‘Persian’. Indeed, it is in these terms that Montesquieu defends his work in the ‘Quelques Réflexions sur les Lettres persanes’.127 In England meanwhile, the way in which Locke’s successors had built on his ideas meant that critical, satirical discussion had become an indispensable part of any dispute concerning religious doctrine or practice. Shaftesbury, who was tutored by Locke, used his Letter concerning Enthusiasm (1708) to proclaim the idea that it was right to ridicule religious beliefs because where religion was concerned wit was the touchstone of truth: Provided we treat religion with good manners, we can never use too much good humour or examine it with too much freedom and familiarity. For, if it be genuine and sincere, it will not only stand the proof but thrive and gain advantage from hence. If it be spurious or mixed with any imposture, it will be detected and exposed.128

The treatment of religious questions in the Lettres persanes clearly corresponds to this approach. Rica’s notorious description of the Pope as ‘an old idol, who is venerated out of habit’ is certainly characterized by both freedom and familiarity. Later in the same letter he also exposes the spurious nature of papal authority: ‘He claims to be the successor of one of the first Christians, who was called Saint Peter: and it is certainly a succession worth inheriting, for he has enormous wealth, and a large country under his control’. The most fundamental aspects of Christian doctrine are not spared their share of raillery. Rica also comments that the Pope ‘pretends that three is equal to one, that the bread we eat is not bread, that the wine we drink is not wine, and plays a thousand other tricks of this nature’.129 Rica’s intellectual freedom has its origin in his identity as a Persian Muslim. His purported ignorance of the sacred nature of concepts such as the Eucharist or the Trinity allows him to discuss these issues in an unintimidated, uninhibited manner, thus maintaining the ‘good humour’ Shaftesbury considered so essential to the treatment of such questions. The reviews of Shaftesbury’s Letter Concerning Enthusiasm that appeared in the Huguenot journals defended his use of wit and raillery in the treatment of serious subjects:

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Serious matters, such as Religion, are normally treated as if one’s words were to be judged by a tyrannical authority … Writers are so fearful, that they turn to zealotry rather than to reasoned examination … The author [Shaftesbury] is right to demand that those discussing these questions should be in a happier, calmer state of mind.130

Such comments explain why it is the vivacious Rica, rather than the more melancholy Usbek, who is the author of letters such as 22[24] and 27[29]. Despite his tendency to raillery however, Rica’s letters respect the important distinction described by Shaftesbury ‘between seeking how to raise a laugh from everything and seeking in everything what justly may be laughed at’.131 In letter 27[29], for example, a note of seriousness is introduced by mentioning the theme of religious persecution, a subject that preoccupies both Usbek and Rica at different points in the text. Some of Locke’s most strongly held views concern what he saw as the anomaly of Christian intolerance. In his Letter concerning Toleration (1689),132 he protested against instances of persecution such as the recent Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), which had driven many French Protestants into exile. Shaftesbury took up this view, and his condemnation of enforced religious uniformity in the Letter concerning Enthusiasm was, unsurprisingly, approved by the exiled Huguenot journalists who reviewed his work in their periodicals. The reviewers’ ironic comments reinforce Shaftesbury and Locke’s judgement that those who persecute other believers misunderstand the fundamental message of Christian doctrine: ‘Driven by an excess of love for their fellow men … they make war on each other most religiously’.133 This irony is also highlighted in the Lettres persanes, where Rica remarks that ‘there never was a kingdom torn apart by so many civil wars as Christendom’. In a letter that begins with a description of the Persian persecution of the Armenians – a thinly-disguised evocation of the plight of French Huguenots – Usbek claims that such wars would cease if the Lockean principles of religious pluralism and tolerance were respected: ‘I admit that history is full of wars of religion, but it should be noted that it is not religious differences that have caused these wars; it is intolerance’.134 Shaftesbury expanded upon Locke’s condemnation of intolerance in his Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit. He declares in one of the most controversial passages of this work that those who seek forcibly to establish religious uniformity misunderstand not only Christian doctrine but the very nature of God. His words were singled out by Jean Le Clerc as worthy of translation for the French readers of the Bibliothèque choisie: ‘Whoever believes there is a God, and professes to believe that this God is just and good, must also believe that there exists independently of Him something that we can call Justice’.135 It is in the name of this absolute justice that religious toleration is advocated. In letter 81[83] in the Lettres persanes Usbek also contends in remarkably similar terms that: ‘If there is a God … he must necessarily be just … Therefore even if there were no God, we

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should still love Justice’. Usbek’s views on religion have much in common with those expressed by Shaftesbury, and diffused by the Huguenot journalists who reviewed his work for French audiences. Enthusiasm, or fanaticism, is qualified by Shaftesbury as a lack of good humour and ‘politeness’; fanatics who ‘see wrath and fury and revenge and terrors in the Deity’, must necessarily have forgotten their own natural sociability and love for their fellow men.136 As one Huguenot reviewer of the Letter concerning Enthusiasm put it, ‘in their dark and sorrowful state, they represent our Sovereign Lord as a bitter, pitiless God; in a word as a being in their own image’.137 Like Shaftesbury, Usbek also condemns those enthusiasts who justify the commission of injustices by depicting God in this way: ‘All these considerations awaken my anger against those clerics who represent God as a being who exercises His power like a tyrant … who attribute to Him all the imperfections that He rightly punishes in us’.138 The treatment of religious issues in the Lettres persanes clearly reflects the ideas of both Locke and Shaftesbury. Locke’s two principal contributions to Enlightenment religious thought – the reasoned examination of hitherto unquestionable truths, and the rejection of religious persecution – both have an important influence on Usbek and Rica’s approach to theological questions. Shaftesbury’s claim that wit and raillery have an essential role to play in assessing the rational basis of religious beliefs also provides a valuable insight into the logic behind Rica’s satirical letters concerning the Catholic Church. Some of the more controversial opinions of Locke’s pupil, regarding the nature of God and his divine qualities, also appear to have inspired Usbek’s speculations on these subjects. The Lettres thus replay, for the benefit of a French audience, the critical debates concerning religion that played a formative role in the development of the English public sphere. Both Locke and Shaftesbury, in their writings, promoted the use of reason in regard to religious matters, in order to combat superstition, dogmatism and fanaticism. This effect is also achieved by Montesquieu in the Lettres persanes.

‘What does it Matter if all their Good Sense be Imported from Abroad?’ Reading Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes in the context of the author’s relationship with England advances our understanding both of the text and of Anglo–French political and intellectual relations at the beginning of the author’s writing career. A close examination of the letters in which England and the English are represented directly reveals that Montesquieu seeks in the Lettres persanes to challenge the conventional image of England as a chaotic, uncivilized and extremist state that had been accepted in France since the mid-seventeenth century. England as depicted in the Lettres persanes appears to represent the positive consequences of increased popular involvement in the political process. The English are portrayed

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as a people who have taken an active role in shaping their own government and commercial economy. This image of England is designed to emphasize the negative consequences of the French government’s absolutist policies and financial mismanagement; the implication is that England’s power is growing, and that France’s position in Europe is under threat. To focus on the representation of England in the text is also to recontextualise the Lettres persanes. It emerges that the work bears witness in many ways to the shift in the structures of French society that occurred during the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans. In this context the enlightened political and philosophical ideas that had originated in England and had hitherto only been accessible to French readers through the mediation of journalists based outside France, could be expressed by a domestic French author for the first time. In the Lettres persanes, Montesquieu consolidates the vision of England promoted in the Huguenot journals and by Addison in his Spectator and juxtaposes it with a satirical view of French society, thus highlighting the disparities between the two cultures. The fact that the Lettres persanes appeared at a time when open communication and rational debate were self-proclaimed English attributes lends new significance to Montesquieu’s use of English ideas and sources in the work. The appearance of the French translation of the Spectator at the beginning of the Regency arguably provided Montesquieu with a valuable template for the transmission of enlightened ideas to a wide audience. Indeed, the philosophical values of the English public sphere that underpin Mr Spectator’s essays are present in many different forms in the Lettres persanes. Shaftesbury’s theory of sociability is also defended allegorically in the episode of the Trogolodytes and his model of politeness is proposed as an implicit alternative to the empty wit of Parisian social circles. The influence of English Enlightenment thought is also evident elsewhere in the text. Locke’s theories regarding the acquisition of knowledge, and the conflict between reason and prejudice, are reflected in the Persians’ experience of the Western world. Lockean principles of rational religion and religious tolerance are evident in the treatment of religious issues in the Lettres persanes. In addition, Shaftesbury’s argument in favour of satire and raillery sheds new light on the naïve social commentary of Montesquieu’s fictional Persians. From Habermas onwards, scholars have emphasized the English origins of the public sphere, often commenting on the cultural and institutional barriers that prevented its development in France and elsewhere. In letter 97[100], Rica comments that the French scorn to import fashionable items of clothing from overseas because ‘foreign fashions always seems ridiculous to them’. However, whilst the French may cultivate their native fashion-sense they have neglected, even stifled, the growth of indigenous philosophy and political theory. Rica notes ironically that they do not mind falling behind their neighbours where intellectual developments are concerned, provided that they maintain their status as the continent’s

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principal wigmakers and chefs: ‘With these noble pursuits to their name, what does it matter if all their good sense be imported from abroad …?’ In the Lettres persanes ‘good sense’ has many sources, but a substantial proportion of the political and social theories that seem to offer hope for the reform of French society come from England. Rica’s comments in letter 97[100] seem to hint that the French should be more receptive to intellectual imports from across the Channel where the future of the continent – in scientific and philosophical terms – lies. Rica goes on to remark that whereas the English have been actively engaged in defining their own system of government the French have merely adopted laws drawn up by the Romans, whilst their Church is governed by Bulls issued from the Vatican. This constitutes a rejection of the nation’s true identity: ‘They have abandoned the ancient Laws made by kings of old in the general assemblies of the Nation’. This of course announces the arguments about French laws to be made in L’Esprit des lois, where Montesquieu advocates a return to France’s ancient constitution which bears a distinct resemblance to the political system established in England. Montesquieu’s first published work reflects a time when French views on England and the English were undergoing an important shift. In the aftermath of the Treaty of Utrecht, England seemed poised to take over from France as the dominant power in Europe. The nation’s political and financial systems also seemed better adapted to the needs of the modern world than did those of France. With the French state pursuing a policy of rapprochement with England, and with French intellectuals beginning to promote the English political and cultural model, the conventional image of England as France’s backward, barbarian enemy was becoming increasingly redundant. The ideas and ideals of the English Enlightenment, introduced to a wide audience of French readers by the Lettres persanes, were progressively popularized and deployed by French intellectuals. As the Anglo–French alliance strengthened during the 1720s, many writers followed Montesquieu’s lead and began to publish works intended to present a new image of England to French audiences. These works were very popular with French readers. The Swiss author Béat de Muralt’s account of his travels in England, Lettres sur les Anglois et les François et sur les voyages was published in 1725 and re-edited four times before 1728. Muralt’s first letter portrayed a very different England from that which dominated in French works prior to the publication of the Lettres persanes. As in Montesquieu’s work, the hallmarks of the nation were now ‘liberty’ and ‘good sense’ : ‘England is a country of liberty … this gives its inhabitants a certain liberty of thought and expression, which contributes greatly to the good sense which is commonly found there, and which marks this nation out from most other countries’.139 Muralt’s letters also conveyed the idea that the only way to ascertain an accurate understanding of the English was to go and visit them. In 1728, this is what Montesquieu himself set out to do.

2 IN SEARCH OF ENLIGHTENMENT: VOYAGES EN EUROPE (1728–31)

The England evoked in the Lettres persanes was a nation that, in 1721, Montesquieu had encountered only on the page. There was however a limit to what he could learn about the country through studying the works of English Enlightenment authors and reading anglophile Huguenot periodicals. In 1728, therefore, Montesquieu set out to view the nation at first hand. England was the final destination on his Grand Tour of Europe (1728–31) which took him to Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany and Holland, concluding with an eighteen-month stay in London (1729–31). In Paris in 1727 he had met Lord Waldegrave, a high-ranking English diplomat posted at the embassy there. When Waldegrave was instructed to visit the Imperial court in Vienna in 1728 Montesquieu accompanied him, beginning his Grand Tour in an English ambassador’s train.1 Montesquieu’s membership of the Club de l’Entresol, an English-style club that met in a Parisian basement (entresol) from 1724–31, had also brought him into contact with exiled Jacobites Andrew Ramsay and Viscount Bolingbroke, who were fellow members.2 Bolingbroke returned to England in 1725, becoming a prominent figure in the so-called ‘Patriot’ opposition to Robert Walpole’s premiership. Montesquieu’s visit to London coincided with fierce debates between Walpole and Bolingbroke regarding recent French attempts to refortify Dunkirk when the Treaty of Utrecht had stated that the harbour must remain unfortified. This signalled the deterioration in relations between England and France that would culminate in the dissolution of the Anglo–French alliance in 1731.3 Montesquieu recorded his experiences as a traveller in his travel journals, or Voyages en Europe.4 These notebooks remained unpublished in Montesquieu’s lifetime, and have only recently been acknowledged as an integral part of the author’s work, worthy of investigation in their own right.5 Despite their fragmentary state, the Voyages are a remarkable illustration of their author’s varied interests, containing information on an eclectic assortment of topics from mining techniques to the intricacies of pan-European diplomacy. The Notes sur l’Angleterre – the section of Montesquieu’s travel journals that documents his time in England – give a brief but fascinating insight into Montesquieu’s impres– 43 –

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sions of English culture and politics. Previous studies of these notes have however tended to privilege anecdotal and biographical details, and are of limited use to those who seek to understand Montesquieu’s relations with England in the light of wider developments in the intellectual and cultural history of the Enlightenment.6 Recent scholarship has established a new critical approach to the Voyages as an example of enlightened travel literature, and this provides a useful starting point from which to reconsider the significance of Montesquieu’s record of his visit to England, and of his Grand Tour as a whole.7 This chapter will examine the influence of English Enlightenment thought on Montesquieu as traveller and travel writer. A close study of the way in which England and the English are represented in the Notes sur l’Angleterre and indeed throughout the Voyages further reveals an evolution in Montesquieu’s views on England between 1728 and 1731 that can be charted through his travel journals. During this same period, it is also possible to see the English responding to Montesquieu in the shape of imitation ‘Persian Letters’ produced in England in the late 1720s and early 1730s. As this shows, texts, people and ideas frequently travelled back and forth across national borders in the Enlightenment period. The dialogue between Montesquieu and England reveals the vibrancy of such exchanges, whilst also forming part of a wider narrative involving Anglo–French political and cultural relations at a time of increasing diplomatic tension.

Montesquieu’s Method of Travel When travelling through Europe, Montesquieu followed the prescribed itinerary known as the Grand Tour. This cultural practice was a primarily English institution.8 Whereas large numbers of English aristocrats and men of letters not only toured Europe but also chose to write about their experiences, Montesquieu is exceptional among French Enlightenment thinkers both in completing the Grand Tour and in leaving a written record of his journey. In the eighteenth century, the Tour formed an integral element of an English gentleman’s education. Cultural historians have suggested a link between the growth of English tourism and the popularization of Locke’s epistemological and educational theories. Continental journeys had been frequent enough before the 1700s, but in the early eighteenth century travel was codified and theorized in a particular way.9 Locke, in his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) had stressed the intimate connection between knowledge and experience. As a result, travel came to be seen as essential intellectual stimulation. As the English translator of Bellegarde’s Histoire universelle des voyages (1707) put it: ‘When a Man continually beholds the same Thing, he has always the same Ideas’.10 Bellegarde, like the authors of other contemporary travel accounts, reiterated the Lockean claim that there was more to be gained from personal observation of the world than from reading authorita-

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tive works. The most valuable lessons were those learnt outside the classroom. In Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693), Locke had emphasized the benefits of undertaking a journey such as the Grand Tour. The student would gain ‘in Wisdom and Prudence, by seeing Men, and conversing with People of Tempers, Customs and Ways of Living, different from one another, and especially from those of his … Neighbourhood’. Locke not only recommended travel as a means of education for young gentlemen, but also declared it a valuable exercise for the man ‘thoroughly acquainted with the Laws and Fashions, the natural and moral Advantages and Defects of his own Country’. Such a thinker would be able to ‘make Observations of what he finds in other Countries worthy his Notice, and that might be of Use to him after his Return’.11 Montesquieu’s Grand Tour manifestly corresponds to this latter Lockean paradigm of travel. His practise of travel was influenced by developments in English Enlightenment thought in other ways too. The Voyages notably demonstrate the author’s employment of the empirical method – pioneered in the field of the experimental sciences by members of the English Royal Society – in order to structure the observations made during his travels. The methods, experiments and discoveries of the Society’s members were reported in its Philosophical Transactions. The summaries of these Transactions that subsequently appeared in Huguenot periodicals such as the Bibliothèque angloise doubtless contributed to Montesquieu’s familiarity with English empirical methods. He also owned a number of French and Latin editions of works by Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle.12 His commitment to carrying out detailed empirical experiments and systematically recording his findings is documented in the collection of scientific treatises he produced for the Académie de Bordeaux from 1717 onwards.13 It was doubtless in recognition of these activities that, as he proudly records in his correspondence, Montesquieu was granted membership of the Royal Society during his stay in London.14 Whilst the Royal Society set the standard for academies across Europe, David Zaret argues that its influence was not limited to the scientific field. He sees the Society as playing an important role in fostering the practice of rational, independent debate in Enlightenment England.15 The notion that open communication between equals could lead to the advance of reason was born in the laboratory, but soon extended to a range of intellectual domains. Thinkers such as Locke and Shaftesbury, who had close links with the Royal Society, applied models of critical, scientific thought to all their philosophical discussions. As Margaret Jacob has commented, the realm of experimental science provided a powerful model that came to be emulated in other areas of public life.16 In his Essai d’observations sur l’histoire naturelle, presented to the Académie de Bordeaux in 1721, Montesquieu stresses the resemblances between the scientific world and the public sphere. Both arenas function along democratic lines,

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with participants upholding the right of the layman to question received authorities, providing his argument is rational. Significantly, Montesquieu also likens the scientist to the traveller, claiming: It does not take much intelligence to go and see the pyramids, the pantheon or the coliseum; it does not take much more to see a dust mite under a microscope … and that is what makes Physics so admirable: great geniuses … mediocre minds; all have their role to play. A scientist unable to devise theories like Mr Newton could nevertheless make an observation that would oblige that great philosopher to change his ideas.17

Montesquieu here defends the work of the amateur scientist whose findings, far from being invalidated by his lack of expertise, must be taken into account by the most eminent practitioners if their theories are to have universal applicability. For Montesquieu, the beauty of the Baconian approach to natural philosophy lay in its emphasis on collaborative observation rather than on a priori systems.18 This gave every participant in scientific pursuits some hope of making a worthwhile contribution. It is on this basis that, in the Discours sur les motifs qui doivent nous encourager aux sciences (1725), Montesquieu declares nothing to have been more fundamental to the advancement of modern science than the establishment of the empirical method: We should be encouraged to devote ourselves to science because our hopes of success are well-founded. This century’s scientific discoveries are remarkable; not so much for the things that have been discovered, but for the methods that have been used to discover them. They are not a stone added to the edifice that is science, but the tools and machines without which the edifice cannot be built.19

Given Montesquieu’s views on the similarities between travel and scientific investigation and his praise for the methodology of English empiricists, it is perhaps unsurprising to find that the observations made during his travels are organized according to English empirical principles. In the most well-known passage of the Voyages, Montesquieu reflects on the method that he uses to orientate himself when travelling: ‘When I arrive in a town, I always ascend the highest steeple or tower, and look down on the whole layout of the town, before exploring its different parts; and, on leaving, I do the same again in order to take stock of my ideas’.20 Jean Starobinski has compared Montesquieu’s initial desire to take a detached panoramic overview of his surroundings, with the author’s overall outlook as a political theorist.21 Other specific studies of the Voyages have distinguished between the actions of Montesquieu as philosophe, objectively surveying the town in order to ‘take stock of [his] ideas’ and Montesquieu as tourist or sightseer, busily ‘exploring its different parts’.22 However, these distinctions to some extent diminish the logic of what Montesquieu articulates as a coherent system. In fact, all three elements of Montesquieu’s tripartite method are integral

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to the author’s application of the English empirical method to his experience of travel. In accordance with Lockean epistemology the ‘ideas’ which Montesquieu ultimately brings into a coherent whole are clearly the product of his observations on the ground. Indeed, the way in which Montesquieu structures his experiences as a traveller corresponds to Locke’s experimental method as laid out in the first book of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This method is explained particularly clearly by Pierre Coste in his translation of Locke’s Essay, which Montesquieu owned. As Coste notes, after first giving a general overview of his subject the author must explore it thoroughly ‘by examining step by step, in a clear, historical manner’ all matters to be investigated. In the same way Montesquieu first surveys his surroundings before descending from his vantage point to explore literally ‘step by step’ the sights of a new town, he then revisits his initial standpoint in order to review his findings and ‘take stock’ of his ideas. Similarly, Locke also concludes his investigation by organizing his ideas in order to ‘establish the extent of the certainty of our knowledge’.23 Locke’s use of the adjective ‘historical’ in explaining his method (the term is also used in the English original) refers to the Royal Society’s practice of writing up discoveries and experiments in the form of ‘histories’. These accounts have been described by Michel Baridon as ‘an accumulation of laboriously noted details, of observations set down in chronological order, of fastidious enumerations’.24 The resemblance between this description and the content of Montesquieu’s Voyages is striking. Take for example the author’s ‘history’ of the observations made during his first few days in Venice: I arrived in Venice on 16th August. On the canal in the Giudecca quarter there were 8 sailing ships. Besides these there are 6 galleons, of which 4 are still at sea … I went on 20th August to visit the factories where glass and mirrors are manufactured … Of great importance in the manufacture of mirrors is the quality of the clay used to make the pots in which the raw materials are stored. That used in Venice come from Vicenza, and I took a sample of it … it is labelled no.1. It is then mixed with an equal quantity of crushed pieces of used pots: again, I have a sample, labelled no.2 … Venetian women used to be live like prisoners. The masquerade delivered them from their subjection.25

Such passages make the Voyages appear an esoteric, inaccessible text, and often escape critical notice. However, when the impact of English empiricism on Montesquieu as traveller and travel writer is taken into account, the significance of these lines – which are representative of a large part of the Voyages – becomes clear. Here we see Montesquieu recording information in a detailed, chronological manner; even collecting and classifying scientific specimens, the souvenirs of the enlightened tourist. The author also demonstrates his curious interest in all aspects of the world around him. Towards the end of the passage the viewpoint

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of the amateur scientist gives way to that of the social scientist, but the observational precision that is the dominant feature of this account is maintained throughout. Baridon comments that the model for this form of enlightened travel writing is to be found in Robert Boyle’s instructions to those writing the ‘natural history’ of a newly-explored country.26 Boyle recommends the gathering of data relating to climate, geography, minerals, industry, the inhabitants’ customs and traditions and so on. This information forms the foundation on which ‘to superstruct, in time, a Solid and Useful Philosophy upon’.27 In the Voyages, it is possible to trace a similar progression from observation to philosophical theory. On arrival in a town Montesquieu often records his first impressions, seemingly based on his initial panoramic view of his surroundings: ‘At first glance Parma appears very agreeable. The streets here are … wide, vast, long; the churches are beautiful; the fortifications are well maintained’.28 The empirical philosopher then comes to the fore as Montesquieu conducts a detailed and exhaustive exploration of each town, recording information relating to its history, geography, culture and art, often with a particular focus on political and social customs and institutions. In these sections, the juxtaposition of discrete data on a variety of subjects creates an impression of incoherence and fragmentation. However, the aim is to maximize the communication of lived experience, on which all empirical knowledge is based. This accounts for one of the most distinctive characteristics of the text: Montesquieu’s use of direct speech, sometimes untranslated, to capture a conversation or encounter.29 As Conroy suggests, the Voyages resemble an eighteenth-century cabinet de curiosités in which experiences are documented without any appearance of logical order.30 Nevertheless, in accordance with Boyle’s method of writing a ‘natural history’ Montesquieu is able to reach ‘solid’ and ‘useful’ conclusions on the basis of these disparate observations. His final evaluation of a town or city – metaphorically represented by his farewell visit to the vantage point from which he began his explorations – often differs markedly from his initial impression. His first positive judgement on Venice, ‘at first glance Venice seems charming, and on one’s first day in Venice there is no other town where one would rather be’ is revised towards the end of his visit once he has observed in detail the moral and political corruption of Venetian senators and citizens: ‘My eyes are highly satisfied with Venice; my heart and mind are most dissatisfied. I cannot like a town where nothing obliges people to be either amiable or virtuous’.31 Importantly, Montesquieu’s observations of the towns and cities of Europe also provide him with the evidence on which to base general rules relating to different aspects of human society. This elaboration of universal principles based on particular observed experiences is the essence of empiricism. Daniel Carey has shown that the extension of Boyle’s ‘historical’ method to include ‘the natural history of man’ was a distinctively Lockean branch of empirical thought. Travel

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played an important part in Locke’s study of human behaviour, as he drew on contemporary travellers’ accounts to supply the examples needed to illustrate his theories.32 During his own travels Montesquieu devised principles concerning the manners and customs of different sections of society, different nations, and humankind as whole. He observes in Italy that ‘I have remarked in the course of my travels that the poorer the common people are, the more likely they are to be cunning and crooked’. At the other end of the social spectrum, the conduct of debauched Venetian aristocrats leads him to reflect more generally on the relationship between liberty and morality: ‘Constraint is a necessary thing: men are like springs, which become stronger when they are compressed’.33 Montesquieu paid particular attention to differences in national character and sought rational explanations to account for these.34 Having commented on the laxity of Italian religious orders compared to those in France he concludes: Things are more relaxed in Italy, because the Italian takes life easier than the Frenchman, and is of a softer disposition. In the same way, the German is tougher than the Frenchman. It seems to me, therefore, that the toughest human specimens are to be found in the northern regions, whereas in warm southern countries the human body is softened and the spirit is more relaxed.35

Montesquieu is here beginning to sketch out the theory of climates later famously expounded in L’Esprit des lois where he provides a detailed physiological explanation for the political, social and cultural differences between the nations of northern and southern Europe. To back up his claims he refers specifically to observations made on his travels, notably in England and Italy.36 Christopher Jones cites both L’Esprit des lois and the Voyages to corroborate his argument that the eighteenth century was a time when increased concern about national identity coincided with scientific questioning of received wisdom. This meant that travellers were preoccupied with the empirical verification of traditional national stereotypes.37 Montesquieu clearly shares this preoccupation. He not only devises his own theories to account for national variation, but also demonstrates a reluctance to accept conventional judgements on other nations unless these are backed up by the evidence of his own eyes. This proves to be the case during his visit to Holland: ‘If I had believed everything I had been told about the Dutch I would have taken them for greedy, dishonest swindlers. In fact, this is exactly what they are’.38 Despite the prejudice detectable in this final observation Montesquieu generally seeks to maintain a position of scientific objectivity in relation to the nations that he observes, and refrains from passing moral judgement. Locke in his Essay had cited the multiplicity of human customs and opinions as proof that the only propositions on which men could universally agree were of the mathematical rather than the moral order.39 This moral relativism meant that Locke’s work was

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permeated with a radical scepticism as to the commensurability of cultures.40 In the Voyages Montesquieu’s experience of cultural diversity also leads him to acknowledge the difficulties involved in reaching a general moral consensus on matters of human behaviour: It seems to me that the morals and customs of one nation … should not be judged to be better or worse than those of another. Indeed, by what standard could such a judgement be made? There is no common denominator; save the fact that each nation considers its own customs to be the rule by which all others should be judged.41

Yet as this statement demonstrates, whilst embracing cultural relativism Montesquieu does not evince Locke’s fundamental distrust of the universal concept of human nature. He confidently asserts that all cultures and societies have something in common, even if it is only a tendency to chauvinistic superiority. This is typical of the reflection on diversity conducted in the wake of Locke’s work by Enlightenment philosophers such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. In the early eighteenth century, Locke’s sceptical delight in tracing the seemingly infinite variations in human behaviour gave way to the search for unifying concepts that would belie human diversity. For Shaftesbury, such an example of commonality could be found in man’s natural instinct for sociable interaction.42 Just as this element of Shaftesbury’s thought was explored and upheld in the Lettres persanes, Montesquieu in the Voyages resists Lockean scepticism and concedes that human nature has some normative universal value; although that appears to reside in intolerance rather than benevolence. Nevertheless, in his empirical approach to conceptualizing and recording his experiences as a traveller, in his application of the techniques of the experimental sciences to the analysis of human society, and in his doubts as to the existence of a cultural consensus, Montesquieu clearly follows in Locke’s footsteps.

The Addisonian Traveller Locke’s broadening of the empirical method to include discussion of human manners and customs was not only crucial to the development of Enlightenment thought, but also had a particular influence on the eighteenth-century experience of travel. Travel accounts written in this period show that those who set out to explore unfamiliar lands and cultures frequently attempted to apply the rational procedures of scientific investigation to the political and social phenomena they encountered. An important but often overlooked example of this form of enlightened travel writing was produced by Joseph Addison. In the decade before he began work on the Spectator Addison toured southern Europe, publishing an account of his travels, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), on his return. In his Remarks Addison employed the same observational techniques

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that he later perfected in his Spectator essays. These were developed in response to the new perspectives on man and society opened up by Locke’s philosophy. Addison’s Spectator essays were so influential that scholars now speak of an ‘Addisonian tradition’ of social commentary characterized by ‘specific and systematic, objective and dispassionate’ reporting and a reliance on sensory data.43 The Remarks inaugurated this ‘Addisonian tradition’ , yet although this text predates the Spectator it only came to the attention of French audiences when a belated translation appeared in 1722 as a supplement to a new edition of Maximilien Misson’s Nouveau voyage d’Italie, a guide particularly popular with French travellers.44 Montesquieu however procured a copy of the original English edition, on which he made extensive reading notes.45 The date of these notes is uncertain, but Montesquieu alludes to Addison’s work in his Voyages, concluding a description of a Florentine statue with the words ‘Addison mentions this’.46 This suggests that his reading of Addison’s text predates his own journey. Just as Addison’s Spectator essays influenced Montesquieu in writing the Lettres persanes, a comparison of the Voyages with the Remarks provides illuminating parallels. Addison, like Locke, believed in using the empirical method to interrogate received opinions. He set out for Italy with the intention of learning more about the world of the ancient poets, a subject previously investigated only by scholars who privileged theory over observation: ‘The Antiquaries have been guilty of the same Fault as the Systeme Writers, that are for cramping their Subjects into as narrow a Space as they can, and for reducing the whole Extent of a Science to a few general Maxims’.47 In contrast Addison in his Remarks demonstrates a willingness to embrace the wide diversity of ancient manners and customs of which he found the vestiges during his travels. Just like Montesquieu’s Voyages, the Remarks contain observations on a variety of subjects ranging from Roman statuary to the geography of modern Italy. Although Addison’s work presumably underwent revision preparatory to publication, the Remarks are very much dedicated to the recording of first-hand experiences. Addison’s principal interest was in Italian antiquities yet he also shows himself, like Montesquieu, to be a keen amateur scientist. Among other instances both the Remarks and the Voyages include an account of their authors’ visits to Vesuvius, with notes on the properties of lava and mechanics of volcanic eruptions. Elsewhere both writers record having conducted experiments into the physics of reverberation and sound production.48 Addison’s work also includes details of the economic and political conditions in the places visited by the author. This establishes the unique significance of the Remarks, as opposed to other contemporary accounts of the Grand Tour, as a precursor to Montesquieu’s Voyages. A comparison of Addison’s work with a text such as Misson’s Nouveau Voyage d’Italie highlights the striking absence of socio-political comment from the popular French text. In the preface to the

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1702 edition of his work Misson had declared that observations on matters of state policy were beyond the remit of the travel writer and should be left to ‘those who have the time and the means to inform themselves of state secrets; Ambassadors, for example’.49 In England the emergence of the public sphere in the years following the Glorious Revolution had created an atmosphere of political accountability whereby members of the public, and particularly journalists such as Addison, had the right to enquire into and voice opinions on state business.50 Addison also exercised this right when travelling abroad. Unlike Misson he clearly felt entitled to evaluate the functioning of the different Italian polities he had the occasion to observe. His account of his visit to Genoa, for example, contains a detailed description of the workings of the Senate and the banking system.51 Addison’s comments on the Genoese administration are reproduced in Montesquieu’s reading notes on the Remarks.52 These notes are brief and selective, and draw attention to the elements of Addison’s investigations that particularly excited Montesquieu’s interest. He systematically records Addison’s thoughts concerning the geography and political economy of modern Italy, but ignores the lengthy discussions of antiquities and frequent quotations from the Latin poets. The notes thus highlight the aspects of enlightened English travel writing, as epitomized by the Remarks, that Montesquieu considered worthy of imitation. In accordance with the values of the English public sphere Montesquieu clearly feels that any rational commentator has the right to express opinions on what French authors such as Misson considered to be strictly matters of state. His notes from Addison’s work indeed suggest a preoccupation with political secrecy and transparency under differing regimes. Addison’s disparaging comparison of the Venetian Senate’s secretive meetings with the open proceedings of the House of Commons is copied down in full.53 Subsequently, in his own Voyages, Montesquieu emulates Addison in submitting every aspect of contemporary European politics and society to uninhibited scrutiny. The intellectual freedom that characterizes the Voyages is not limited to the discussion of socio-political issues. Didier Masseau has shown that the emergence of the public sphere allowed intellectuals to gain unrestricted access to cultural domains that had traditionally been closed to laymen. During the eighteenth century the fine arts in particular became the province of the interested amateur and non-experts were legitimately able to comment on painting and sculpture for the first time.54 A surprising number of passages in the Voyages are dedicated to the discussion of art and architecture, to the extent that Montesquieu’s travel journals furnished him with a stock of aesthetic experiences on which he later drew when composing his Essai sur le goût (c. 1753–5). Throughout the Voyages, whether he is analysing political or artistic matters Montesquieu displays the same remarkable confidence in the validity of his own opinions. This is characteristic of discussions of art and politics in the public sphere where

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participants recognized no authority higher than the judgement of the rational layman.55 Having seemingly absorbed this prerogative from the work of English authors such as Addison and Locke, Montesquieu in the Voyages considers himself qualified to comment on any topic without previous consultation with experts. Jean Ehrard’s detailed analysis of the artistic element of the Voyages interestingly pinpoints the influence of modern scientific thought on Montesquieu’s aesthetic judgements. These are dominated by a demand that the laws of physics be respected.56 Montesquieu notably admires a carved crucifix for its anatomical accuracy, and criticizes ceiling painting on the grounds that ‘it is an exceedingly stupid thing to have depicted houses floating on the ceiling’.57 Francis Haskell also notes that Montesquieu shares with Addison a tendency to consider the work of art as a scientific specimen on the basis of which socio-political deductions could be made.58 Addison’s comments on antique statuary in the Remarks serve as evidence to support the author’s conclusions regarding ancient manners and customs; whilst Montesquieu uniquely interprets the busts of Roman Emperors in the Uffizi as demonstrating through their declining artistry the parallel decline and fall of Rome, a subject which he would explore in depth in his Considérations sur les … Romains (1734).59 In the Voyages the same tone of scientific neutrality characterizes the author’s observations of both natural and social phenomena. In this too Montesquieu emulates Addison, who surveyed society in the guise of Mr Spectator and believed that a dispassionate perspective was necessary to ensure the accuracy of his social commentary: ‘There are some Opinions in which a Man should stand Neuter … Such a hovering Faith as this, which refuses to settle upon any Determination, is absolutely necessary to a Mind that is careful to avoid Errors and Prepossessions’.60 That Montesquieu strives to maintain this attitude in the Voyages is demonstrated by his dismissal of those travellers who criticize foreign customs rather than remaining impartial: ‘For my part, I remarked that I would be very angry if all men were identical to me … one travels in order to experience different manners and customs, not in order to criticize them’. Montesquieu voices his personal opinions in the Voyages with confidence rather than dogmatism. Wherever possible he backs up his observations with objective proofs that speak for themselves. For instance, he draws statistical tables of collected data to illustrate his conclusions regarding variations in population or fiscal revenue.61 Both in his approach to travel and the way he wrote about his experiences, Montesquieu was undoubtedly heavily influenced by developments in English Enlightenment thought and writing. Describing his method of travel as one which subordinates ideas to experience – it is necessary to spend time ‘exploring’ in order subsequently to ‘take stock of [one’s] ideas’ – Montesquieu makes clear his debt to the methodology of English empiricism. Having adopted the techniques of the Royal Society when previously conducting scientific experi-

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ments for the Académie de Bordeaux, Montesquieu followed Locke, Addison and others in applying the empirical method to the social as well as the scientific domain. The rational arguments of English scientists helped stimulate the free exchange of facts and opinions within the English public sphere, founding a tradition which upheld the right of the thinking individual to question received authorities on any subject. The Voyages, in their eclecticism and amateurism, clearly build on this tradition.

Locating Liberty Within the Addisonian tradition of dispassionate enquiry the author’s stated objectivity does not prevent his observations being orientated by a particular political or ideological mission. In ideological terms the Remarks, like the Spectator, are firmly anchored in the English Whig tradition. In a manner typical of many Augustan travel writers, Addison when journeying through Italy continually emphasizes the ‘Poverty and Misery’ of the Italian population. This he links to the limited liberties and opportunities for personal enterprise that are granted them by the rulers of Italy’s different states.62 The Remarks are implicitly intended to disseminate the values underpinning the English political system and to highlight the wealth and industry resulting from constitutional reform.63 Regardless of the fact that his ostensible aim is to investigate the remains of ancient Roman civilization, Addison is preoccupied as much with denouncing the corruption and decadence of eighteenth-century Italians as with investigating the customs and traditions of their illustrious forebears. In contrast, Montesquieu’s Voyages are more genuinely impartial. Like the Remarks the greater part of the text deals with the author’s experiences in Italy, which was the primary destination for all Grand Tourists. However, whereas Addison depicts modern Italy in such a way as to deplore nostalgically the decay of ancient virtues, Montesquieu appears intrigued by processes of historical change and seeks to understand their causes. During his time in Rome for instance, Montesquieu analyses with scientific precision the disparities between the city’s ancient and modern incarnations. Differences in manners, morals and climate are objectively cited to account for the apparent degradation of the modern inhabitants of Rome. These findings were later to be formulated still more systematically in the Réflexions sur la sobriété des habitans de Rome comparée à l’intempérance des anciens Romains (1732), a scientific paper Montesquieu presented to the Académie de Bordeaux on his return to France. In the Réflexions, Montesquieu emphasizes above all the powerful transforming influence of the Catholic Church on Roman society following the collapse of the Empire.64 To a great extent Addison’s negative stance towards modern Italy is determined by his attitude to Roman Catholicism. Reporting in the Remarks that

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the ‘Desolation’ of the country ‘appears no where greater than in the Pope’s territories’, Addison presents himself not only as a champion of political liberty, but also of the Protestant faith.65 This attachment to Protestantism was of course a singularly important element of English self-definition and identity formation in the eighteenth century. Understandably Montesquieu as a French Catholic reacts very differently to similar situations. He displays no particular reverence for papal authority, and observes that the Pope would do well to sell off some of his store of precious stones in order to pay his debts. Yet he does feel a strong allegiance – albeit more aesthetic than spiritual – to Italian Catholicism: ‘I feel that I am more attached to my religion since I have seen the wonders of Rome and the great works of religious art that hang in the churches there’.66 Addison in his account continually draws attention to the many ‘Ceremonies and Superstitions’ that epitomize the Catholic Church. He witnesses the miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius in Naples and describes the event as ‘so far from being a real Miracle, that I look upon it as one of the most Bungling Tricks that I ever saw’. Confronted by the same scenes on his own visit to the city, Montesquieu typically strives to find a logical, scientific explanation for the Italians’ behaviour: I do not think that the miracle of Saint Januarius is the work of a trickster … the clergy is of good faith; it is in fact a thermometer … The priest always clasps the reliquary in two hands, one at each end, which heats it up … Besides, the fact that the congregation continually kiss it must also cause the temperature to rise … That which has a physical cause has simply come to be regarded as an example of the saint’s holiness.67

Italy has a special status in the Voyages as it represents for Montesquieu the possibility of a close relationship with Europe’s past. Like many travellers to Italy he records sensations of timelessness and continuity, noting in Rome, ‘This is the eternal city. “Vixit in Urbe æterna”’ and in Florence, ‘as I left the house carrying my little lantern and umbrella, I thought: now I know what members of the ancient Medici clan felt like when they paid visits to their neighbours’.68 Montesquieu’s experiences as what David Lowenthal would call a ‘time tourist’ reveal much about the author’s mental map of Europe.69 It appears that travelling south or east represents a move away from modernity. Montesquieu significantly describes his detour to Hungary – an unusual destination for a Grand Tourist – as a step back into the feudal Middle Ages: ‘I wanted to see Hungary because all the states of Europe were once like what Hungary is at present, and I wanted to see how our forefathers lived’.70 However, whilst Montesquieu clearly enjoys reliving the past in Italy he finds the present state of the nation’s political and social institutions highly unsatisfactory. The Italians’ reluctance to embrace modernity leaves them at a disadvantage in eighteenth-century Europe. They have little or no manufacturing industry,

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neglect commercial opportunities, and reject suggestions for reform ‘because their ancestors did not do things like that’.71 Given the Voyages’ unrevised state, the text cannot be said to carry a clear social or political message.72 Yet despite its fragmented appearance a narrative does nevertheless emerge which allows us to chart an evolution in Montesquieu’s political views over the course of his travels. Arriving in Venice via Austria, Montesquieu’s political disillusionment with Italy is immediate. The Venetian Republic has degraded the formidable ancient Roman partnership between Senate and people. Montesquieu finds ‘the people of Venice very downtrodden’, while the members of the aristocracy ‘have taken it upon themselves to live a life of idleness and leisure’. The upper classes have no sense of political or social responsibility and have abused the freedom normally enjoyed by the citizens of a republic: ‘In Venice one can enjoy a type of freedom that most respectable people would not wish to have: one can go by daylight to see a courtesan; it is even acceptable to marry one’. Finally Montesquieu concludes that ‘the two great enemies of this republic are fear and greed’.73 Not only is political liberty compromised in Italy, but there is little free communication or even conversation within Italian society. Montesquieu remarks on ‘the solitary state of the Venetians, who never communicate with each other’ and on a visit to another republic, Genoa, he condemns the citizens’ lack of civility: ‘The Genoese are entirely unsociable … and utterly unpolished in their dealings with one another … they are like rough-cut stones which cannot be smoothed’.74 The choice of metaphor recalls Shaftesbury’s definition of politeness in his Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, where sociability is defined as a process whereby we ‘polish one another and rub off our corners and rough sides’.75 It will be remembered however that Shaftesbury saw sociability as a characteristic inhering only to the public sphere, an arena of uncensored, rational debate free from courtly influence. Montesquieu’s observations of Italian society provide little evidence for the existence of such an arena. Even the citizens of republican governments do not associate freely and in monarchic states such as Sardinia a courtly culture reminiscent of Versailles under Louis XIV still holds sway: ‘There is nothing more stilted and awkward than this court. Not for anything would I be a subject of these petty princes! They know everything you do; they always have their eye on you’. In England private citizens who desired to see the state run along lines conducive to the public good were able to voice their views collectively. This meant that every citizen had a stake in the welfare of the body politic. By contrast, Montesquieu found small proof of such public vigilance in Rome: ‘Corruption has never before been seen to reign so openly. On all sides despicable men bid for public office. The people do not appear to worry at all about the future of their country’. Unprompted by Whig ideology, Montesquieu eventually comes to Addison’s conclusion that the present-day Romans bear little resemblance to their virtuous forebears: ‘The grandeur of the Roman

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people, which Livy talks about so much, is terribly degraded … One might say the S.P.Q.R. now stands for: Sanno puttare queste Romane [the Romans know how to prostitute themselves]’.76 Montesquieu’s descriptions of Italian decline in the Voyages are thrown into sharp relief by the emergence of an alternative cultural model. In marked contrast to Italy, one European nation in particular is not only thriving but continually furthering its interests. Visiting Genoa and Livorno Montesquieu observes that the traditional French dominance of the Italian export market is being challenged: ‘The English nation is the main trader here … English commerce is increasing, whilst French trade is drying up’. The rise of this new commercial power also threatens Italy’s status as a centre of artistic excellence, as Italian cultural artefacts have become commodities to be sold on the English market: ‘Foreigners, particularly the English, have taken everything worth taking from Padua, and from the rest of Italy as well. If it weren’t for the churches, there would be practically no paintings left; they would all have been sold. The rich nation acquires everything’.77 Previously, European intellectuals had considered the cradle of Latinity their natural home. Montaigne’s Journal de Voyage (1580– 1), for instance, records his pleasure on being granted Roman citizenship during his time in Italy.78 In the age of Enlightenment however, French thinkers had to contemplate making new intellectual alliances. Montesquieu reveals in the Voyages that he took English lessons while in Rome.79 If southern nations like Hungary and Italy represent Europe’s past in the Voyages, it gradually becomes clear that the future of the continent lies to the north. Following Montesquieu’s progressive disenchantment with Italy’s sociopolitical situation his subsequent journey through Austria, Germany, Holland and England becomes a search for political and intellectual liberty, the essential qualities of the successful modern state. Moving northwards Montesquieu admires the peaceful coexistence of Protestants and Catholics in the German city-states, and observes an increased freedom and openness in political life that contrasts with the situation in Italy. Those German rulers who do hold court ‘live alongside their subjects as they would their friends’. Confronted with Germanic governments that differ substantially from the absolutist regime established in his native France Montesquieu reflects that the ‘Barbarians’ who originally inhabited northern Europe ‘did not think of establishing despotic governments: they could not even conceive of such a thing’. Instead ‘everything was decided in the general council of the nation’. It appears however that the same ‘barbarianism’ that has preserved the German states from the imposition of absolutism has also prevented the development of any intellectual tradition. When travelling through Bavaria Montesquieu declares the Germans to be a ‘free people’ yet also qualifies them as ‘insolent’ and ‘stupid’. Prussian families are even discouraged from sending their children to school, which for Montesquieu represents

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a state of ‘appalling barbarianism’.80 Convinced of the Germans’ intellectual and cultural philistinism Montesquieu presents the political and religious liberties enjoyed by the population as primitive tribal privileges rather than the product of modern enlightened thinking. Importantly, the only German state of which Montesquieu appears to approve is Hanover. Here he is reunited with Lord Waldegrave, introduced to Secretary of State Viscount Townshend and dines with the Elector – the recently crowned George II of England who in 1729 had returned to Hanover to ensure the state’s security against the threat of Prussian attack. Montesquieu finds George II ‘exceedingly polite’ and a great conversationalist. He commends the King on his management of the Hanoverian exchequer and on his recent diplomatic triumph over the ‘barbarian’ Prussians. In contrast to the other German states Montesquieu visits, Hanover appears to be a thriving community watched over by a vigilant and enlightened ruler. Yet opportunities for intellectual and cultural stimulation are lacking. To find them one must follow George II ‘who quickly bored of Hanover and returned to England’.81 Montesquieu himself leaves Hanover with Waldegrave to travel to Holland. The contrast with Germany could not be more marked. In Holland the benefits of modernity and technical advancement are evident. Amsterdam in particular appears in the Voyages as a symbol of the positive effects of trade and industry. Commercial wealth has made the town ‘one of the most beautiful cities in the world’ and at its centre is the Exchange: ‘The Exchange is a wonderful spectacle. I think there must be at least eight or ten thousand people there. It is crammed so full that one can hardly move’. Amsterdam appears modern and progressive in contrast to Montesquieu’s previous destinations. In Rome he had been astonished by the apparent indolence of the Italians whereas Amsterdam resembles an anthill where entrepreneurs ‘labour continuously’ to generate wealth.82 Before arriving in Holland, Montesquieu had reflected on the beneficial political effects of commerce and industry: ‘It seems to me that the inhabitants of France are more dependent on the state, because they are labourers, than the people of Holland and England, who are mainly artisans’. Yet in the case of the Dutch Republic the citizens’ desire for independence has caused popular government to degenerate into a form of mob rule. Dutch society is controlled by ‘the lower ranks of the population, who are the most insolent tyrants one could wish to meet’. Ultimately Montesquieu finds that the Dutch, like the Venetians, have allowed motives of personal gain to pervert a system of government initially designed to uphold the will of the people: ‘The Burghermeisters do not seem to care that they are driving the state to the brink of collapse, provided that they can rake in lucrative charges whilst they are in power … The Republic is sinking into corruption’.83 His search for a nation where legislation exists to guarantee

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the public interest and maintain individual liberties and where an enlightened intellectual could flourish is not yet over.

Liberty located During his time in Holland Montesquieu met Lord Chesterfield, then ambassador to The Hague, and when he arrived in England in October 1729 it was as a passenger on Chesterfield’s yacht. He was immediately introduced into high political and social circles, meeting the Royal Family and attending debates in parliament. Montesquieu’s record of his time in England, the Notes sur l’Angleterre, affords a unique insight into the English cultural context in the early 1730s. His interest in the realms of politics and international affairs means that the Notes also bear witness to the state of relations between England and France in the period leading up to the collapse of the Anglo–French alliance in 1731. Montesquieu’s initial assessment of the socio-political situation in England in the Notes is based on his previous experience of assessing the condition of other political regimes across Europe: ‘In London there is liberty and equality. Liberty in London is the liberty of respectable people, in which it differs from that of Venice, where one is free to live privately with wh***s and to marry them: equality in London is also the equality of respectable people, in which it is different from that of Holland, where the rabble run wild’.84 It is noticeable that Montesquieu chooses to compare the situation in England with that of two European republics, a form of government he would later define as one where sovereign power was conferred on representatives of the people.85 To evaluate the significance of the remarkable observations made by Montesquieu in his Notes sur l’Angleterre it is useful to compare the Notes with other French travel accounts of the period. Paul Langford has made a detailed study of the image of England and the English that emerges from such works. He sees the early eighteenth century as a time when the gradual dissemination of enlightened political values encouraged European visitors, particularly the French, to acknowledge the benefits of living under a constitutional monarchy. Frenchmen were obliged to revise their traditional view of Englishmen as ‘barbaric’ and uncultured.86 From the seventeenth to the eighteenth century the travel writing produced by French visitors to England underwent a distinct evolution. Louis Coulon’s Fidèle Conducteur pour le voyage d’Angleterre (1654) reveals how the events of the English Civil War and Interregnum had alienated French travellers. England might be geographically close to France but as Coulon informs his readers, the ideological distance separating the two nations is immense: ‘My dear reader, it is only seven leagues’ journey from France to England. You will not have a long way to travel if you want to visit this island, which … is a hellish place peopled by demons and parricides’. In Le Fidèle Conducteur the English are depicted as

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irrational and excessive, ‘a furious people’ characterized by ‘brutality’ and ‘superstition’.87 In the early 1720s Montesquieu used his Lettres persanes to present an alternative vision of England as a land where politics and society were run along rational and indeed enlightened principles. This signalled a shift in the way England was perceived in the francophone world. Following the appearance of the Lettres persanes French opinions of England were further altered by Paul Rapin de Thoyras’s seminal Histoire d’Angleterre (1723–5) and Béat de Muralt’s Lettres sur les Anglois et les François et sur les voyages (1725). In the early 1730s two works whose composition coincides with that of Montesquieu’s Notes sur l’Angleterre made a particular impact on French views of England. These were Voltaire’s groundbreaking Lettres philosophiques (1733–4) and the fifth volume of the abbé Prévost’s Mémoires d’un homme de qualité (1728–31), which included an account of the narrator’s time in England.88 Both authors chose to emphasize the religious pluralism and tolerance that set England apart from France. They also addressed the recent turbulent events in the nation’s history that had caused the English to be branded as savage revolutionaries. Voltaire points out the uniquely positive result of England’s wars and revolutions: ‘the English nation is the only one on earth which has successfully limited the power of Kings by resisting them’, whilst Prévost draws an uncomfortable comparison with events in France: ‘If domestic troubles and disastrous events are to be considered proof of a nation’s bad character, I ask whether there is any people on earth who might be seen as worse than the French?’89 Prévost and Voltaire clearly aim to challenge conventional French attitudes towards England and stimulate pro-English sympathies at a time of increased tension between the two nations. Montesquieu’s Notes offer a more impartial and therefore ambivalent view of England than that which emerges from Voltaire and Prévost’s polished, published accounts. Montesquieu’s impressions of England are far from being entirely positive and he emphasizes the corruption and greed that are seemingly endemic in English society and politics. Montesquieu for the most part is a disinterested observer of English life and the Notes do not betray any particular partisan sympathies. There is however no doubt that the concerns he expresses regarding corruption strongly echo the line taken by the opposition to Walpole under the leadership of Lord Bolingbroke. Shackleton claims that having met at the Parisian Club de l’Entresol Montesquieu and Bolingbroke renewed their acquaintance in London, though the Notes provide no evidence for this.90 Montesquieu does however refer to Bolingbroke’s paper the Craftsman (1726–52) in the Notes, mentioning its editors by name. The Craftsman was a provocative, anti-ministerial paper through which the opposition’s views were widely disseminated. Montesquieu remarks that editors Bolingbroke and William Pulteney had proved adept at evading the government’s attempts to prosecute them for libel or sedition. The Craftsman is thus presented as

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embodying a highly critical attitude to government policy. Montesquieu was clearly an avid reader of the Craftsman during his time in England. His Spicilège, a notebook of excerpts from the press and other sources, contains citations from several articles that appeared in the Craftsman in 1730–1.91 Isaac Kramnick’s study of Bolingbroke’s political campaigns shows that in the late 1720s and early 1730s the opposition focused on attacking the new economic order established by the Whig government. From his opponents’ point of view, Walpole’s premiership symbolized the domination of the monied interest in society and politics. Montesquieu’s reading of Bolingbroke’s journal conceivably influenced his opinions regarding English society; their views on the theme of financial corruption are certainly voiced in strikingly similar terms. In one article in the Craftsman Bolingbroke deplored the fact that money had become ‘a more lasting tie than honour’ and he later complained that all political decisions now appeared to be dictated by ‘the spirit of private interest’ rather than more selfless motives such as a love of country.92 In his Notes Montesquieu too is critical of the overriding concern with commercial profit that he also sees as pervading English society: ‘Money is greatly esteemed here; honour and virtue rather less so’. He also comments that financial gain appears to have replaced the advancement of liberty as the driving force behind England’s achievements: ‘It seems to me that many extraordinary things are done here in England, but they are all done for money’. Montesquieu’s assertion that ‘corruption has infected all sections of society’ could equally have been attributed to Bolingbroke.93 Bolingbroke himself frequently voiced the opinion that a corrupt and mercenary society had produced an equally corrupt parliament. In Bolingbroke’s view, the significant number of members in receipt of royal pensions increased the power of the executive and unbalanced the constitution. To resolve the issue of corruption parliament should be made financially independent of the Crown and should be granted absolute legislative sovereignty. As First Minister, and a Court Whig, Walpole came in for Bolingbroke’s harshest criticism. His attacks were particularly vociferous during the debates on the Bribery in Elections Act of 1729, a measure to limit electoral fraud that is mentioned specifically by Montesquieu in the Notes. Although this Act was passed in the parliamentary session preceding his visit, Montesquieu’s allusion to it is a measure of its importance in his eyes. The Notes record accurately that a stand-off between Lords and Commons had ironically led to the imposition of stricter penalties for bribery than either House had intended. Montesquieu qualifies the Bill as ‘miraculous’ for having been passed seemingly against the will of all parties and concludes that ‘the most corrupt of parliaments is the one which has done most to ensure public liberty’. In the Notes Montesquieu also strongly condemns the use of Crown patronage to stock the Commons with placemen, an example of Court Whig corruption frequently criticized by Bolingbroke. However, although Montesquieu’s

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unfavourable impression of parliamentary integrity has much in common with Bolingbroke’s political writings in the Craftsman, he did not unreservedly support the opposition’s concerns. Where Crown patronage is concerned, he later remarks in the Notes that the executive must have some means by which to check absolute parliamentary sovereignty, which could otherwise become ‘unlimited’ and ‘dangerous’. His final conclusion is that: ‘A good Englishman must attempt to defend his liberty from the encroachments of the Crown on the one hand and parliament on the other’.94 During his time in London Montesquieu witnessed several fierce debates in the House of Commons, including that of January 1730 on the size of Britain’s standing army, which he records in the Notes. This was a recurring issue but the particular debate transcribed by Montesquieu was notable for a provocative speech by the Tory and Jacobite sympathizer William Shippen, who declared that only ‘tyrants’ and ‘usurpers’ needed significant numbers of troops to maintain their power. Montesquieu expresses astonishment that any politician should openly criticize Hanoverian policy in such terms. The Notes reveal that Montesquieu does not consider the English regime to be in any way tyrannical. On the contrary, he observes during his time in England that the nature of the country’s constitution offers its citizens unique protection from those in authority: England is at present the freest country in the world … I say free, because the Prince does not have the power to wrong anyone at all, for the reason that his power is controlled and restricted by statute … Even if an Englishman were to have as many enemies as he has hairs on his head, he could still live in perfect security.95

Fundamental to this particularly English brand of liberty is the freedom of the press. French writers frequently featured the press in their accounts of England, often emphasizing the fact that English journalists were free to condemn the government with impunity. This served to represent and illustrate the liberty and equality of the English public sphere, whilst also drawing attention to the absence in French public life of a similarly powerful and vocal media culture. Prévost, who had a personal interest in journalism, notes in his Mémoires that in England: ‘Affairs of government concern the common people as much as statesmen. Everyone has the right to talk about them freely. Politicians are condemned, approved, criticized, torn to shreds … in conversation and on paper, and the authorities do not dare to object. The King himself is not above criticism’.96 Montesquieu’s observations of English life show that he considered the freedom of the press to be a key element of England’s exceptional status. Writing to a friend soon after his arrival in London the author proclaims that England stands out in comparison to the other nations he has visited: ‘I am here in a country which hardly bears any resemblance to the rest of Europe … As you know, all

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sorts of the most free and indiscreet papers are in circulation here every day’. Like Prévost, Montesquieu notes that no figure of authority in England is considered beyond the reach of the satirist or political commentator: ‘The King levies a duty on all papers in circulation … so that he makes a profit from being continually insulted’. Montesquieu also remarks on the importance of the press in ensuring equality of access to information, thereby promoting popular involvement in politics: ‘A roofer had a gazette delivered to him on the roof so that he could read it’.97 Craig Calhoun comments that the only criterion for participation in the early modern public sphere was the ability to read or write. Every literate member of the population was able to participate in the political debates conducted in the press and ‘coffee-house politicians’ could potentially address a still wider audience.98 The resultant politicization of the general population, witnessed by Montesquieu in England, was ‘antithetical to the absolutist assumption that politics were an arcane realm whose “secrets” should be accessible to no one beyond sovereigns and their ministers’.99 This assumption, which underpinned the French ancien régime, is challenged throughout the Voyages by Montesquieu’s free, confident discussion of matters of state. His notebooks were not intended for immediate publication however, and in the Notes sur l’Angleterre the public discussion of state affairs is shown to be an English prerogative. Importantly, in his Notes Montesquieu observes that French impressions of England have regularly been distorted by a misunderstanding of the nature of the English press. He refers to Charles François de la Bonde d’Iberville, French envoy to England in 1713–17, who apparently convinced the French government that the Tories would win the 1715 general election based on the evidence of Tory support he read in partisan newspapers. Montesquieu reports that the French government offered the Tories financial backing as their Jacobite tendencies were seen as potentially more favourable to French interests. The subsequent Whig victory led to D’Iberville’s dismissal, and is also proof in Montesquieu’s eyes of the ignorance of English politics in the higher echelons of French government. It is perhaps for this reason that Montesquieu wrote to the French Foreign Secretary Chauvelin during his visit to London to recommend himself as a good candidate for a diplomatic post.100 Montesquieu’s views on England were certainly at odds with those of the French ambassador in post at the time, François-Marie de Broglie, who mentioned Montesquieu unfavourably in a dispatch to Chauvelin in October 1730. De Broglie had been present at one of Montesquieu’s meetings with Queen Caroline, and accuses him of condemning the French system of government and ‘showering exaggerated praise on the English constitution’.101 Montesquieu criticizes de Broglie indirectly in the Notes when he claims that the ill-informed French diplomats of his own day were perpetuating D’Iberville’s errors by basing their reports on the content of newspapers without making allowances for the liberties of the English press:

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This evidence of the cultural misunderstandings that dogged Anglo–French relations is of critical importance given the timing of Montesquieu’s visit, which coincided with the deterioration in relations between England and France pending the breakdown of the Anglo–French alliance in 1731. At this time England was pursuing an alliance with Austria, of which the French disapproved, and political sentiment was running high. In February 1730 Montesquieu witnessed a Commons debate concerning the refortification of the harbour at Dunkirk by the French government, a military measure prohibited under the Treaty of Utrecht. According to Montesquieu the sitting lasted until the early hours (Cobbett’s Parliamentary History corroborates this) and the issue of France’s status as a reliable ally was fiercely debated: ‘I have never seen parliament so enflamed … The French were very ill used; I witnessed the extent of the terrible rivalry which exists between our two nations’.103 Montesquieu was right. Following the parliamentary protests a promise was extracted from the French ministry that the works at Dunkirk would be demolished, but this was not adhered to. The conclusion of an Anglo–Austrian alliance in early 1731 then alienated the French, with the result that both nations were now highly suspicious of the other’s intentions. Shortly after Montesquieu’s return to France in May 1731 the British and French armies and navies were mobilized and converged on Dunkirk. Military action was averted but the Anglo–French alliance was effectively over.104 Montesquieu’s representation of England in the Notes is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, the author’s opinion of English politics and society is informed by his previous experiences as a Grand Tourist, which means he is able to compare the situation in England with that of other European nations. This lends an added significance to the fact that Montesquieu chooses to locate liberty and equality in England, rather than anywhere else in Europe. Secondly, Montesquieu’s positive vision of English liberty did not prevent him from criticizing certain aspects of English society, along the lines of the opposition campaigns against Walpole. The Notes sur l’Angleterre thus form a useful counterpoint to works like Prévost’s Mémoires or Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques, whose authors sought rather to make a favourable impression on French readers than to document the realities of English social and political life. Thirdly, the Notes bear witness to the increasing tensions in Anglo–French relations in the 1730s, perhaps exacerbated by the misconceptions harboured by French statesmen in England. Finally, the Notes reveal Montesquieu’s identification of England with the emerging public sphere. His conflation of English liberty with the freedom

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of the press emphasizes the crucial role played by journalists and commentators such as Bolingbroke in mobilizing and politicizing public opinion, and encouraging the citizens’ active involvement in the running of the state.

Montesquieu’s Persians in London, 1727–35 Montesquieu’s own role in the politicization of public opinion in England in the late 1720s and early 1730s has too often been overlooked. At this time, imitations of his Lettres persanes by English writers and journalists made a significant impact in political debates. The scope of such imitations has only been partially recognized. The first full-length English version of Montesquieu’s work, George Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan (1735), has received some critical attention.105 Yet Lyttelton was not the first writer to attempt to recreate Montesquieu’s work in an English context. Close examination of press publications from the 1720s reveals that other, earlier imitation ‘Persian Letters’ were published by English journalists from 1727 onwards. When Montesquieu’s work had appeared in English translation in 1722 the translator John Ozell advertised it to the public in glowing terms as: ‘The most diverting as well as instructive Book that France has produced these many Years. It is wrote with a Strength of Reasoning, a Freedom of Thought, and a Vein of just Humour, which that Nation was hardly thought capable of ’.106 The Lettres persanes were thus associated from the outset with a distinctively non-French brand of rational freethinking. More importantly, Montesquieu’s work addressed many issues that were giving rise to debates in the English public sphere in the early 1720s. The work notably highlighted the dangerous abuses of absolutist governments and corrupt ministers. It also drew attention to the disastrous economic consequences of Law’s ill-conceived monetary schemes and the ruin of the Mississippi Company in France. At the time Montesquieu’s work appeared in translation, similar themes were being tackled by the authors of another fictional correspondence, Cato’s Letters, a series of epistolary political essays by radical Whigs Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard that featured in the London Journal from 1720–3. In these letters the English government’s dependence on courtly patronage was criticized and ministers were held to account for the wanton financial speculation leading to the collapse of the South Sea Company in 1720.107 The common concerns linking the Lettres persanes and Cato’s Letters no doubt enhanced the relevance of Montesquieu’s work in England. Montesquieu had succeeded in combining satire and polemic with fashionable Orientalism, and his work’s accessibility and effectiveness were recognized by Bolingbroke who read the Lettres persanes in French whilst in exile in France.108 Following Bolingbroke’s return from exile in 1725, Gordon and Trenchard’s anti-ministerial and anti-corruption stance was taken up by his Patriot opposition party. In 1727,

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Bolingbroke’s opposition paper the Craftsman was the first English publication to include a letter from a putative Persian correspondent.109 Due to the conventional identification of the Orient with the abuse of arbitrary power, Oriental motifs were often exploited by political journalists who opposed Walpole.110 The writers of the Craftsman were no doubt following this generic convention, but they explicitly cited Montesquieu’s work as a model. The author of the first imitation ‘Persian Letter’ that appeared in the Craftsman in 1727 declares his work to be a continuation of ‘a small Collection of elegant little Essays … published at Paris, under the Title of Persian Letters; wherein a Gentleman of that Country … gives an Account to his Correspondents of the manner and customs of the French’. The letter in the Craftsman is addressed to Usbek, a correspondent familiar from Montesquieu’s original work. The English ‘translator’ of the letter explains that following the collapse of his seraglio recounted in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, Usbek decided to leave France and travelled to London: He happen’d while at Paris, to fall into conversation with some of our Country-Men, and was so pleased with their character of our Liberty and Laws, things intirely new to him, that this learned Asiatick could not resist his curiosity to make us a Visit.

However, the letter implies that the exceptional English freedom that had drawn Usbek to England is threatened by Robert Walpole. Usbek’s correspondent, Esriff, describes events in Persia that evoke allegorically Walpole’s destruction of traditional English rights and liberties. Esriff ’s concluding remarks are clearly intended to be read ironically: ‘Thou art happy, Usbeck, who do’st now reside in the Land of Liberty, a happy Country!’111 Between 1727 and 1732 a series of ‘Persian Letters’ appeared in the Craftsman. These imitation letters follow Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes in criticizing arbitrary government, financial speculation and the involvement of the Church in affairs of state. They also promote rational discussion of a variety of philosophical themes. Montesquieu notably used his letters as a vehicle for scientific vulgarization, as when Usbek extols the achievements of Newton and his followers: ‘They follow … the path of human reason. You would not believe where this has guided them. They have brought order out of chaos and have explained the divine architecture of the universe in terms of simple mechanisms’.112 A ‘Persian Letter’ from the Craftsman’s Usbek reiterates this praise of English scientists: ‘They prove what they assert by Reason. They believe nothing but what they demonstrate … This Doctrine opens and enlarges the Mind, and throws before it a more extended View of the Works of Omnipotence’. Significantly, this letter also demonstrates the partisan nature of the Craftsman’s adaptation of Montesquieu’s original work. As a rule, in the opposition ‘Persian Letters’ philosophical speculation and satirical social observation swiftly degenerate into a torrent of anti-Walpole invective. In the letter in question Usbek goes on to

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explain how the invention of the telescope and the microscope has aided the advancement of science, only to speculate on what would be exposed if the internal workings of Robert Walpole were examined under the microscope: Should we not behold a strange, wild and contradictory Jumble of Principles and Passions? Now, you wou’d see this Statesman, as he calls himself … busily employed in supporting Liberty by the Aid of Tyranny; maintaining Trade by destroying Manufactures, and raising publick Credit by robbing the Publick … But let me go on and tell thee; by these Glasses we might now and then have the Pleasure to see the Heart of this Devourer beating quick, convulsed, and dreading a periodical Drop of Ink that sinks into his Liver from the Point of a Pen, and sours the whole Mass of his Blood.113

Similarly, as Montesquieu’s Usbek had devoted letters 99[102]–101[104] to elaborating a typology of European governments, his opposition avatar undertakes to do the same; only to focus on describing ‘a particular odd kind of Government … called ROBINARCHY or ROBINOCRACY’. The polemical efficacy of the Oriental despotism motif is evident when the Usbek of the Craftsman demands: ‘How painful a Task must it be, Rustan, for a brave People to submit to such a mean, Plebæian and inglorious Tyranny? Is it not much more tolerable to be Slaves, as our Asiaticks are …?’114 Walpole is not however the only direct target of the Craftsman’s ‘Persian Letters’. Just as the criticism of Law’s schemes in France forms a major theme in Montesquieu’s original work, so the opposition paper harshly condemns English financial practices. Montesquieu and the writers of the Craftsman share the same fundamental objection to financial speculation: it is a hollow occupation divorced from real commerce or industry. In a letter supposedly written at the height of the stock market bubble in France, Montesquieu’s Usbek announces that Frenchmen have been infected by ‘a detestable desire to enrich themselves, not by honest work or liberal industry, but by bankrupting their ruler, the state and their fellow citizens’. The Craftsman’s Usbek in turn declares that while one might imagine the stock-jobbers of the London Exchange to be ‘a sort of industrious People employing themselves in the general Welfare of the Society … they are in reality only a sort of Wild Gamesters, endeavouring to trick one another out of their Fortunes’.115 In order to address the issue of financial corruption to greatest effect, Bolingbroke and his co-authors on one occasion combined Montesquieu’s influence with that of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Usbek receives a letter from Rica announcing the arrival in Persia of ‘a very famous Traveller’, Lemuel Gulliver. Rica quotes Gulliver’s description of the inhabitants of A’brotia (an allegorical representation of England), which he has lately visited: ‘They have, for more than a Century, boasted and enjoy’d the Freedom of their Bodies and their Minds – but they are now sunk in the Love of Wealth – Corruption has introduced Luxury … and now the sole Government among them seems to

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be Money’.116 There is a noticeable commonality between Gulliver’s depiction of the A’brotei and Montesquieu’s own criticisms of the money-grabbing English in the Notes sur l’Angleterre. This is a reminder that Montesquieu’s vision of English corruption may have owed something to his reading of the Craftsman. As such, the Craftsman’s ‘Persian Letters’ exemplify the complex dynamics of intellectual cross-fertilization that characterize Anglo–French relations in the age of Enlightenment. The authors of the Craftsman adopted Montesquieu’s satirical devices whilst in turn influencing his views on the state of their nation. According to the paper’s editors, the letter on A’brotia was included in the Craftsman because the ‘Persian Letters’ previously published in the paper had enjoyed a ‘good Reception from the Publick’. Interestingly, the success of the imitation letters seems to have influenced the reception of Montesquieu’s own work in England; Ozell’s 1722 translation of the Lettres persanes was re-edited in 1730, 1731 and 1736.117 The Craftsman’s skilful exploitation of Montesquieu’s technique also prompted the writers of the London Journal, a paper on the other side of the partisan divide, to imitate him in their turn. The Usbek of the London Journal derides the perpetual grievances of Bolingbroke and his party: I told thee, Ezron, in my last … that Opposition was necessary in a Free Government, and was the Child of Liberty; and so it is. But, methinks, this Child should not always be crying … what dost thou think of these Men? Wilt not thou be apt to imagine, with all their boasted Liberty … the poor, humble, quiet, harmless Slaves of Asia have as much real Pleasure as the turbulent, imperious, high-fed, discontented, complaining Britons?118

Aside from this clever counter-imitation however, English adaptations of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes were generally associated with Bolingbroke’s opposition to Walpole’s administration.119 Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian, the first full-length English version of Montesquieu’s work, is particularly clearly infused with Patriot ideology. Lyttelton’s imitation brings to light the most influential aspects of the Lettres persanes within an English context. For instance, Lyttelton emulates Montesquieu in writing an ‘anti-preface’ declaring that his Letters ‘are not recommended to the Publick by a Dedication to some Great Man about the Court’ but that he relies on ‘the Candour of the Reader’ in making a judgement as to their worth.120 Lyttelton was a favourite of the Prince of Wales, so it is significant that his imitation of Montesquieu’s work maintains the anti-court sentiments of the original.121 It was perhaps advisable however not to proclaim open allegiance to the Prince of Wales when criticizing his father’s government. In addition, as far as the market was concerned the success of works such as the Lettres persanes had proved that authors would do well to seek the favour of readers rather than patrons.

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The first letter of Lyttelton’s Letters establishes continuity between his work and Montesquieu’s evocation of English political ideas in the Lettres persanes. Lyttelton’s protagonist Selim explains to his correspondent Mirza that the exploits of their mutual friend Usbek have encouraged him to travel to England in order to ‘apply myself principally to study the English Government, so different from that of Persia, and of which Usbec has conceiv’d at a Distance so great an Idea’. Indeed, Lyttelton generally chooses to imitate those aspects of Montesquieu’s original work that concerned England or were heavily influenced by English ideas. For example, the fable of the Troglodytes that bears so strong an imprint of Shaftesbury’s social theories is continued in letters 12–24 of Lyttelton’s work to allow Selim to demonstrate ‘by what Steps, and through what Changes, the original Good of Society is overturn’d, and Mankind become wickeder and more miserable in a State of Government, than they were when left in a State of Nature’.122 The strong vein of social satire that runs through the Lettres persanes also finds an echo in Selim’s letters as he seeks to prove that the English of 1735 are no longer worthy of the liberties won in the Bill of Rights of 1689. Selim’s portrait of England in the 1730s resembles that of Regency France painted by Usbek and Rica in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes. In both works the Persians’ descriptions make the rituals and rhetoric governing English and French society appear ridiculous to native eyes. The main thrust of Lyttelton’s Letters is of course to denounce the negative effects of Walpole’s administration. In his study of a subsequent version of the Lettres persanes published in Dublin in 1756, Alessandro Crisafulli comments that, ‘unlike Montesquieu’s French imitators who preferred to exploit the romanesque and erotic aspects of his fiction, the English chose to emphasise the elements of satire and essay’.123 It is certainly true that Lyttelton does not include a Persian subplot in his Letters, though he does exploit certain Oriental motifs and makes allusions to harems and eunuchs. These allusions interestingly suggest that Montesquieu’s original storyline involving Usbek’s seraglio was not seen as ‘romanesque’ in England but was read as a clear political allegory illustrating the inevitable collapse of a despotic regime. This allegory is in fact inverted by Lyttelton when he has Selim declare that endemic partisan disputes have guaranteed the security of the English commonwealth ‘as in a Seraglio; the Honour of the Husband is preserv’d by the Malice of the Eunuchs and the mutual Jealousies of the Women’.124 Lyttelton’s focus on political comment and satire and his reduction of the Orient to a political cipher makes his work far less ideologically ambivalent than the Lettres persanes. During his time in England Selim wholeheartedly converts to English political values: ‘I have now, my Dear Mirza, traced thee out a general Plan of the English Constitution, and I believe thou wilt agree with me upon the whole, That a better can hardly be contrived’. He also declares his willingness to embrace Anglicanism ‘if the Force of Education had not rooted Mahometism

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in my Heart’, and finally returns to Persia ‘with a Mind a good deal alter’d by his Travels’.125 Selim’s position is however more ambiguous that it first appears. In the tradition of the Oriental tale the conversion of an Oriental visitor to Western libertarian ideals is generally a testament to their universality.126 Yet whilst Lyttelton’s Letters do proclaim that English political values have a universal appeal to all rational beings, those same values are also deemed to be unique and exclusive to England. As Montesquieu had occasion to observe in the Notes sur l’Angleterre when he witnessed the fiery Commons debate on the Dunkirk Affair, the English public sphere was sustained by a forceful rhetoric of English exceptionalism fed by hostility to the island’s continental neighbours. England’s liberty, equality and freedom of speech were championed in part for their own sake, but also because they set the nation apart from absolutist Europe. The anti-French sentiments Montesquieu heard expressed in the Commons also pervade Lyttelton’s Letters. In fact, his work draws heavily on the French tradition of the satirical travelogue the better to criticize France. As well as imitating Montesquieu, Lyttelton also evokes images and themes from Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques that are suggestive of England’s cultural supremacy. Selim visits the Stock Exchange, and discusses academies with an Englishman who considers French intellectuals to be muzzled by their ‘Fear of offending Men in Power’. In one letter the quintessentially English public space of the bear garden which to Selim represents the nation’s ‘Ferocity’ and ‘Spirit of Freedom’, is revealingly contrasted with the ‘Gentleness and Effeminacy’ of a French private drawing-room. Throughout Lyttelton’s Letters France figures as an example of what England will become if Walpole’s administration continues. As members of the English nobility both Lyttelton and Bolingbroke believed that the ascendancy of Walpole’s urban oligarchy could be checked by the power of landed aristocrats. Selim thus comments to Mirza: We have often been told by our Friend Usbec, that the Court and Capital of France is crowded with Nobility; while in the Provinces, there is scarce a Mansion-house that is not falling to Ruin; an infallible sign of the Decay and Downfall of the Nobility itself. Those who remember what England was forty Years ago … complain, that their Countrymen are making Haste to copy the French.127

There is perhaps a certain patrician class-consciousness apparent in Montesquieu’s work that helped to make the Lettres persanes a desirable model for fellow nobles Lyttelton and Bolingbroke. Montesquieu, like the English Patriots, upheld the political influence of the landed aristocracy and deplored the effects of absolutist government whereby too many peers had become mere court lackeys without power or responsibility.128 Despite the anti-French tone of Lyttelton’s work, however, Walpole’s supporters criticized his Letters on the grounds that by imitating Montesquieu Lyttelton

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too appeared to be ‘making Haste to copy the French’. In the 1730s, French writers such as Prévost and Voltaire sought to promote England as an intellectual and cultural model but their admiration was not reciprocated. In the years following the breakdown of the Anglo–French alliance the English reacted strongly against France’s perceived cultural dominance in Europe. The nationalistic poet James Thomson declared in his poem Liberty (1735–6), that the English should be ruled by ‘their own Joint Wisdom’ and shun political or cultural conventions established in France, ‘a Land that bends, Deprest, and broke, beneath the Will of One’.129 Lyttelton was in fact Thomson’s patron, and fully endorsed his protégé’s anti-French sentiments, but papers loyal to Walpole’s cause portrayed his imitation of Montesquieu in a different light. Orator Henley’s Hyp-Doctor disparaged Montesquieu’s original work and attacked Lyttelton for his slavish lack of originality: ‘We have been pester’d with an Inundation of Chinese Tales, Siam Tales, Peruvian Tales, Arabian Night’s Entertainments, Persian Letters by a President of the Parliament of Bourdeaux, and more Persian Letters by an Ape of the former’. The Hyp-Doctor also derides the lazy, imitative journalistic practices employed in the Craftsman. To make clear his accusation that Lyttelton and Bolingbroke are guilty of ‘aping’ the French, the journalist inserts an imitation ‘Persian Letter’ from an ape in London to a jackanapes in Persia, in which the Patriots are ridiculed for being ‘forced to pilfer out of other Books’.130

The Cosmopolitan Enlightenment The imitation of Montesquieu’s work by English authors was clearly a contentious issue in England in the 1730s. This raises questions regarding the interchange of ideas between nations in the eighteenth century, which is commonly described as an era of cosmopolitanism.131 Craig Calhoun has discussed the concept of the eighteenth-century public sphere as a universal setting for objective debate in which issues of national or class allegiance are largely disregarded or transcended.132 Calhoun defines what might be termed the ‘scientific model’ of the public sphere, a setting where the identity of the speaker or writer is less important than the universal rational proofs that he or she proposes. As Montesquieu proclaimed in his Essai d’observations sur l’histoire naturelle, in the scientific milieu ‘one can take advantage of observations without knowing the identity of the observer’.133 This is the crucial difference between the seventeenth-century erudite Republic of Letters, described by Anne Goldgar as a scholarly community based on personal friendships and reputations, and the new public sphere that emerged in Enlightenment Europe.134 However, this scientific model of reasoning becomes problematic when the debates taking place within the public sphere are themselves intended to constitute the identity, national or otherwise, of the participants. This was the case in the English public sphere during the

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1730s when discussion of fundamental English rights and liberties – supposedly threatened by Walpole – dominated in parliament and the press. National rivalry, heightened by the collapse of the Anglo–French alliance, meant that those rights and liberties were often expressed in terms of hostility towards France. This can be seen in the anti-French sentiments evident in Lyttelton’s Letters and in his political opponents’ reactions to the work. At the same time however, English politicians and intellectuals such as Lyttelton and Bolingbroke were receptive to the ideas of Montesquieu and Voltaire. The imitation ‘Persian Letters’ produced in England in the late 1720s and early 1730s testify to their authors’ admiration for Montesquieu’s original work and the enlightened values it conveyed. The concept of the Enlightenment as a cosmopolitan movement in which ideas from different sources were freely exchanged and debated is clearly more complex than it first appears. Scholars would now generally endorse Roy Porter’s assessment that Enlightenment thinkers combined a ‘true internationalism’ with more local preoccupations, and sought to balance cosmopolitanism with national interest. John Robertson has noted that their frequent engagement with public opinion shows that enlightened thinkers were closely bound to national contexts; yet many also appear to have taken it for granted that they could communicate their intellectual interests ‘across frontiers and language barriers’.135 Montesquieu clearly strives to achieve this balance between cosmopolitanism and patriotism in the Voyages, though the text betrays a certain tension between the author’s different intellectual and political loyalties. On the one hand, Montesquieu’s Grand Tour was an eminently cosmopolitan exercise and his contacts with other European intellectuals during his travels show that he clearly saw himself as a member of an international Republic of Letters. Jonathan Israel has recently focused attention on this aspect of the Voyages. He refers to Montesquieu’s encounters with intellectuals and visits to libraries and academies when mapping the progress of the Enlightenment as a Europe-wide phenomenon.136 Montesquieu’s Voyages testify to his internationalist outlook. Whilst travelling through Europe he retrospectively condemns the policy of French isolationism pursued by Louis XIV: ‘The late King did not much like alliances; he preferred … to take a solitary stand against all other nations’.137 He approves the establishment of the Quadruple alliance and takes a remarkably cosmopolitan view of the future of the continent: ‘The situation of Europe is such that a nation only derives its true power from its allies’. On the other hand however, Montesquieu’s judgements on other nations are also influenced by national sympathies. Most tellingly, in the Notes sur l’Angleterre he follows up his praise of English liberty by remarking: ‘I think it is in the French interest to support the monarchy in England, as a republic would be much more dangerous: its powers would not be limited at all’. He also remarks that under the Hanoverian dynasty England has become a force to be reckoned with in Europe, and has upset the balance of

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power by threatening France’s dominant position: ‘The English are the cause of our subjugation’.138 As an enlightened thinker, Montesquieu can admire England as the land of liberty, equality and a free press whilst also being concerned by the threat the nation poses to his native France. Taken together, Montesquieu’s journals of his travels on the continent and in England in the late 1720s and early 1730s and the imitations of the Lettres persanes produced by English writers and journalists during the same period, reveal the complexity of international intellectual relations in the age of Enlightenment. On both a practical and a methodological level Montesquieu’s experiences as traveller and travel writer bear the marks of English influences, from the itinerary of the author’s Grand Tour to the empirical methods that he used to survey and record the world around him. The works of Locke and Addison were particularly instrumental in shaping the way Montesquieu conceptualized his Tour, which was at once a prolonged empirical experiment and a search for political liberty. It is noticeable that Montesquieu not only located liberty in England, but also equated its existence with mechanisms of the English public sphere such as the free press and unrestricted parliamentary debate. At the same time, Montesquieu’s own Lettres persanes became an instrument for the defence of liberty in the hands of writers who made him an actor on the English political stage. Clearly, the exchange of ideas that took place between Montesquieu and England in the late 1720s and early 1730s fits into the wider context of Anglo–French relations during this period. Rivalry between the two nations increased at this time, as the Anglo–French alliance broke down and both asserted their ambition to become the dominant power in Europe. Montesquieu’s travels allowed him to appreciate the necessary interdependence of European nations in the modern world. Having observed in eighteenth-century Italy the long-term legacy of the Roman Empire he would seek in his next published work, the Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734), to prove that the Europe of the Enlightenment differed fundamentally from its ancient incarnation, not least because of the emergence of a new model of modern political liberty.

3 RECONSIDERING ROME: CONSIDÉRATIONS SUR LES … ROMAINS (1734)

‘They call it the decadence of Montesquieu’. It was thus that Voltaire, writing (in English) to Thieriot in 1734, announced the publication of the Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence.1 The majority of contemporary commentators agreed with Voltaire that the Considérations did not do justice to Montesquieu’s reputation as an innovative thinker, established by the Lettres persanes.2 The brief, lapidary work of just twenty-three short chapters was judged to be inadequate as a history of Rome. From the eighteenth century onwards the coherence of the text has also regularly been called into question. Shackleton for instance finds that its historical focus is dissipated by the author’s inclusion of ‘observations which refer to many things other than his immediate subject matter’.3 However, a revisionist view of the text has recently been put forward by Paul Rahe, who re-embeds the work in its historical context and claims that the subject matter of the Considérations has been consistently misunderstood by critics.4 The seemingly digressive ‘observations’ to which Shackleton refers include a wide range of comments on eighteenthcentury European history and politics. As his travel journals show, Montesquieu had developed a keen interest in relations between the European states, notably England and France, during his Grand Tour (1728–31). Rahe maintains that the Considérations were written in response to shifts in the balance of power on the continent in the 1730s. He makes a convincing case for reading the work in the light of Montesquieu’s Réflexions sur la Monarchie universelle en Europe (c. 1733–4), originally intended for publication alongside his analysis of Roman history.5 The Réflexions address the possibility of one European nation achieving cultural and military supremacy or ‘universal monarchy’ on the continent. This ambition had been pursued by Louis XIV in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but was thwarted by the English victory in the War of the Spanish Succession. The fear that either France or Britain would again seek to gain overall control of the continent was reignited by the collapse of the Anglo– French alliance in 1731 which created a climate of suspicion in both France and – 75 –

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England regarding the rival nations’ ambitions. The balance of Europe, which had seemed assured by the alliance of these two powers, was again under threat. In the Réflexions Montesquieu forthrightly declares that the pursuit of universal monarchy in modern Europe would be futile. He addresses both French and English former pretensions to dominance. Whilst ‘nothing would have been more disastrous for Europe’ than the success of Louis XIV’s schemes, the French campaign did have the beneficial effect of curtailing England’s conquests: ‘The English … were soon confined to their island and acknowledge[d] the vanity of their former endeavours’.6 Montesquieu’s Réflexions were in the process of being printed when the Rouen edition of Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (1734) was denounced as treacherous by the censors and burned by the public hangman while a warrant was issued for the author’s arrest. This text also addressed the relationship between France and England, in a particularly inflammatory manner. Voltaire held England up as an example of a modern successful state and tacitly decried French policy. Rahe claims that the fate of Voltaire’s work led Montesquieu to abandon publication of the Réflexions.7 There is no evidence for this, but it is certainly true that Montesquieu considered his work to be similarly controversial. Only one offprint of the Réflexions survives, on which Montesquieu noted that he ‘suppressed’ the work ‘for fear that certain passages might be misinterpreted’.8 The Considérations were not suppressed, but the first edition of the work was published anonymously in Amsterdam in order to bypass the French censors. Remarkably, diplomatic records from 1733 reveal that Montesquieu enlisted the help of Lord Waldegrave, with whom he had become friends during his travels through Europe, to ensure the work’s publication. Montesquieu asked Waldegrave, then English ambassador in Paris, to send the proofs of the Considérations to his publisher in Holland under diplomatic cover. Waldegrave obliged and enclosed a letter with the text stating that ‘Montesquieu … has begged of me to send it … that it may not fall in to his countrymen’s hands who perhaps would not approve of all that is said in it’.9 This reflects the sensitivity of the political context and the intensity of France’s rivalry with England in the mid-1730s. The precise nature of this Anglo–French rivalry suggests that the Considérations not be read as a defective history of Rome but rather as a commentary on the political situation in Europe in the 1730s. At this time, both the French and English sought to reinforce their claim to cultural supremacy among the European nations by declaring themselves to be the heirs of Rome. Following the example set by Louis XIV, a self-styled Augustus, the French monarchy had developed absolutist tendencies along the lines of the Caesars. In England, those who sought to legitimize the political regime established by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 appropriated a different period of Roman history and likened their new constitution to that of the Roman Republic. Both nations similarly found that the Roman Empire offered a useful precedent for their strategies of

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conquest, not only in the New World but within Europe itself. Although the possibility has not hitherto been raised by critics, various events surrounding the publication history of the Considérations also imply that the work was addressed to an English as well as a French audience. During his time in England in the early 1730s Montesquieu had occasion to observe that his own work could command a significant readership in an English context. His Lettres persanes were re-edited twice during his stay in London, whilst imitation ‘Persian Letters’ regularly featured in the English press during the same period. It is worth noting that the first mention of the Considérations in Montesquieu’s correspondence is in a letter to Lady Hervey, wife of the politician Lord John Hervey, whom he met during his stay in London.10 The letter shows that Montesquieu clearly expects his work to be read in England: ‘You will shortly see published a work of mine that is currently being printed in Holland … It would give me great pleasure to know your opinion of it … It is entitled: Considérations …’11 Montesquieu made a particular effort to ensure a wide distribution for his work in both England and France. Following the publication of the Amsterdam edition in June 1734, Montesquieu enlisted the help of the Jesuit père Castel to rid the text of any overtly contentious passages to make it acceptable for publication in Paris with royal privilege.12 In August the first English translation (of the original Amsterdam edition) appeared. To facilitate discussion of the work in English intellectual circles the author personally sent three copies to Sir Hans Sloane, President of the Royal Society, of which he himself had become a member four years previously.13 In the context of exploring relations between Montesquieu and England it is essential to examine the ideas that the Considérations were intended to convey; regarding not only Rome but the situation in contemporary Europe. On the one hand, Montesquieu uses his reading of Roman history to demonstrate that an unbridgeable divide separates antiquity from modernity. This invalidates the use of Rome as a cultural model by both England and France. Among the various arguments employed to reinforce this point, he postulates the existence of a new sphere of publicity that is causing the social and political structures of modern Europe to be reconfigured. This sphere was of course particularly well developed in England. On the other hand, Montesquieu draws lessons from Roman history to address questions raised by this reconfiguration, notably concerning the role of political parties in the modern state. The question has here been raised as to whether the Considérations were intended to transmit a message pertinent to readers in both England and France. To answer this question it is necessary to analyse the different strategies deployed by Montesquieu to reach audiences on both sides of the Channel. Many commentators have explored the different influences on Montesquieu’s vision of Roman history, and have revealed his debt to French and classical historians.14 Further attention must however be focused

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on defining the work’s relationship to a particularly English historical tradition. Finally, an examination of the different English translations of the text will shed light on the exchanges of ideas surrounding the Considérations within the English public sphere.

Rome Redefined In the opening paragraph of the Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle, intended as a companion text to the Considérations, Montesquieu makes an intimate connection between the history of the Roman Empire and the nations of contemporary Europe: ‘One might ask the question whether, given the current state of Europe, it could transpire that one nation might gain power over all the others as the Romans did. I think that such a thing has become morally impossible: the reasons for this are as follows’.15 The Considérations provide the historical justification for this assertion. Montesquieu’s reading of Roman history clearly underlines the geopolitical, social and material differences that divide Europe ancient and modern. This was a direct challenge to the assumptions of many classically educated readers. In both England and France, Roman history formed an integral part of the national culture, to the extent that the ancients were familiar figures who had achieved mythical status as models eminently worthy of emulation.16 In order for readers to follow his argument therefore, Montesquieu had first to convince them to see Rome not as myth but as history. From the outset in the Considérations Montesquieu seeks to redefine the relationship between modern Europeans and the Romans. He comments early on in chapter 3: ‘As all the peoples of Europe have today reached a similar stage of advancement as regards the arts, weaponry, and military discipline and strategy, the prodigious conquests of the Romans appear inconceivable to us’. Presenting the Romans as distant, almost alien, Montesquieu rewrites their history through a series of negative statements that challenge its universality. Assuming a high level of knowledge on the part of his readers Montesquieu concentrates not on providing information about Rome, but on contradicting analogies between past and present. He begins in the work’s very first line: ‘One should not envisage the city of Rome, at its foundation, as being in any way like the towns and cities we see today’. Such remarks introduce a note of historical and cultural relativism into the Considérations: Rome should not be used as a guide for contemporary conduct because the values governing Roman life differ fundamentally from those of early modern Europe. Describing the overt brutality of the emperors, Montesquieu writes: ‘We will not find anything to match this in our modern histories; this … must be attributed to our more refined manners and more repressive religion’. However, while changes in historical circumstances have rendered any ambition to emulate the Romans ‘inconceivable’, it is nevertheless

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important to understand the underlying causes and effects of events in Rome. Important lessons can be learnt from the realities of Roman history once it is demystified; the heroes and villains of Roman times were after all ‘men just like ourselves’.17 In debating the relevance of ancient Rome to early modern life, Montesquieu is engaging with issues arising from the quarrel of the ancients and moderns. This cultural dispute was largely played out in France and England in the late 1600s, but continued to shape attitudes to antiquity well into the eighteenthcentury. In criticizing the tendency to see the ancient Romans as demigods Montesquieu echoes the view of the moderns, most famously voiced in France by Charles Perrault in Le Siècle de Louis le Grand (1687): ‘Antiquity is no doubt venerable, / But I do not think it should be idolized. / I do not bow on bended knee before the Ancients, / It is true that they were great, but they were men like us’. It should however be noted that Perrault’s poem continues, ‘And without being injudicious one can compare / the Age of Louis to the great Age of Augustus’.18 Perrault’s work illustrates the power of the Roman Augustan Age – a time when imperial expansion went hand in hand with the flowering of Roman culture – as a model to be emulated. In England Augustus’s reign was venerated for the works produced by classical writers under the emperor’s patronage, but his tyrannical tendencies were criticized by liberal political thinkers. The authors of Cato’s Letters for instance classed him as one of the ‘great Pests’ of mankind, guilty of more ‘Mischief and Villainy’ than the Emperor Nero.19 French interpretations of Augustus’s rule were conversely overwhelmingly positive. Augustan Rome had furnished France with a model of powerful centralized government and ambitious conquest. Bernard Magné’s analysis of the French ‘Querelle des anciens et des modernes’ shows that in proclaiming the triumph of modernity over antiquity, the moderns also demonstrated their belief that France could rival the Roman Empire in her military and cultural dominance of Europe.20 In the Considérations Montesquieu’s refusal to see antiquity as a golden age carries a very different political message: that of the redundancy of modern ambitions to universal monarchy. Montesquieu questions the canonical status of the ‘Age of Augustus’ as a political and cultural reference, and in so doing he directly confronts conventional French readings of Roman history. The positive depiction of Augustus’s rule was a common factor uniting histories as different in tone as Bossuet’s absolutist Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681) and Saint-Évremond’s Réflexions sur les divers Genies du Peuple Romain, dans les divers tems de la Republique (1666–9), a critical and enlightened analysis of Rome often seen as a forerunner of the Considérations.21 Saint-Évremond credits Augustus with putting an end to the disorder of the civil wars by reducing the Roman people to ‘a happy subjection’ and ruling them by reason rather than by force.22 In the 1660s, just before his history of Rome was

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published, Saint-Évremond sought exile in London after being banished from France for criticizing the conduct of Louis XIV’s military campaigns. He was well received at the Restoration court of Charles II and granted a royal pension. His vision of Augustus’s reign should clearly be linked to Charles II’s restoration of order following the demise of Cromwell’s Republic. His work is also a reminder that positive depictions of Augustan rule were not limited to France but also had currency among certain parties in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.23 In France, Louis XIV was likewise admired for having brought stability and grandeur to a disordered state following the chaos of the Fronde which mirrored the Civil War in England. However, in the Considérations Montesquieu refuses to find any redeeming features in Augustus’s reign. Having explicitly juxtaposed the Roman civil wars that brought Augustus to power with the Fronde that preceded Louis’s personal rule, he then condemns the regime that followed: ‘Augustus … established order, that is to say, long-lasting servitude’. Rather than praising Augustus for uniting Rome and extending its power, Montesquieu instead calls him a ‘cunning tyrant’ and identifies his reign with the start of the nation’s decadence.24 Pointedly, no mention is made of the flowering of culture in the Augustan period, an argument commonly used by historians to counterbalance the emperor’s political heavy-handedness. The birth of Christianity in the Empire, for which Augustus was frequently commended, also goes unnoticed. As a result, from a French point of view the Considérations represent an ideological challenge to established visions of Rome.25 Closer inspection reveals that this ideological challenge is reinforced through references – albeit often oblique – to England and the English. The provocative intrusion of France’s political and territorial rival into Montesquieu’s tale of Rome’s rise and fall is subtle, but powerful. Allusions to England in the text are frequently obscure and dependent on the reader’s ability to decode the author’s characteristic periphrases, as in the following discussion of seemingly trivial cases of lèse-majesté during Tiberius’s reign: ‘I think however that some of the grounds for accusation were not as ridiculous as they may appear by today’s standards … I gauge this by what can be observed today in a nation that cannot be suspected of tyranny, and where it is a capital crime to drink to the health of a certain person’. This allusion to Hanoverian England, where it was forbidden to drink to the Stuarts, obliges the reader who understands the reference to agree that England is above suspicion of tyranny, and also that English conduct is a measure of rationality. Elsewhere, when singling out certain aspects of Roman life as worthy of particular praise, the author carefully selects cultural traits associated with eighteenth-century England. Contemporary accounts of English life by French writers such as Prévost and Voltaire placed great emphasis on the nation’s religious tolerance and pluralism. Montequieu’s praise for the syncretism of ancient Rome highlights the political benefits of this defining characteristic of English

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society: ‘The ancient Romans strengthened their Empire by allowing different religions to coexist’. This inclusive approach is contrasted with the enforcement of religious uniformity by Eastern emperors, particularly Justinian: What did the most political damage to the government was the project he conceived to oblige all men to embrace the same religious beliefs … Justinian, who destroyed religious sects by the sword and by law … thought he had increased the ranks of the faithful; but he had only diminished the ranks of his subjects.26

This parallels the French authorities’ treatment of the Huguenots and recalls the fact that France has lost, and England gained, the skills of the exiled Protestant community. Throughout the Considérations, descriptions of Roman history and culture strengthen the impression that England resembles ancient Rome in its days of grandeur while descriptions of imperial décadence recall events in France. Following the provocative reassessment of Augustus’s rule, analogies between the Roman emperors and the French monarchs resurface in the final chapters of the text where Montesquieu describes the corruption of the imperial court at Constantinople. The portrait of the eastern emperors, ‘ever more indolent, ever more attached to their palaces, and ever more isolated from the people’, conjures up a clear image of the Bourbons at Versailles. The dominance of the royal court over French public life prevented the free and frank discussion of matters of state policy that existed in the English public sphere. This is implied in Montesquieu’s harsh criticism of courtly culture: ‘The venom of the court increased in strength as the Emperor became more isolated; nothing was said, everything was insinuated … the Prince was reliant on the poisonous speeches of a few confidants’.27 Montesquieu is also keen to point out that these alterations in Roman government are the result of Oriental influences on the eastern empire. This recalls the parallel established between Oriental despotism and Bourbon absolutism in the Lettres persanes. The Considérations reinforce the message of the author’s earlier work: a government modelled on that of Augustus or Constantine can only lead the nation towards decline, as demonstrated by the collapse of Usbek’s seraglio. Montesquieu’s reading of Roman history in the Considérations thus promotes a reconsideration of the relative merits of both Rome and England on the part of the French. On the one hand, the aspects Roman life traditionally most admired in France are glossed over or openly criticized. On the other, the links suggested between England and republican Rome highlight the presence of positive factors such as religious pluralism in both these societies and thus draw attention to their absence from France. Voltaire in his provocative Lettres philosophiques also plays on analogies between England and Rome, hinting that France would do better to emulate the former rather than the latter: ‘There is one essential difference between Rome and England which gives a clear advan-

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tage to the latter, it is that the result of the civil wars in Rome was slavery, whilst from England’s troubles resulted liberty’.28 The Considérations and the Lettres philosophiques appeared within a few months of each other. It is proof of the power of the Roman example that both Montesquieu and Voltaire chose to use it to bring their message home to French and English audiences at this time.

Machiavellian Maxims Montesquieu’s Considérations is a work designed to renegotiate the relationship between antiquity and modernity. The author seeks to establish Rome’s status as historical fact rather than atemporal myth. He also questions the political and cultural analogies on which traditional notions of continuity between ancient Rome and eighteenth-century Europe were based. Yet Montesquieu acknowledges that Rome can still claim a continued relevance to contemporary culture. Although antiquity and modernity are presented as fundamentally different historical entities in the Considérations, Montesquieu lays particular emphasis on the fact that both are subject to the same general laws. For instance, he illustrates the effects of changes in a nation’s class system by comparing Servius Tullius’s displacement of the patrician minority in Rome with the limitations placed on the power of the English nobility under Henry VII’s reign. This parallel between events in ancient Rome and Tudor England is justified by Montesquieu on the grounds that ‘recent history furnishes us with an example of what happened in Rome at this time, and of this we must take note; for as men have always been moved by the same passions, the events that produce great changes may be different, but the causes are always the same’.29 In accordance with this principle, throughout the Considérations Montesquieu elaborates universal maxims that have governed historical change and political conduct from Roman times onwards. These maxims are applicable to all European nations but are of particular relevance to England and France. In arguing that events in Rome reveal the general laws of history in motion, Montesquieu reveals his debt to Machiavelli. In his commentary on Livy, which Montesquieu owned in contemporary French translation, Machiavelli similarly claimed that ‘the same passions, and the same movements, have always been present in all republics, and in all nations’.30 This belief underlay Machiavelli’s reinterpretation of Livy’s account of the Roman Republic for Renaissance Europe. It seems Montesquieu was inspired by Machiavelli’s effective use of the Roman experience to awaken the political sensibilities of his contemporaries. Machiavelli’s influence on the Considérations is now well attested.31 This influence is particularly significant given the measure of hostility generally voiced by French Enlightenment thinkers towards the Florentine author.32 In France Machiavelli was reviled for having theorized arbitrary and abusive power in The Prince. By contrast, contemporary English readings of

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his work foregrounded the Discourses on Livy in which Machiavelli provides a commentary on civil government and constitutional balance. On this basis, Shackleton has argued that the Considérations show Montesquieu reading Machiavelli through an English lens.33 As the author’s Notes sur l’Angleterre reveal, Montesquieu’s time in England coincided with developments in the English public sphere which saw the press take on the role of an extra-parliamentary opposition to government. Habermas singles out Bolingbroke’s Craftsman as of crucial importance in the development of an independent journalism prepared to subject the government’s actions to constant scrutiny. From the late 1720s onwards regular confrontations between government and press would become a permanent feature of political life in England.34 Among the excerpts from the English press recorded by Montesquieu in his Spicilège notebook are extracts from Bolingbroke’s Remarks on the History of England, a series of letters published in the Craftsman in 1730–1 that typify the ongoing heated discussions of constitutional issues in the public sphere in this period. According to Alexander Pettit, Bolingbroke’s campaign against Walpole reached its height in the early 1730s, which also corresponds to the apex in popularity of the Craftsman. Aware that he could command a large readership, Bolingbroke not only specifically criticized Walpole’s negotiation of the Treaty of Vienna which cemented the Anglo–Austrian alliance of 1731 but also more generally attacked the First Minister’s style of leadership and supposedly tyrannical tendencies. In the Remarks he significantly chose to conduct this attack through the medium of historical analysis. However, in the Remarks ‘historiography becomes polemics’ as Bolingbroke’s reading of English history is intended to denounce Walpole’s violation of the nation’s ancient constitution.35 J. G. A. Pocock qualifies the eighteenth century as a ‘Machiavellian moment’ in European history, a time when the means and ends of government were debated using terms laid down by the Florentine thinker.36 Machiavelli certainly has an important role to play in Bolingbroke’s Remarks. When setting the agenda for his analysis of English history Bolingbroke draws on his Discourses on Livy: ‘Though I would not advise you to admit the works of Machiavel into your canon of political writings; yet since in them … many excellent thing are interspersed, led us begin by improving a hint taken from the discourses of the Italian Secretary on the first decade of Livy’. This ‘hint’ concerns Machiavelli’s description of a successful government as one which is ‘frequently renewed’ by a return to its original principles, as was the case with the Roman Republic. This should of course be read as a demand that Walpole’s ‘statecraft’ should be abandoned and England revert to more traditional forms of governance.37 Thanks no doubt to Montesquieu’s exposure to Bolingbroke’s Remarks during his time in England, his own Considérations are influenced by English readings of Machiavelli. In his own reading of Roman history Montesquieu takes up Bolingbroke’s argument

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concerning the mechanisms of renewal necessary in a successful government. Having condemned the Augustan imposition of ‘long-lasting servitude’ replicated in absolutist France, Montesquieu proposes a new constitutional model inspired by the Roman Republic and Hanoverian England: The Roman system of government was admirable in that from its foundation the constitution was such that … any abuse of power could always be corrected … The English system of government is one of the wisest in Europe, because there is a body which scrutinises it constantly, and which also submits itself to scrutiny.38

It is important to understand that Montesquieu does not admire the English for having adopted the principles of the Roman Republic, but for having adapted them to suit the demands of contemporary politics. This proves Machiavelli’s assertion in the Discourses that a thriving state will ‘accommodate itself to changing times’.39 The English have eliminated the weaknesses existing in the original Roman republican constitution and have improved upon a system held up for centuries as an inimitable model; as Addison put it in the Spectator: ‘The Division of the three Powers in the Roman Constitution was by no means so distinct and natural, as it is in the English Form of Government’.40 Montesquieu’s praise for a system of government underpinned by checks and balances and capable of internal reform would have been familiar to English readers of the Craftsman; less so to French readers accustomed to seeing the enforcement of order as the mark of a successful state. The same applies to the maxim that Montesquieu draws from his analysis of England and Rome: ‘In a word, a free government – that is to say, one that is constantly unsettled – cannot maintain itself if it is not capable of self-correction by its own laws’.41 This rule justifies Montesquieu’s reading of Roman history, whereby the grandeur of the Republic rests on its ability for self-regulation and décadence begins with the advent of the Emperors who refused to allow their abuses to be corrected. He evidently sees the English as having emulated the former style of government and the French the latter. Montesquieu was far from being the first commentator to remark on the inherent instability of the English regime where power was divided between different bodies. However, this was frequently portrayed negatively. The Jacobite Andrew Ramsay for instance described the English system of government as resulting in a ‘perpetual combat’ between different interest groups that bordered on ‘anarchy’.42 Montesquieu’s depiction of the ‘unsettled’ English government as ‘one of the wisest in Europe’ endorses an alternative Whig historical narrative whereby the English constitution was in a constant state of evolution to ensure the population enjoyed an ever-increasing degree of liberty. This vision was best laid out in Paul Rapin de Thoyras’s influential Histoire d’Angleterre (1723–5), a work frequently cited as a source by Bolingbroke in his Remarks.43

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Montesquieu’s reference to the ‘body’ responsible for the examination of legislation in England makes the development of parliamentary democracy the key to the nation’s thriving polity. As Montesquieu himself had occasion to observe, parliamentary debate in England permitted the free expression of opinions and allowed the opposition to correct and refine government policy. The power of parliament was particularly well illustrated by events surrounding the Excise Crisis in 1733, the year before the Considérations were published. This crisis is well known for the fact that the opposition press, led by Bolingbroke, stirred up public opinion to a fever pitch on the issue of Walpole’s fiscal policies. However as Paul Langford’s study demonstrates, the outcome of events was ultimately decided by parliament. During the parliamentary session of 1733 the opposition mentioned the Excise Bill at every opportunity to ensure that the issue dominated all debates. Members also held the government to ransom by voting against many unrelated Bills. The result was that, fearing defeat, Walpole withdrew his excise proposals before they ever came to a vote.44 The Excise Crisis exemplified parliament’s power to influence legislation proposed by the ministry. To illustrate the different forces operating in the English and French political systems in the 1730s Melton significantly compares events in England in 1733 with a similar conflict that arose in France in 1730–2. At this time the Parlement de Paris attempted to voice opposition to Louis XV’s enshrinement of the papal Bull Unigenitus in French law. This led to the royal imposition of silence on all related debates and to the enforced exile of the leading parlementaires.45 Louis XV’s reaction to opposition reveals the tendency of France’s absolutist monarchs to reinforce their own power at the expense of legitimate institutions. Though resident in England at the time, as a former leading member of the Bordeaux parlement Montesquieu no doubt took a keen interest in the disputes over Unigenitus. Among the extracts from Bolingbroke’s Remarks that Montesquieu noted down (in English) during his stay in London is a political maxim to the effect that the actions of those in power must always be subject to scrutiny. Since ‘the love of power’ is ‘insatiable’ and ‘constantly whetted’ there is a need not only for institutional safeguards but also for permanent vigilance on the part of the people.46 Montesquieu also cites (again in English) another extract from the Craftsman to explain how this vigilance affects the nature of the political system: In all the free contries where the people have the liberty to examine publik affairs there ever were and ever will be parties … look into the absolute monarchies and you’ll find no parties indeet but the reason is because there’s no liberty … none but litle minds and half thinkers count those divisions an evil.47

The ‘litle minds and half thinkers’ criticized here are those supporters of Walpole’s administration who levelled charges of dissidence and disloyalty at Bolingbroke

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and other members of his party. These charges were multiplied during the Excise Crisis and the general election campaign of 1734 that followed. The ministerial press declared that in a nation where the government worked for the ‘General Good’ there was no place for opposition: ‘To set up a Country Interest against the Court … is a Crime of the highest Nature’.48 Walpole’s ally Lord Hervey attacked the arguments Bolingbroke had made against the government in the Remarks by reinterpreting Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy from a pro-ministerial stance. In his pamphlet Ancient and Modern Liberty Stated and Compar’d (1734) he condemns the opposition on the basis of Machiavelli’s description of party divisions in republican Rome: To such sort of Contention (says Machiaval) is owing the Ruin of most States … Those therefore who say our Government is founded on Resistance, and from thence infer that Resistance and Struggle is the Situation in which the People in this Country, whether oppress’d or not, ought always to keep themselves in order to preserve their Liberties; are … great Enemies in my Opinion to this Constitution.49

A similar debate as to the legitimacy of political opposition was also taking place in France at this time, in the wake of the Unigenitus disputes of the early 1730s. There is much debate among historians as to when what Keith Michael Baker terms ‘a politics of contestation’ first emerged in France to challenge the absolutist order of the ancien régime.50 The conflict between Crown and parlements in 1730–2 has recently been credited with transforming the Parlement de Paris into an active, if not effective, opposition party.51 Louis’s XV’s reaction to this shows that there was at this time no provision within the French polity for the expression of opinions in contradiction with government. The Parlement de Paris’s stand against the King was consequently presented as rebellion and punished accordingly. The belief evinced in Lord Hervey’s pamphlet that partisan division weakened the state was also widely held in eighteenth-century France. It can be detected in contemporary French readings of Roman history, where the fall of the Republic was commonly attributed to internecine conflict within Rome. Voltaire, comparing the English and Roman governments in his Lettres philosophiques, declared that the Romans succumbed to tyranny like ‘slaves’ because of their partisan sympathies.52 In the Considérations Montesquieu radically revises these judgements: ‘All the authors talk about the divisions which led to the fall of Rome; but one must understand that these divisions were necessary, that they had always been, and always would be, part of the Republic’.53 He thus takes a stand not only on Roman history but also as regards contemporary debates in England and France concerning the nature of party divisions in the state. His views represent a dissident reading of Machiavelli which differs substantially from that proposed by Lord Hervey. Montesquieu’s Machiavelli, like Bolingbroke’s, is a theorist of lib-

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eral republicanism. The Considérations echo the claim made in the Discourses that those who condemn Roman disunity, ‘condemn in the same breath the very foundations of Roman liberty’.54 Asserting the necessity of political division, based on the dynamics of political change in Rome, Montesquieu is at odds with French proponents of absolutism and with Walpole’s supporters in England. His definition of a ‘free government’ as one which is ‘constantly unsettled’, defies those who associate opposition to government policy with rebellion and sedition. In a passage remarkable for its striking imagery, Montesquieu elaborates maxims that redefine the nature of political unity: What we commonly call union in a political body is a very equivocal thing; true union is a form of harmony whereby all parties, however opposed to each other they may appear, work together for the good of society, as dissonances in music add richness to the melody. In a despotic government, that is to say, any government which is not moderate, there is always common agreement … yet this is not the union formed when citizens unite together, but that of dead bodies piled into a common grave.55

Montesquieu thus reveals the need to revise those readings of Roman history which condemn party divisions and to accept that political dissension advances rather than threatens ‘the good of society’. Unanimity and order are no longer to be seen as the hallmarks of a successful state: ‘As a general rule, at times when nothing disturbs the tranquillity of a state … we can be assured that there is no liberty there’.56 His argument also reinforces Bolingbroke’s defence of the actions of his opposition party as outlined in the Craftsman. Humphrey Oldcastle, the fictional narrator of the Remarks on the History of England, claims on behalf of his fellow citizens that before Bolingbroke and his party began to speak out against Walpole’s administration, ‘we were not only quiet, but we seemed implicit, and dull uniformity of eternal assent prevailed in every place’. While dismissing any attempt to rouse ‘your seditious, rebellious spirit … so as to discompose the harmony of the several orders of government’, he praises the fact that as a result of opposition campaigns: ‘The humour of the nation is altered … All orders of men are more intent than I ever observed them to be on the course of public affairs’.57 Montesquieu’s meditation on political harmony in the Considérations, where he contrasts the conformist subject with the active citizen, clearly echoes such sentiments. The model of the divided state which the text proposes had a clear precedent in English thought, as did the idea of using a history of Rome to illustrate such political lessons. Bolingbroke’s Remarks trace the development of the ‘spirit of liberty’ through English history, but the narrator begins with the example of Rome, on the grounds that ‘surely no history can be more fruitful in examples of the danger to which liberty stands exposed … than the Roman

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history is, from the last of the kings to the first of the emperors’.58 Following the Revolution of 1688 it had become commonplace for supporters of the government to make the analogy between the liberties preserved in the English constitution and that of the Roman Republic in its heyday. Here, Bolingbroke shows that this analogy is double-edged. Presenting the Romans as a people who failed to safeguard their ancient liberties, he undermines those oligarchs who complacently uphold Roman virtus and libertas as English civic ideals.59 The Considérations reveal that Montesquieu shares this critical stance towards the anachronistic idolization of Rome in England as well as France. He differs from Bolingbroke however, by putting forward an argument based on cultural relativism. Like Machiavelli, Montesquieu emphasizes the impact of Christianity in irrevocably separating modern European culture from the ancient world.60 He uses a passage concerning the suicide of Cato, a figure seen as incarnating republican virtue, to demonstrate that in modern times ‘men have become less free, less courageous, less liable to perform great deeds than they once were’. He adds an intriguing footnote: ‘If Charles I and James II had followed a religion which condoned suicide, the former would not have had to endure such an awful death and the latter such an awful life’.61 Montesquieu here plays on the analogy between the English and the republican Romans to reinforce the fact that the English have no right to pretend to ancient heroism in modern times. It is evident that England’s role in the Considérations is not limited to that of playing political foil to France. Through his work, Montesquieu intervenes simultaneously in both English and French cultural and political debates. Whilst provocatively comparing the French monarchs with Rome’s corrupt emperors, Montesquieu is careful not to encourage complacency by merely congratulating the English on their ideal political system. The analogy between the English and Roman constitutions reveals the vulnerability of England’s political system. Following the Glorious Revolution England might have achieved a grandeur worthy of the Roman Republic, but by the 1730s Bolingbroke and his party were forecasting impending décadence if the abuses of Walpole’s government were ignored. Commenting that, ‘the tyranny of a Prince does not bring the state closer to ruin than indifference to the common good in a republic’, Montesquieu exposes the different dangers that threaten both the French-Augustan and English-republican regimes.62 The political maxims that Montesquieu develops in the Considérations are clearly applicable to both England and France in the light of recent events in both countries. Montesquieu has a message for the English, too apt to rest on their political laurels as the heirs of republican Rome and to criticize the voicing of opposition views in the political public sphere. He emphasizes the need for internal reform and continual renewal in order to adapt to changing historical circumstances, posits the necessity of division to ensure the harmony of the state, and highlights the differences between ancient and modern values.

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The French meanwhile are to abandon the Augustan constitutional model and accept that the state is not an unchanging, incontestable structure. The lessons of Rome are there to be learnt.

An End to Empire Having contradicted the conventional view that internal divisions in the city precipitated the fall of republican Rome, Montesquieu presents another thesis previously championed by Machiavelli: ‘The greatness of the Republic was the sole cause of all its ills’.63 This statement can appear elliptical given that ‘greatness’, or ‘grandeur’, might equally refer to a state’s achievements or to its geographical dimensions.64 However, Paul Rahe argues convincingly that the arguments presented in the Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe as well as in the Considérations suggest that Montesquieu was pinpointing territorial expansion as the reason for Rome’s decline.65 The work of David Armitage and Kenneth J. Banks on British and French imperial history shows how the political stability assured by the Anglo–French alliance (1716–31) allowed England and France to invest resources in expanding their possessions overseas, notably in the New World.66 In the early 1730s, however, growing tensions within Europe itself raised the prospect of clashes between imperial powers much closer to home. In this context Montesquieu’s critical treatment of Roman imperialism in the Considérations can be read as a clear warning to those in England, France and elsewhere who sought to follow Rome in gaining territorial supremacy in Europe and beyond. Montesquieu’s critique of imperialism rests on his assertion that the growth of Rome’s Empire, far from representing a national asset, in fact weakened the state and paved the way for the excesses of the emperors. The economic benefits of conquest do not offset the political risks, as the case of Pompey shows: He expanded the Empire to include an infinite number of countries, which contributed more to the spectacle of Roman magnificence than to its true power; and although the banners carried in his triumphal procession announced that he had increased fiscal revenues by a third, Rome was if anything less powerful and public liberty was ever more exposed.67

Montesquieu clearly locates the roots of Rome’s decline in the growth of its empire. He denounces not only the system of imperial government but the territorial expansion which made such government necessary. The Republic – by definition a contained city-state of active citizens – was destroyed by over-ambitious conquest: Rome was no longer the city whose people had shared the same ideas, the same love of liberty, the same hatred of tyranny … the city was torn apart … and as Roman citi-

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The description of Rome as ‘torn apart’ suggests that the city became mistress of the world through a process of political mutilation or disfigurement. Montesquieu’s use of the words ‘fiction’ and ‘chimera’ also pinpoints the establishment of the Empire as the moment when Rome ceased to represent a political reality and became a myth. Eighteenth-century Europeans who attempt to justify colonial expansion through an evocation of the Roman precedent are thus exposed as basing their arguments on a historical fantasy. Judith Shklar has commented that the depiction of imperial Rome in the Considérations should be read as a response to contemporary geopolitics. In the early 1730s, ‘empire was on the agenda of every European state and Montesquieu meant to deglamorize it’.69 Two strategies are at work in the text to convey this powerful message. On the one hand, Montesquieu’s reading of Roman history demonstrates that imperial expansion has negative consequences for the political structures of the mother country. Rome paid for her empire with the loss of her liberty; as Montesquieu explained in his Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle: ‘In a great empire, those that rule must necessarily do so with despotic authority’. On the other hand, conquest is also frequently condemned for its own sake in the Considérations. For instance, in the final chapter of the work Montesquieu describes Europe’s disastrous attempts to subdue the Middle East during the Crusades. He sees a parallel between the conduct of the medieval French knights and France’s current colonists: ‘We must admit that … we behave without restraint when we invade foreign nations and that we were then guilty of offences which we continue to commit today’.70 It is significant that Montesquieu’s interpretation of Roman history closes on the evocation of a negative episode in France’s past, with the obvious intention of discouraging further conquest. The exploits of the Spanish conquistadores in Mexico also make a noteworthy appearance in the text. Montesquieu’s commentary on Spain – a common enemy to both France and England in the 1730s – adds another dimension to the contemporary geopolitical focus of the Considérations. Shackleton has demonstrated the author’s keen interest in Spain both as a colonial power and a nation with pretensions to territorial supremacy in Europe.71 The image of Spain, a recent example of unbridled imperial ambition and its disastrous consequences, hovers in the background throughout the Considérations as a warning to both France and England. In his Considérations sur les richesses de l’Espagne (c. 1727), a short text that can productively be read alongside his similarly titled reflections on Roman history, Montesquieu shows how Spanish imperialism has led only to poverty and discontent. Contrary to popular belief, Spain’s empire is not to be envied:

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I have many times heard people deplore the lack of foresight displayed by François I’s councillors who turned Christopher Columbus away when he came seeking French help for his expedition to uncover the treasures of the Indies; sometimes very wise decisions are taken inadvertently, and the current state of Spain must be a great consolation to us.72

In the Considérations not only Spain, but also England and France are criticized for their desire obtain territories in the New World. Both nations saw this as consistent with their aim of achieving Roman-style hegemony, yet Montesquieu seeks to show how misguided Europeans have been in their replication of the Roman model of conquest.73 He particularly questions the logic behind England and France’s decision to adopt the Roman practice of employing slave labour in their colonies. Slavery can no longer be justified on the terms used in the ancient world, and modern Europeans have succeeded only in alienating native populations: ‘What can account for the ferocity that we witness in the inhabitants of our colonies, if not the continual infliction of cruel punishments on an unfortunate portion of the human race?’74 Moreover, whilst arrogating the brutal Roman custom of slavery the French and English have paradoxically chosen to ignore the equally well-established Roman tradition of tolerance as regards the religion and customs of conquered nations: ‘It is madness on the part of conquerors to try and impose their laws and customs on all nations; no good can come of this’. To make clear the contemporary relevance of his observations, Montesquieu significantly emphasizes the fact that the Roman policy of respecting the character of the different European nations under its domination resulted in a united Europe: ‘As Rome did not impose any general laws, the peoples of Europe were not drawn together unwillingly; they were united as one body by a common obedience, and although they were not compatriots they were all Romans’.75 The discussion of Roman imperialism in the Considérations thus not only raises questions about Europe’s relations with the New World but also addresses the interaction of states within Europe itself. Outlining a new – and extraordinarily farsighted – model for intraEuropean relations in the Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle, Montesquieu declares that it is time the European powers, particularly France and England, acknowledged their interdependence and need for cooperation: Europe is now one nation made up of many. France and England depend on the wealth of Poland and Russia, as one of their provinces depends on the others: any state which seeks to increase its power by attacking its neighbours will generally end up weaker as a result.76

The Considérations do not merely tell the story of the rise and fall of Rome, but also of the birth of modern Europe. Montesquieu’s theory, expanded in the unpublished Réflexions, is that no one European nation will ever again be able to

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assert its superiority over others through territorial expansion on the continent or overseas. Instead, he argues powerfully that to pursue conquest or universal monarchy has a destructive effect on a nation, endangering liberty at home and encouraging intolerance and exploitation abroad. At a time of great colonial expansion and when England and France – no longer allies – looked set to renew their struggle for control of Europe, Montesquieu’s reinterpretation of events in Rome strikes a warning note. Identifying the decline of Rome with the establishment of its empire, he shows that to imitate Roman imperialism is to risk descent into decadence. Modern Europeans should embrace the changes that have taken place on the continent since the fall of Rome and make collaboration, rather than domination, their aim.

Writing Enlightened History As Karen O’Brien has shown, eighteenth-century historians often promote the idea that they and their readers are living in an age more enlightened – albeit less spectacular and heroic – than that of the ancients.77 The arguments presented in the Considérations suggest that Montesquieu shared this view. In his work a description of the plots that eventually brought down the Roman Empire becomes an occasion to discuss the very different conditions governing political events in the eighteenth century. He interestingly associates the increasing enlightenment of the modern age with what we now recognize as the emergence of the public sphere: Communication between nations is such, today … that news flies in and out, so to speak, from all directions … The invention of printing, which made books accessible to all, engravings … and above all the establishment of political newspapers make everyone aware of matters of general interest and shed light on even the most covert operations.78

Montesquieu here recognizes that developments in communications have fundamentally changed the nature of participation in public life. In ancient Rome the space of the forum existed to allow citizens to play an active role in the running of their state through debating public affairs.79 However, the Considérations demonstrate that when imperial expansion extended Rome’s rule beyond the bounds of the city many citizens found themselves irrevocably excluded from the business of government. By contrast, the invention of printing and the consequent ever-increasing circulation of books and newspapers in early modern Europe meant that participation in public debates was no longer dependent on the citizens’ physical presence in the forum romanum. Instead, all members of the public sphere could be implicated in the discussion of social and political issues.

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The results of this transformation were clearly visible in England in the 1720s and 30s. The extracts from the Craftsman cited by Montesquieu in his Spicilège show Bolingbroke making systematic appeals to public opinion in his disputes with the government, revealing that popular support had become a crucial factor in political decision-making.80 The serialization of the Remarks on the History of England over a number of issues of the Craftsman also shows how the desire to influence public opinion transformed the nature of historical writing at this time. Previously the dominant historiographical model in both England and France had been that of the classical narrative; an eloquent account of events written by a statesman-historian who often enjoyed a close relationship with the established authorities. Such histories emphasized the will of Princes in effecting historical change, and divine providence was also seen as playing an important determinative role.81 Philip Hicks has commented that Bolingbroke was in many respects the archetypal statesman-historian. Yet when he presented his interpretation of history to readers of the Craftsman he deviated from this model in significant ways. He dismissed the eloquence and elevated style of classical history in favour of an informal, conversational tone more in keeping with periodical journalism because it could engage the reader and transmit ideas effectively in the course of a short article.82 As the lengthy, classical narrative form of history was obviously unsuitable for the press, the Remarks are divided into twenty-four letters each discussing a particular period or aspect of English history. This was consistent with Bolingbroke’s belief, expressed in a letter to Alexander Pope, that the historian should sketch what he termed ‘Political Maps’. Works of history written along these lines were simple in principle and functioned as ‘Systems of hints rather than Relations of Events’.83 The historiographical vision outlined here by Bolingbroke clearly also informs Montesquieu’s Considérations. The ideological similarities between the two authors manifestly affect the form as well as the content of their work. Firstly, the titular use of the terms ‘remarks’ and ‘considerations’ implies a rejection of history as narrative in favour of a more personal, critical examination of events. The resultant histories are also somewhat aphoristic and disjointed, as is suggested by Bolingbroke’s description of his works as ‘systems of hints’. This definition can also be applied to the Considérations, where Roman history is not related but presented as a series of enigmatical political lessons to be decoded by the astute reader. Secondly, Montesquieu’s avoidance of antiquarian erudition and his very limited use of Latin quotations in the Considérations show that he too sought to write a work that would reach a wide, non-scholarly audience. Chantal Grell confirms that by the 1730s French booksellers had begun to express doubts as to the commercial viability of Latinate works, which could no longer command a significant readership.84 Finally, the Considérations represent a uniquely concise and lapidary survey of Roman history divided into twenty-three short

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chapters, just as Bolingbroke’s Remarks are composed of twenty-four brief epistolary essays. The reception of Montesquieu’s work in France supports the idea that the Considérations represented an English approach to history. It was the brevity and fragmentation of the text that most shocked contemporary French readers. Castel, one of the few commentators to compliment Montesquieu on his succinct analysis, underlined the discrepancy between the Considérations and conventional histories of Rome: ‘I found it contained all the elements of Roman history that I have never encountered previously in less than 16, 18, 20 or 30 quarto volumes’.85 However Voltaire, writing (in English) to Thieriot expressed the opinion of the majority: ‘Have you seen the little and too little book writ by Montesquieu on the decadence of Empire? … This book is less a book than an ingenious table des matieres [contents page] writ in an odd stile’.86 Montesquieu’s Considérations are all the more enigmatic because there is no preface included to explain the author’s intentions; nor are these clarified explicitly in the text.87 In this Montesquieu differs from Saint-Évremond, whose own retelling of Roman history had also attracted criticism due to its brevity and lack of antiquarian erudition.88 In the first chapter of his Réflexions sur les divers Genies du Peuple Romain Saint-Évremond defends the concise nature of his work. On the one hand, he will spend no time citing established authorities on the subject: ‘I wish to consider the Romans on their own merits, without taking absurd conventions and received ideas into account’. On the other hand, his declared aim is to establish the defining characteristics or ‘genius’ of the Roman people and no more: ‘My work would be boring, if I entered into the exact details of all the circumstances related; but … I will merely trace the genius evident in certain memorable events, and the different spirit which animated Rome at these times’.89 Bolingbroke’s Remarks constitute a similarly selective overview of English history that seeks to trace the dominance of the ‘spirit of liberty’ over the ‘spirit of faction’ in the nation.90 In the Considérations, Montesquieu follows Saint-Évremond and Bolingbroke in writing the history of a nation in such a way as to bring out what he calls its ‘esprit général’. His work is structured by a desire to understand the Romans’ character and motivations: ‘I cannot neglect any circumstance which might shed light on the genius of the Roman people’.91 It is on this basis that Montesquieu rejects two essential premises of classical history. He asserts that historical change is not a consequence of the actions of exceptional heroic figures or of providential forces, but rather of changes in the body of the people. Saint-Évremond, despite his claim to be examining the ‘spirit’ of Rome, laid particular weight on the actions of historical figures such as the Emperor Augustus. In contrast, Bolingbroke showed that the personalities who marked English history could have had little influence over the course of events had not ‘the spirit of liberty prevailed enough in the whole body of the nation’.92

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Montesquieu significantly adopts a similar viewpoint to Bolingbroke. In the Considérations iconic figures such as Caesar are shown to be of little historical consequence: ‘If Caesar and Pompey had embraced Cato’s ideas, other leaders would have arisen to take Caesar and Pompey’s place; the Republic, which was destined to perish, would have met its death at other hands’.93 This was a direct challenge to absolutist visions of history that cast the Prince – God’s representative on earth – in the principal role. In contrast, Montesquieu claims that a nation determines its own destiny: It is not fortune which rules the world, one need only ask the Romans, who experienced unending prosperity when they governed themselves in a certain way, and an unending series of disasters when they chose another form of government. There are general causes, either moral or physical, which take effect … all events are a result of these causes.94

Thus, in the penultimate chapter of his work, Montesquieu induces a general theory of historical causation based on his previous observations of events in Rome. This equates to an application of the empirical method of the experimental sciences to the writing of history. Montesquieu’s historical empiricism again points to the influence of English historical writing on the Considérations. The author’s library contains the 1728 edition of Gilbert Burnet’s Abridgement of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England, presumably acquired during Montesquieu’s stay in London in 1729–31. Burnet’s work is particularly indicative of trends in contemporary English historiography that shed light on the historical methodology applied in the Considérations.95 The Abridgement is a condensed version of Burnet’s voluminous History of the Reformation (1679– 1715), and in his preface the author acknowledges that the ‘Bulk and Price’ of his full-length work have alienated some potential readers. Burnet claims that historical writing is ‘of excellent Use’ to all and must therefore be made available to the general public in a concise, comprehensible and commercially accessible form. Even more importantly, Burnet also explains how the scientific methods championed by the Royal Society, of which he was a member, can be applied to historical writing: What is said of Notions and Matters of Science, is likewise applicable to Matter of Fact. History is of little Use, if we consider it only as a Tale of what was transacted in former Times. Then it becomes most profitable, when the Series and Reasons of Affairs … are rightly presented to us, that so upon the Light which is given us of past Times, we may form prudent Judgements of the present Time, and … enlighten our Understandings more, by giving us a freer Prospect of Human Affairs.96

The Considérations are clearly consistent with Burnet’s empirical model of historiography. Inducing historical theories on the basis of observations, Montesquieu analyses events in Rome in order to reach conclusions regarding the

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‘esprit général’ of the Romans and to infer universal maxims that continue to govern eighteenth-century politics and society. This process is exemplified by his discussion of the Roman Republic’s political structure. Scrutinizing the conventional view that the competing claims of rival interest groups precipitated Rome’s decline, Montesquieu produces evidence to show that they in fact preserved the city’s liberties. This then leads him to elaborate a more general hypothesis regarding the necessity of partisan divisions in any free state. Such demonstrations are in accordance with Burnet’s declaration that history is ‘most profitable’ as a discipline when the study of the past is ‘rightly presented’ so as to rectify the reader’s judgement of the present. It is in this context that the lack of chronological precision in Montesquieu’s work should be understood. Remarkably, the text of the Considérations is entirely free of dates. This allows the author to trace patterns in history that defy simple chronology. In addition, his observations more easily transcend their Roman setting and become the starting point for the establishment of general historical laws. This aspect of Montesquieu’s work clearly caught the attention of the printer of a 1752 English translation of the Considérations, who declared the author to have established ‘the several operations of the … political and social world, on as regular principles as our Newton has fixed those of the natural’.97 In the early eighteenth century, as Newtonianism emerged from the laboratory to become a widespread cultural movement, all fields of study were seen as susceptible to explanation by general laws.98 Various thinkers attempted to devise the principia governing historical and political development. The most evident example of this phenomenon is the pamphlet written by Newton’s disciple John Theophilus Desaguliers, an exiled Huguenot and member of the Royal Society. The publication of The Newtonian System of the World, the Best Model of Government: An Allegorical Poem coincided with the coronation of George II in 1728. In his poem Desaguliers ‘linked up Newtonian cosmology and Hanoverian politics’, portraying the newly-crowned George II as the sun in the political solar system.99 As a Huguenot refugee, Desaguliers was concerned above all to defend the Protestant Succession and he portrayed the Hanoverian regime as supported by a universal non-partisan consensus. As such, his Newtonian model of politics represented a contribution to the constitutional debates on the legitimacy of political opposition that animated the English public sphere in the late 1720s and early 1730s. Desaguliers depicted a system where ‘Harmony of Government’ matched the harmony of the spheres; thus ‘MAJESTY diffusive Rays imparts’, whilst ‘Ministers within their orbits move’ and no ‘jarring Parties rend the … State’.100 Desaguliers’s equation of political harmony with unanimity necessarily clashed with the constitutional theories of Bolingbroke’s opposition party. Kramnick has shown that Bolingbroke’s work bears witness to the widespread

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impact of Newtonianism on political thought in the 1730s.101 When describing England’s constitution in his Dissertation Upon Parties, published in the Craftsman in 1733–4, Bolingbroke employs the Newtonian frame of reference used by Desaguliers. However, he chooses to emphasize that just as the seeming disorder of the universe is in fact well regulated, a certain amount of division between parties does not mean that a government is in chaos. He also significantly questions the place of the King in Desaguliers’s system, claiming that he is not ‘some superior planet’ able to direct the motions of those around him, but one element of a system in which all parts are in balance: ‘Acting and acted upon, limiting and limited, controlling and controlled by one another’.102 Montesquieu’s Considérations also bear the imprint of the political Newtonianism common to many Enlightenment thinkers. This cannot be traced directly to Bolingbroke’s influence (Montesquieu had returned to France before Bolingbroke’s Dissertation appeared in the Craftsman, though he did later acquire a 1739 edition of the text in book form). Yet Montesquieu notably deploys Newtonian concepts as Bolingbroke does, to show that political divisions are crucial in a constitutional system of checks and balances: ‘There can be union – that is to say the harmony which alone brings happiness and true peace – in a state where there is seemingly only disorder; such is the case with the different parts of the universe which are eternally connected as they act and react to one another’.103 The influence of English empirical thought is thus evident in Montesquieu’s constitutional theories as well as in the methodology of the Considéraions. Montesquieu’s empirical approach to historiography raises the question of the author’s relation to authority. A true empiricist should reject received opinion and rely on nothing but personal observations. Burnet’s preface to his Abridgement shows how this scientific practice defines the enlightened historian’s attitude towards source materials. His declared aim is ‘to clear the Reader’s Mind of the Prejudices which may be apt to arise, either from a slight and general View of this Matter, or from the false Relations that have been formerly made of it’. He thus engages critically with his sources, referencing accounts that justify his reading of events and finding rational grounds for confuting those that do not.104 To this end he makes ample use of notes and appendices. Such scholarly apparatus was absent from more traditional classical histories and its adoption by eighteenth-century historians was indicative of history’s transformation from narrative to intellectual practice in the Enlightenment period.105 In the Considérations Montesquieu too uses footnotes to give details of the sources from which his information is drawn. This also emphasizes the critical distance that Montesquieu puts between himself and the ancient authorities. He attempts to evaluate the reliability of his sources objectively and to take into account any possible bias on the part of the writer, particularly when it comes to the imperial historians: ‘Dion Cassius does well to remark that it was more difficult to write

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history under the emperors; everything became secret … one has to rely on those things that the tyrants in their madness or unscrupulousness did not bother to hide, and on the conjectures of historians’. Montesquieu’s attitude to his sources is therefore consistent with the overall aim of his work, which is designed to question the deference to ancient models inherent in eighteenth-century culture. He also criticizes the historical judgements made by more recent historians of Rome. Remarking that, ‘there are things that everyone says simply because they have been said before … to do this is to neglect to seek the true cause of events’.106 Montesquieu distinguishes his views on Rome from received opinion and proclaims the validity of his own rational, empirical account. In Montesquieu’s view, the business of writing history has changed fundamentally since Roman times. In the Considérations he credits developments in communications with having opened up a new sphere of publicity in early modern Europe. His further meditations on this subject in the Pensées reveal that these developments also contributed to the evolution of historiography. However, he exhibits an interesting ambivalence as to the positive or negative nature of this evolution: ‘One might well ask whether printing has done a service or disservice to historical truth’. On the one hand, the knowledge that their works will reach a wider audience has made historians aware of the need to back up their claims with credible evidence: ‘Previously, authors … unscrupulously concealed the truth: their works were not widely diffused and were only read by a small number of people … they were therefore less fearful of writing absolute absurdities’. On the other hand, the new publicity surrounding historical works has brought history to the attention of those in power: ‘Princes have made this discipline the main object of their surveillance; the royal censors control every writer’s pen … Today, all books must be submitted to their inquisition’. He concludes that the modern historian is in a difficult position, aiming to achieve rational credibility yet under strict censorial control: ‘At one time historians could tell the truth, and they did not; today we would like to tell the truth, and we cannot’.107 Montesquieu’s suppression of the Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle, originally intended for publication as a companion text to the Considérations, shows that he was acutely sensitive to the restrictions placed on the production of historical ‘truth’. His comments in the Pensées are also an invitation to investigate the strategies used by Montesquieu to reveal what he considers to be the truth about Roman history in the Considérations, a text which tacitly challenges aspects of both domestic and foreign policy pursued by European governments, particularly in France and England. In this context, Montesquieu’s use of annotation is of key importance. Not only do the footnotes in the Considérations enhance the empirical character of the author’s historical investigations but they are also used subversively to facilitate the introduction of controversial or contradictory opinions into the

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work. This device was exploited previously by Bayle and afterwards by Voltaire and Gibbon, among others.108 Subversive annotation is particularly noticeable in those chapters of the Considérations dealing with the advent of Christianity and its impact on the Roman state. Montesquieu claims that the growth of Christianity in the Empire was a cause of Rome’s political decline. This was a bold argument in the light of recent events in France. As was demonstrated by the official response to the Parlement de Paris when its members struggled to debate the Unigenitus Bull, the French authorities did not consider the relationship between ecclesiastical and civil government to be a subject suitable for free public discussion. Previously in the Lettres persanes Montesquieu had followed the example set by English writers such as Shaftesbury and Locke in asserting his right to discuss religious issues in a rational, even satirical manner. He also creates a unique space for free debate on the pages of the Considérations. This space exists in the interaction between the footnotes and the main body of the text. When discussing the reign of Constantine, the Emperor traditionally celebrated for proclaiming Christianity the official Roman religion, Montesquieu declares that in reality he weakened the Empire through his misguided policies. He footnotes the remark: ‘What is said here of Constantine should not shock ecclesiastical authors who declare that they are only interested in those of the Emperor’s actions which demonstrate his piety and not those which concern the government of the state’. This note could be intended to pre-empt potential accusations by official censors. However, it also acts as an ironic criticism of those ecclesiastical commentators who refuse to consider religious and secular history on the same terms. This was a concept of fundamental importance to enlightened historians such as Burnet who, in his History of the Reformation, acknowledged that religious and political concerns were intimately linked and discussed both in the same reasoned tone. Two footnotes later Montesquieu again demonstrates his determination to debate religious issues according to rational secular criteria. Commenting that the soldiers of Constantine’s reign idled away their time in the circus and the theatre he adds the footnote: ‘From the time when Christianity was established gladiatorial combats became rare, Constantine forbade them … the new spectacles invented to replace them sapped the Romans’ strength and encouraged debauchery’.109 In other words, the influence of Christian doctrine on the state led to the decline of traditional Roman civic virtues. This in turn had disastrous political consequences for the Empire. Montesquieu’s verdict on Christianity should be linked to the themes explored in his Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion (1716). Echoing the arguments made by Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy, Montesquieu presents religion in ancient Rome as a matter of political expediency.110 Whereas the Unigenitus crisis had revealed that the Catholic Church exercised more influence over public life in France

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than the magistracy, in pagan Rome the actions of clerics were always subject to secular control: ‘Priests had no right to intervene in public affairs without the magistrates’ permission’.111 Montesquieu’s Considérations suggest that the Church has always been an obstacle to political reform. This was particularly evident in the days of Rome’s decadence when there were calls for a return to the traditional pagan values that had contributed to the greatness of the Empire. As Montesquieu mentions in a footnote, the arguments made by Saint Augustine in his City of God convinced the Romans that their ancient ‘moral virtues’ were worthless. This argument ended any attempt to recapture traditional values and liberties and as the concluding chapters of the Considérations show, the doctrinal disputes of the Early Church dominated the final days of the Empire. The portrait of a government weakened by allowing theological concerns to take precedence over the business of government again resonates with events in France in 1730–2, where the resistance of the Gallican parlementaires to the imposition of papal directives had momentarily paralysed the state.112 In contrast, Voltaire in his Lettres philosophiques declared that the success and prosperity of the English resided in their having conclusively banished religious disputes from the political realm following the Act of Toleration of 1689. Eighteenth-century Englishmen were free to worship as they wished, with the result that religious differences did not intrude into the transaction of political and commercial affairs. Voltaire famously depicts the London Stock Exchange as embodying England’s modern secular culture: There the Jew, the Muslim and the Christian trade together as though they all professed the same religion, and the name of infidel is reserved for bankrupts. There the Presbyterian places his trust in the Anabaptist, and the Anglican takes the Quaker’s word as his bond.113

Both the Considérations and the Lettres philosophiques are texts that champion the layman’s right to express an opinion on ecclesiastical affairs. The fate of Voltaire’s work at the hands of the French censors to some extent justifies Montesquieu’s use of annotation to create a textual space in which religious issues could be discussed freely and rationally without damaging his chances of publication in France. The Considérations uphold the values of critical, rational thought on all subjects, including religion, which had been fundamental to the establishment of the English public sphere. The work is not dedicated to a powerful patron and the first edition appeared anonymously, as had the Lettres persanes.114 The validity of Montesquieu’s account of Rome is thus vested purely in the cogency of his argument and the documentary evidence supporting it. As such, the way in which history is debated in the Considérations recalls the nature of discussions in the scientific arena, which were rational and objective and where contributions were judged on the quality of the arguments put forward rather than on

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the status of the contributor. The Considérations show Montesquieu, under the influence of English historiography, moving away from classical historical narrative and turning towards enlightened history as practised by Bolingbroke and Burnet. History that was governed, like science, by the dual imperatives of intelligibility and rationality; empirical in method, resolutely secular in outlook and accessibly designed to implicate as wide an audience as possible in political and social debate.

The Romains Conquer England The reception of Montesquieu’s Considérations in an English context significantly contrasts with the French view of the text as a defective history of Rome. In fact, in England the Considérations were not initially considered to be a work of history at all. When the English translation of Montesquieu’s work appeared in August 1734, it was advertised in the Gentleman’s Magazine. This periodical classified new books by their subject matter. The Considérations were not entered under the heading of ‘History’, but ‘Politicks’; clearly one English reviewer at least had already seized the deeper ideological import of the text.115 The first English translation of the Considérations was also published under the name of ‘the Author of the Persian Letters’, a textual label which no doubt created an expectation of satirical political content. In England, texts such as Bolingbroke’s Remarks on the History of England had established an important precedent for works of history with a clear contemporary message and in which analysis of the past led to judgement on the political present. Bolingbroke had of course begun his Remarks with a reading of Roman history, which would have further enhanced the relevance of Montesquieu’s own interpretation for the English market. The kinship between Bolingbroke and Montesquieu’s work did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. As Joseph Spence reports in his Anecdotes for 1734–6, Alexander Pope had particularly noted that Bolingbroke’s ‘several strictures on the Roman affairs’ were ‘something like what Montesquieu published afterwards … among which there were many excellent observations’.116 Once again, as had been the case with the Lettres persanes, the arguments made by Montesquieu in the Considérations resonated with debates in the English public sphere. From the start, translators and printers involved in the production of English editions of the Considérations drew their own distinctive meanings from the text. As Frédéric Ogée comments, the texts involved in eighteenth-century Anglo–French intellectual exchanges were not so much translated as transformed; linguistic and ideological alterations were made to suit the culture of the target country.117 The process of translating the Considérations into English brought out political allusions in the text that had been implicit in the original French. For instance, where Montesquieu had used the

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word ‘Angleterre’, translators could make a strategic choice between ‘England’ or ‘Britain’ according to context and chronology. Thus Montesquieu’s favourable description of the English constitution becomes, ‘the British Government is one of the wisest in Europe’, whilst a passage concerning the Cromwellian protectorate contains references to ‘England’.118 This introduces into the Considérations a linguistic and ideological separation between the old ‘England’ and the new ‘Britain’ which emerged from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Act of Union of 1707. Montesquieu’s work, in its adapted form, was thus made to play a role in the English public sphere of the mid-1730s. In 1733–4 Bolingbroke in his Dissertation upon Parties similarly distinguished between the ‘constitution of England’ that existed before the revolution settlement and the modern ‘British constitution’ which he exhorts every citizen to preserve.119 Bolingbroke and his party claimed to be defending the liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights against Walpole’s despotic encroachments. The Patriots and others frequently cited the canonical example of Rome to prove that where liberty is compromised, decadence ensues. The translator’s decision to have Montesquieu endorse British liberty and constitutional balance in the context of a work on Roman history therefore made his words particularly pertinent. Paul Rahe has suggested that the English translators of the Considérations were working from uncorrected page proofs of the text that reflected Montesquieu’s uncensored thoughts, some of which were bowdlerized before the final French edition came to press. Rahe particularly points to passages where the provocative term ‘universal monarchy’ (absent from French versions of the text) is explicitly used in English to describe the expansion of the Roman Empire.120 This implies that readers in England were exposed to a clearer polemical message as to the dangers of modern European states seeking to emulate Rome’s conquests. This would have chimed with growing fear in England as the balance of power, upset by the collapse of the Anglo–French alliance in 1731, shifted still further in 1733 when France formed alliances with Sardinia and Spain and then led this new Bourbon bloc against Hapsburg Austria in the War of the Polish Succession (1733–5). When England did not intervene to support Austria the Anglo–Austrian alliance also collapsed. As Andrew Thompson comments, this left Britain in an increasingly isolated position while ‘once more France appeared to be … likely to instigate universal monarchy and destroy Europe’s freedoms’.121 The critique of universal monarchy contained in English translations of the Considérations would have become increasingly relevant when England resumed hostilities with France in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8). In the uneasy peace that followed, Newcastle as Secretary of State pursued a ‘stridently anti-French policy’ supported by a sustained propaganda campaign in the press ‘based on the premise that France was inexorably determined to gain every possible advantage over Britain’.122

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In this climate Montesquieu’s work continued to play a role in English political debates. This is borne out by an analysis of the 1752 edition of the Considérations, published with a long preface by the prominent printer William Bowyer. Bowyer seeks to enhance the text’s relevance to the contemporary English situation by inserting excerpts of the recently translated L’Esprit des lois at various strategic points. The chapters he includes from L’Esprit des lois concern issues relating to global trade and imperial expansion that were far more pressing in the 1750s than they had been when the Considérations first appeared in the 1730s. Montesquieu’s description of Rome’s rise to greatness therefore includes an extract from book 21 of L’Esprit des lois that is so placed, Bowyer explains, ‘that the reader may be the better judge of how little effect trade had in gaining Rome a superiority over other nations’.123 Bowyer’s addition is in keeping with one of the original aims of the Considérations, that of correcting misapplications of the Roman example to affairs in the modern world. In the passage cited Montesquieu clearly states that there is no Roman precedent for the domination of global commerce: I am not ignorant that men prepossessed with these two ideas, that commerce is of the greatest service to a state, and that the Romans had the best policied government in the world, have believed that they greatly honoured and encouraged commerce; but the truth is, they seldom troubled their heads about it.124

John Robertson points out that in the 1750s David Hume, along with other British Enlightenment thinkers, was becoming increasingly concerned about England’s aggressive pursuit of commercial imperialism through the use of protective and mercantilist trade policies backed up by naval and military power.125 In the same year that Bowyer published his edition of the Considérations, Hume’s essay ‘Of Commerce’ appeared in his Political Discourses. Examining the maxim that declares ‘the greatness of a state, and the happiness of its subjects’ to be ‘inseparable with regard to commerce’, Hume argues that ‘this maxim is true in general; though I cannot forbear thinking, that it may possibly admit of exceptions, and that we often establish it with too little reserve and limitation’. One of the exceptions to this rule, as Hume remarks, is Rome.126 Whereas trade does not feature largely in the original text of Montesquieu’s Considérations, Bowyer’s comments and additions transform the 1752 edition of the work in such a way that it concurs with Hume’s contemporary thesis. It is apposite to read the Political Discourses alongside Montesquieu’s work as in several essays Hume responds specifically to issues raised in L’Esprit des lois and the Considérations.127 Echoes of this latter text are clearly detectable in the essay ‘On the Balance of Power’, where Hume assesses the competition between France and England for domination of Europe, most recently demonstrated in the War of the Austrian Succession. He concludes that ‘enormous monarchies,

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such as Europe, at present, is in danger of falling into’, are inevitably doomed to collapse. Yet this does not prevent nations striving for control of Europe, ‘and the melancholy fate of the Roman emperors, from the same causes, is renew’d, over and over again’.128 In the mid-eighteenth century England and France were not only struggling for supremacy in Europe but across the globe. As the extent of French and English overseas dominions increased so did rivalry between the two colonial powers. The early 1750s saw England clash with France in the Ohio Valley, Canada and India.129 Bowyer’s 1752 edition of Montesquieu’s Considérations aptly emphasizes, even more than had the original text, the deleterious political consequences of Rome’s imperial ambitions. Into Montesquieu’s description of the territorial expansion which caused Rome’s downfall, Bowyer inserts an extract from book 11 of L’Esprit des lois which explains how empire-building places domestic liberty in jeopardy: ‘Hence it was that the strength of the provinces made no addition to, but rather weakened the strength of the republic. Hence it was that the provinces looked upon the loss of the liberty of Rome as the epocha of their own freedom’.130 During his time in England in the early 1730s, Montesquieu revealed his understanding of the problematic relations between the English and their empire when he observed in his travel journal: ‘I think that if any nation is to be forsaken by its colonies, England shall be the first’.131 When Bowyer’s edition of the Considérations appeared Benjamin Franklin was calling for the North American colonies to unite and defend their liberties whilst on the domestic political front England faced increasing instability.132 Bowyer’s adjustments to Montesquieu’s work therefore heightened its relevance to the English situation in the 1750s. Appended to Bowyer’s edition of the Considérations is another short text by Montesquieu which also evokes the events of Roman history. The Dialogue de Sylla et d’Eucrate depicts the Roman general Sulla in conversation with a philosopher who condemns Sulla’s invasion of Rome, his usurpation of his rival Marius’s power and the establishment of a dictatorship limiting the exercise of Roman republican liberties. This text had been implicated in an important event in eighteenth-century Anglo–French relations: the Jacobite Rising of 1745–6. Having originally composed the dialogue in the early 1720s Montesquieu only chose to make it public in February 1745, at a time when the French government was debating whether or not to lend its support to the Jacobite invasion of England planned for later the same year.133 Significantly, the author made the decision to publish his text in the Mercure de France, a widely-circulated French newspaper. As in the case of Bolingbroke’s Remarks on the History of England, which were published in the Craftsman, Montesquieu’s evocation of Roman history in the French press implies a desire to have an immediate impact on public opinion as well as the conflation of historical judgements with contemporary political comment. The dialogue’s themes relate directly to Sulla’s ill-fated schemes for

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invasion, usurpation and constitutional change and thus are highly relevant to the context of French preparations to back the ’45 in which Charles Edward Stuart planned to invade Britain, reclaim the Hanoverian throne and reinstate a Catholic monarchy in defiance of the Act of Settlement. The Prince was himself in Paris in early 1745 and French newspapers such as the Mercure de France were widely promoting his efforts to drum up support. Pro-Jacobite propaganda in France focused less on the Stuarts’ claims to dynastic legitimacy than on the person of Charles Edward himself, presenting him romantically as a ‘perfect hero’.134 In Montesquieu’s Dialogue the philosopher Eucrate explicitly debates Sulla’s status as a Roman hero and concludes that heroism is a ‘destructive’ quality: ‘It costs us too dearly when we set one man above the rest of humanity’.135 Following its publication in the press, Montesquieu’s Dialogue was appended to the 1746 French edition of the Considérations. The dialogue’s direct relevance to Charles Edward’s situation was enhanced when Montesquieu personally sent a copy of this new edition to the Prince, with a letter containing a cleverly-worded dedication: ‘To whom shall I present my tales of Roman heroes, if not to him who brings them back to life?’136 The inclusion of the first English translation of Montesquieu’s Dialogue in Bowyer’s edition of the Considérations thus further enhances the importance of both texts in the history of eighteenth-century Anglo–French intellectual exchanges. Bowyer’s edition of the Considérations may have carried a contemporary political message, but as a classicist and active member of the Society of Antiquaries the editor was equally concerned about the accuracy of the text’s historical details.137 His preface contains a highly erudite discussion as to the exact calculation of a Roman soldier’s pay in which he criticizes the flaws in Montesquieu’s reasoning on the subject. Bowyer appeals to ‘Liberty, which is as necessary to the welfare of the literary, as of the political republic’, to back up his right to dispute the opinions of a prestigious author.138 True to the values of the literary as of the political public sphere Montesquieu demonstrated his respect for Bowyer’s views by responding to them in his Remarques sur certaines objections que m’a faites un homme qui m’a traduit mes Romains en Angleterre. Here he indulges in the scholarly speculation, punctuated by copious Latin quotations, which he had so carefully avoided in the Considérations.139 As this exchange shows, exploring the composition, distribution and reception of Montesquieu’s history of Rome provides a valuable insight into the nature of Anglo–French intellectual relations in the first half of the eighteenth century. At this time, the Roman example was frequently called upon to legitimize English democracy, French absolutism, and both nations’ strategies of conquest. In this context, Montesquieu’s provocative reading of the events surrounding Rome’s rise and fall can be read as a response to attitudes prevalent on both sides of the Channel, if not elsewhere in Europe. In the Considérations, Montesquieu negotiates the complex question of when

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and how it is appropriate to make analogies between the modern and the ancient world. On the one hand, he questions the status of Rome as a political and cultural model, emphasizes the specificity of the historical circumstances that led to the establishment of the Empire and reveals the inadvisability of emulating this achievement. On the other, he suggests many lessons on matters social, political and religious that Europe can draw from Roman history. These lessons cannot be understood without reference to England, which emerges from the text as an alternative model of a nation that has embraced recent advances in communications and is developing the sophisticated political mechanisms necessary in a modern state. The Considérations represent a rejection of the methodology as well as the ideology of existing French histories of Rome. Montesquieu was instead influenced by contemporary English writers who had transformed history into a rational, accessible science. The work thus bears witness to developments in the English public sphere whilst also reflecting and contributing to debates taking place in both England and France in the 1730s regarding the legitimacy of public discussion of government policy and, in a specifically French context, of religious matters. The pertinence and power of the work were subsequently recognized by the English editors and translators who adapted the Considérations to reflect their own ideological stance. Clearly, Enlightenment authors such as Montesquieu were justified in anticipating that their work would be read, and their ideas exploited, beyond their own national borders. Written in the years following the collapse of the Anglo–French alliance, the Considérations expose the dangerous consequences of competing for cultural supremacy in Europe or overseas. In his unpublished Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle Montesquieu claimed that ‘today … civilized peoples are all, one might say, members of one great republic’.140 Had the Réflexions not suffered from Montesquieu’s self-censorship, his discussion of the Roman domination of Europe in the Considérations would have been accompanied by a text proposing a new model of intra-European relations based on the recognition of common interests and shared values. Wishing to emphasize the political and cultural freedoms that are fundamental to these shared values, in L’Esprit des lois Montesquieu would in turn develop a new cosmopolitan constitutional model inspired by the liberties of the Gothic nations who hastened the fall of Rome and in so doing laid the foundations for modern Europe.

4 COSMOPOLITAN CONSTITUTIONALISM: L’ESPRIT DES LOIS (1748)

No study of relations between Montesquieu and England would be complete without an examination of the famous chapters in L’Esprit des lois where Montesquieu describes England’s constitution before going on to show how this constitution affects the morals, manners and national character of the English population.1 These passages have been extensively discussed by commentators who have typically sought to identify the exact sources of Montesquieu’s information on English institutions or to confront his perceptions with the political and social realities of life in eighteenth-century England.2 Yet to appreciate fully the significance of Montesquieu’s representation of England and the English in L’Esprit des lois a different approach to these chapters is required. Not merely their content but their grounding in a particular historical, political and ideological context must be taken into account. Keith Michael Baker’s detailed analysis of the evolution of French political culture in the second half of the eighteenth century promotes this contextual understanding of the role played by England in L’Esprit des lois. Baker’s research shows that England – both the nature of the nation’s politics and its relations with France – was a recurring theme in French constitutional debates of the 1740s and 50s. In Baker’s view, this was a symptom of growing conflict within the ancien régime. He argues that the mid-eighteenth century saw the development of a politically active public sphere in France, with growing awareness of political issues among the general public and mounting opposition to absolutism from within the governing classes. In short, France was embracing political practices ‘that many contemporaries associated with that turbulent state across the Channel’. Touching briefly on L’Esprit des lois, Baker demonstrates that in this period French thinkers attempting to grapple with the tensions in their own absolutist regime frequently turned to England as a reference point. At the same time, the increasing similarities between the political cultures of France and England challenged traditional assumptions regarding the ideological and cultural differences between the two nations.3 Baker raises a number of points that can inform a reinterpretation of Montesquieu’s representation of England and the English in L’Esprit des lois. His – 107 –

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comments focus attention on the way in which Montesquieu portrays not only England’s political culture, but also its relationship with France. This is of particular significance given the fact that when L’Esprit des lois appeared the two nations had been at war for eight years (the work was published in October 1748, the same month that the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of the Austrian Succession). This makes it necessary firstly to confront Montesquieu’s representation of the English with contemporary hostile French views of England. From this confrontation emerges Montesquieu’s vision of the past, present and future of Anglo–French relations and the intimate connection between the political cultures of the two nations. It is also important to determine the extent to which Montesquieu’s comments on England represent a contribution to contemporary French constitutional debates. Furthermore, as English responses to his earlier works had allowed Montesquieu to assume the existence of an English readership for L’Esprit des lois, the possibility that Montesquieu was intervening in political debates of particular relevance to an English audience must also be addressed. Several recent studies of Montesquieu’s political philosophy have shown that the author’s reflections on England in L’Esprit des lois should be linked to other aspects of his thought, such as his attempt to describe and classify the different types of political regime and his views on the functioning of modern commercial societies.4 Therefore, although the chapters of L’Esprit des lois that concern England directly will provide a starting point for this discussion the aim will be to link them with themes present in the text as a whole.

English Savages? Concluding his celebrated description of the English constitution in chapter 6 of book 11 in L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu makes an extraordinary claim regarding the system of government that he has just outlined: ‘Anyone who wishes to read Tacitus’s admirable work on the customs of the Germans, will see that it is from them that the English derived the idea of their government and politics. This fine system was found in the forests’. Declaring that the English constitution is rooted in the political traditions of the barbarian German tribes that the Romans sought to subdue, Montesquieu seemingly confirms the conventional French perception of the English as unruly savages.5 This perception was rooted in French responses to the bloody events of English seventeenth-century history.6 During the period of Anglo–French détente in the 1720s and 30s enlightened thinkers such as Montesquieu and Voltaire had begun to promote another image of England as a civilized, successful, modern nation but the powerful French doctrine of English savagery was resurrected in the 1740s, a time of heightened tension between England and France.7 Not only did the two nations oppose each other in the War of the Austrian Succession but France attempted to invade England in 1744 and

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also supported the Jacobites in their subsequent bid to regain the English throne for the Stuarts. The publication of Montesquieu’s work coincided with the end of hostilities and L’Esprit des lois therefore appeared in a post-war context of lingering hostility and continuing rivalry between the two nations over colonial possessions in the New World.8 The author’s allusion to the kinship between the English and the barbarian tribes would also have struck a chord with French readers who had read the first French translation of Shakespeare’s works (1745–9), produced by Pierre-Antoine de La Place. Contemporary responses to this translation show that French commentators frequently emphasized the bard’s typically English barbarianism, displayed in the violent events portrayed on stage and the mixing of comic and tragic elements that violated French theatrical convention. In his preface La Place himself acknowledged the bloody nature of Shakespearean tragedy and commented that if one judged England by its theatre ‘one could be forgiven for thinking the English the most ferocious and bloodthirsty people in Europe’. Naturally this further reinforced the images of English savagery that prevailed in France in times of war.9 However, when comparing the English with Germanic savages in L’Esprit des lois Montesquieu cites a specific source text: ‘Tacitus’s admirable work on the customs of the Germans’. The particular characteristics of Tacitus’s work suggest that Montesquieu’s remarks cannot simply be interpreted as reinforcing traditional Anglo–French hostility. In De Situ Moribus et Populis Germaniae (ad 98), better known as the Germania, Tacitus describes the laws and customs of the barbarian Germans for the benefit of a Roman audience. Commonly seen by the Romans as both primitive and ferocious, the Germans as depicted by Tacitus belie such simple stereotyping. Rather, the admirable aspects of their social and political organization are held up as an example to Rome. Montesquieu’s reference to Tacitus therefore invokes a particular image of ‘savagery’, one which highlights the extent to which so-called barbarians resemble civilized peoples whilst remaining free of the vices of the author’s own corrupt society. In the Germania Tacitus makes no overt comparisons between the customs and institutions of the tribes he is describing and those of his native Rome, yet his aim is to incite in the Roman reader a feeling of nostalgia. The Germanic tribes clearly embody the original values of republican Rome which have been lost in the transition to a rich and powerful empire. As Donald Kelley has shown, Tacitus’s work furnished early modern Europe with a catalogue of virtues originally possessed – and subsequently lost – by European societies. These so-called ‘Germanic’ virtues included pudicita, liberalitas, simplicitas, integritas, fides, fortitudo, ingenium and nobilitas. The most important was undoubtedly libertas.10 The influence of this Tacitean vision of Germanic culture on Montesquieu in particular has been emphasized by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger in her extensive study of the links between the two authors.11 However, the possibility that the same vision might

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inform Montesquieu’s depiction of the English in L’Esprit des lois is in need of further investigation. In an English context, Howard Weinbrot remarks that eighteenth-century interpretations of the Germania transformed Tacitus into both a ‘mentor of constitutional balance’ and a definer of British national identity. Radical Whig Thomas Gordon’s translation of Tacitus’s works (1728–31), to which were prefaced political discourses condemning tyranny and defending England’s constitution, was particularly influential in shaping this aspect of eighteenthcentury thought.12 The publication in 1742 of a French translation of Gordon’s discourses made his liberal Whig reading of Tacitus accessible to readers in mideighteenth-century France.13 Montesquieu’s references to Tacitus in L’Esprit des lois significantly resemble English interpretations of his works, which placed particular emphasis on Tacitus’s theorization of a balanced constitution giving due weight to the will of the people. When he mentions Tacitus’s Germania in connection with England’s political system, Montesquieu footnotes a quotation from the work that captures the essence of the Germanic – and hence the English – constitution: ‘Affairs of smaller moment the chiefs determine: about matters of higher consequence the whole nation deliberates; yet in such sort, that whatever depends upon the pleasure and decision of the people, is examined and discussed by the chiefs’.14 This sums up Montesquieu’s lengthy discussion of the workings of English government in earlier chapters. Montesquieu previously had explained that in England all citizens were involved in political decision-making, yet a system of checks and balances was in place to make sure that important decisions could not be made arbitrarily by one interest group. The constitutional safeguards supporting this structure make England ‘the one nation in the world that has made political liberty the direct object of its constitution’.15 Just as Tacitus had held up the example of German liberty to Romans living under imperial tyranny, Montesquieu’s quotation from the Germania therefore calls attention to the differences between the English constitution and the French ancien régime, where political decisions were made without popular consultation or consent. In L’Esprit des lois Montesquieu contends that a nation’s laws and institutions are closely related to its manners and morals. Introducing his lengthy description of the English in the final chapter of book 19 he comments: ‘I mentioned, in book 11, a free people; and I detailed the principles of their constitution: let us now examine the effects which necessarily follow from this, the character to which this constitution must give rise, and the customs which result from it’. The description which follows is written in the conditional mode, as if Montesquieu is hypothesizing about the cultural effects of England’s constitution. His depiction of the eighteenth-century English is nevertheless both detailed and perceptive. Importantly, it clearly implies that English people possess what

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are understood, after Tacitus, to be Germanic ‘savage’ virtues. Earlier on in the work a chapter explaining the effects of the English climate on the national character had brought out the population’s ‘impatience’ and ‘courage’.16 This is reinforced in book 19 where England appears as a nation that is ‘always in a ferment’, and ‘passionately fond of its liberty’. Englishmen have little knowledge of social graces, but instead display ‘probity’ and ‘good faith’ in all their dealings with others, just as Tacitus’s Germans are ‘artless and upright … no wise subtle or politic’. Tacitus had notably remarked on the egalitarian nature of German society, ‘the lord you cannot discern from the slave, by any superior delicacy in rearing’ and on the frank, open nature of communication between social ranks marred by ‘no complaisance or effort of flattery’. Similarly, Montesquieu comments of England that ‘the nobles, in this country of liberty, would be closer in rank to the common people … we should thus see fewer courtiers, flatterers and parasites’. Montesquieu’s observations on the biting nature of English satire, in which ‘the folly of vice’ is vilified rather than ridiculed, recall Tacitus’s declaration that in Germany ‘in truth, no body turns vices into mirth’. Interestingly, civic virtue is clearly linked by both authors to the absence of women’s influence in society. According to Tacitus, German women ‘live in a state of chastity well secured; corrupted by no seducing shews and public diversions’, whilst Montesquieu claims of their English counterparts: ‘In a country where every man has a share in the business of government, women would spend little time in the company of men. They would therefore be modest, that is to say, timid: this timidity would guarantee their virtue’. Both authors debate the question as to whether the mechanisms of government can function effectively in the free societies they are describing. Factional strife in particular is a prime concern. Tacitus comments that ‘to a free nation, animosities and faction are always more menacing and perilous’. However, he then demonstrates that divisions among the German tribes are ‘wholesome to the State’ because they are not ‘unappeasable and permanent’ but continually shifting. Montesquieu also emphasizes the salutary effect of partisan divisions in English politics. He notes that the continual exchange of ‘clamours and abuse’ between parties ‘would be very beneficial, because it would strengthen the internal workings of government whilst engaging the attention of every citizen’.17 This assertion went against conventional French wisdom regarding the destructive nature of partisan politics and the desirability of political uniformity. Previously, in his Considérations sur les … Romains, Montesquieu had sought to disprove the popular thesis that internal party divisions were to blame for Rome’s fall. Using references to the English system of government to back up his argument, he proposed instead that party political discord did not impede the harmonious function of the state as moderate governments thrived on debate and a watchful opposition party was a necessary guarantee of public freedoms. In spite of

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Montesquieu’s efforts to prove the contrary, however, in the 1740s the majority of French commentators continued to present English political liberty as being tainted with the dangers of faction. This view is represented by works such as the abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc’s influential Lettres d’un François concernant le gouvernement, la politique et des mœurs des Anglois et des François (1745). Le Blanc had visited England in 1737–8 and on his return published a series of letters on different aspects of English life addressed to prominent figures in French politics and society. In a letter to the historian and jurisconsult Jean Bouhier, Le Blanc described his experience of witnessing the 1737 by-election in Leicester. Contemporary accounts confirm that this election became a focus for factional dispute with local Whigs accusing the Tory or ‘Country’ candidate of hatching a Jacobite plot.18 Le Blanc in his letter decries the violent confrontations between supporters of different parties, the seditious nature of electoral pamphlets and the fact that the election took place in an atmosphere of ‘drunken confusion’.19 Le Blanc also addressed two of the letters in which he discusses English government and politics to Montesquieu. In the first of these Le Blanc clearly associates Montesquieu’s verdict on Rome with the situation in England: ‘Sir, it is impossible that the advantages and defects of the English government can have escaped the observation of one who has so plainly pointed out the causes of the grandeur and decadence of the Roman Republic’. Interestingly, Le Blanc’s comments suggest that Montesquieu was already perceived to be an advocate of English-style constitutionalism on the basis of the observations contained in his Considérations. That Le Blanc holds a very different opinion on this subject is confirmed in his second letter to Montesquieu where he argues that whilst France’s absolutist regime is roundly condemned in England, absolutism is in fact preferable to the constant turbulence and anarchy of English politics: ‘I think the English pay too dearly for that so-called liberty of which they are so proud: the degree of subjection with which they reproach us Frenchmen is not as bad as they would like to think, and would perhaps make them less unhappy than the continual disputes between factions that threaten to tear their state to pieces’.20 Le Blanc’s work received a favourable reception in France where the truth of his descriptions was widely proclaimed.21 In L’Esprit des lois, which appeared three years after Le Blanc’s Lettres, Montesquieu uses his portrayal of the English to attack such contemporary French beliefs regarding the superiority of France’s cultural and political organization and the dangers of English political liberty. In chapter 6 of book 11 the English state is portrayed as a model of balanced government which functions very effectively to guarantee the liberties of its citizens. When partisan divisions are mentioned, as they are in chapter 27 of book 19, it is in the positive context of encouraging all citizens to engage in political affairs. Montesquieu moreover embraces the conventional image of the English as unschooled barbarians, propagated during the Anglo–French hostilities of the

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1740s, in order to question the assumption that French civilization is superior to English savagery. According to Paul Rahe, the efficacy of this particular element of Montesquieu’s message is demonstrated by Rousseau’s reading of L’Esprit des lois. Montesquieu’s depiction of the English provided Rousseau with an important precedent for his nostalgic evocation of man’s savage state of nature and consequent indictment of modern French civilisation.22 L’Esprit des lois is of course far less polemical in intent than Rousseau’s first discourse, but a similar effect is nevertheless achieved in the passages where Montesquieu describes the virtues of the English. Montesquieu himself clearly modelled these passages on Tacitus’s depiction of the German tribes in the Germania. The Germania not only functioned as an implicit criticism of the laws and manners of imperial Rome but was also designed to generate a feeling of nostalgia in the Roman reader. Imperial Romans were meant to see their former republican selves – warlike, courageous and free – in Tacitus’s description of the supposedly barbaric Germans. A similar message is addressed to eighteenth-century French readers in L’Esprit des lois. Montesquieu not only presents the English as savages but as embodying France’s original values.

A Common Political Inheritance The notion that the French once shared the savage virtues possessed by the English is developed progressively throughout L’Esprit des lois. In book 11 for instance, Montesquieu’s sketch of England’s government is followed by an explanation of the origins of the French constitution: The foundations of the monarchies under which we live were laid as follows: the Germanic nations which conquered the Roman Empire were, as we all know, entirely free. On this point we need only consult Tacitus’s work On the manners of the Germans … When they were in Germany, the whole nation was able to assemble together. They could no longer do this when they were dispersed throughout the conquered provinces. It was nevertheless necessary that the nation should deliberate on public affairs, in accordance with their traditional form of government: they therefore had recourse to representatives. Such is the origin of Gothic government in our countries.

Deliberately reiterating his reference to Tacitus’s work ‘On the manners of the Germans’, Montesquieu draws attention to the fact that the French and English share the same political and cultural ancestry. Like Tacitus, Montesquieu is seeking to generate a feeling of nostalgia; not for republican Rome but for France’s Gothic past. His evocation of Gothic government is clearly tinted with nostalgic idealization: ‘I do not think there ever was another government on earth that was so well tempered as that which once existed in every part of Europe. It is remarkable that the corruption of the government of a conquering nation

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should have given rise to the best constitutional system that we could possibly imagine’.23 Montesquieu here invokes what is commonly referred to as the myth of the ancient constitution. The history of this myth has been analysed in detail by J. G. A. Pocock, who dates its emergence in both France and England to the sixteenth century. At this time, research undertaken by Renaissance legal scholars into the origins of national liberties and privileges gave rise to the notion that modern monarchies and their institutions were founded on primitive tribal customs. Many of these national liberties could be traced back to the Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire; but as the exact date of their institution could not be identified they came to be seen not only as ancient but as immemorial. The power of this constitutional myth was strengthened by the increasingly absolutist tendencies of monarchs in early modern England and France. Opponents of absolute monarchy began to demand that rulers such as Louis XIV or Charles I respect the ancient constitution as an inviolable guarantee of fundamental political rights. As Pocock explains: Since there was an increasing tendency to claim sovereignty in the full sense for the king, it was natural that those who sought to defend threatened privileges or liberties should emphasize in return that their rights were rooted in a law which no king could invade. 24

Equally, the ancient constitution was frequently contested by supporters of the royal prerogative. The myth of the ancient constitution retained its power well into the eighteenth century. In England in particular, the idea that the nation’s constitution was Germanic in origin acquired new potency and relevance with the accession of a German monarch to the English throne in 1714. Christine Gerrard has shown that George I was portrayed as restoring ‘the ancient ties between libertyloving Britons and Germans’. Gerrard gives the example of the 1722 edition of William Camden’s Britannia, prefaced with a dedication to the King that traced England and Germany’s common history and proclaimed to George I that ‘the main Body of your People in both Nations, are really descended from one and the same common Stock’. However, as Gerrard comments, under Walpole’s ministry it was not the Court Whigs but Bolingbroke’s opposition party who took up the theme of England’s Gothic government.25 Bolingbroke recognized the power inherent in the notion of immemorial liberty and exploited it in the opposition campaigns of the 1730s and 40s against Walpole’s perceived abuses. In his Dissertation upon Parties, which appeared in the Craftsman in 1733–4, Bolingbroke invokes the myth of the ancient constitution when tracing the history of the English system of government. This he portrays as built ‘upon foundations laid by the rough simplicity of our northern ancestors’. Ancient freedoms had been

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doggedly preserved over time in the face of encroachments by kings and their ministers, but could never be entirely secure. Interestingly, to illustrate the point that ancient rights and privileges were easily destroyed Bolingbroke highlights the fact that France and England originally enjoyed the same liberties: ‘Both their ancestors and ours came out of Germany, and had probably much the same manners, the same customs, and the same forms of government’. Acknowledging that this ‘truth of history, is contrary to the national prejudices of many people on this subject’, Bolingbroke recognizes that the original similarities between the English and French constitutions contradict the customary English perception of the French as an inherently servile nation. Bolingbroke conceives this similarity as a warning to the English, for the French were deprived of their traditional freedoms due to their inability to resist ministerial manipulation. Their fate should therefore bring home the need to protect England’s ancient constitution from the threat posed by Walpole. On modern Englishmen is conferred ‘the peculiar honour of maintaining the freedom of our Gothic institution of government, when so many other nations, who enjoyed the same, have lost theirs’.26 Montesquieu owned a copy of Bolingbroke’s Dissertation upon Parties in its fifth English edition of 1739. Shackleton dates its acquisition to the early 1740s and speculates as to whether Bolingbroke himself, resident in France at the time, conveyed the work to Montesquieu.27 Bolingbroke’s Dissertation is seen by Shackleton as having informed Montesquieu’s vision of balanced government and partisan divisions in English politics.28 Significantly, although Shackleton does not mention it, Bolingbroke’s arguments regarding the common origins of the French and English regimes and the gradual erosion of France’s ancient constitution are also echoed in L’Esprit des lois. Montesquieu’s descriptions of Frankish laws and customs in book 18 of the work underline the fact that the French constitution has its origins in traditions of chieftainship and tribal councils. The Franks – the ancestors of modern Frenchmen – are portrayed in a manner intended to show that the French once resembled the English in their attachment to freedom and balanced government. The author remarks of the Franks that ‘they only gave their kings, or chiefs, a very moderate degree of power’. Montesquieu refers once again to the excerpt from the Germania he had cited in relation to England, to demonstrate that the whole of the Frankish nation was involved in the political process: ‘“The princes”, says Tacitus, “deliberate on small matters but the whole nation has a say on affairs of great importance”’. Repeatedly citing Tacitus, Montesquieu intentionally brings out the aspects of Frankish life that contrast with the manners and customs of their modern descendants. Quotations from the Germania emphasize the Franks’ marital fidelity, moral integrity and aversion to material luxury. ‘We should all read Tacitus’s descriptions of the admirable simplicity of the German nations’, Montesquieu concludes.29

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While L’Esprit des lois was the result of a lifetime’s work on Montesquieu’s part, these chapters in book 18 were late additions to the text.30 They appear to have been the result of research undertaken by the author in the late 1740s when he was working on books 28–31 of L’Esprit des lois, which describe in detail the evolution of Germanic law in ‘the country that we today know as France’.31 These final books are often seen as an appendix to the main body of Montesquieu’s work, or as a mere academic exercise in historical jurisprudence.32 There is no doubt that they appear somewhat obscure at first glance, yet their content is of crucial importance. As Lee Ward has been at pains to show, Montesquieu’s lengthy descriptions of French feudal law combine with his previous explanation of the English system of government to produce a powerful political model that Ward dubs ‘Anglo–Gothic constitutionalism’. This combines the division of powers in England with the intermediary regional institutions of medieval France. It is on this basis that Ward proclaims Montesquieu to be a theorist of federal government.33 However, in the context of Montesquieu’s relations with England it is more important to note that in these final books Montesquieu elaborates his own version of Bolingbroke’s argument that France and England once shared the same political values. This argument arguably held more significance in 1748 than it had in 1733–4 when the Dissertation upon Parties was first published. The final chapters of L’Esprit des lois were composed at a time when England and France were at war, and when the English constitution so lauded by Montesquieu had recently faced a serious threat. Had the Stuarts been successful in their French-backed bid to reclaim the English throne in the mid1740s, France would have been instrumental in reinstating absolute monarchy in England, thus placing the nation’s parliamentary democracy in jeopardy. This context heightens the relevance of Montesquieu’s ostensibly obscure descriptions of Gothic laws. He is describing a constitutional system to which France would do well to return, at a time when the French were attacking the one nation who had succeeded in preserving such a system into modern times. Once again, the starting point for the author’s investigations into France’s original Gothic laws is the Germania. It is clearly in Tacitus’s footsteps that he is following: Tacitus left us a work in which the customs of Germanic peoples are described in precise detail. This work is short, but it is the work of Tacitus, who was always concise because he took in everything at one glance … If, in my researches on feudal laws, I find myself in a dark labyrinth full of twists and turns, I think I hold the end of the thread and I will be able to find my way.34

Throughout his descriptions of Frankish law Montesquieu consistently refers to the German barbarians first depicted by Tacitus as ‘our ancestors’. The qualities ascribed to France’s political forebears are familiar from his earlier descriptions

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of the English, as well as the Franks. Characterized by ‘an admirable simplicity … an original resilience’, the barbarians are most notably ‘free and independent’. In the concluding chapters of L’Esprit des lois Montesquieu clearly echoes the argument made by Bolingbroke in his Dissertation upon Parties. He claims that the English constitution and common law embody the survival of Gothic values. This connection is made explicitly in passages such as that describing Germanic law on capital punishment, where Montesquieu concludes: ‘I think this system has survived in the custom still followed today in England, of obliging jurors to be unanimous in their verdict in cases involving a death sentence’. Similarly, when detailing the Franks’ division of local administration into boroughs Montesquieu notes that ‘this style of local government can be observed in England to this very day’.35 The significant changes made to L’Esprit des lois by the addition of the chapters on Frankish law helped to reshape the work along the lines of Tacitus’s Germania. In the same way that Tacitus’s depiction of the German tribes was meant to remind Roman readers of the republican values they had lost, the description of the laws and customs of France’s original inhabitants reveal the extent to which the French ancien régime has deviated from the pattern of Gothic government and Germanic virtue established by the nation’s ancestors. Following the descriptions of the Franks in book 18, in the concluding chapter of book 19 Montesquieu portrays the English as modern-day Germani. Both peoples are characterized by female chastity, rejection of luxury, male probity and dedication to public affairs. Between these two evocations of virtuous savagery comes a description of an unnamed nation which clearly represents modern France. The description is largely positive, highlighting the ‘sociable humour’ of ‘open-hearted’ Frenchmen who ‘enjoy life, have good taste, and communicate their thoughts with ease’. A certain ambivalence is however evident. Ostensibly dismissing any faults in the French national character, Montesquieu succeeds in drawing attention to them: If in general their character is good, their little faults may be said to be of no great importance. One might say they should constrain the excesses of their women, make laws to correct the nation’s manners and to limit their luxury: but who knows if, in doing so, they might not lose that particular taste which would be the source of the riches of the nation, and that politeness which would so attract foreigners to their country?

Using a rhetorical strategy which is highly unusual for L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu allows the voice of the French honnête homme to take up the argument: ‘“We should be left as we are”, said a gentleman of a nation which very much resembled that which we have been describing, “and nature will repair whatever is amiss”’. While tinged with complacency, this interjection serves as a warning

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against overzealous projects for social reform in France and is in accordance with Montesquieu’s firm belief that: ‘The legislature must follow the spirit of the nation … for we do nothing so well as when we act freely and in accordance with our natural genius’.36 These comments also reveal the ingenious strategy employed by Montesquieu when he presents the English in books 11 and 19 as latter-day incarnations of France’s Germanic ancestors. In so doing, he achieves two distinct aims: on the one hand, he resolves any apparent contradiction between the status of the English system as a constitutional model and the governing theory of L’Esprit des lois; the notion that different laws are appropriate to different national contexts. As Pangle has shown, the problem of the transferability of the English constitution to France is dissolved by Montesquieu’s demonstration that a spirit of independence and freedom worthy of the English governed French political history previous to the imposition of absolute government.37 On the other hand, Montesquieu’s portrait of the culture and institutions of eighteenth-century England shows that a political system founded on ancient Germanic rights and liberties can function viably and successfully in modern times. The English have indeed adapted the Germanic constitution to the demands of a modern, commercial society. As Montesquieu noted in his discussion of Gothic government, among the German tribes political decisions were made in common. In England, this practice has evolved into parliamentary representative government: In a free state, every man who is able to think for himself must live according to his own laws. Accordingly, the legislative power should reside in the whole body of the people. But since this is impossible in large states … the people must enact through their representatives what they cannot enact for themselves … All the inhabitants must have the right to vote to elect a local representative.38

A little further on in this particular passage Montesquieu cites the English author Algernon Sidney’s Discourses concerning Government (1698) to clarify the distinction between English-style representative government and other forms inherited from feudal particularism, where delegates promote a restricted local or corporate interest rather than that of the nation as a whole. Montesquieu cites Sidney on what is apparently a technicality. However, this citation carries great ideological weight. Sidney’s opposition to perceived royal tyranny cost him his life and eighteenth-century Whig hagiography made him a martyr to liberty. He was celebrated by the opposition Patriots and his work informed Bolingbroke’s vision of English history.39 In explaining the mechanisms of the English constitution in the Discourses Sidney asserts, like Bolingbroke after him, that the nation owes its form of popular government to its Saxon founders who ‘enjoy’d the liberties we claim, and always exercised them in governing themselves popularly, or by such representatives as have been instituted by themselves, from the

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time they were first known in the world’.40 Montesquieu’s reference to Sidney during his discussion of representative government in England is therefore an indirect invocation of the myth of the ancient constitution. Montesquieu’s comments on representative government should be seen in the context of debates regarding the nature and mechanisms of representation that were taking place in France in the mid-eighteenth century. In the absence of any regularly sitting national assembly, different interest groups and bodies variously claimed to speak for the French people.41 In L’Esprit des lois Montesquieu contributes to these contemporary debates by suggesting that only a popularly elected legislative body would be true to the spirit of the Germanic ‘assemblies of the nation’ that once existed in France.42 He also attempts to quash more radical projects for French political reform by demonstrating that institutions can be restructured most effectively by legislators working within the national political tradition rather than seeking to found a polity ex novo. It is on these grounds that Montesquieu criticizes the constitutional reforms proposed by James Harrington in his Oceana (1656). In L’Esprit des lois the English author is accused of constructing a political Utopia when England already possessed a constitution that effectively guaranteed liberty: ‘He built Chalcedon even though he had Byzantium before his eyes’. Harrington explicitly refuted the myth of the ancient Germanic constitution and instead devised a theory of modern republicanism. It is therefore unsurprising to find his ideas dismissed by Montesquieu, who admired the English system of government firstly because it represented the survival of traditional Gothic constitutionalism and secondly because it could be seen to function effectively in practice. This meant that the French could adopt a similar system whilst remaining faithful to their cultural roots and avoiding theoretical political innovations. Montesquieu was not a political visionary but a pragmatist: ‘To find a constitution that preserves political liberty, one need go to no great trouble. If we can see it where it exists, if we have located it, why should we go on looking?’43 By showing that England represents a modern incarnation of France’s original political values, Montesquieu implies that the English constitution could be transplanted to French soil. This issue of transferability perhaps explains the strangely abstract nature of Montesquieu’s representation of England in L’Esprit des lois, on which commentators have often remarked.44 In his lengthy descriptions of English institutions and culture, Montesquieu studiously avoids mentioning ‘England’ or ‘the English’ by name. Apart from the chapter heading in book 11, which states clearly that the author will discuss the English constitution, the nation is rarely identified and terms specific to the English system such as ‘Lords’ and ‘Commons’ are avoided.45 Even more striking is the chapter in book 19 where Montesquieu consistently refers to England by means of periphrases such as ‘a free people’ or ‘this state’ and describes the nation in the conditional

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mode: ‘If this nation inhabited an island, it … would be inclined to pursue trade … the men of this nation would be more like confederates than fellow subjects’.46 Sheila Mason has claimed that Montesquieu’s portrait of England has the value of a theoretical prototype and that he is in fact describing a potential or ideal state rather than a reality.47 This is questionable, but Montesquieu’s avoidance of specific references to England certainly serves to endow the nation’s political culture with universal relevance. For example, by referring to ‘the representative body’ and ‘the body of nobles’ rather than the Commons and the Lords, Montesquieu enhances the applicability of the English constitution to other national contexts. The hypothetical tone of his description of English culture in book 19 emphasizes the fact that while allowances must be made for specific factors such as England being an island, any nation that adopted an Englishstyle constitution would develop certain cultural characteristics. Montesquieu also uses his description of English culture to address particularly French concerns. He implies that the adoption of limited representative government makes for a more efficient fiscal policy and increased willingness on the part of citizens to pay taxes. In addition, the chances of popular rebellion decrease, commercial productivity is improved and religious tolerance reigns. In the concluding chapter of book 19, Montesquieu significantly points to the existence of a politically active public sphere in England. He declares that the involvement of individuals in rational political debate is fundamental to the nation’s freedom: In a country where the constitution gave every citizen a share in government and an interest in political affairs, there would be much discussion of politics … In a free nation it often matters little whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they exercise their reason: this is the source of freedom.48

Such open discussion of matters of government policy had traditionally had no place in ancien régime France. However, from the Regency period onwards sources of political information multiplied and became accessible to a wider public. The disputes between Crown and parlements in the 1730s lent added impetus to this trend and by the mid-eighteenth century there was widespread debate and contestation on political issues that the French authorities struggled to keep in check. However, the emergence of public opinion did not mean that the King or his ministers could be held accountable for policy decisions and secrecy remained the normative principle of French absolutist government.49 In this context, it is significant that Montesquieu’s description of England demonstrates the positive effects of increased transparency in public affairs: ‘As ministers are frequently obliged to justify their conduct before a popular council, their negotiations could not be secret; and in this respect they would be forced to handle their affairs with more probity’. He also offers reassurance that

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free and open debate does not transform the law-abiding citizen into a rebel: ‘In a free society everyone must be able to say what he thinks … a citizen in this state would say and write whatever the laws do not expressly forbid him from saying or writing’.50 Montesquieu thus presents the English political public sphere as the necessary counterpart of the nation’s balanced constitution. France’s adoption of the English model would have a salutary effect on politics and would encourage free thinking, but without plunging the country into anarchy. Depicting England and the English in L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu transmits a powerful political message concerning the functioning of the modern state. In the passages where he focuses on England, Montesquieu draws on Tacitus’s portrayal of the ancient German tribes and emphasizes above all the freedom of the nation he observes. Having likened English customs and institutions to those of the German barbarians, Montesquieu then sets out to prove that France too was once free and democratic. The author’s admiration for the English and for their constitution is nuanced by his determined emphasis on the fact that the Franks once resembled them. This problematizes any simple contrast between England and France. Indeed, to some extent it is not the English who are held up as a model to the French, but rather their own Frankish ancestors. However, the English must be admired for having adapted their original Gothic constitution to the demands of a modern commercial polity. The English example of open government supported by an active public sphere is made to appear more attainable thanks to the abstracted nature of Montesquieu’s exposition. England’s open political culture is thus presented as the rightful inheritance of any nation whose constitution is founded on the same ancient rights and liberties that the English claim. Montesquieu’s vision of English constitutionalism is clearly informed by the writings of seventeenth-century Commonwealthmen and eighteenth-century Patriots. The role played by Bolingbroke, Sidney and Harrington’s ideas in the elaboration of Montesquieu’s political theory provides a significant counterweight to Jonathan Israel’s claim that the works of these English thinkers and others like them were rarely referred to in France during the political debates of the late 1740s. This assertion is evidently consistent with Israel’s broader attempt to downplay the influence of English thought on the French Enlightenment in general. Yet whilst Israel is justified in showing that Montesquieu also addresses issues raised by the likes of Spinoza, Bayle and Fontenelle in L’Esprit des lois, there is no doubt that his discussion of Gothic representative government is inspired by English works on similar themes.51

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Enlightened Gothic Government In accordance with Montesquieu’s theory of the ‘esprit général’ or ‘general spirit’, a nation and its culture are uniquely matched: ‘Men are governed by various factors: climate, religion, laws, maxims of government, historical precedent, morals and customs; all these combine to form a nation’s general spirit’.52 In the eighteenth century, historical precedent in particular was a powerful factor in determining the structure of a nation’s constitution. In France, as in England, rival interpretations of the nation’s past were persistently put forward by those who hoped to shape future political change. Thomas Kaiser comments that in France in the 1730s and 40s international and domestic opposition to the Bourbon state generated debate as to the origins and prerogatives of the French monarchy.53 Montesquieu’s depiction in L’Esprit des lois of the Franks and their modern avatars the English represents an intervention into this debate. To portray the English as modern Germanic savages was not only to redefine French views of England, but of France’s own political past, present and future. When calling on the Germania to back up his claims as to the origins of the French constitution, Montesquieu refers not only to the Tacitean text but to contemporary notions surrounding it. Eighteenth-century English interpretations of the Germania made Tacitus a defender of parliamentary democracy, and his work was similarly exploited in France by opponents of tyranny and advocates of representative government.54 From François Hotman’s Franco-Gallia (1574) onwards, the Germania was invoked by French thinkers who espoused what was known as the ‘Germanist’ thesis of French history. According to this thesis the original government of France had been similar to that prevailing among the Germanic tribes observed by Tacitus. These tribes conquered France and established Gothic government there. Subsequently, absolutist monarchs imposed the Roman imperial model of government on what was fundamentally a free and democratic nation. Proponents of the alternative ‘Romanist’ thesis of French history traced the origins of the French constitution only to the establishment of Roman government in Gaul. Whilst the Romanist thesis was fundamentally an endorsement of royal despotism, the Germanist argument was put forward by opponents of the Bourbon mode of centralized absolutist monarchy. The exact nature of France’s original Germanic constitution was interpreted differently by those wishing to defend the prerogatives of either the peerage, la noblesse d’épée, or the magistracy, la noblesse de robe.55 The rights of the peerage were upheld by the Comte de Boulainvilliers in his Histoire de l’ancien gouvernement de la France (1727). Boulainvilliers arrogated political power to a Frankish noble caste directly descended from Clovis and his Germanic warriors who had conquered France. His claims were refuted by Romanist historian the abbé Dubos in his Histoire critique de l’établissement

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de la monarchie françoise dans les Gaules (1734). In this work, Dubos declared that the Franks, far from conquering Gaul, were in fact invited by the Romans to assume their mantle of power. Some Frankish nobles abused this privilege, and Dubos qualifies aristocrats in possession of feudal tenures as ‘usurpers’.56 In Dubos’s eyes French government had always been structured along the lines of the Roman Empire. French kings had inherited the Roman emperors’ right to rule the people directly, without the interference of any aristocratic intermediaries and according to their absolute will. Montesquieu’s own views on the precise genealogy of the French constitution are complex and have been explored at length by Élie Carcassonne.57 It is evident that Montesquieu’s views had much in common with the Germanist thesis, and indeed he constructs his history of French government in L’Esprit des lois in explicit opposition to Dubos’s Romanist arguments. The key difference lies in the two authors’ portrayal of the Franks. Montesquieu sets out to highlight their opposition to Rome and their rejection of the Roman political and legal establishment. He directly contradicts Dubos, whom he refers to as ‘a celebrated author [who] based his theory regarding the establishment of the Franks in Gaul on the supposition that they were the best friends of the Romans’. Montesquieu argues that to lend credence to such a groundless supposition would be to rewrite Frankish legal and political history: ‘To say that Roman law had preference over the legal codes of the Barbarians, is to desecrate all our ancient monuments’. However, whilst Montesquieu refutes Dubos’s argument at every possible opportunity he is also careful not to fall into the trap of arguing Boulainvilliers’s case for the existence of a modern-day aristocratic caste with inherited Gothic privileges: ‘The Count de Boulainvilliers and the abbé Dubos have each formed their own system, one of which seems to be a conspiracy against the common people, and the other against the nobility’. The author’s advice to himself is to ‘avoid either extreme’.58 However, it is often claimed that Montesquieu’s views on the French constitution were dictated by his social status as a member of the magistracy or noblesse de robe. According to Louis Althusser’s longstanding Marxist reading of L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu demanded constitutional reform only to consolidate the political power of his own class. More recently, Jonathan Israel has argued that Montesquieu’s preference for British-style mixed monarchy was inspired by the author’s own aristocratic allegiances rather than any objective political judgement.59 It is certainly true that the author’s approval of England’s constitution seems to be based in part on the important role played by the Upper House in the English legislative process. In his description of English government Montesquieu sanctions the power of the Lords, thereby implicitly denouncing the Bourbon monarchs’ disenfranchisement of the French nobility:

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Montesquieu is also concerned to show that the power of the aristocracy in English politics forms part of the nation’s Gothic lore, inherited from the federations of Germanic princes who secured their vassals’ approval for any political or military enterprise and rewarded them for faithful service. Montesquieu subsequently goes on to show that the Frankish nobles who accompanied Clovis in his conquest of Gaul originally held the same position in relation to the French monarchy as that held by English peers in the eighteenth century. In his explanation of Frankish government, a chapter entitled ‘On the French nobility’ explicitly contests Dubos’s view of the hereditary aristocracy as ‘usurpers’. Dubos’s defamatory claims are shown to be not only ‘injurious to the blood of our most high-ranking families’, but also equally offensive to ‘the three great houses which have successively reigned over this realm’. Montesquieu charges himself with finding rational justification for the political status of French aristocrats: ‘I must plumb the depths of our history to trace the source of the ancient prerogatives of our nobility, who for eleven centuries have been covered with dust, sweat, and blood’.61 Rooting the ‘the ancient prerogatives’ of the nobility in France’s Gothic past, Montesquieu conjures up an image of what might be termed Arthurian government. Under this system a monarch who is not absolute but who sees himself as primus inter pares, consults with his peers around a symbolic Round Table so that his decisions reflect the will of the people. The vocabulary used in L’Esprit des lois to describe the position of the French nobility under the ancient Germanic constitution reflects this view. Nobles are the ‘companions’ of the monarch, ‘trustworthy men … bound by their word of honour … who willingly supported the Prince’.62 Elena Russo has recently sought to rectify the idea that Montesquieu’s constitutional theory was based on class prejudice. Russo claims instead that Montesquieu’s defence of the nobility derives from his interest in the ethics of political exchanges. In emphasizing the role of the nobility, Montesquieu highlights the need for aristocratic virtues such as generosity and honour in political dealings.63 This is a necessary counterpoint to the executive’s tendency to accumulate power, inherent in any political system. Montesquieu’s description of the Frankish nobles’ involvement in politics lends weight to Russo’s insightful interpretation. The peers’ loyalty to their leader rests on the institution of comitatus, a rapport of reciprocal duty which made monarch and peers interdependent, meaning that neither could acquire power except at the expense of the other. It is this rapport which makes monarchy a form of limited government. When comitatus is replaced by institutional and

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legislative safeguards, monarchy is a system ideally suited to an enlightened postfeudal society, as the English example shows. Montesquieu argues that nothing strengthens a modern monarchy more than a powerful body of nobles who continue to exercise their traditional role of supporting the king whilst also acting to limit royal power. Conversely, the absence of such a body is a sign that liberty is under threat: ‘The nobility … is in some ways the essence of a monarchy, a form of government founded on the maxim, no monarch, no nobility; no nobility, no monarch; but there may be a despot’. Under France’s ancient constitution, as in eighteenth-century England, the nobles played a significant role in balancing the will of the people with that of the monarch. In former times this amounted to consulting with the Prince on whether to lead the nation to war. In England, where the ancient constitution has evolved and become institutionalized, the nobility ensure constitutional balance. The executive and legislative powers ‘need a regulating power to mediate between them; the part of the legislative body composed of the nobility is fit for this purpose’.64 However, Montesquieu takes issue with one aspect of England’s adaptation of Gothic government to modern commercial society. He criticizes English peers who do not appear to be content with their influence in the Lords but also wish to engage in trade. This blurs the distinction between nobles and the trading classes and puts the ancient constitution at risk: ‘The English practice of permitting the nobility to trade has been an important factor in weakening the nation’s monarchic government’.65 Montesquieu thus differs from the likes of Voltaire and Bolingbroke who saw the commercial activities of the English nobility as central to the country’s prosperity. Instead, Montesquieu considers that the peers’ status as traders jeopardizes the disinterest essential to their role as the ‘intermediary power’ balancing Crown and Commons. While Montesquieu’s political theory should not be dismissed as a defence of class privilege, there is no doubt that the author greatly emphasizes the role of the nobility in assuring constitutional balance and protecting ancient rights and liberties. At the time when L’Esprit des lois appeared the role of both magistrates and peers in the French state was being widely debated. Both groups had felt themselves increasingly sidelined from government since the beginning of Louis XV’s personal rule in 1743, and in the late 1740s and early 1750s there was a concerted effort to justify the role of the nobility in the legislative process.66 Montesquieu intervenes in this debate through his descriptions of both the English and French’s Frankish forebears in L’Esprit des lois. He questions whether the progress from savage Franks to enlightened polite and civilized Frenchmen must be made at the cost of diminishing the constitutional role of the nobility. The right of nobles to intervene in policy-making, and to have a share in the monarch’s status, is proclaimed an essential Germanic liberty. By implication, the government at Versailles represents a betrayal of France’s Gothic

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past. Although given a new relevance by the constitutional debates of the 1740s, this line of reasoning is also present in Montesquieu’s earlier work. In the Lettres persanes, Rhédi’s letter on ‘the history and origin of republics’ sees the Persian taking a Germanist view of history, describing the spread of limited monarchy as the barbarian tribes took over the Roman Empire: When the northern peoples who were free in their own countries overran the Roman provinces, they did not confer any great authority on their chiefs … indeed, many constraints were placed on the Prince’s authority: a great number of Lords shared it with him … laws were made in assemblies of the whole nation. Such was the founding principle of all the states that grew up from the ruins of the Roman Empire.67

However, commenting on the French tendency to adopt foreign fashions indiscriminately, Rica reveals that in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire the ancient body of laws inherited from France’s Germanic ancestors was abandoned in favour of Roman jurisprudence: ‘Who would imagine that the most ancient and powerful kingdom in Europe should have been governed for more than a thousand years by foreign laws? … the French … have abandoned the ancient laws made by their first kings in the general assemblies of the nation’.68 The Roman political and juridical model held such sway in eighteenth-century Europe that it was difficult to propose a convincing alternative. Nevertheless, in his Considérations sur les … Romains Montesquieu went on to question the advisability of taking the Romans as exemplars and instead proposed a new English paradigm of constitutional government that notably took into account the development of the modern public sphere. This was not an easy stand to take at a time when, for many, Rome represented all that was most revered in European culture. In L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu’s endorsement of the English system of government is strengthened by the connection he makes between England and ancient Germany. This endows the English model with the power of historical precedent. L’Esprit des lois builds on the message of the Considérations as the Roman Republic, which was traditionally seen as representing an admirable example of constitutional balance, is contrasted unfavourably with England. In his chapter on English government Montesquieu draws frequent direct comparisons between the English constitution and that of ‘the ancient republics’, making six specific references to Rome. These comparisons are all in England’s favour. However, the text of L’Esprit des lois also betrays what a struggle it was for Montesquieu to abandon Rome as a political model in favour of the ancient Germanic constitution in its modern incarnation. In book 11, just a few chapters after he has asserted the virtues of English government, the persistent fascination which Rome holds for the author makes itself felt: ‘One can never forget the ancient Romans: even today, visitors to Rome soon leave the city’s modern palaces to go in search of ruins’.69 Nevertheless, in accordance with

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his wish to show that France’s original constitution was rooted in the Gothic heritage of limited monarchy, Montesquieu continually emphasizes the nation’s non-Roman ancestry. In so doing, Montesquieu sets himself apart from the majority of French Enlightenment thinkers. The positive depiction of Gothic government in L’Esprit des lois is clearly in keeping with a longstanding English tradition of proclaiming the nation’s Germanic roots, but was less familiar in a French context. The Germanist thesis of French history notwithstanding, in eighteenth-century France the Gothic tribes who overran the Roman Empire were commonly associated with the fall of classical civilization and were therefore denigrated as savage, backward and ignorant. Where socio-political structures were concerned, Michael Sonenscher asserts that French Enlightenment thinkers generally espoused one of two socio-political models: some, like Rousseau, looked back to antiquity and advocated a revival of Greco-Roman virtues; others, like Voltaire, embraced modernity and declared the state should be shaped by the forces of progressive secularism and the market economy.70 For both groups, the barbarous Germanic tribes who had ruled France after the collapse of Roman civilization embodied everything the Enlightenment should leave behind. In contrast, Montesquieu refused to take the conventional view of the Middle Ages as a time of brutality and obscurantism.71 In L’Esprit des lois he presents this period in European history as a privileged moment when political liberalism prevailed, justice was administered fairly and many enduring cultural practices took root. Among the Gothic tribes’ bequests to Europe are what the author calls ‘the marvellous scheme of chivalry’ and the ‘spirit of gallantry’. These concepts, which were ‘practically unknown to the ancients’, exercised a civilizing influence over the whole continent.72 Montesquieu’s views on the Gothic in all spheres – cultural, political and aesthetic – were equally unconventional. In his treatise De la manière gothique (c. 1734), written shortly after he returned from his travels in Europe, Montesquieu refutes the idea that the Goths were responsible for the demise of classical taste in Rome. He claims instead that ‘the arts were declining in Rome before the barbarian invasions began’. What Montesquieu terms ‘the Gothic manner’, which in aesthetic terms denotes ‘the decadence of the arts’, thus appears to be something of a misnomer.73 It is related to the corruption of imperial Roman society rather than to any Germanic influences. Montesquieu’s dissociation of the stilted and stylized ‘Gothic manner’ from the Goths as a people can be seen as preparing the way for ‘Gothic’ or Germanic government to be accorded a positive political signification in L’Esprit des lois.74 However, the author’s aesthetic treatise remained unpublished and in the eyes of most of his French contemporaries a system of government which carried the label ‘Gothic’ continued to be heavily connoted with ignorance and vulgarity. Those who did grasp the full significance of Mon-

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tesquieu’s attempted rehabilitation of the Gothic felt compelled to justify his ideas. In the preface to a 1750 French edition of L’Esprit des lois, the anonymous editor forewarns the reader of Montesquieu’s unconventional stance: You will often see customs which seemed to be the fruit of savage stupidity, appear quite reasonable, when they are traced back to their origins, and the author … also recognizes the wisdom of those peoples we consider to be barbarians.75

Other philosophes were less forgiving. In his Observations sur le vingt-neuvième livre de L’Esprit des Lois (c. 1780, published 1811), translated into English by Thomas Jefferson, the radical French thinker Condorcet severely criticized Montesquieu for locating the origins of French jurisprudence in Gothic laws. These he claimed were not only ‘vague’ and unsuitable for a modern state but ‘might lead ignorant and ferocious judges to shameful acts of barbarity’.76 If Montesquieu deviated from French Enlightenment orthodoxy by displaying an unconventional interest in Gothic government, he contravened it absolutely when he declared that the English constitution and common law represented its modern-day incarnation. For Voltaire in particular, it was unthinkable to proclaim such manifest continuity between the customs and policies of a nation upheld by the philosophes as a beacon of Enlightenment, and those of a time when the continent relapsed from Roman civilization into barbarism. In his Lettres philosophiques (1734), Voltaire had denounced the faults of the ancien régime by creating a vision of England as the land of reason, and more importantly the land of modernity. In L’Esprit des lois Montesquieu, aiming to rehabilitate Gothic government and to change conventional views of France’s political heritage, also attempts to change this Voltairean vision of England. He depicts it rather as the land where Gothicism lives on in modern form. Voltaire tackles this aspect of Montesquieu’s work head on in his Questions sur l’Encyclopédie (1770–2). He cites Montesquieu’s famous claim that the English system of government ‘was found in the forests’, only to reject it outright. A constitution which for Voltaire symbolized modern political progress could not possibly have originated with the Goths in Germany: The house of peers and that of the commons, the high court, invented in the forests! One would never have guessed it. Doubtless the English also owe their naval and trading prowess to the Germans, and Tillotson’s sermons to those pious barbarian sorcerers who sacrificed prisoners of war on their altars in order to ensure the success of their military campaigns. One must also assume that the English owe their factories and industry to the praiseworthy customs of the Germans, who, Tacitus tells us, preferred to live by rape and pillage than by honest work.77

Challenging both Montesquieu’s vision of the English constitution and his depiction of the Germanic tribes as France’s political forebears, Voltaire proves

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that the two are intimately linked. Montesquieu’s claim that the modern English and the ancient Germans were equally savage yet equally worthy of emulation, was highly contentious. In response, Voltaire fiercely contests English savagery while accepting German savagery without question. As an ardent neo-classicist he harshly condemned the peoples who brought down Rome. In his Commentaire sur l’Esprit des Lois (1777) Voltaire returns to the attack, demanding ‘who were these Franks, whom Montesquieu of Bordeaux calls our ancestors?’ Whereas Montesquieu himself defined the Germanic tribes as ‘simple, frugal, free, warlike people’, Voltaire’s answer to his own question is very different: ‘They were, like all the other Northern barbarians, ferocious beasts … Today, one only utters the names of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Huns, the Franks … of all those hordes who destroyed the great Roman Empire, with the disgust and horror rightly inspired by the reek of a herd of wild beasts’.78 Voltaire evidently understood, and baulked at, the far-reaching implications of Montesquieu’s views on Gothic government and the English constitution. L’Esprit des lois declares that France and England share a common political ancestry; definitively non-Roman, yet still an ancestry to be proud of and which can be lived out in the modern world. Montesquieu brings out the similarities between the government of the English and that of the Germanic tribes to transmit a simple yet controversial message: to be true to its past France should follow England’s example in rejecting absolute monarchy and reverting to Gothic government. Whilst Voltaire might have agreed with this in part, he was certainly not prepared either to reject Europe’s Roman heritage or to view England as an example of continuity between modernity and the barbarous Middle Ages. Fundamentally, it is Europe’s cultural identity which is at stake here. Voltaire to some extent remains true to the model of European cultural identity promoted by Renaissance scholars, who had declared themselves members of an international intellectual community unified by a common Greco-Roman cultural heritage. Within this cultural paradigm Europe was seen as a beacon of civilization and moral standards. As Terry Ellingson notes, in the age of colonization and exploration, Europe increasingly defined itself in opposition to other societies which were branded either ‘oriental’ or ‘savage’.79 One explanation for this may lie with the primordial importance of antiquity within European culture. Europeans were effectively positioning themselves in relation to the two societies which had threatened and eventually brought down classical civilization: the Goths in the west and the Persians in the east. This positioning was problematic, however. In celebrating its Roman roots, Europe was proclaiming itself the heir of a society irrevocably associated with decline and fall. Montesquieu’s philosophy represents an attempt to renegotiate Europe’s relationship with this heritage. His various works address the gradual corruption of all political systems – as exemplified by Rome – and explore

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Europe’s connection with the Goths and the Persians, the two peoples who ultimately assured Roman decline. The fall of the western and eastern Roman Empires appeared to establish a historical model whereby political systems were threatened on the one hand by an excess of liberty, and on the other by its suppression. Having accepted the fact that Rome was a deficient political exemplar, Montesquieu accordingly looked elsewhere. There was no possibility of adopting the mechanisms of Oriental despotism. The Lettres persanes reveal, in the shape of the disaster in Usbek’s seraglio, the dangers facing a state which goes too far towards an eastern-style regime. Gothic government however did appear to offer some hope for Europe, not least because it was the foundation of all European political systems. The chaos and anarchy into which Europe was plunged after the fall of Rome had after all been reined in. The modern monarchy which remained closest to its Gothic roots seemed to have achieved the perfect balance between freedom and control. As Bolingbroke put it in a passage from the first letter of his Remarks on the History of England that Montesquieu noted in his Spicilège: ‘Our monarchy is in the middle point from whence a deviation leads on one hand to tyranny, and on the other to anarchy’.80 In L’Esprit des lois therefore, Montesquieu proclaims the French and the English along with all other Europeans to be the heirs of Goths. After two centuries of celebrating European Latinity, this rediscovered political and cultural inheritance offered an escape from the dynamic of decline inherent in Roman history and was consistent with the Enlightenment idea that progress was an essential element of European identity. In the Considérations sur les … Romains Montesquieu had questioned the validity of emulating Rome, arguing that changes in historical circumstances since the days of the Empire made the Roman example largely irrelevant to modern Europe. The same did not apply to the Gothic system of government, however. Gothic law had no institutional foundations that belonged to a particular historical period. It simply emerged organically from the forests of Germany, a remarkable example of the power of natural liberty and reason: In Roman times the inhabitants of northern Europe lived without art, without education, and almost without laws: and yet, with only good sense on their side … they made an admirable stand against the power of the Roman Empire, until the day came when they emerged from their forests to bring about its destruction.

Based on custom rather than legislation, the Gothic constitution evolved naturally over time, adapting itself to changing circumstances whilst remaining rooted in ancient liberties. This idea is conveyed by Montesquieu using a powerful organic image:

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The feudal laws form a very beautiful prospect. A venerable old oak raises its head to the skies: the eye perceives its leaves from a distance; upon drawing nearer it perceives the trunk; but the roots cannot be seen: they are buried deep underground.81

As Pocock has shown, the power of the myth of the ancient constitution lay in it having been wrought by no man.82 Montesquieu declares in L’Esprit des lois that ‘laws always clash with the passions and prejudices of the legislator’, and his accompanying references to Thomas More’s Utopia and Harrington’s Oceana shows that this comment has particular relevance to England. One of Montesquieu’s fundamental aims in writing L’Esprit des lois was to call for caution in drawing up legislative programmes: ‘I think I have undertaken this work to prove only one thing; legislators must be imbued with the spirit of moderation’.83 His discussion of Gothic government shows that a system of constitutional and civil law based on immemorial custom is free of the legislative prejudices that are otherwise inevitable. In England, despite the efforts of misguided reformers such as More and Harrington an unwritten constitution has grown up inseparably entwined with the customs of the country. Gothic government, which represents the esprit rather than the lettre of liberty, has been preserved. J. Q. C. Mackrell reads the final sentence of L’Esprit des lois, ‘my treatise on feudal law ends where most authors begin’, as proof of Montesquieu’s restraint in not carrying the implications of his theory of Gothic government into contemporary constitutional disputes.84 Montesquieu’s call for reform of the modern French constitution is present in the text by implication only, in accordance with his own guidelines established in the final chapter of book 11: ‘One should not always exhaust a subject to the point where the reader has no work to do. My business is not to make people read, but to make them think’.85 As Voltaire’s reaction to L’Esprit des lois demonstrates, for the reader who follows these instructions and makes the connection between the author’s representation of England and that of France’s national past, the call for a return to Gothic values is unmistakeably clear.

A Cosmopolitan Constitution As Montesquieu stresses in book 11, the Gothic system of government was not only ‘the best constitutional system that we could possibly imagine’ but was also ‘that which once existed in every part of Europe’. Submitting both the English constitution and French feudal government to particular scrutiny in L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu makes sure to emphasize that these are just two examples of a political system which had at one time been common to all European nations. The numerous references to Tacitus that recur at strategic points in the text help to bring this point home. Donald Kelley, who has traced the reception of Tacitus’s Germania in early modern Europe, remarks that the work was incorporated into what he terms the ‘mystical search’ for Europe’s ‘founding fathers’. During the

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Enlightenment period in particular the Germania became the key to solving ‘the difficult and myth-ridden questions of national spirit and origins’.86 The wider European scope of the Germanic myth is of vital significance to L’Esprit des lois. Thanks to the earlier success of both the Lettres persanes and the Considérations sur les … Romains, Montesquieu was able confidently to expect a readership from all corners of the Republic of Letters. It was therefore of great advantage to him to be able to reinforce his programme for constitutional reform by coupling it with a myth that had resonance throughout Europe. Gothic liberty, as he emphasizes in L’Esprit des lois, was originally common to the Visigoths, Lombards, Franks, Saxons and Danes whose descendants now people Spain, Italy, France, England and Scandinavia respectively. National diversity of custom and law is therefore grounded in a fundamental unity: ‘The laws of one barbarian people … help us to understand all the others, since they all have much the same spirit’.87 Colin Kidd has examined concepts of nationhood and ethnicity in the period before the advent of nineteenth-century nationalism. Among the different accounts of European identity developed during the Enlightenment period he draws attention to Gothicism, the vision of a common European heritage of Germanic liberties that is exemplified in Montesquieu’s work. Gothicism, Kidd claims, is exceptional among eighteenth-century theories of identity in that it does not magnify the differences between the countries of Europe. Instead, theories of Gothic identity and liberties crossed national boundaries and the notion that modern Europeans were all members of a ‘common family of Gothic kingdoms’ emerged as part of a ‘cosmopolitan conversation’ about the origins of the continent.88 However, Gothicism could be put to different uses according to the demands of national identity politics. Bolingbroke for instance was quick to acknowledge the common origins of the French and English political systems, only to incorporate this notion into his rhetoric of English exceptionalism. However, when Montesquieu declares in L’Esprit des lois that the English have remained faithful to their Gothic roots he is not proclaiming, as Bolingbroke had done, the exclusive nature of England’s constitutional tradition. Rather, he maintains that all European nations can lay claim to the same Gothic inheritance. In his Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle, the unpublished companion text to the Considérations sur les … Romains, Montesquieu had declared that ‘Europe is now one nation made up of many’.89 The historical investigations into the Gothic tribes conducted in L’Esprit des lois provide both an ethnological and institutional basis for this assertion. Tracing the history of Europe’s Gothic origins allows Montesquieu to claim membership of a wider European community which goes beyond mere national allegiance. The advantage of using a political rhetoric based on Gothicism and Germanic liberties is that the author can address many readerships – French, English and European – with one inclusive discourse. In this context, Montesquieu’s repeated references to the Germanic

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tribes as ‘our ancestors’ are conveniently ambiguous. As the following extract from the fragments originally intended for L’Esprit des lois demonstrates, all Europeans are potentially implicated in his use of the first person plural: ‘Tacitus left us his excellent treatise De Moribus Germanorum, in which we see our customs depicted and our laws described … One might wish that someone had left us a similar treatise on Gothic customs and laws’.90 Significantly, the myth of Europe’s Gothic origins laid out in L’Esprit des lois diminishes perceived constitutional and cultural differences between England and France. These differences had been magnified by the events of the 1740s. The two nations were engaged in formal hostilities from 1744 to 1748, with France supporting the Jacobite invasion of Britain in 1745. This mutual military threat led to France being seen in England as the personification of despotic Catholic domination, whilst Englishmen were viewed by their French counterparts as warring barbarians.91 In this context, Montesquieu’s description of the English constitution appears to represent an attempt to legitimize the English polity in the eyes of his countrymen. Rather than being a modern aberration founded on regicide, usurpation and heresy, England’s government is shown to stand for the survival of ancient European liberties. Conversely, Englishmen are also reminded that the liberties they possess do not set them apart from their continental neighbours but should be viewed as a shared heritage. Kidd points out that eighteenth-century English accounts of Europe’s Gothic origins defied the prevailing climate of Francophobia to promote ‘a vision of Europe which located England and its arch-rival France as part of a glorious constellation of Gothic nations’. He argues that such works introduced ‘some political and historical sophistication into the differences between English liberty and French slavery’ which were a stock feature of political rhetoric.92 Montesquieu’s depiction of England in L’Esprit des lois similarly attenuates conventional contrasts between England and France. His work adds sophisticated nuances to Anglo– French narratives of identity, while the emphasis placed on the longstanding constitutional kinship between the two nations explicitly challenges existing stereotypes deployed on both sides of the Channel at the time when his work appeared. In L’Esprit des lois, England is constructed as a focus for the dreams of liberty cherished by the European subjects of the continent’s absolute monarchs. Yet the work is also of relevance to the English themselves. For many Englishmen, the idea that their nation was a haven of liberty offered an unwelcome contrast with political reality. In the 1730s and 40s, the Patriot party led by Bolingbroke continually attacked Walpole’s administration on the grounds that the progressive corruption of parliament was threatening the balance of the nation’s ancient constitution. In his Dissertation upon Parties, Bolingbroke had set out a bleak vision of England’s future:

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Montesquieu and England Let us suppose our parliaments, in some future generation, to grow so corrupt, and the crown so rich, that a pecuniary influence constantly prevailing over the majority, they should assemble for little else than to establish grievances, instead of redressing them … Our constitution itself would become our grievance, whilst this corruption prevailed; and if it prevailed long, our constitution could not last long.93

In L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu concludes his own description of the English constitution with a similar prediction: ‘The state we are speaking of will lose its liberty and will perish … It will perish when the legislative power has become more corrupt than the executive’. As if aware that this assertion clashes with his more positive comments earlier in the chapter, he seeks to qualify his description: ‘It is not for me to examine whether the English currently enjoy this liberty, or not. It is sufficient for me to say that it is established by their laws; and I enquire no further’.94 During his visit to London in the early 1730s, Montesquieu noted in his journal: ‘The English are no longer worthy of their liberty. They sell it to the King’. This comment is made in the context of a discussion regarding Crown patronage of parliament and implies that the Commons is dominated by placemen. The English political classes, rather than the nation as a whole, are therefore the targets of Montesquieu’s criticism but the verdict is nevertheless damning.95 However, the author seems to have made a conscious decision not to represent this reality in L’Esprit des lois, where his praise of England’s balanced constitution is unstinting and corruption is never mentioned. Yet the image of England as a land of freedom and primitive virtue that emerges from the text is double-edged. Designed to inspire reform in those European countries that have clearly lost sight of their Gothic liberties, as has France, Montesquieu’s portrait of the English as free and endowed with all Germanic virtues at once seduces English readers and indicts them of their present corruption. The possibility that L’Esprit des lois spoke to the concerns of different parties within England has not hitherto been addressed, but this dimension of the work is undoubtedly worthy of exploration. Closer examination reveals that the emphasis placed by Montesquieu on England’s Germanic political traditions led to English translations of the work being used to legitimize the claim of the Hanoverian monarchs to the English throne. In the mid- to late 1740s, the threat of a Jacobite invasion and the possible restitution of the Stuarts sparked fresh debate as to the legitimacy of the Hanoverian monarchy. Within this context, Montesquieu’s declaration that England’s political system originated in the forests of Germany lent itself to the justification of the imposition of a German dynasty. The frequent references to Tacitus doubtless reinforced this interpretation, for as Weinbrot has shown, the Germania was often invoked in a pro-Hanoverian context to promote the dynasty’s libertarian heritage.96 Thomas Nugent, the approved English translator of L’Esprit des lois, was also an author in his own right and his works reveal him to have been an ardent supporter of

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the Hanoverian constitutional settlement.97 However, it appears he was commissioned on the basis of his 1748 translation of Burlamaqui’s Principles of Natural Law (he later went on to translate both Voltaire and Rousseau). Nugent did not add a preface giving his own views on Montesquieu’s work, and the faithfulness of his translation was commended by the author himself.98 Others did however seek to appropriate Montesquieu’s work for overtly pro-Hanoverian purposes. When Nugent’s official translation of L’Esprit des lois appeared in 1750, the two chapters of the work directly concerning England were published separately in pamphlet form. Democratically priced at four pence (whereas the full-length edition cost 10–12 shillings), and aimed at readers ‘who have neither time nor inclination to read so large a work as the treatise on the Spirit of Laws’, the pamphlet was clearly intended to transmit what its anonymous editors considered to be Montesquieu’s most important ideas to as wide a readership as possible.99 The translated chapters are broadly similar to Nugent’s version but contain interesting editorial annotations. Particularly worthy of note is the following footnote, appended to Montesquieu’s claim that the English constitution was ‘found in the forests’: One would rather believe, that the author couched in this mysterious way an opinion a Frenchman dare scarce avow, that this happy establishment was secured at the revolution 1688, concerted by the lovers of British liberty, and the Prince of Orange, at his house of the Wood, and afterwards completed by the accession of the præsent reigning German family.100

Montesquieu’s account of England’s Germanic constitution – intended by the author to promote the idea that England has preserved ancient liberties common to all European nations – is here interpreted as referring not to the nation’s long-lasting tradition of Gothic government but to modern developments in English history. This interpretation of Montesquieu’s text would have been endorsed on the one hand by those seeking to portray the House of Hanover as the guardians of English liberty, which must be defended against Stuart absolutism. On the other hand, it would have appealed to members of the ruling Whig administration who, in response to Bolingbroke’s evocation of the ancient constitution, claimed that English liberty had only been established on secure foundations by the Glorious Revolution, thus making Gothic history irrelevant to modern politics.101 That the editors of the pamphlet saw fit to add such a footnote when publishing their translated chapters of L’Esprit des lois demonstrates the perceived power and influence of Montesquieu’s work within English political circles. There is certainly anecdotal evidence from 1749 of L’Esprit des lois having been cited by Pulteney and Carteret in parliament.102 However, in denying England’s links with its constitutional past and reasserting the unique-

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ness of English liberty, such partisan readings clearly go against the message of Montesquieu’s original text. The role of the monarch or executive in the English constitution preoccupied another British reader of L’Esprit des lois: the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume’s response is especially interesting given the impact of Montesquieu’s work on his own thought and that of the Scottish Enlightenment in general, particularly in the area of political economy.103 Having read the first French edition of L’Esprit des lois Hume wrote a letter to Montesquieu giving a long and detailed commentary on various aspects of the work, but reserved his final comments for the section on England. In Hume’s eyes, Montesquieu’s approbation for the English constitution was excessive and risked encouraging a tendency to complacency among the English with regard to their nation’s political achievements. In contrast, Hume draws attention to the vulnerability of the English system. This reading of L’Esprit des lois was entirely in keeping with the views Hume had expressed in his Essays, Moral and Political (1741–2), where he emphasized the institutional fragility and potential corruption of England’s constitution. However, where Bolingbroke and others had advocated parliamentary independence as the solution to this problem, Hume defended the necessity of increased executive influence to preserve constitutional balance.104 However Hume’s assumption that Montesquieu’s praise for their constitution would make his English contemporaries complacent is belied by the letters Montesquieu received from several prominent Englishmen after his work appeared. These correspondents clearly understood the import of the work as reinforcing Bolingbroke’s argument concerning the worrying disparity between England’s ancient constitution and present corruption. William Domville speaks for the majority: How did you succeed in explaining our constitution and in painting such a true portrait of our nation? You are perhaps the only foreigner who has been able to make sense of so complex a system, and of such a variable character … You feel that we are no longer what we should be, that our liberty has degenerated into licence, that the very ideas of the public good is lost, that the fate of rich and corrupt nations awaits us and that we are even hastening towards it.105

Domville wrote specifically to request Montesquieu’s opinion on England’s future prospects. The author replied in reassuring terms, declaring that ‘in Europe, the last sigh of liberty will be breathed by an Englishman’.106 He also drafted further reflections in response to Domville’s letter that are preserved in his Pensées. Here he gives a more lengthy explanation of his views, suggesting that his ‘foreign status’ allows him to view the future of England’s constitution more objectively than an Englishman, ‘because I am moved neither by terror, nor by hope’. In spite of the legislative corruption that he acknowledges exists

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in England, Montesquieu declares that the nation’s liberty will nevertheless be preserved by what he calls ‘those of a middling sort’. This chimes with the understanding of the constitution offered by Bolingbroke and other Country opponents of Hanoverian Court influence, whereby the fate of English liberty depended on the virtue of the people. Kramnick has argued that in Bolingbroke’s case this political populism implied an aristocratic alliance with the people in opposition to the liberal capitalism of the middle classes.107 In contrast, Rahe makes the case that the champions of English liberty mentioned in Montesquieu’s letter to Domville are the middle-class merchants who have reaped the benefits of the country’s bourgeoning industrial economy.108 The members of this class are active citizens who are ‘astute in their political judgements’ because their commercial activity ‘both teaches a form of citizenship and encourages political participation’.109 Thanks to England’s system of representative government, this new political class are able to vigilantly watch over the nation’s ancient constitution: ‘Among your people, those of a middling sort still love their laws and their liberty. I will go so far as to say … as long as mediocre persons conserve their principles, it is impossible that your constitution should be overturned’. In effect, Montesquieu’s comments describe the growth of the public sphere in England, where the literate, merchant classes form a body of citizens who are both politically aware and able to make their voices heard. Characterizing the English population as animated by ‘a spirit of liberty which is always alight and which is not about to be put out’, Montesquieu declares that it is the people’s ability to think for themselves and to debate issues freely and rationally that allows them to remain unaffected by the influence of corrupt elites.110 As was emphasized in the portrait of France in book 19 of L’Esprit des lois, during the early Enlightenment the French too developed sophisticated mechanisms of communication and debate. However, in the absence of the appropriate institutional structures these led to refined politeness and sociability rather than to political involvement. Daniel Gordon’s study of French sociability presents a similar view. Gordon shows that the public sphere that emerged in eighteenth-century France remained resolutely apolitical. Free, egalitarian discussion was confined to social or aesthetic questions and the salon, rather than the legislative assembly, was considered the acceptable sphere of action for les gens du monde.111 This began to change in the mid-eighteenth century. As constitutional contestation developed within the parlements and the magistracy in France, debates within the French public sphere focused increasingly on political issues.112 Montesquieu’s depiction of England in L’Esprit des lois highlights the nation’s preservation of Europe’s Gothic constitution on the one hand, and the English population’s involvement in free, rational, political debate on the other.113 The former, Montesquieu reveals in his projected letter to Domville, is in fact dependent on the

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latter. Therefore, if France is to return to its constitutional roots and embrace the Gothic liberties and institutions once possessed by the nation’s Frankish forebears it will also be necessary to cultivate a wider interest in politics among the middle classes. This was precisely Montesquieu’s aim in writing L’Esprit des lois. His preface to the work demonstrates that the route to legislative reform lies in changing the opinions not merely of the political classes, but of society as a whole. This will have a more lasting impact on the actions of legislators: ‘It is not a matter of indifference that the people be enlightened. The prejudices of magistrates arise from the prejudices of the nation’. In seeking to transmit such a message to French audiences through praising the superior political and social establishment of a rival nation with whom France was at war, Montesquieu placed himself in a potentially difficult position. D. J. Fletcher has commented that Montesquieu’s authorial standpoint in L’Esprit des lois, as in his other works, equates to the position adopted by Bolingbroke and his Patriot party in their disputes with the English political establishment.114 Bolingbroke upheld a definition of patriotism that made it a citizen’s duty to point out abuses of authority. In his Idea of a Patriot King (1749), Bolingbroke affirms his right to criticize the government ‘in an age when so many others shrink from the service of their country’, and defends himself against the potential accusations of disloyalty which ‘may be expected in an age … when to assert the truth is called spreading of delusion, and to assert the cause of liberty and good government, is termed sowing of sedition’.115 Bolingbroke enhanced the patriotic overtones of his Patriot King by dedicating it to Frederick the Prince of Wales, to whose reign the English opposition looked forward as ushering in a new era of enlightened benevolent government. Significantly, the passages omitted from Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois include the draft of a dedication to an anonymous patron who is said to belong to the royal house of a nation where kings are uniquely constrained by laws. In a clarifying footnote the author reveals: ‘I had thought to dedicate my work to the Prince of Wales’.116 However, Montesquieu decided against this potentially provocative patronage. He was a pragmatist rather than a polemicist and indeed personally disliked Bolingbroke’s tendency to invective.117 In comparison with Bolingbroke’s strident denunciations of Walpole’s government Montesquieu’s criticisms of France are subtle and implied. Importantly, by modelling his positive depiction of England and veiled censure of France on the Germania, Montesquieu associates himself with a Tacitean tradition of ‘loyal opposition’ that existed in eighteenth-century political philosophy. This was based on the fact that Tacitus was a member of the Roman establishment who nevertheless condemned imperial tyranny in his Annals and Histories whilst the Germania functioned as a powerful critique of Roman cultural degeneracy.118 In L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu takes great pains to register

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his allegiance to his native France, declaring in the preface that ‘Plato thanked the gods that he was born in the age of Socrates, and for my part I thank heaven that I was born a subject of that government under which I live’. The author’s admiration for England is carefully qualified by statements designed to appease the French or European reader, as when he concludes his description of the English constitution with the words: It is not for me to examine whether the English currently enjoy this liberty, or not … Neither do I mean by this to undervalue other governments, nor to say that this extreme political liberty humiliates those whose freedom is limited. Why would I say that, I who believe that the excess of reason is not always desirable and that mankind is generally better suited to mediums than to extremes?119

‘Myths for the Age of Reason’ As such statements show, England fulfils a highly complex function in L’Esprit des lois. Through his descriptions of the nation’s institutions and political culture in books 11 and 19, Montesquieu addresses a variety of questions that preoccupied his contemporaries. In the mid-eighteenth century, developments on the French political scene seemed to suggest that France might be adopting the practices of contestation and free debate that were seen as characteristic of England. Given that the two nations were at war for much of the period, any perceived similarity between France and its rival was cause for concern. In L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu exploits the hostile French stereotype of the English as warring barbarians to reveal that Englishmen embody the savage virtues of the German tribes immortalized by Tacitus. Portraying the Franks in similar terms, he shows that France and England share the same political ancestry. In so doing, Montesquieu involves himself in the struggle between Romanists and Germanists for control of France’s past. He proposes an alternative cultural model, demonstrating that if the French wish to remain faithful to their own political origins they should model their institutions and values more closely on those of their perceived rivals, the English. England’s polity remarkably combines an ancient Gothic heritage with the modern mechanisms of the public sphere. This allows the best traditions of Germanic government to be preserved in the midst of a progressive commercial society. Englishmen all participate in political debates, and indeed the vigilance of the general population acts as an essential safeguard to the nation’s constitution. Echoing the arguments of Bolingbroke’s Patriot party, Montesquieu in L’Esprit des lois portrays the English constitution as being at once anchored in immemorial liberties and precariously balanced. In this way, he makes his work relevant to audiences from England, France and throughout Europe. The English should not be complacent but rather defend their constitution, not as a unique asset but as the common political heritage of all European nations.

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The connection that can be made between Montesquieu’s depiction of the modern English and of the pre-feudal Gothic tribes allows the coherence of seemingly disparate parts of L’Esprit des lois to emerge. This should not be taken to mean that the unity of a famously fragmentary text hinges on the chapters concerning England. Yet clearly the author’s description of the English constitution – long since considered to be a seminal passage in L’Esprit des lois – gains in significance if it can also be linked to other important elements of the text. Among the most significant of these are book 14 on climatic theory, where all peoples descended from the Gothic tribes are shown to share the same physical and cultural characteristics; books 18 and 19, where Montesquieu first describes the savage virtues of the Franks and then contrasts them with the refined sociability of their modern descendants; and the concluding books on Gothic government which have so long been considered a mere postscript to the main body of the text. On one level, Montesquieu’s representation of England in L’Esprit des lois conveys a rational and indeed utilitarian message. England is a rich, free, successful modern nation; and if riches, success and freedom are dependent on adopting a Gothic constitution, then surely France should do so. All the more since France would not so much be following England’s example as acknowledging her rightful political ancestry. Yet on another level there emerges from Montesquieu’s work a powerful myth of English liberty. Christiane Mervaud has analysed Voltaire’s creation of an ‘English myth’ in the Lettres philosophiques, a myth formed from existing stereotypes and images already present in the minds of both author and reader. These ideas are schematized, reduced to their essentials, and the very simplicity of Voltaire’s vision of England – land of freedom and progress – allows it to become mythical.120 Montesquieu does not seek to abolish this existing myth of England, which had grown up in the early eighteenth century before being crystallized by Voltaire in the 1730s. He rather combines it with other myths; of the ancient constitution, of Gothic virtue, of the ‘noble savage’, thus demonstrating his ability to work within the changing political culture of the ancien régime. For as Baker has shown, as public opinion became an increasingly important factor in political debate those involved in political contestation began to support their arguments by deploying ‘symbolic resources held in common by members of … society’.121 Christiane Mervaud remarks on Voltaire’s understanding of the fact that modern man was not governed by reason alone and would therefore respond best to a rational argument structured by symbols and emblems or, as she puts it, ‘myths for the age of reason’.122 Kramnick’s analysis of Bolingbroke’s political writings also highlights the importance of constructing an argument in ‘a language meaningful to the political mind’ of the audience of the time.123 Inspired in particular by Bolingbroke’s use of the myth of the ancient constitution, Montesquieu clearly anticipated that his readers would react favourably to the

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seduction of such images as the organic, naturally evolving Gothic lore, to the suggestion that their forefathers had ruled Europe since the dawn of time, and to the possibility of an alternative to the Roman paradigm of decadence and corruption. The exploitation of Montesquieu’s ideas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries lends credence to the suggestion that the L’Esprit des lois provided an alluring, plausible and significantly non-Roman myth as to the origins of European culture. When Montesquieu’s theory of climates and his Tacitean image of Germany as the birthplace of liberty were applied outside the political sphere, the author’s move away from Roman influences towards Europe’s Gothic origins became in broader cultural terms the development from classicism to Romanticism.124 Montesquieu is not generally seen as one of the Enlightenment writers who heralded the Romantic tradition. Yet the role which he accords to England and the nations of northern Europe in L’Esprit des lois, together with his validation of the Germanist thesis of French history, suggest that this opinion should be revised. Indeed, the early modern myth of Europe’s ancient constitution which is so fundamental to Montesquieu’s political theory as laid out in L’Esprit des lois, is seen by Pocock as one symptom of a general movement: Towards the customary, the native, the feudal and the barbarous, that was discernible in contemporary thought and may have furnished one of the roots of European romanticism, for it constantly opposed the folk to the legislator, the primitive … and the mutable to the rigidities of ordered reason.125

In an English context, commentators are beginning to see links between the work of Bolingbroke and other Patriot writers and eighteenth-century pre-Romantic literature, based on Bolingbroke’s valorization of the Gothic in English culture.126 Given the extent to which L’Esprit des lois echoes the arguments made by Bolingbroke in his Dissertation upon Parties and other texts, a similar analysis of Montesquieu’s work could yield interesting results. While L’Esprit des lois has earned for Montesquieu the name of rationalist father of the social sciences, the title of the work itself declares that the author will be exploring not just the letter of the law but its spirit; a concept which in many contexts would imply something immaterial and not wholly susceptible to rational explanation. It is striking that in the author’s description of the English constitution the theoretical discourse of political science, which prevails as Montesquieu explains the rationale behind balanced government, in the end gives way to fable: ‘This fine system was found in the forests’. The England of L’Esprit des lois is at once a myth and a model, and the depiction of the English in the work reveals how effectively Montesquieu harnesses existing ideas to communicate his political message. The Voltairean myth of England as land of liberty,

the Tacitean myth of the Germanic savage, and the myth of the ancient Gothic constitution as propagated by Bolingbroke, are joined together to reinforce Montesquieu’s call for a return to the principles which once governed European states. As the attention paid to the customs of the Franks shows, this message is designed above all to appeal to readers in France. To readers in England is addressed an injunction to remain faithful to the origins of their constitution, in which both Europe’s past and future are preserved.

5 AESTHETIC ALLEGIANCES: ESSAI SUR LE GOÛT (c. 1753–5)

The extensive connections between Montesquieu and the English Enlightenment are evident in the author’s political philosophy. These connections are widely acknowledged and, when examined in context, reveal the extent to which Anglo–French intellectual exchanges stimulated the development of political thought on both sides of the Channel in the early Enlightenment. Yet it is important not to overlook the influence of the English ideas at work in a lesser-known dimension of Montesquieu’s work: the aesthetic theories outlined in his Essai sur le goût dans les choses de la nature & de l’art (c. 1753–5). The Essai was Montesquieu’s only direct contribution to Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–72). In their preliminary discourse to this unrivalled compendium of Enlightenment thought the editors sought to establish their credentials as reviving a national French tradition of groundbreaking philosophical investigation. The genealogy of knowledge they sketched implied that philosophy had been born in France, but had been reared in England. The Encyclopédie marked philosophy’s return to its native land, yet the editors had to acknowledge the importance of English ideas in bringing it to maturity. They duly recognized themselves to be continuing a project begun by Ephraim Chambers and also invoked the intellectual patronage of Bacon, Newton and Locke. Montesquieu’s Essai is therefore placed in a work where English philosophy is appropriated and given French finesse. Montesquieu was working on the Essai at the time of his death in 1755. In 1753 he had been asked by D’Alembert to supply the encyclopaedia articles ‘Democracy’ and ‘Despotism’ but had refused the request, declaring: ‘I have already plumbed the depths of my knowledge on these heads … It occurs to me that maybe I could write on ‘Taste’.1 Montesquieu’s preference no doubt reflects his own eclectic intellectual tastes (he was later to feature in Diderot’s article on ‘Eclecticism’) but is also an invitation to explore the complex relationship between aesthetics and politics in the eighteenth century. The Essai was found incomplete among Montesquieu’s papers on his death. It is a fragmentary text comprising twenty brief sections, fifteen of which were included in the article ‘Taste’ in volume 7 of the Encyclopédie (1757).2 Here, – 143 –

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the Essai appears between Voltaire’s general entry on taste and an essay by D’Alembert entitled ‘Réflexions sur l’usage & sur l’abus de la Philosophie dans les matieres de goût’.3 In his contribution to the article Voltaire sought to differentiate between good taste and bad taste whilst D’Alembert fiercely defended the right of the philosophes to legislate on such questions. By contrast, in his Essai Montesquieu aims above all to be consensual. He defines taste inclusively as: ‘The ability to gauge quickly and accurately the amount of pleasure which humankind will derive from different things’. He then explains his theory that judgements of taste are determined by universal psychological criteria, what he terms ‘the pleasures of our soul’.4 The rest of the essay is given over to discussion of the different qualities of objects that invariably give pleasure. These qualities – which include symmetry, variety, the sublime and the je ne sais quoi – arise from certain characteristics of the human mind such as a general tendency to boredom or a love of the unexpected. Their capacity to generate a sensation of pleasure is illustrated using examples drawn from both art and nature. The unusual circumstances of the Essai’s commission, composition and publication have attracted considerable critical attention but the work itself has traditionally been seen as confused and lacking in originality. Robert Shackleton and Charles-Jacques Beyer’s brief analyses reflect the critical consensus.5 Both scholars take what has long been the standard approach to the text. They begin by tracing its origins to the late 1720s when, in an exchange of letters with his friend Jean-Jacques Bel concerning the abbé Dubos’s Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture (1719), Montesquieu sketched the outlines of a theory regarding judgements of taste and declared his intention to investigate the matter further.6 The Essai is accordingly evaluated against the intellectual background of the 1720s. Shackleton explores the influence on the Essai of works such as Dubos’s Réflexions critiques and Crousaz’s Traité du beau (1715) while Beyer further emphasizes the climate of Cartesianism that prevailed in this period.7 Seemingly, the Essai can only be redeemed by removing it from the context in which it appeared. As Shackleton concludes, the work ‘would have appeared much less contemptible in 1727 than it did in 1753’.8 However, in her introduction to the newest edition of the work Annie Becq questions the Essai’s supposed kinship with studies of taste from the first half of the eighteenth century. Becq attempts a genuine rehabilitation of the Essai as a product of several decades’ reflection on the part of the author, freshly conceived and structured from 1753 onwards with a view to publication in the Encyclopédie.9 Downing A. Thomas has also challenged traditional approaches to the text.10 Thomas takes Montesquieu’s interest in taste to be an integral part of the author’s thought, stemming from a general concern with negotiating between uniformity and diversity in human activities. He thus instructively compares the Essai with the cultural dimension of Montesquieu’s reflections in L’Esprit des lois.11 Importantly, Thomas also

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demonstrates the benefits of analysing the Essai within the ideological environment of the Encyclopédie. On the basis of Montesquieu’s views on human nature and cultural relativism, he establishes the Essai’s relevance to the article ‘Taste’ as a whole and to aesthetic discussions throughout the Encyclopédie including Diderot’s article ‘Beau’ (1752).12 In connecting Montesquieu’s work with this article, Thomas opens up a new line of enquiry into the Essai sur le goût. Diderot begins his discussion of beauty by providing a survey of the major developments in eighteenth-century aesthetics. He notably reviews the work of English Enlightenment thinkers Hutcheson and Shaftesbury alongside that of the père André and the abbé Batteux, thus drawing attention to the crucial contribution made by English philosophy to contemporary French aesthetic debates. In his Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, included in the 1711 edition of his Characteristics, Shaftesbury had set out to revise his tutor Locke’s sensationalist philosophy. He did not believe artistic judgement should be confined to the realm of sense perception and therefore proposed a link between aesthetics and ethics. According to Shaftesbury, taste governed not only norms of artistic excellence but also of social interaction. It thus became an issue fundamental to social wellbeing and in which the whole of society had a stake. Diderot’s translation of the Inquiry into French in 1745 encouraged discussion of Shaftesbury’s innovative theories in France. Interest in English Enlightenment aesthetics was further enhanced by the publication in 1749 of a French version of Francis Hutcheson’s Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). This work is widely seen as the first systematic, philosophical account of the theory of taste.13 Hutcheson drew not only on the ideas expressed in Shaftesbury’s Characteristics but also on a celebrated series of essays ‘On the Pleasures of the Imagination’ that Addison had included in the Spectator in 1712. In addition to the 1714 English edition of the Characteristics and versions of the Spectator in both English and French (works which can of course be counted among the English sources of the Lettres persanes), Montesquieu also owned a copy of the first English edition of Hutcheson’s Inquiry.14 Given this evidence of Montesquieu’s familiarity with some of the founding works of eighteenth-century English aesthetics, and given that the influence of English thought and a preoccupation with England can be detected throughout his thought and writing, it is remarkable that this connection has not hitherto been explored in relation to the Essai sur le goût. A new understanding of the claims made by Montesquieu in the Essai can be gained by considering its possible English sources. To investigate the English influences on Montesquieu’s Essai sur le goût is to reinforce the links between this work and the aesthetic theories being elaborated by the encyclopédistes in the 1750s. This equates to a reconsideration of the text’s relation both to the author’s œuvre as a whole and to the context in which it was published. In order to exam-

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ine the Essai in this context it is necessary to trace the changes that took place in the aesthetic domain between the 1720s and 50s. In other words, between Montesquieu’s first reflections on the subject of taste and his announcement to D’Alembert of his intention to revisit these initial findings in order to present them in the Encyclopédie. In the mid-eighteenth century questions relating to art and taste were attracting ever-increasing interest from the French public. JeanBaptiste le Blanc, commenting on the Paris Salon of 1753, remarked that: ‘Never at any time in French history has so much been written on any subject, as in the works now appearing on all things concerning taste’. The recent wave of publications, declares Le Blanc, is a response to unprecedented public demand. He illustrates his point by referring to the work that sparked Montesquieu’s original interest in the subject of taste: ‘When the excellent Réflexions sur la poésie et sur la peinture by Monsieur l’abbé Dubos were printed for the first time, only a few readers recognized their merit. They are now essential reading for everyone’.15 Thomas Crow has emphasized the importance of the Paris Salon in transforming the French public’s relationship to art, which in turn influenced theories of taste. The Salon did not become a regular feature of French cultural life until the 1730s. Before this time, art exhibits had been associated with the ostentatious display of power by Crown and Church.16 The establishment of the Salon meant that art was henceforth freely accessible ‘in a completely secular setting and for the purpose of encouraging a primarily aesthetic response in large numbers of people’.17 Whilst the visual arts had traditionally been seen as the preserve of a small circle of elite patrons and erudite experts, members of the public visiting the Salon began to assert their right to judge the works on display. This helped to establish the validity of personal aesthetic opinions expressed by amateur critics.18 Increased interest in aesthetic subjects on the part of the general public thus called into question the traditional notion that good taste was the reflection of aristocratic or courtly standards. This shift fits into the narrative of the emergence of the French public sphere. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the increasing exercise of free debate in relation to art and literature laid the foundations for a new practice of critical dissent that was eventually to challenge the structures of absolutism.19 As Le Blanc reports, the Salons of the 1750s attracted more independent critical judgements than ever before. In consequence, the nature of taste, the means of acquiring it and the social or intellectual qualifications required to comment on it were subjects preoccupying many French writers and thinkers in the mid-eighteenth century. At this time also, French interest in England’s contribution aesthetic thought was stimulated by the translations of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson already mentioned. As is suggested by the weight given to English thinkers in Diderot’s article ‘Beau’, this interest was highly significant in shaping French Enlightenment aesthetics.20 Thomas has shown that Montesquieu’s Essai is best read as

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a contribution to the Encyclopédie working in conjunction with other articles. This approach will be maintained here, not least because it further emphasizes the contribution of English ideas to the French Enlightenment. To ascertain the extent to which the Essai sur le goût reflects developments in eighteenth-century English aesthetics particular aspects of the text must be subjected to close examination, notably the general theoretical assumptions that Montesquieu makes about taste as a human faculty, the terms in which he describes how taste is experienced and the particular qualities he attributes to objects of taste. When it comes to considering the Essai’s relationship to Montesquieu’s other published works, it must be noted that whilst Ernst Cassirer recognized aesthetic theories to be a crucial element of Enlightenment philosophy, more recent interpretations by Jonathan Israel and others highlight above all the political and scientific dimensions of eighteenth-century thought. However, as Cassirer points out, most if not all of the most important figures in the European Enlightenment chose to elaborate aesthetic theories.21 Though he is commonly thought of as a political thinker, Montesquieu’s reflections on questions relating to art and taste are also worthy of attention. Indeed, examining the Essai sur le goût sheds new light on the interaction between the different elements of Montesquieu’s philosophical theories and, more widely, on the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the early Enlightenment.

‘Experimental Physics of the Soul’ In the same letter to D’Alembert in which he proposes to take taste as the subject of his Encyclopédie article, Montesquieu also heaps praise on the editors’ preliminary discourse, which he has lately read.22 The discourse outlines an epistemological system which has its roots in Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), a work that placed the activity of the human mind, or soul, at the centre of all philosophical investigation. All knowledge is shown to be the result of human experience, derived from information gathered by the senses. Metaphysical, abstract concepts thus lose their meaning, unless they are defined in relation to man. As the discourse explains, Locke changed the course of philosophy, rejecting ‘the abstractions and the ridiculous questions that had hitherto been debated’ in favour of examining ‘our soul, its ideas and its affections … In a word, he transformed Metaphysics into what it must rightfully be, the Experimental Physics of the soul’. Although Locke’s work contained no observations directly relating to judgements of taste, it nevertheless redefined the terms on which such issues were discussed in both England and France in the eighteenth century.23 Most influentially, Locke challenged the aesthetics of neo-classicism by proposing a new definition of beauty.24 This notion was central to early modern discussions of taste, which was commonly seen as the capacity

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to appreciate the beautiful, among other aesthetic qualities. For theorists of taste who adhered to classical principles, such as La Bruyère, certain objects could be qualified as inherently and absolutely beautiful regardless of the perceiver’s opinion: ‘There is such a thing as perfection in art … he who can sense it, and who justly appreciates it, has perfect taste; he who cannot sense it, and who under – or overvalues it, has defective taste’.25 In the Essay Locke challenged such accounts by asserting that beauty was a subjective sensation of delight in the beholder arising from the perception of certain types of objects by the senses.26 As Hutcheson, who built on Locke’s theories, explains: ‘Beauty … properly denotes the Perception of some Mind; so Cold, Hot, Sweet, Bitter, denote the Sensations in our Minds, to which perhaps there is no resemblance in the Objects, which excite these Ideas in us’.27 In the first section of the Essai sur le goût Montesquieu makes a similar case, declaring that ‘objects of taste such as the beautiful, the good, the pleasant’ are determined by subjective criteria: The ancients did not understand this; they saw as positive qualities what are in fact qualities relative to our soul … all their reasoning about the nature of the good, the beautiful … softness, dryness, wetness, treated as positive qualities, is meaningless. The sources of the beautiful, the good, the pleasant &c. are all within ourselves.28

Montesquieu’s espousal of Locke’s theories appears particularly remarkable in light of the fact that the neo-classical notion of beauty still held significant sway in eighteenth-century France. This is demonstrated by Voltaire’s article on taste in the Encyclopédie, in which he claims of the arts: ‘They have truly beautiful qualities, those with good taste can discern them, and those with bad taste are oblivious to them’. By contrast, Montesquieu’s views coincide with those of the majority of English thinkers (with the notable exception of Shaftesbury), who accepted Locke’s conclusions and held beauty to be a relative concept, dependent entirely on human psychology and physiology. Locke’s suggestion that aesthetic qualities were determined by the psychological reactions of the beholder marked a shift in discussions of taste. In his Essai Montesquieu does not investigate the nature of beauty in absolute terms, as the neo-classical theorists had done, nor does he define good taste as the ability to perceive it. Instead, in accordance with Lockean psychology he identifies qualities such as beauty with the experience of pleasure by the perceiver. Taste is the capacity to determine which objects are susceptible to create this effect. However, Montesquieu’s main preoccupation is to identify the sources of aesthetic pleasure within the human mind or soul. When seen in this way, the structuring concept of Montesquieu’s Essai resembles that of Addison’s essays ‘On the Pleasures of the Imagination’. These essays were widely known and influential in both eighteenth-century England and France. This is emphasized by Voltaire in his extended article ‘Taste’ in the Ques-

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tions sur l’Encyclopédie, where he proclaims: ‘Of all the English authors who have written on taste, the mind and the imagination … Addison can be considered the most authoritative’.29 However, Voltaire does not choose to defer to Addison’s authority, whereas Montesquieu in his Essai adheres closely to the terms of Addison’s discussion of the pleasures of the imagination. Addison sought in his series of essays ‘to reflect on those Operations of the Soul that are most agreeable, and to range under their proper Heads, what is pleasing or displeasing to the Mind’. This also forms the logic of Montesquieu’s argument. Having established the subjective nature of aesthetic perception in the initial sections of the Essai Montesquieu too discusses the soul’s most agreeable operations, ‘the pleasure of grasping an idea completely, that of perceiving a great number of things at once, &c. that of comparing, combining and separating ideas’.30 He then goes on to classify objects taken from art and nature according to whether they invigorate or frustrate the mind. Throughout the Essai Montesquieu emphasizes the fact that the soul seeks stimulation and enjoys activity, but dislikes being presented with insurmountable challenges. For instance, the mind enjoys being presented with many objects at once but confusion should be avoided as the soul will labour in vain to establish order and will be ‘fatigued’. This is also an important point for Addison, who argues that the pleasures of the imagination act as ‘a gentle Exercise to the Faculties’, awakening them ‘from Sloth and Idleness, without putting them upon any Labour or Difficulty’.31 Both authors consider that the soul experiences pleasure when its sphere of activity is widened and it can survey objects with ease. This becomes the basis for their preference for objects possessing qualities such as grandeur and symmetry. Interestingly, both writers exploit the contrast between classical and Gothic architecture to demonstrate the soul’s love of majestic proportions as opposed to the intricate variety of small detail. Addison’s acknowledged source for his commentary on architecture is the French theorist Roland Fréart de Chambray’s Parallèle de l’architecture antique avec la moderne (1650). Addison overlays Fréart’s theories with his own observations on pleasure; this focus is then maintained by Montesquieu in his work, where the discussion proceeds along strikingly similar lines.32 This discussion of architectural style therefore demonstrates the mechanisms of reciprocal exchange of aesthetic ideas between France and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are indeed striking resemblances to be drawn between the analysis of the soul’s natural tendencies in Montesquieu’s Essai and Addison’s Spectator papers. For both, the realm of the imagination is governed by fundamental human impulses. Significantly, Montesquieu and Addison emphasize the importance of what might be termed freedom of perception. The soul’s natural state is one of liberty and no restrictions should be placed on its capacity to gather infor-

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mation from the senses. It is not difficult to see an analogy between this theory and Addison’s declaration in his political paper the Free-holder (1715–16) that: ‘A Free Holder of Great Britain is bred with an aversion to every thing that tends to bring him under … subjection’. Addison contrasts this inborn British liberty with continental popery (a pressing fear in 1715) which imposes ‘complicated tyranny’ not just on ‘our bodies, our fortunes’ but also ‘our minds’.33 While there are no explicitly political overtones in the Spectator essays on the imagination, the aesthetic domain is clearly organized along the same lines as the political in that it illustrates man’s natural preference for freedom over tyranny. In aesthetic terms this results in a preference for natural landscapes over built-up urban environments and ‘stately’ formal French-style gardens: ‘the Mind of Man naturally hates every thing that looks like a Restraint upon it … a spacious Horizon is an Image of Liberty, where the Eye has Room to range abroad’.34 Montesquieu also presented despotism as an unnatural, intolerable state and associated political liberty with a lack of unreasonable constraint.35 It is therefore significant that in the Essai sur le goût he similarly extols the pleasure derived from an unhindered view: Our soul shuns restrictions, and … takes great pleasure in extending the range of its vision. But how can this be done? In cities, our sight is restricted by houses; in the countryside there are a thousand other obstacles … when we are at liberty to see far off meadows, streams and hills … our soul is far more enchanted than by the prospect of Le Nôtre’s gardens.36

Establishing the importance of individual intellectual freedom in determining judgements of taste, Addison identified the mind’s most pleasurable activity as that of ‘retaining, altering, and compounding’ ideas.37 This means that the mind can act reflexively to enhance its experience of aesthetic pleasure. Like many of the most influential elements of English Enlightenment aesthetics, this theory of the association of ideas has its roots in Locke’s work. Locke used associationist psychology to justify the existence of unnatural preferences and aversions, but it was first applied to discussions of taste by Addison in his Spectator papers. Whereas Locke had stressed the disordered consequences of associations of ideas on the workings of the mind, Addison focused instead on the increase of pleasure which could result from such connections.38 He explains how a single sight can conjure up a whole scene, or a train of related images, and how this ‘heightens the Delightfulness of the Original’.39 In the Essai Montesquieu also comments that the human mind is full of what he calls ‘idées accessoires’, or associated ideas. These ideas complicate and enhance the experience of perception: ‘An object can conjure up the associated idea of the difficulty involved in making it, or of the person who made it, or of the time when it was made, or the means of its fabrication, or any other related circumstance’. Importantly Montesquieu also

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emphasizes, as Addison had done, the heightened pleasure this mental exercise brings: Our soul often creates its own reasons for experiencing pleasure, and by far the most successful means of doing this is to connect ideas together; thus an object which pleased us once will please us again by the mere remembrance of having been pleased, because we connect the new idea with the old … all these factors combine to create what we might call a compound idea from which we derive pleasure.40

Where both Montesquieu and Addison are concerned, the association of ideas serves to highlight the arbitrary nature of artistic perfection. On an individual level this is dictated by variations in the human mind, but on a more universal scale it would also be influenced by variations in the human form. For Addison, ‘there is not perhaps any real Beauty or Deformity more in one Piece of Matter than another, because we might have been so made, that whatsoever now appears loathsome to us, might have shewn it self agreeable’. In his Essai, Montesquieu too speculates as to the aesthetic consequences of physiological difference: ‘We could have been made as we are or in another form, but if we had been made differently, we would have sensed things differently; one organ more or less in our bodily machine, and the nature of eloquence would change, as would poetry’.41 Montesquieu here takes Locke’s theory of the relativity of perception to its logical conclusion. Lockean psychology, as applied by Addison in his Spectator papers, had a fundamental influence on the assumptions underlying Montesquieu’s theory of taste. His Essai concentrates on the human soul and on the pleasures that it derives from certain activities, based on a belief that perception is both subjective and relative. However, this belief left Montesquieu faced with a problem that had to be negotiated by all thinkers who accepted Locke’s theories: if perception is entirely subjective, on what basis can a rational consensus be reached regarding aesthetic standards, or the nature of taste?

Creating Consensus In the Essai, Montesquieu embraces Lockean subjectivism yet does attempt to create general agreement regarding the factors that determine judgements of taste. In this regard, examining the impact of English thought on the Essai reveals connections between Montesquieu’s work and the new aesthetic theories being developed in France in the 1750s. Diderot also sought to achieve a similar balance between subjectivity and objectivity in his article ‘Beau’. To this end he revisited the work of Hutcheson, who elaborated the first systematic aesthetic treatise based on Locke’s theories. Diderot reveals that Hutcheson supported his claim to aesthetic objectivity by grounding the argument of his Inquiry in the universality of human psychological responses.42 As Diderot puts it: ‘The soul’s tendency to react with pleasure or distaste in response to the contemplation of

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certain objects and certain ideas, can be observed in all men’. This means that aesthetic perception is unaffected by differences in individual preference and can therefore be defined objectively in relation to humanity as a whole. Montesquieu too adopts Hutcheson’s stance and attempts to counterbalance his aesthetic relativism with universalism. He bases his reflections in the Essai on the belief that all humans possess the same capacity to make judgements of taste and puts forward the view that the ‘pleasures of our soul’ by which taste is determined ‘are common to every intelligent being’.43 This egalitarian outlook sets the Essai apart from Voltaire and D’Alembert’s contributions to the article ‘Taste’. These two writers both consider taste to be restricted culturally to those nations that have achieved a certain degree of civilization and socially to a group of privileged intellectuals, presumably including themselves. Voltaire in particular expresses his opinions on behalf of ‘the man of taste, the connoisseur’, and qualifies good taste as ‘the preserve of a small number of great minds to be kept … out of reach of the mob’.44 In L’Esprit des lois Montesquieu too had considered taste as historically linked to the economic advancement of modern commercial societies.45 His exclusion of this perspective from the Essai heightens the universalist import of the text. In the Essai the universality of human nature, rather than the taste of a select group, acts as the sole guarantee of aesthetic values. This makes Montesquieu not only more egalitarian than Voltaire but also more radically secular than Hutcheson, for the author of the Inquiry attributes the existence of standards of taste to the fortuitous action of ‘the Author of our nature’ who had providentially designed human beings to appreciate certain objects.46 Hutcheson had a particular aim in establishing that the experience of aesthetic pleasure was not subject to individual variation. He sought in the Inquiry to refute the claims made by Hobbes and Mandeville, among others, regarding the self-interested nature of all human activity. Hutcheson hoped to prove that human reactions could go unaffected by individual appetites or desires. His main argument related to ethical questions but he chose to take aesthetic appreciation as a model. He thus defines aesthetic pleasure as divorced ‘from any Knowledge of Principles … or of the Usefulness of the Object’.47 If humans could appreciate beauty without any sense of vested interest then, Hutcheson proposed, a similar mode of perception could surely apply in the domain of moral choices. This idea was first introduced by Shaftesbury in his Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, where he suggested that humans could contemplate both beauty and virtue with a ‘delight’ unrelated to any thought of personal advantage or ‘private interest’.48 The attitude he identified has come to be known as ‘aesthetic disinterestedness’, and is seen by Jerome Stolnitz as one of the major contributions made by English thinkers to the development of Enlightenment aesthetics.49 In the Essai sur le goût, Montesquieu follows Hutcheson by observing: ‘When we derive pleasure from seeing an object … without attributing to it any immediate utility, we call

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it beautiful’.50 This corresponds to Elizabeth Bohls’s definition of the aesthetic attitude as ‘a special mode of attention … excluding any practical stake in the existence of the object’. This is an important step towards considering aesthetic perception to be freed from competing individual interests. Bohls also comments that disinterestedness implies focusing on the general rather than the particular aspects of perception in order to arrive at a rational, stable judgement.51 This is certainly true of Montesquieu’s Essai where aesthetic pleasure is shown to derive from psychological characteristics that are common to all humanity, such as the soul’s dislike of constraint and desire for liberty. The notion of divorcing taste from individual desires is often said to have political overtones. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson’s account of aesthetic perception as disinterested and universal has been interpreted as an attempt to generate a sense of community and shared values which could then be projected onto the political scene. This was in accordance with their opposition to the Hobbesian vision of the state as a repressive force that enforced uniformity. Instead, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson argued, citizens could reach general agreement by identifying their individual interests with those of the public. The convergence of judgements on aesthetic matters was an example of this process.52 Whether or not the Essai sur le goût should be read along these lines is open to debate. There is however no doubt that in his work Montesquieu upholds the universality of aesthetic perception and seeks to achieve general agreement on matters of taste. This he does through emphasizing that aesthetic judgements are reached through a collaborative process. Having established that aesthetic perception is disinterested and that the reactions of all perceivers are determined by common factors, Montesquieu takes the important step of assuming that taste is perfectible and can form the common ground linking a community of perceivers. He accordingly invites readers to accompany him on an empirical exploration of shared territory: ‘Let us examine our souls, let us study them in their actions and passions, let us seek out their pleasures … this will assist us in refining our taste’.53 Here, Montesquieu shows that he wishes to generate consensus through participation and declares the cultivation of taste to be a collective enterprise. This again closely links the Essai to Addison’s treatment of the subject in the Spectator. In an essay on taste that precedes those ‘On the Pleasures of the Imagination’, Addison informs his readers that ‘notwithstanding this Faculty must in some measure be born with us, there are several Methods for Cultivating and Improving it’.54 This he sees as a pursuit in which the whole of polite society should be actively engaged. In his essays Addison aims consciously at creating a community of readers bound together by shared aesthetic values. He therefore takes a normative approach, encouraging convergence of taste judgements by frequently illustrating his philosophical speculations with literary examples drawn from the

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classical canon.55 Montesquieu also appeals to readers to join him in ‘rectifying our taste’.56 The use of this term clearly implies the existence of an aesthetic norm which enlightened perceivers will appreciate. Like Addison, when Montesquieu wishes to illustrate his aesthetic theories he refers most often to classical authors such as Homer, Virgil and Ovid (providing translations of any Latin quotations). Where art is concerned, he turns to the undisputed masters of the Italian Renaissance. These are works with which readers could claim familiarity and which are universally considered to be of value.57 In other words, they are chosen to facilitate agreement on judgements of taste.58 Taste, as it is treated in the Essai and in the Spectator, is a matter of discussion but not a matter of dispute. The desire to create agreement on aesthetic matters by informing and educating the public is also evident in Montesquieu’s choice of the Encyclopédie as the forum in which to present his views on taste. Interestingly, in selecting taste (rather than D’Alembert’s proposal of democracy and despotism) as the subject of his Encyclopédie article, Montesquieu opted to appear in the work as an amateur rather than an expert. This position is also adopted by Addison in the Spectator. Neither he nor Montesquieu claim the status of the connoisseur, but rather address their readers on equal terms as fellow members of the public. It is noticeable that Montesquieu does not seek to assert his authority in the essay but instead makes his pronouncements concerning taste in the first person plural, in the name of a universal community of perceivers. Addison allows the first person singular more preponderance in his essays. This is consistent with his more introspective approach to taste. Yet Addison also seeks to endow his personal judgements with a universal relevance. David Marshall comments that, far from presenting himself as the only valid judge of artistic excellence, Addison’s ‘performance’ as a man of taste is designed to convince others that they too can voice their opinions with confidence.59 This manoeuvre is replicated by Montesquieu. His travels in Europe in 1728–31 had provided him with a stock of aesthetic experiences to which he often refers in the Essai, and he draws on his own personal observations in order to extrapolate general aesthetic rules. The faith in the educability of his audience which Montesquieu shares with Addison is to some extent based on his own aesthetic initiation. Early on in his Grand Tour he confided to Mme de Lambert: ‘Since I arrived in Italy my eyes have been opened to new art forms of which I had no idea’.60 His travel journals show him going through a process of improving and refining his artistic judgement as a result of his exposure to the masterpieces of Italian art and architecture. They also reveal that even as a non-initiate he nevertheless considered himself qualified to comment on all he observed. The validity of the amateur’s judgement is similarly upheld in the Essai sur le goût. Taste is presented in the essay as a universal human faculty. At the most basic level it is simply an expression of natural psychological and physiological tendencies. Treating taste in this way means that Montesquieu

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can achieve a general consensus on matters of taste by following Hutcheson’s reasoning concerning the universality of aesthetic perception. This consensus is then enhanced by an emphasis on the collective improvement of taste, evident in both Montesquieu’s Essai and Addison’s Spectator. The conception of taste as a consensual, collaborative process can be linked to ideals of increased participation in the public sphere and Addison’s treatment of taste in the Spectator clearly had a role to play within his wider journalistic programme of encouraging rational debate on a variety of subjects among the general public. Montesquieu’s Essai enjoys a similar relationship to the rest of the author’s work, which is dominated by criticism of absolute power imposed by either civil or ecclesiastical authorities. Asserting that there is no authority in matters of taste other than the norms devised in common by a community of perceivers who recognize the shared value of certain cultural products, Montesquieu challenges the exclusive, hierarchical conception of culture promoted by the likes of Voltaire. This is consistent with Shaftesbury and Hutcheson’s aim of providing a basis for social cohesion through the recognition of common interests, firstly aesthetic, but ultimately political.

The Pleasure and Purpose of Art When Montesquieu proclaims that aesthetic objects exist for no other purpose than that of giving pleasure to the beholder and should be appreciated without taking their practical uses into account, he liberates perceivers from any obligation to recognize the value potentially conferred on an object by its association with the Crown or the Church. This marks a significant shift in relation to the pre-Enlightenment understanding of art as having a primarily iconic or ceremonial purpose; that is, of conveying an image of royal or divine power.61 The origins of this shift can be traced on the one hand to Locke’s assertion that the value of an aesthetic object is determined by the experience of delight on the part of the perceiver; and on the other to the work of English thinkers such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson who ‘transformed habits of seeing and judging’ by recognizing that perceivers were capable of contemplating aesthetic objects in a disinterested manner.62 In consequence, during the Enlightenment period aesthetic appreciation became a realm of experience detached from the issues of interest, power and patronage that surrounded artistic production. The increasing exposure of the general public to cultural products meant that their reception could no longer be determined or administered from above. As readers and viewers gained in freedom, art itself came to be seen as autonomous and was gradually detached from the preordained functions from which it had previously been indissociable.63 As a result of these intellectual and social developments the eighteenth century saw the reclassification of the arts. The viewer’s pleasure came to take

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precedence over any political or religious function fulfilled by an artistic object. Montesquieu signals this change in the Essai when he comments that ‘perfection in art is the ability to present things to us in the way that gives us the greatest possible pleasure’. The idea that the perceiver’s pleasure should be the only artistic benchmark has important implications. For instance, it emerges from the Essai that aesthetic objects should be appreciated on their own merits, rather than according to external laws or the imitation of nature. This notion continued to dominate contemporary French treatises such as the abbé Batteux’s Les BeauxArts réduits à un même principe (1746). The ‘principle’ to which Batteux reduced all arts was the faithful imitation of the beautiful in nature. In contrast, in a section of the Essai that did not appear in the Encyclopédie Montesquieu confronts Michelangelo’s disregard for the laws of anatomy in his most pleasing sculptures. His admiration for Michelangelo’s work leads him to conclude that the rules of composition traditionally applied by artists are less important than ‘an exact knowledge of everything that gives pleasure’.64 Montesquieu’s views on this subject are at odds with the dictates of French neo-classicism but are consistent with an innovative English tradition begun by Shaftesbury. In his Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, Shaftesbury proposed that the most effective works of art embodied what he termed ‘graphical or plastic truth’ rather than the truth of nature.65 Addison embraced this notion and expanded on it in his papers ‘On the Pleasures of the Imagination’. Here he uses the example of the fantastic, ‘a kind of Writing, wherein the Poet quite loses Sight of Nature’, to demonstrate that each work of art represents a separate world governed by its own laws. The pleasure of the beholder thus depends not on representational truth, but on the internal coherence of the work.66 In another section of the Essai omitted from the Encyclopédie Montesquieu develops this theme at length. Like Addison, he refers to the world of fairy tales and fables but this time in the context of their adaptation for the opera. He commends the French practice of using the operatic genre, ‘a form very far removed from the natural’, to convey the ‘fantastical’ elements of fairy stories. The artificiality of opera is in keeping with the intrinsic structures of the fairy tale and the combination of the two is therefore in the interest of the viewers’ pleasure. The opposite effect is achieved in Italian historical operas where figures such as Caesar and Cato are incongruously made to express their feelings in song.67 As Jerome Stolnitz has commented, placing pleasure at the heart of aesthetic perception also led to an expansion in objects of taste. This trend is demonstrated admirably in Addison’s Spectator papers. The fact that the perceiver’s pleasure is Addison’s main preoccupation means that ‘by contrast to traditional theory, no object is admitted to or excluded from the realm of the aesthetic because of its inherent nature’. Instead Addison considers the most diverse works of art and nature together and on the same terms.68 This aesthetic eclecticism is also a

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prominent feature of Hutcheson’s Inquiry. Indeed Hutcheson further extends aesthetic appreciation to include mathematical theorems and equations.69 It is however noticeable that eighteenth-century French commentators – whether establishing a traditional comparison between poetry and painting as in the case of Dubos, or elaborating a more general aesthetic theory like the abbé Batteux – generally restricted themselves to considering the fine arts. This tendency is also exhibited in the article ‘Taste’ in the Encyclopédie. D’Alembert illustrates his theory of taste with examples drawn only from ‘les Belles-Lettres’ whilst Voltaire comments that judgements of taste cannot be said to apply ‘to objects which do not rank with the fine arts’. By contrast, in the opening section of his Essai Montesquieu claims the soul can derive pleasure from ‘poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, different sorts of games, as well as all the works of nature and art’. He later declares that taste also applies ‘to intellectual pursuits, the knowledge of which gives such pleasure to the soul’.70 Like Addison, Montesquieu does not attempt to establish a hierarchy among the soul’s different sources of pleasure but considers them all on the same terms. Stolnitz has noted how examining a wide variety of objects of taste led Addison to believe ‘that things can be valuable aesthetically in different ways’. Recognizing that the soul can gain pleasure from many different properties in an object, including its ‘greatness’ and ‘uncommonness’ Addison ‘breaks away from the traditional view that “beauty” is the primary or even the sole value-category’.71 Addison’s aesthetic eclecticism thus led him to push back the boundaries of taste, which was commonly identified with the perception of beauty alone. Both Voltaire and D’Alembert interpret the notion of taste in this conventional manner in their Encyclopédie articles.72 Montesquieu meanwhile declares that the soul’s appetite for pleasure is such that ‘the objects of taste’ include not only beauty but also ‘the pleasant, the naïve, the delicate, the tender, the gracious, the je ne sais quoi, the noble, the great, the sublime, the majestic &c.’73 Both Montesquieu and Addison expand the field of taste properties because they believe that anything susceptible to stimulate pleasurable activity in the soul can be defined as an object of taste. In his Essai, Montesquieu also foregrounds certain aesthetic qualities in works of art that fulfil this purpose most successfully. His views on painting are particularly interesting in that they have much in common with those exposed in a brief treatise by Shaftesbury entitled A Notion of a Tablature, or The Judgement of Hercules (1712), appended to the 1714 edition of the Characteristics (which Montesquieu owned). This text was in fact translated word-for-word by Diderot in the article ‘Composition in painting’ which appeared in the Encyclopédie in 1753, although Diderot typically does not acknowledge Shaftesbury as his source.74 Shaftesbury’s argument was essentially that a painting should be composed in order to be ‘comprehended in one View, and form’d according to one Single Intelligence, Meaning, or Design; which

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constitutes a real WHOLE, by a mutual and necessary Relation of its Parts’.75 Michael Fried comments that mid-eighteenth-century France witnessed a transformation in the aims and essence of painting. He particularly draws attention to the new emphasis placed on compositional unity at this time and cites Diderot’s encounter with Shaftesbury as being influential in effecting this change. In his article ‘Composition’ Diderot explores the differences between writing and painting. The former reveals ideas progressively to the reader, while in the latter it is necessary to impart information to the viewer in an instant. This creates a need for enhanced unity and coherence. Paraphrasing Shaftesbury, Diderot concludes that: ‘A well-composed painting is a whole that can be viewed from a single point of view, where all the parts combine to fulfil the same objective’. Fried also detects this emphasis on unity in art criticism produced in the 1750s by other French writers including Caylus and Grimm, but does not mention Montesquieu.76 However, the Essai sur le goût reveals that Montesquieu is clearly preoccupied by similar issues. Like Diderot, he distinguishes between ‘things that we perceive successively’ and ‘things which, conversely, we perceive at a glance’. He offers compositional guidelines to painters on this basis: ‘An object that the viewer is to perceive at a glance must be simple, it must be unified, and all its parts must clearly relate to the main subject of the composition’.77 As this example shows, although Montesquieu’s Essai is not generally compared to other Encyclopédie articles on aesthetic matters, such comparisons can be extremely illuminating. Not least because the influence of English Enlightenment thought appears to be a common factor linking Montesquieu and Diderot’s aesthetic theories. According to Fried, ‘the demand that pictorial unity be apprehended at a glance, in a single coup d’œil, was implicitly a demand that the painting as a whole be instantaneously, and, within reasonable limits, universally intelligible’.78 This requirement was consistent with the Enlightenment reclassification of art as a cultural product with universal appeal. To ensure that art was not esoteric, Shaftesbury in his Notion of a Tablature developed guidelines for unified pictorial composition, designed to produce clear and intelligible results. His detailed advice as to the grouping of figures and the use of colour is reproduced word-for-word by Diderot in his article ‘Composition’. Shaftesbury sought to discourage artists from composing works that might, as he put it, ‘disturb the Sight’ or ‘perplex the Mind’.79 Montesquieu’s comments on painting in the Essai show that he also considers this a priority. He explains how a complex canvas affects the viewer, ‘in a work where there is no order, the soul seeks to establish coherence and is continually disappointed … the result of this confusion of ideas is a humiliating inanity’. This meaningless confusion can however be avoided if ‘painters … place in the forefront of their pictures the things that the eye is meant to distinguish’.80

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Unified pictorial composition is important to Montesquieu because he considers that works of art should be designed to stimulate intellectual activity. Although less obviously present in Diderot’s article ‘Composition’, this idea is clearly evident in Shaftesbury’s Notion of a Tablature where the author is careful to distinguish between paintings whose meaning can be grasped in a single look, and those which are merely attractive at first glance: ‘Nothing is more fatal, either to Painting … or the other Arts, than this false Relish, which is govern’d rather by what immediately strikes the Sense, than by what consequentially and by reflection pleases the Mind’.81 In the same way, Montesquieu also condemns the bad taste exhibited in works where ‘an extraordinary expression, bright colours, a bizarre attitude … attract us at first glance because we are not accustomed to such things’. He contrasts this effect with the enhanced pleasure that results from contemplating the work of a master such as Raphael: We are touched by Raphael’s simplicity … and that is far more pleasing … We can compare Raphael to Virgil, and the painters of the Venetian School with their forced attitudes, to Lucan. Virgil is more natural, and makes less of an initial impact, but his impact is lasting. Lucan makes a greater impact at first, but this does not last.82

In his work, Montesquieu assigns to works of art and nature alike the principal function of generating pleasure in the beholder. This leads him, like Addison, to expand the field of potential objects of taste beyond that of the fine arts. By emphasizing the importance of unity and simplicity in pictorial composition, Montesquieu also reveals that he shares Diderot and Shaftesbury’s belief that art should be intelligible and accessible. Examining the links between Montesquieu’s Essai and eighteenth-century English aesthetic theories thus sheds new light on the author’s understanding of the function of art, which was undergoing an important transformation at the time the Essai appeared.

The Politics of Taste Shaftesbury’s preference for art that ‘pleases the Mind’ over that which merely ‘strikes the Sense’, has been linked to the values of civic humanism that are manifest elsewhere in his work. In the Notion of a Tablature Shaftesbury demands that a picture represent a united whole, that its meaning be easily grasped, and that it stimulate thought. When seen in the context of his other writings, this is in fact to claim that art should be accessible to all citizens, impart a clear message and promote the common exercise of reason. John Barrell has analysed the work of Shaftesbury alongside that of Dubos and other French commentators on aesthetics. He debates whether, given the cross-fertilization of aesthetic theories between France and England in the eighteenth century, Shaftesbury’s views can be said to represent a specifically English attitude towards art. He comes

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to the conclusion that what sets the likes of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Addison apart from their French contemporaries is the connection between their aesthetic theories and a distinctively British brand of political philosophy.83 All these writers see increased public participation in the world of culture as positive, because discussion of the norms of taste provides a model for the functioning of the political sphere. This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by Hutcheson’s Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, where the author first argues for the existence of universal tendencies in judgements of taste, based on the common experience of aesthetic pleasure. This then acts as a demonstration for the case that Hutcheson goes on to make regarding the nature of social and political organization. Based on the lack of individual variation and normative convergence in the aesthetic domain, Hutcheson claims that the will of the majority must prevail over that of any one individual or interest group in a political context also. Governments should therefore pursue ‘the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers’.84 As Barrell remarks, French theorists also proposed that shared aesthetic values could provide grounds for social affiliation, though on a slightly different basis. He cites Dubos, who in his Réflexions sur la poésie et sur la peinture declared that man’s natural sensibility, demonstrated in the artistic realm by ‘his disposition to be easily moved by all objects which are imitated by painters and poets’, functions in the political realm as ‘the basic foundation of society’. However, closer examination of the central thesis of Dubos’s work reveals the significant differences between his aesthetic theories and those elaborated by English writers. Dubos argues in his Réflexions that the fate of works of art is decided by ‘sentiment’ rather than ‘discussion’. By this he means that the spontaneous judgement of the public carries more weight than opinions expressed by critics. In theory this appears to support the idea that anyone has the right to voice his or her opinions on artistic matters, but Dubos is careful to point out that: ‘I do not include the lower classes in the public capable of pronouncing judgement on poems or pictures … The word “public” only refers here to those persons who have enlightened themselves either by reading or by frequenting polite society’.85 In proclaiming that valid verdicts of artistic excellence must be based on ‘sentiment’ rather than ‘discussion’, Dubos also implies that judgements of taste are intuitive and are not therefore open to debate. Montesquieu takes issue with several aspects of Dubos’s work when debating its merits in his exchange of letters with Jean-Jacques Bel in 1726. He notably comments that: ‘Dubos is wrong … to distinguish between the ways in which men of different classes or professions judge works of art’.86 In his Essai sur le goût, Montesquieu deliberately extends the exercise of taste to all. He also implicitly questions Dubos’s notion that good taste represents the aesthetic choices of a single social group, recognizing instead (albeit in a manner tinged with aristo-

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cratic paternalism) the existence of multiple publics within society: ‘Common people … have a taste for things which are designed for their consumption and which are within their comprehension’. Most importantly, he also considers taste to be perfectible and recommends his Essai to readers of the Encyclopédie on these grounds as a shared exercise in ‘refining our taste’.87 This is in marked contrast to Dubos’s theory that the ‘sentiment’ governing aesthetic appreciation is innate and instinctive, a sense as natural as sight or hearing and which, like sight and hearing, cannot be perfected or refined.88 Dubos’s declaration that taste is an undebatable birthright in fact equates to an endorsement of the established order. Indeed, his stance on aesthetic questions is commonly seen as consistent with his political position as a bourgeois supporter of Bourbon absolutism, clearly expressed in his Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie françoise dans les Gaules (1734). In this work Dubos highlighted the achievements of the French monarchy, not least in promoting good taste in the arts.89 In L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu refuted the political arguments made in the Histoire critique and questioned the right of the French monarchs to rule without consultation with the people. In the Essai sur le goût, he challenges the implications of Dubos’s aesthetic theories in the Réflexions by holding out the possibility of collectively improving the public taste. William Ray has remarked that the many French writers who wrote on taste in the 1740s and 50s pitched their work at the lay public newly exposed to a wide range of cultural products, most notably the paintings displayed in the Paris Salon. He argues that these works were written with the aim of encouraging individuals to align their taste with collective norms, and links them to the Enlightenment project of refiguring authority as a shared discursive process. Ray’s interpretation of the aesthetic treatises produced in France in the mideighteenth century reinforces the connection between Montesquieu’s Essai and the challenge to the imposition of institutional authority detectable elsewhere in the author’s work. The Essai suggests that where judgements of taste are concerned a consensus can be reached on the basis of the universality of human nature. Individual tastes are all valid, insofar as they are the expression of shared tendencies. Ray comments that this corresponds to a core principle of contemporary political theory, whereby ‘the interdependence of individual opinion and consensual opinion was crucial to securing the authority of collective discourse to represent and guarantee the rights of the individual’.90 This connects Montesquieu’s treatment of taste in the Essai sur le goût with the support he expresses in L’Esprit des lois for the English constitutional model of representative government, where laws made in parliament are the expression of the rational consensus of citizens’ opinions rather than the sovereign’s individual will. Investigating the possible English influences behind the claims made by Montesquieu in the Essai sur le goût draws out the differences between his work

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and that of his French contemporaries. These are illustrated by the subtle but fundamental disparities between Montesquieu and D’Alembert’s definitions of taste, which are juxtaposed in their contributions to the Encyclopédie. Montesquieu defines taste as ‘the ability to gauge … the amount of pleasure which humankind will derive from different things’, while D’Alembert describes the same faculty as ‘the talent of identifying those aspects of works of art which must appeal to fine minds, and those which must offend them’. Montesquieu’s more inclusive approach is rooted in Lockean psychology, which is predicated on the universal capacity of human beings to experience pleasure and pain. Having also accepted Locke’s theory that aesthetic qualities are vested in the experience of the beholder, Montesquieu escapes the relativistic implications of Lockean subjectivism by following Hutcheson’s argument regarding the commonality of human responses to objects of taste. He therefore sees judgements of taste as being relevant to all humankind rather than merely to ‘fine minds’. He also follows Addison in assigning to cultural products the primary role of giving pleasure to the perceiver, which means that he considers not only ‘works of art’, but many different objects and activities as susceptible to taste judgements. In his Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands, sur la réputation, sur les Mécènes, et sur les récompenses littéraires (1753), D’Alembert had previously asserted that the philosophes’ intellectual superiority gave them the right to ‘set the standards for the rest of the nation where matters of taste are concerned’.91 In contrast, Montesquieu treats taste as a universal and perfectible quality. He never implies that members of a select group can pretend to monopolize a domain in which the consensual opinion of the majority must prevail. Like Addison’s essays, Montesquieu’s Essai is intended to empower readers to express their own judgements of taste with confidence. As Roger Chartier has shown, as the public sphere emerged in Enlightenment Europe habits of critical, reasoned debate were developed in the cultural public sphere before being transferred to the political scene. In other words, a public that feels qualified to voice opinions confidently on cultural matters is being trained in the techniques of political participation.92 It is for this reason that Habermas relates Addison’s activity as a literary and art critic in the Spectator to the emergence of a politically active public sphere in England at the turn of the eighteenth century. It is important to ask how texts such as Montesquieu’s Essai, published in the Encyclopédie in the 1750s, fit in with the legitimization of public opinion as a political force in France at this time.93 Although Montesquieu may have begun to reflect on the subject of taste in the late 1720s in response to Dubos’s work, when he proposed the Essai for inclusion in the Encyclopédie he was addressing concerns regarding the function of art and the nature of collective authority which were highly relevant in the 1750s; concerns which are brought to light by examining of the impact of English ideas on the Essai sur le goût.

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A deeper understanding of the Essai sur le goût and of its contemporary political implications is attained by tracing the close kinship between Montesquieu’s work and English Enlightenment aesthetics. Despite the extent of this kinship, however, Montesquieu’s Essai received what can only be called a mixed reception in Britain. One translator responded to the work in a particularly negative fashion. In 1759 the Essai was translated into English along with Voltaire and D’Alembert’s contributions to the article ‘Taste’ as a supplement to the Scottish philosopher Alexander Gerard’s Essay on Taste, submitted to the Select Society of Edinburgh in 1757. Montesquieu’s Essai in fact supports many of the claims Gerard makes in his work, notably concerning the potential for improving taste and the availability of objects to which taste judgements can be applied.94 Yet the translator presents Montesquieu’s work as an anomaly. Not only is it an ‘imperfect fragment’ in comparison with Voltaire and D’Alembert’s ‘finished pieces’ but it contains observations which are ‘intirely erroneous’. Most remarkably, the translator appears unashamed of his avowed inability to understand, or even translate, certain passages: The President de Montesquieu, though one of the greatest writers of this, or any other age, was not without certain defects. The affectation of depth rendered him sometimes obscure, and a passion for novelty of thought, and analytical refinement led him frequently astray. If the following fragment abounds with fine thoughts upon the sources of our intellectual pleasures, it must … be acknowledged, that its ingenious author has advanced therein some propositions that are absolutely false, others that are perhaps trivial, several that are somewhat obscure, and a few which the translator confesses he does not understand at all. These last are given in the original French.95

However, in the same year that this translation appeared the merits of Montesquieu’s Essai’s were tacitly recognized by Edmund Burke. In 1759 Burke published a second edition of his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), to which was prefaced a new introductory discourse ‘On Taste’. Although Burke does not reference the Essai sur le goût in this text, his theory of taste has much in common with that expounded by Montesquieu. This is in part due to the fact that Burke also drew on ideas developed by Addison, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (though he does not reference their work either).96 Burke proclaims taste to be a universal faculty which can be enhanced by the association of ideas and by the acquisition of knowledge. Like Montesquieu, he links taste to the experience of pleasure stimulated by the perception of a certain object by the senses, and on these grounds postulates a commonality in taste judgements on which consensus can be reached: ‘As the senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of our pleasures … the whole ground-work of Taste is common to all, and therefore there is sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on these matters’.97 The links between Burke and Montesquieu’s work might appear speculative, were it not for the fact that Burke’s Annual Register for 1758 contains in

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the section ‘Literary and Miscellaneous Essays’ a translation by Burke himself of Montesquieu’s Essai. Burke’s prefatory remarks establish the text’s status: It is saying enough in its praise to say it is written by Mons. De Montesquieu, who so happily employed philosophy to illustrate and improve the laws of all the nations of the world. So far as this piece goes … he employs philosophy with equal happiness to explain and improve the polite arts.98

Burke synthesizes and abridges Montesquieu’s Essai as he translates it. In so doing, he significantly eliminates any mention of either the sublime or the beautiful as aesthetic categories, or Montesquieu’s definition of taste as a collaborative, consensual exercise. Burke gives no explanation for these omissions. On closer examination, however, they reveal the significant differences between his and Montesquieu’s aesthetic theories. Notably, Montesquieu considers the sublime as an aesthetic quality like any other, one of many objects of taste. As such, it is also identified with the experience of pleasure.99 Burke meanwhile isolates and elevates the sublime above other human experiences, and connects it not just with intense pleasure but also with pain and terror. For Burke, the sublime is also a radically individual experience and consensus is not necessary to validate it.100 Burke’s theories on these subjects resonate with his distinctive brand of political philosophy, particularly his writings on the French Revolution. His political thought was also significantly influenced by Montesquieu. In his Abridgement of English History, written in 1757 alongside the first edition of his Philosophical Enquiry, Burke embraces Montesquieu’s vision of the English constitution and calls him ‘the greatest genius which has enlightened this age’. Indeed, Burke frequently acknowledged his debt to the author of L’Esprit des lois in his works and his parliamentary speeches. Yet Burke was more often invoking Montesquieu’s reputation than his ideas. Montesquieu is cited when Burke wishes to confer validity on his own political vision.101 A similar process of selective appropriation is at work in his translation of the Essai sur le goût. Burke’s brief introduction to his translation praises Montesquieu’s philosophy, but his translated version of the Essai is made to accord with his own aesthetic theories as laid out in his discourse ‘On Taste’ and his Philosophical Enquiry. This is not surprising given that Burke sets out in his discourse to determine the ‘invariable and certain laws’ of taste and proclaims himself a ‘legislator’. This terminology clearly recalls the governing principle of Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois. Yet while Burke may have deferred to Montesquieu in the realm of political theory, he claims the aesthetic domain for his own.

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Epilogue: Monumentalizing Montesquieu Burke was not the only thinker to honour Montesquieu as a ‘genius’ while invoking his reputation for a particular rhetorical purpose. In a paragraph that introduces Montesquieu’s Essai sur le goût to readers of the Encyclopédie, the editors refer to ‘the glory of M. de Montesquieu, founded on his works of genius’. Clearly, Diderot and D’Alembert anticipated that some of this ‘glory’ would be reflected onto their own enterprise. Montesquieu’s participation in the encyclopaedic project was exploited by Diderot and D’Alembert in order to enhance the intellectual credibility of their work.102 Their editorial glosses present the Essai as ‘an eternal testimony to the interest which the great men of our nation took in this work’. The Encyclopédie thus confirms Montesquieu’s elevation to the canon of great Frenchmen (‘the great men of our nation’), a cultural phenomenon that developed during the last four decades of the ancien régime. At this time the veneration of the secular saints of the Enlightenment became an essential element of a new French patriotism requiring allegiance to the nation rather than the king. The formation of this cult can be traced through the increasing frequency and popularity of the ‘éloges’, or elegies, produced in honour of statesmen and intellectuals.103 D’Alembert was a prolific practitioner of this genre, and his work in particular promoted a new relationship between intellectuals and the public.104 In the elegies composed by D’Alembert and others, writers and thinkers were often presented as scorning riches and reputation in favour of higher aims. Freed from the bonds of patronage by the emerging mechanisms of the public sphere and resolutely asserting their intellectual independence despite the risk of persecution by the authorities, intellectuals were worthy of public admiration as disinterested benefactors of humanity.105 D’Alembert’s ‘Éloge de M. le président de Montesquieu’, published in volume 5 of the Encyclopédie (1755) following the author’s death, exemplifies this type of rhetoric. The opening paragraph of the ‘Éloge’ establishes the Encyclopédie’s status as ‘one of the monuments best suited to act as a depository of patriotic feeling, and to pay homage on behalf of the nation to the celebrated men who have done her honour’. The fact that Montesquieu was denied such homage during his lifetime is emphasized throughout the ‘Éloge’. D’Alembert compares Montesquieu to Socrates, an analogy that suggests a hostile relationship between the philosopher and the polis. In his eyes, Montesquieu’s determination to question false values and to speak the truth was as ill-received in ancien régime France as Socrates was in Athens. Surveying Montesquieu’s life and work, D’Alembert particularly accentuates aspects that he considers to have been been misunderstood or wrongly condemned by critics. In so doing, he highlights several salient points raised in the course of this study. He begins with the biting satire of the Lettres persanes that exposed the frivolity and ‘artificial politeness’ of French society, pausing to

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pinpoint the Persians’ discussions of religion as one of the many ‘serious subjects that the author discusses in depth whilst appearing to skim over them’. D’Alembert argues in the ‘Éloge’ that despite the attacks of critics in France the success of the Lettres persanes convinced Montesquieu of his ability to ‘serve other nations through his work’ and thus motivated him to set out on his Grand Tour of Europe. D’Alembert likens Montesquieu to Newton, presenting him as a dedicated empiricist and champion of the amateur scientist. He points out that this attitude also informed the records kept by Montesquieu on his travels, which include detailed observations of the politics and laws of other nations. The method used in the composition of the author’s Considérations leads D’Alembert to compare historical investigations with those of the experimental sciences. He draws out the principal message of the work, but comments that Montesquieu avoids any overly detailed exposition of his ideas: ‘By leaving many things unsaid he gives us leave to think’. When it comes to L’Esprit des lois, however, D’Alembert adds a long explanatory note detailing the arguments contained in the text. This is compensation the fact that the work attracted severe criticism and he wishes to give a ‘true idea’ of its contents. He accordingly focuses on the fact that political liberty finds its most perfect expression in the shape of the English constitution, which is founded on ‘the fundamental law of the ancient Germans, that affairs of little importance are decided by rulers, whilst great matters are brought to the tribunal of the nation’. D’Alembert is careful to point out that Montesquieu’s praise of England does not spring from any desire to demean other states. On the contrary, L’Esprit des lois ‘must earn for its author the praise of all nations’. He remarks finally on Montesquieu’s interest in the encyclopaedic enterprise, demonstrated by his contribution of the Essai sur le goût. This conclusion reinforces Montesquieu’s status as a victim of persecution, for D’Alembert draws the analogy between the troubled publishing history of the Encyclopédie and Montesquieu’s own battles with the authorities in the ‘Querelle de l’Esprit des lois’.106 It is significant that many of the aspects of Montesquieu’s work which have apparently earned him general opprobrium in France – most notably his treatment of religious issues and his endorsement of the English constitution – point to the author’s connection with the ideas and ideals of the English Enlightenment. In his ‘Éloge’ D’Alembert stresses for polemical purposes that although Montesquieu has suffered from a lack of recognition in France, the English have rightly estimated the writer’s merits: ‘Whilst a swarm of critics tormented him in his own country, England was erecting a monument to his glory’. The polemical effect of such assertions is twofold. On the one hand, D’Alembert is returning to a theme on which he had previously dwelt in the Encyclopédie’s preliminary discourse. Here, he had singled England out as a nation where intellectuals were not dependent on state patronage but were valued by the public at their true worth:

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Let us concede that knowledge can be its own reward and that intellectuals often abound in places where they can expect no financial recompense. Look at England, to whom the sciences owe so much, but where the government does nothing to support them. It is true that this nation values its intellectuals, even respects them; this form of reward, superior to all others, is surely the best way to ensure that the arts and sciences flourish. The esteem of the public is better than any academic prize. The love of knowledge, which is well established in the culture of our neighbour, is as yet a mere fashion in our own country.

D’Alembert is not so much praising England here as pitting France against its intellectual rival in order to motivate French philosophes to outdo the English in the pursuit of knowledge. His comments are also intended to convince the wider French readership of the Encyclopédie that such an enterprise should be valued as enhancing the national reputation.107 The ‘Éloge’ similarly reproaches the French with obliging an enlightened thinker such as Montesquieu to turn to their intellectual competitors for approbation. The extent of D’Alembert’s polemical intentions only truly emerges when his elegy of Montesquieu is placed in its historical context. Edmond Dziembowski’s study of the development of French patriotism in the run-up to the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) emphasizes the risks that D’Alembert is taking when he portrays England as Montesquieu’s intellectual homeland. In November 1755 when the ‘Éloge’ appeared, to commend English culture was implicitly to oppose the French establishment. The same year had seen the outbreak of hostilities with England that would lead to the declaration of war in May 1756. In response the French royal authorities had begun a concerted anglophobic propaganda campaign.108 Ministerial pamphleteers resurrected traditional images of the English as ferocious savages. The general population was branded an uncivilized mob, and the nation was deemed to be in a state of political turmoil and crisis.109 Against this backdrop, D’Alembert’s ‘Éloge’ strikes a provocative note. D’Alembert claims in this text that Montesquieu respected and desired to learn from the English: In London, he formed a network of intimate connections with men accustomed to reflection … they taught him about the nature of their government, and he came to know it very well. In writing this we do no more than repeat the public statements to this effect made by Englishmen themselves.

According to D’Alembert, Montesquieu’s work excited spontaneous admiration from English peers and public alike. This is reinforced by his quotation of Lord Chesterfield’s complimentary obituary of the author in which Chesterfield highlights both Montesquieu’s opposition to French ‘Prejudices’ and ‘Errors’ and his avowed admiration for the English system of government. It is significant that D’Alembert quotes this obituary in English. As Laetitia Perret has

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remarked, this enables him to draw attention to Montesquieu’s critical attitudes to French institutions whilst bypassing the critical gaze of the censors.110 Even without Chesterfield’s obituary, D’Alembert’s portrait of Montesquieu remains highly controversial. Commenting on the overwhelming grip of anglophobia taking hold of France at the time the ‘Éloge’ appeared, Dziembowski asks: ‘After 1755, can anyone dare to declare himself both a philosophe and an anglophile?’111 D’Alembert certainly seems prepared to make such a claim on Montesquieu’s behalf. Montesquieu is a true anglophile, according to Dziembowski’s definition. In his study Dziembowski attempts to nuance the notion of eighteenth-century French sentiment towards England being characterized by anglomania. He distinguishes between anglophilia – an intellectual curiosity about English political and social structures that developed in France in the first half of the eighteenth century – and the fashionable anglomanie that swept the nation from the 1760s onwards.112 Montesquieu’s anglophilia is an essential element of his identity as an Enlightenment public figure, as shaped by the Encyclopédie. Stressing the mutual bonds of admiration that link Montesquieu and England allows D’Alembert to highlight not only the author’s love of liberty, limited government and the rule of law but also the enlightened, cosmopolitan outlook of France’s intellectual, cultural and – in 1755 – military rival. D’Alembert mentions in his ‘Éloge’ the ‘monument’ that England has elevated in Montesquieu’s honour. In literal terms he is referring to the medal of Montesquieu executed by Dassier, a craftsman previously commissioned by the London mint to produce similar portraits of prominent Englishmen including Lord Chesterfield.113 Dassier’s medal shows Montesquieu in the likeness of a republican Roman.114 In the Encyclopédie meanwhile, the author is represented as an exemplary citizen of another republic: the modern, cosmopolitan Republic of Letters.

CONCLUSION: SPHERES OF INFLUENCE

This study has examined Montesquieu’s work as a site of intellectual exchange between England and France in the early Enlightenment, in the context of developments in Anglo–French relations in the same period. The significance of the English constitutional model in Montesquieu’s political philosophy is well known, but this study has demonstrated the depth and breadth of England’s impact on Montesquieu’s work. It has emerged that during his lifetime Montesquieu was continuously influenced by the ideas and ideals of the English Enlightenment. These he encountered in the publications of Huguenot journalists sympathetic to English ways of thinking, in works written by English authors and in England itself. English ideas and ideals resonate throughout his published works and his travel notebooks, from which the nation emerges as a symbol of cultural and political modernity rooted in a longstanding constitutional tradition. England is also synonymous with the practices of open, reasoned debate and political participation that defined the English public sphere. Where previous commentators have presented Montesquieu as a more or less passive receptor of English ideas, this study has shown him actively engaging in ideological debates that exercised both the French and English public spheres. The role played by Montesquieu’s work within the latter arena has also been uncovered, and the author’s attempts to enhance that role by addressing issues of relevance to English audiences have been fully explored. Through his work, Montesquieu thus initiated a series of enlightened exchanges which testify to the dynamic nature of the diffusion and reception of ideas in the eighteenth century, and to the extensive intellectual cross-fertilization linking England and France at this time. In an article which throws these findings into sharp relief, Edmond Dziembowski emphasizes the mutual hostility and prejudice with which the majority of French and Englishmen viewed each other in the Enlightenment period. He notably comments that the interest in England demonstrated by eighteenth-century French intellectuals was ‘almost miraculous, when we consider the mental climate’. Dziembowski argues that the roots of both the animosity that dominated eighteenth-century Anglo–French relations and the attraction of England for enlightened French intellectuals can be traced to the events of 1689, the year

– 169 –

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of Montesquieu’s birth.1 In this year the Glorious Revolution marked the founding of modern English parliamentary democracy whilst the resulting military clashes between England and France signalled the start of the Second Hundred Years’ War. Montesquieu’s subsequent dialogue with England was conducted in the light of the political success of the English constitution established by the Bill of Rights, the intellectual advances of the English Enlightenment and the commercial expansion of the nation’s industrial economy. This dialogue is all the more remarkable for having taken place in a context of almost continuous Anglo–French hostility, culminating in the enduring deterioration of relations between England and France after 1755. As Dziembowski points out, for forward-thinking Frenchmen from the Glorious Revolution onwards England gradually attained the status of an ideal. The nation represented freedom of speech, religious tolerance and the power of public opinion to determine the course of political events. There is initial evidence of this in the Lettres persanes, where Montesquieu touches on the enlightened maxims underlying England’s system of government, and the nation’s resultant stability and commercial success. It was in the 1730s, however, that the idealization of England by French authors began in earnest.2 Montesquieu’s unpublished Notes sur l’Angleterre reveal that his personal experiences as a traveller in England gave the lie to this idealized view. Accordingly, in his Considérations Montesquieu does more than merely perpetuate the emergent myth of England’s political perfection. Instead he chose to undermine an illusion fostered by both Englishmen and Frenchmen who saw themselves as emulating the achievements of the Romans. Driving a wedge between antiquity and modernity, Montesquieu established that the Roman constitution was no longer an appropriate model for enlightened European governments. He highlights the benefits of the English system of government, but not without drawing attention to the turbulence and partisan strife inherent in England’s polity. The importance of historical precedent within the political culture of ancien regime has been underlined by Keith Michael Baker. Clearly, Montesquieu’s work would have had little relevance to contemporary French constitutional debates if he had denied France its Roman roots without proposing a new political heritage for the nation. In L’Esprit des lois therefore, Montesquieu skilfully compounded the message of English modernity that had emerged from his previous works with the myth of Europe’s ancient constitution. Implying that France should imitate England in returning to its constitutional roots as a limited monarchy governing by popular consent, Montesquieu echoed many of the objections to absolutism being voiced in the nascent French public sphere in the mid-eighteenth century.3 At this time, contestation was developing within the parlements and French writers and journalists began to express controversial views more freely. England’s success on an international scale continued to demonstrate the beneficial

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consequences of an open public sphere, and the political cultures of France and England appeared to be converging.4 In the 1750s, despite opposition from the establishment, the encyclopédistes were able to produce a work embodying the values of free, rational, critical debate that underpin a successful public sphere, and that Montesquieu had sought to promote throughout his œuvre. His own contribution to the Encyclopédie is often seen as having little in common with his earlier works, but the Essai sur le goût clearly resonates with English ideas and upholds the English ideal of universal, disinterested participation in the cultural as in the political sphere. Rather than declaring that intellectuals should determine public taste, Montesquieu sought in the Essai to equip individuals to make their own amateur aesthetic judgements. Indeed, throughout his work Montesquieu sought to diminish his authorial authority and to promote the free exercise of reason. He did this in the case of the Lettres persanes through publishing anonymously and adopting foreign, naïve and freethinking personæ to express a plurality of opinions. The Voyages further reveal the author’s reliance on first-hand observation and his determination to question received authorities. In both this text and the Considérations, the authority of the arguments put forward resides in the rational, empirical manner of their formulation, rather than the identity of the author. Finally, in composing L’Esprit des lois, as in all his other works Montesquieu avoided the erudite demonstrations that would have made his ideas inaccessible to the general public, declaring: ‘One should not always exhaust a subject to the point where the reader has no work to do. My business is not to make people read, but to make them think’.5 To examine the relationship between Montesquieu and England is to explore the new conditions of authorship and authority that emerged as the European public sphere grew and evolved to challenge established social and political structures. Montesquieu’s representation of England and the English in his work, together with his deployment of English ideas, are involved in founding what Baker has termed ‘a new system of authority’. This resulted in the devolution of power from its traditional sources under the ancien régime to the ‘public’, which emerged as a new defining political and cultural force in the eighteenth century.6 As established authorities were undermined, the role of Prince and cleric in determining popular sentiment was gradually assumed by other elements in society. In France, by the mid-eighteenth century the nation’s men of letters were making themselves increasingly visible as what Melton calls the ‘self-appointed representatives’ of enlightened opinion.7 Indeed, the publication of L’Esprit des lois was identfied by a contemporary commentator as a turning point in the emergence of public opinion as a significant force within French society.8 However, Montesquieu’s work arguably shows him to be less concerned with shaping public opinion than with investing the public itself with a newfound authority. It is here that the author’s representation of England and his deployment of English

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ideas come into play. Implicit in the Lettres persanes is the notion that authority should be transferred from Prince and cleric to be vested in the will of the sovereign majority; it is moreover revealed in the text that this transfer has already been accomplished in England. The will of the majority must not however tyrannize over that of the reasoning individual, a notion upheld in Montesquieu’s Voyages where the author follows English empirical philosophers in asserting his right to question received opinion and to form his own independent judgements on all he observes. In the Considérations, the question of where authority lies is further explored through the example of Rome. The message of the work, drawn from Bolingbroke’s Remarks on the History of England, is that it is not the personalities of individual leaders that determine a nation’s fate but the spirit in the body of the people. L’Esprit des lois introduces the powerful idea of custom to support this concept. The ancient constitution, a body of customary law that has grown up in the body of the people, is shown to have resulted in a freer and fairer government in England than that established by the acts of unrepresentative legislators in France. The Essai sur le goût, finally, upholds universal consensus rather than the preferences of a particular class as providing the only firm basis for establishing standards of taste. Using the representation of England and the English to address such questions was dually advantageous to Montesquieu. On the one hand, England was already associated in the French imagination with the free expression of opinions and with the opposition to absolute power in both Church and state. Montesquieu could therefore work within this existing framework to present the English attitude to authority as constructive rather than destructive. On the other hand, references to England often provided a useful camouflage for the discussion of ideas that would have been unacceptable in a French context. These ideas were contained in the works of thinkers such as Locke, Shaftesbury, Addison, Bolingbroke, Sidney and Hutcheson, where issues surrounding politeness, popular consent, rational debate and consensual politics were addressed. Montesquieu’s encounter with English Enlightenment thought in the works of these and other authors greatly assisted him in formulating ideas regarding the new structures of authority required to guarantee political and cultural freedoms. The presence of English ideas in Montesquieu’s work bears witness to the fact that the Enlightenment public sphere was an arena in which ideas circulated freely across national borders. Authors could anticipate their work being read, and their ideas exploited, in nations other than their own. Official reactions to the Lettres persanes demonstrate that in the early eighteenth century France’s underdeveloped public sphere created difficult conditions for writers. Yet in England, as Montesquieu witnessed when he visited the country in the early 1730s, the existence of a free press gave sanction to publications as contentious as Bolingbroke’s Craftsman. In this environment, the full satirical potential

Conclusion

173

of Montesquieu’s own Lettres persanes was realized by the English writers and journalists who imitated his work and who openly acknowledged their debt to a French author even at a time of renewed rivalry between the two nations. Similarly, Bolingbroke’s reading of history in the Craftsman, among other works, inspired Montesquieu’s Considérations. When translated into English, this text was subsequently used as a vehicle for exploring themes particularly relevant to an English context. Just as Montesquieu’s understanding and deployment of English ideas was determined by the political and cultural environment in which he wrote, so his works’ impact in England was determined by particular contemporary conditions. Thus L’Esprit des lois was interpreted by some in England as legitimizing Hanoverian rule, and by others as an injunction to protect the nation’s polity from imminent decline. However, Montesquieu’s dialogue with English readers in his correspondence reveals that he did not share the pessimistic outlook of this latter group. Indeed, in taking his work so seriously the English demonstrated the political awareness and vigilance that Montesquieu thought would be the saving of their constitution and that he wished to inspire in their French counterparts. Examining Montesquieu’s relations with England illustrates the vibrant nature of the traffic in texts and ideas across national borders in the Enlightenment. Developments in the public sphere such as the expansion of the international periodical press facilitated such exchanges. Authors were freed from the obligation of writing to please any patron other than the public and sought to encourage open debate on issues of concern to audiences in different national contexts. Montesquieu’s relations with England encapsulate the richness and intricacy of eighteenth-century Anglo–French intellectual relations, characterized by complex dynamics of reciprocal influence in which both cosmopolitan open-mindedness and patriotic chauvinism can be detected. Habermas, whose narrative of the public sphere has proved so productive in opening up new avenues in eighteenth-century studies, has described communication within this arena as a ‘process of mutual enlightenment’.9 It is in these terms that the relationship between Montesquieu and England should be understood.

ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used in the notes and Works Cited: Catalogue L. Desgraves and C. Volpilhac-Auger, Catalogue de la bibliothèque de Montesquieu à La Brède, Cahiers Montesquieu 4 (1999). Masson Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. A. Masson, 3 vols (Paris: Nagel, 1950–5). OCM Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. J. Ehrard and C. Volpilhac-Auger et al., 22 vols (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1998–). BJECS British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. DHS Dix-Huitième Siècle. ECS Eighteenth-Century Studies. ELH English Literary History. LP Lettres persanes. JAAC Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. MLQ Modern Language Quarterly. MLR Modern Language Review. PMLA Publications of the Modern Languages Association of America. RHLF Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France. RLC Revue de littérature comparée. SVEC Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth-Century. All references to the Catalogue of Montesquieu’s library at La Brède are given by item number, as are references to the author’s Pensées.

– 175 –

NOTES

Introduction 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

London Evening-Post, 4256 (18–20 February 1755). This obituary was published anonymously but Chesterfield’s correspondence includes a letter to the editor of the London Evening-Post which identifies him as its author. The editor enhanced Chesterfield’s original text (included in full in the letter), where it is stated that Montesquieu ‘well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country’, The Letters of Lord Chesterfield, ed. B. Dobrée, 6 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1932), vol. 5, pp. 2136–7. The use of the term ‘England’ in this study is not intended to exclude the wider British dimensions of the Enlightenment now emphasized by historians. ‘England’ is used throughout in the way Montesquieu uses the term ‘Angleterre’ in his works: to refer collectively to the nations of Great Britain governed from London under one constitution following the Act of Union in 1707. In his study of ‘Englishess’ Paul Langford comments that in the eighteenth century the French invariably used the term ‘England’ rather than ‘Britain’ to refer to the British Isles as a whole. To avoid ‘terminological chaos’ Langford also adopts this usage, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character 1650–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 12–14. J. Dedieu, Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France: les sources anglaises de L’Esprit des lois (Paris: Gabalda, 1909). Dedieu’s analysis of Montesquieu’s use of sources has been questioned by Mary Alice Kimbrough, ‘English influences on the thought of Montesquieu: a re-evaluation’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Illinois, 1966). Kimbrough points to the existence of alternative non-English texts which could have served as sources for L’Esprit des lois. Her approach is problematic in that she takes the absence of an English work from Montesquieu’s library or notebooks as proof of the author’s ignorance of the ideas contained therein. J. B. Sturges, Montesquieu en Angleterre: Le Voyage de Montesquieu en Angleterre et l’influence des pensées et des mœurs anglaises sur la vie et les œuvres de Montesquieu (Paris: Sirey, 1934). R. Shackleton, Montesquieu: a Critical Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961); see also C. Dédéyan, Montesquieu, ou, Les lumières d’Albion (Paris: Nizet, 1990). J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 20–2; Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 58. – 177 –

178 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

Notes to pages 2–4 Israel, Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested; J. Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). P. Hazard, La Crise de la conscience européenne, 1680–1715 (Paris: Boivin, 1935). R. Chartier, Les Origines culturelles de la Révolution française (Paris: Seuil, 1990); K. M. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); R. Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (London: Harper Collins, 1995). H. Jürgens, ‘Contesting Enlightenment Contested: Some Questions and Remarks for Jonathan Israel’, De Achttiende Eeuw, 39:1 (2007), pp. 52–60 (57). J. Israel, ‘Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment?’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67:3 (2006), pp. 523–45; Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment, pp. 27–9. R. Porter, The Enlightenment, 2nd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 41; R. Porter and M. Teich (eds), The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). D. Gordon, ‘Introduction’, in D. Gordon (ed.), Postmodernism and the Enlightenment: New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century French Intellectual History (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 1–6. See for instance M. W. Ghackem, ‘Montesquieu in the Caribbean: The Colonial Enlightenment between Code Noir and Code Civil’, in Gordon (ed.), Postmodernism and the Enlightenment, pp. 7–30, and Dorinda Outram’s recent interpretation of the Enlightenment in which Montesquieu is mentioned only as a critic of colonial slavery, The Enlightenment, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 60–76. D. Brewer, The Enlightenment Past: Reconstructing Eighteenth-century French Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 94. R. Butterwick (ed.), ‘Introduction’, in Peripheries of the Enlightenment, SVEC, 2008:01, pp. 1–16. E. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. F. C. A. Koelin and J. P. Pettegrove (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), originally published in German in 1931; P. Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols (New York: Knopf, 1966– 69). Outram, The Enlightenment, p. 2; T. Munck, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History 1721–1794 (London: Arnold, 2000), pp. vii–ix. J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), pp. 32–42. This work first appeared in German in 1962; a French translation entitled L’Espace public was published in 1978. W. Outhwaite, Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), p. 9. T. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660– 1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 10. N. Crossley and J. M. Roberts (eds), After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); D. Goodman, ‘The Public and the Nation’, ECS, 29:1 (1995), pp. 1–4; this journal issue, to which Goodman’s brief essay forms the introduction, is devoted to discussion of the public sphere. M. Jacob, ‘The Mental Landscape of the Public Sphere: A European Perspective’, ECS, 28:1 (1994), pp. 95–113 (97–9). Habermas, The Structural Transformation, pp. 57–67.

Notes to pages 4–6

179

25. Blanning has argued that European countries developed a ‘cultural public sphere’ in parallel with England, only lagging behind when it came to the politicization of this arena, The Culture of Power, pp. 9–10; Keith Michael Baker declares that evidence of free, critical debate on political subjects among French writers and politicians can be found earlier than Habermas would suggest, ‘Defining the Public Sphere in EighteenthCentury France: Variations on a Theme by Habermas’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 181–211. 26. J. Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 19–48. 27. D. Zaret, ‘Religion, Science and Printing in the Public Spheres in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Calhoun (ed.), Habermas, pp. 212–35, p. 215; Zaret further develops this argument in Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 28. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 33–43. 29. ‘In the first half of the century, the criticism of the philosophes was preoccupied, Montesquieu notwithstanding, with religion, literature, and art; only at the stage of its encyclopaedic publication [1750s] did the moral intent of the philosophes develop into a political one’, Habermas, The Structural Transformation, p. 68. 30. In a French context see for instance J. R. Censer, The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1994); H. T. Mason (ed.), The Darnton Debate: Books and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, SVEC 359 (1998); D. Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); A. Lilti, Le Monde des salons: sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2005). 31. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 142–55; E. L. Eisenstein, Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); H. Bots (ed.), La Diffusion et la lecture des journaux de langue française sous l’ancien régime (Amsterdam: Holland University Press, 1988). 32. The journal holdings in Montesquieu’s library are listed in L. Desgraves and C. VolpilhacAuger, Catalogue de la bibliothèque de Montesquieu à La Brède, Cahiers Montesquieu, 4 (1999), p. 472. 33. K. H. Doig and D. Medlin (eds.), British–French Exchanges in the Eighteenth Century (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), p. 1. 34. G. Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne devant l’opinion française au XVIIesiècle, 2 vols (Paris: J. Gamber, 1930); G. Bonno, ‘La Culture et la civilisation britanniques devant l’opinion française de la Paix d’Utrecht aux Lettres philosophiques (1713–1734)’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 38:1 (1948), pp. 1–184. 35. See J. Grieder, Anglomania in France 1740–1789: Fact, Fiction and Political Discourse (Geneva: Droz, 1985). 36. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 356–71; E. Dziembowski, ‘The English Political Model in Eighteenth-Century France’, Historical Research, 74:184 (2001), pp. 151–71. 37. R. Whatmore, ‘French Perspectives on British Politics, 1688–1734’, in J.-P. Genet and F.-J. Ruggiu (eds), Les idées passent-elles la Manche? Savoirs, représentations, pratiques (France-Angleterre, Xe-XXe siècles) (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2007), pp. 83–98, p. 89. 38. J. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (London: Duckworth, 1986); R. and I. Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (London: Heinemann, 2006), pp. 25–191.

180

Notes to pages 7–14

39. F. Crouzet, ‘The Second Hundred Years War: Some Reflections’, French History, 10:4 (1996), pp. 432–50. 40. On the significance of the Glorious Revolution and its aftermath see A. Murdoch, ‘A Crucible for Change: Enlightenment in Britain’, in M. Fitzpatrick, P. Jones, C. Knellwolf and I. McCalman (eds), The Enlightenment World (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 104–16. 41. Dziembowski, ‘The English Political Model’, p. 155. 42. This is acknowledged by Roy Porter in his preface to Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000), p. xx. 43. F. Ogée (ed.), ‘“Amicable Collision”: Some Thoughts on the Reality of Intellectual Exchange between Britain and France in the Enlightenment’, in ‘Better in France?’ The Circulation of Ideas across the Channel in the Eighteenth Century (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2005), pp. 13–34. 44. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, p. 59–61. 45. C. P. Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963); F. T. H. Fletcher, Montesquieu and English Politics (1750–1800) (London: E. Arnold, 1939). 46. D. W. Carrithers, M. A. Mosher and P. A. Rahe (eds), Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); L. Landi, L’Inghilterra e il pensiero politico di Montesquieu (Padua: CEDAM, 1981); T. L. Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on The Spirit of the Laws (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973). 47. P. Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, trans. R. Balinski (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 53–64; P. A. Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). On the relevance of Montesquieu’s work to the French political tradition see J.-F. Lecoq, ‘Montesquieu entre Rome et l’Angleterre’, in J. Dagen (ed.), Morales et Politique (Paris: Champion, 2005), pp. 209–27. 48. See for instance C. P. Courtney, ‘Morals and Manners in Montesquieu’s Analysis of the British System of Liberty’, in R. E. Kingston (ed.), Montesquieu and his Legacy (New York: SUNY Press, 2008), pp. 31–48. 49. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, p. 264. 50. Gordon, ‘Introduction’ to Postmodernism and the Enlightenment, p. 2. 51. Q. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 103.

1 Importing Good Sense: Lettres Persanes (1721) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, pp. 8–11. Crouzet, ‘The Second Hundred Years War’, p. 436. Quoted in Bonno, ‘La Culture et la civilisation britanniques’, p. 38; unless otherwise stated, all translations from French works are the author’s own. Whatmore, ‘French Perspectives’, p. 84. T. E. Kaiser, ‘Money, Despotism, and Public Opinion in Early Eighteenth-Century France: John Law and the Debate on Royal Credit’, Journal of Modern History, 63:1 (1991), pp. 1–28. R. E. Kingston, Montesquieu and the Parlement of Bordeaux (Geneva: Droz, 1996), pp. 65–70.

Notes to pages 14–17 7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

181

See for instance J. Goldzink, Charles-Louis de Montesquieu: Lettres persanes (Paris: PUF, 1989), pp. 8–9, and J.-M. Goulemot, ‘Vision du devenir historique et formes de la révolution dans les Lettres persanes’, DHS 21 (1989), pp. 13–22. R. Laufer, ‘La Réussite romanesque et la signification des Lettres persanes de Montesquieu’, RHLF, 61 (1961), pp. 188–203. Laufer was the first critic to suggest, in this article, that the Lettres persanes should not be considered as mere prologue to L’Esprit des lois; Starobinski pursued this analysis in his preface to the Folio edition of the work (Paris: Gallimard, 1973). J. H. Shennan, Philippe, Duke of Orléans: Regent of France 1715–1723 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), pp. 53–9. T. Munck for instance sets the chronological boundaries of the movement as beginning with the Lettres persanes and ending with the death of Condorcet (1721–1794), The Enlightenment, p. viii. Grieder, Anglomania in France, pp. 1–5. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, pp. 12–14. J.-M. Goulemot, Discours, révolutions et histoire: Représentations de l’histoire et discours sur les révolutions de l’Age Classique aux Lumières (Paris: Union générale d’édition, 1975), pp. 49–55. J. B. Bossuet, ‘Oraison funèbre de Henriette-Marie de France’, in Oraisons funèbres, ed. J. Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1988), pp. 112–19. Goulemot, Discours, révolutions et histoire, pp. 81–93. P. J. d’Orléans, Histoire des Revolutions d’Angleterre depuis le commencement de la Monarchie, 3 vols (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1693–4). Montesquieu did not have a high opinion of the père d’Orléans’s historical judgements; his work’s entry in Montesquieu’s handwritten library catalogue includes a quotation from Petronius’s Satyricon: ‘He babbles about things that concern neither heaven nor earth’, Catalogue, 3204. D’Orléans, Histoire des Révolutions, vol. 1, ‘Épître dédicatoire’. C. J. de Colombier, Voyages historiques de l’Europe, 4th edn, 8 vols (Amsterdam: 1718), vol. 4, pp. 51–4. Whatmore, ‘French Perspectives’, p. 88. A. Ramsay, Essay philosophique sur le gouvernement civil, 2nd edn (London: 1721), pp. 35–6. Ramsay’s Essay was given a new title in this its second edition. P. Rapin de Thoyras, Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys. Or, An Historical Dissertation upon Whig and Tory, trans. J. Ozell (London: E. Curll, 1717), p. 106. Bonno, ‘La Culture et la civilisation britanniques’, pp. 38–9. Mercure Galant (March 1715), p. 61, cited by S. Lovering, L’Activité intellectuelle de l’Angleterre d’après l’ancien « Mercure de France » (1672–1778) (Paris: Boccard, 1930), pp. 16–17. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 142–55. C. Todd, Political Bias, Censorship and the Dissolution of the ‘Official’ Press in EighteenthCentury France (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), pp. 73–90. R. Favre, ‘Montesquieu et la presse périodique’, Études sur la presse au XVIIIe siècle, 3 (1978), pp. 39–59. Favre gives an overview of Montesquieu’s use of press sources but does not analyse the Huguenot periodicals in any specific detail. One rare exception is Anne-Marie Mercier-Faivre, ‘Une lecture fantasmatique de la Gazette d’Amsterdam au temps des Lettres persanes (1720–1721): le cas du despotisme oriental’, in H.-J. Lüsebrink and J. D. Popkin (eds), Enlightenment, Revolution and the periodical press, SVEC, 2004:06, pp. 46–80.

182

Notes to pages 17–23

28. Habermas notes that the Huguenot gazettes were viewed with suspicion by the French authorities and that Louis XIV banned the importation of foreign newspapers on three occasions during his reign, The Structural Transformation, p. 67, n. 23. 29. Goulemot, Discours, révolutions et histoire, p. 97; on the Huguenot journalists’ contribution to liberal political theory, see G. H. Dodge, The Political Theory of the Huguenots of the Dispersion with Special Reference to the Thought and Influence of Pierre Jurieu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947). 30. In the first issue the journalist comments that ‘English books are scarcely known beyond the shores of this island’, Bibliothèque angloise, 1 (1717). 31. Bibliothèque angloise, 7 (1720), pp. 297–302. 32. References and quotations are taken from C.-L. de Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, ed. C. P. Courtney et al., OCM, vol. 1 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004), henceforth referred to as LP. This latest edition differs from most modern versions of the text in reproducing the first 1721 edition. This encourages increased recognition of the work’s relevance to the context in which it was first published, and distinguishes the text in its original state from later editions that include additional letters largely intended to enhance the Oriental intrigue. Where references to letters are given the numbers commonly used in other modern editions are given, in parentheses. 33. C. J. Betts briefly discusses the relationship between the two texts in ‘Lettres persanes, Lettres anglaises: Some Reflections’, SVEC, 304 (1992), pp. 874–5. 34. C. Dédéyan, Montesquieu ou l’alibi persan (Paris: SEDES, 1988), pp. 29–30. 35. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, pp. 81–2. 36. Blanning, The Culture of Power, pp. 9–10. 37. Melton, The Rise of the Public, pp. 45–6. 38. Whatmore, ‘French Perspectives’, pp. 94–5, see also R. Dale, The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 128-30. 39. Kaiser, ‘Money, Despotism, and Public Opinion’, pp. 6–7. 40. LP, letter 99[102]. 41. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, p. 7; see also Tim Blanning’s description of ‘representational culture’ in The Culture of Power, pp. 5–8. 42. LP, letter 99[102]. 43. D’Orléans, Histoire des Revolutions, vol. 1, ‘Avertissement’. 44. A. Crisafulli, ‘Parallels to Ideas in the Lettres persanes’, PMLA, 49 (1937), pp. 773–77. For a more detailed discussion see U. H. Gonthier, ‘Persians, Politics and Politeness: Montesquieu reads Shaftesbury’, Nottingham French Studies, 48:3 (2009), pp. 4–15. 45. Montesquieu owned Hobbes’s complete works in Latin in a 1668 edition, Catalogue, 1473. 46. Montesquieu’s library contains the Characteristics in its 1714 English edition, Catalogue, 696. On the reception of Shaftesbury’s ideas in a French context, see E. Casati, ‘Hérauts et commentateurs de Shaftesbury en France’, RLC, 14 (1934), pp. 615–45. 47. Montesquieu’s access to English sources before his visit to England in 1729–31 remains a subject of dispute. Paul Vernière for instance has questioned Montesquieu’s ability to read and understand English at the time the Lettres persanes were written, see Lettres persanes, ed. P. Vernière (Paris: Garnier 1960), p. 174, n. 2. 48. Bibliothèque choisie, 19 (1709), p. 437. 49. I. M. Wilson, The Influence of Hobbes and Locke in the Shaping of the Concept of Sovereignty in Eighteenth-Century France, SVEC, 101 (1973), p. 46.

Notes to pages 23–9

183

50. A. Crisafulli, ‘Montesquieu’s Story of the Troglodytes: its Background, Meaning and Significance’, PMLA, 54 (1943), pp. 372–92. 51. LP, letter 12. 52. M. Richter, The Political Theory of Montesquieu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 42–3. 53. A. Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. L. E. Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 51–2. 54. J. Schøsler, ‘L’Essai sur l’entendement de Locke et la lutte philosophique en France au XVIIIe siècle: l’histoire des traductions, des éditions et de la diffusion journalistique (1688–1742)’, SVEC, 2001:04, pp. 1–259; R. Hutchinson, Locke in France 1688–1734, SVEC, 290 (1991). 55. Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans (1691), p. 461. 56. Bibliothèque universelle et historique, 19 (1690), p. 582. 57. Romans 13:1. 58. A. Sidney, Discourses concerning Government, ed. T. G. West (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1996), III.10; see for instance Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans (1702), pp. 63–75. 59. M. Goldie, ‘The English System of Liberty’, in M. Goldie and R. Wokler (eds), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 40–78. 60. J. Ehrard, ‘La Fronde’, in L’Esprit des mots: Montesquieu en lui-même et parmi les siens (Geneva: Droz, 1998), pp. 95–106, pp. 95–7. Usbek himself comments on the tendency to compare the two regencies in supplementary letter 5[111], added to the second 1721 edition: ‘The reign of the late King was so long, that by its end everyone had forgotten its beginning. It is the fashion today to recall the events of his minority; history books about that time have become so popular that people now read little else’. 61. Goulemot, Discours, révolutions et histoire, pp. 34–5. 62. Anon., ‘Le Raisonnable plaintif sur la dernière Déclaration du Roy’ (1652), in C. Moreau (ed.) Choix de Mazarinades, 2 vols (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1853), vol. 2, p. 454 [M 2969]. 63. J. H. M. Salmon, The French Religious Wars in English Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 147–58. 64. Dédéyan, Lumières d’Albion, p. 9. 65. LP, letters 78[80], 99[102] and 130[136]. 66. LP, letters 149[159] and 150[161]. 67. LP, letters 132[138] and 134[140]. 68. L. E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 69. D. Randall, ‘Epistolary Rhetoric, the Newspaper, and the Public Sphere’, Past and Present, 198 (2008), pp. 3–32; Habermas, The Structural Transformation, pp. 20–5. 70. On the European impact of the Spectator see Melton, The Rise of the Public, pp. 96–7. 71. Grieder, Anglomania in France, p. 3. 72. Le Spectateur, ou le Socrate Moderne, Où l’on voit un Portrait naïf des Mœurs de ce Siècle, 8 vols (Amsterdam: Mortier, 1714–18), Catalogue, 701. Montesquieu also owned the original English Spectator in its 1729 edition (Catalogue, 702). 73. See for example Goldzink, Lettres persanes, p. 16. 74. Spectator, 50 (27 April 1711). Addison’s Indian Kings have been seen as forerunners of the philosophical travellers that recur throughout English and French Enlightenment literature, see N. Cronk, ‘Voltaire, Lucian, and the Philosophical Traveller’, in J. Renwick

184

75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

Notes to pages 29–33 (ed.), L’Invitation au voyage: Studies in Honour of Peter France, (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), pp. 75–84, and ‘Voltaire rencontre Monsieur le Spectateur: Addison et la genèse des Lettres anglaises’, in M. Delon and C. Seth (eds), Voltaire en Europe: hommage à Christiane Mervaud (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), pp. 13–21. On the relationship between philosophy and journalism in the Spectator essays see M. Biziou, ‘La philosophie pratique des essayistes britanniques du XVIIIe siècle: Shaftesbury, Addison, Bolingbroke, Hume’, in P. Glaudes (ed.) L’Essai: métamorphoses d’un genre (Toulouse: PU du Mirail, 2002), pp. 279–97. LP, letter 11. A. J. Weitzman, ‘The Oriental Tale in the Eighteenth Century: a Reconsideration’, SVEC, 58 (1967), pp. 1839–55. Spectator, 159 (1 September 1711). LP, letter 11. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, pp. 31–6. Spectator, 9 (10 March 1711). E. and L. Bloom, Joseph Addison’s Sociable Animal (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1971), p. 5. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 30–1. LP, letter 61[63]; the dissimulation and flattery governing French public life are emphasized by E. J. Hundert and P. Nelles, ‘Liberty and Theatrical Space in Montesquieu’s Political Theory: The Poetics of Public Life in the Persian Letters’, Political Theory, 17:2 (1989), pp. 223–46. LP, letters 80[82] and 107[110]. L. E. Klein, ‘The Figure of France: The Politics of Sociability in England, 1660–1715’, Yale French Studies, 92 (1997), pp. 30–45. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, pp. 34–5; on this point see also J. Weinsheimer, ‘Shaftesbury in our Time: the Politics of Wit and Humour’, Eighteenth Century, 36:2 (1995), p. 178–88. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 49. Blanning, The Culture of Power, pp. 103–6; Habermas, The Structural Transformation, p. 31. R. Howells, ‘The Secret Life: Marana’s Espion du Grand-Seigneur (1684–86)’, FS, 53 (1999), pp. 153–66. LP, letter 8. G. P. Marana, L’Espion du Grand-Seigneur, et ses Relations Secretes Envoyées au Divan de Constantinople […] Traduites de l’Arabe en Italien Par le Sieur Jean-Paul Marana, Et de l’Italien en François par *** (Amsterdam: H. Wetstein and H. Des Bordes, 1684), ‘Au Lecteur’ and letter 1. LP, letter 1. Spectator, 1 (1 March 1711). Spectator, 4 (5 March 1711). Marana, L’Espion du Grand-Seigneur, ‘Épître dédicatoire’ and ‘Avertissement’. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 50. LP, p. 137. Having gauged public responses to the first few issues of his periodical, Addison comments in Spectator, 10 (12 March 1711): ‘Since I have raised to myself so great an Audience, I shall spare no Pains to make their Instruction agreeable, and their Diversion useful’.

Notes to pages 33–9

185

100. Marana, L’Espion du Grand-Seigneur, ‘Au Lecteur’. 101. LP, p. 138. 102. LP, p. 137. 103. E. H. Cook, ‘The Limping Woman and the Public Sphere’, in V. Kelly and D. Von Mücke (eds), Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 23–44 (28–31). 104. D. Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 47–8. 105. Blanning, The Culture of Power, p. 104. 106. Porter, Enlightenment, pp. 60–71. 107. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 520–5, and Enlightenment Contested, pp. 360–2. 108. J. Locke, Essai philosophique concernant l’entendement humain, où l’on montre quelle est l’étendue de nos connoissances certaines, et la manière dont nous y parvenons, trans. P. Coste (Amsterdam: Henri Schelte, 1700), Catalogue, 1489. 109. J. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Berwick, 1690), II.1.ii. 110. Locke, Essay, II.1.xxi. 111. LP, letter 1. 112. Locke, Essay, II.1.xxii. 113. LP, letters 46[48] and 21[23]. 114. F. Keener, The Chain of Becoming: The Philosophical Tale, the Novel, and a Neglected Realism of the Enlightenment: Swift, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Johnson and Austen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 156. 115. LP, letter 23[25]. 116. Locke, Essay, IV.19.i, cited in Hutchinson, ‘Locke in France’, p. 223. 117. LP, letter 147[155]. 118. On Usbek as an intellectual exile, see J. Mander, ‘Nothing to Write Home About? The Linguistic Limits of the Enlightenment’s Global Journey’, in Renwick (ed.), L’Invitation au voyage, pp. 13–21. 119. Locke, Essay, II.33.i. 120. LP, letter 147[155]. 121. Pierre Coste declares himself unable to translate this term, which remains in English in the French translation, glossed as ‘the feeling we have about ourselves’, see Locke, Essai, trans. Coste, II.27.xvi. 122. On the so-called ‘Querelle de L’Esprit des Lois’ and its consequences see Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 291–2; and P. Kra, ‘La défense des Lettres persanes’ in Montesquieu, œuvre ouverte? (1748–55), Cahiers Montesquieu, 9 (2005), pp. 17–29. 123. R. Shackleton, ‘Censure and Censorship: impediments to free publication in the age of Enlightenment’, Essays on Montesquieu and on the Enlightenment, ed. D. Gilson and M. Smith (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1988), pp. 405–20, p. 414. 124. Locke, Essay, IV.19.xiv. 125. Zaret, ‘Religion, Science and Printing’, p. 221. 126. LP, letters 81[83] and 83[85]. 127. LP, p. 567–9. 128. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 18. 129. LP, letters 27[29] and 22[24]. 130. Bibliothèque choisie, 19 (1709), p. 428–9. 131. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 59.

186

Notes to pages 39–45

132. The French translation of this work is included in the edition of Locke’s Œuvres diverses, ed. and trans. J. Le Clerc (Rotterdam: Fritsch and Böhm, 1710), which Montesquieu owned (Catalogue, 1490). Edwin Curley compares Locke’s notion of toleration with Montesquieu’s in ‘From Locke’s Letter to Montesquieu’s Lettres’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 26:1 (2002), pp. 280–306. 133. Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans (1708), p. 516. 134. LP, letters 27[29] and 83[85]. 135. Bibliothèque choisie, 23 (1711), p. 107. 136. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 18. 137. Histoire des ouvrages des savants (1708), p. 517. 138. LP, letter 81[83]. 139. B. L. de Muralt, Lettres sur les Anglois et les François et sur les voyages (London, 1725), p. 3

2 In Search of Enlightenment: Voyages en Europe (1728–31) 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Shackleton, Montesquieu, p. 90. N. Childs, A Political Academy in Paris, 1721–1731: The Entresol and its Members, SVEC, 2000:10, p. 93. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, pp. 20–2. The title Voyages en Europe is used to refer collectively to Montesquieu’s travel notebooks, individually entitled Voyage en Autriche, Voyage en Italie, Voyage en Allemagne, Voyage en Hollande, Lettre sur Gênes, Florence, Mémoires sur les mines and the Notes sur l’Angleterre. The Voyages appear in Masson, vol. 2, pp. 965–1356, henceforth referred to as VE. Montesquieu’s correspondence reveals that he was considering revising his travel journals for publication just before his death, Masson, vol. 3, letter 672, to Guasco (5 March 1753). Sturges, Montesquieu en Angleterre; Dédéyan, Lumières d’Albion; J. Churton Collins, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England (London: E. Nash, 1908). G. Van Den Abbeele, ‘Montesquieu touriste, or a View from the Top’, L’Esprit Créateur, 25:3 (1985), pp. 64–74; P. V. Conroy Jr, ‘Reading Montesquieu’s Voyages as a Novel’, SVEC, 305 (1992), pp. 1644–7, ‘A Philosophe on the Road’, French Forum, 20:3 (1995), pp. 299–314, and ‘Montesquieu, Tourist and Traveller’, SVEC, 348 (1996), pp. 1343– 6. J. Black, The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (Stroud: Sutton, 2003), and C. Hibbert, The Grand Tour (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 10. A. Wilton and I. Bignamini (eds), Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1996), pp. 13–14. J.-B. Morvan de Bellegarde, A General History of all Voyages and Travels (London: Edmund Curll and Egbert Sanger, 1708), p. 31. J. Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, 9th edn (London: A. Bettesworth, 1732), pp. 324–6. Catalogue, 1405, 1412, 1509, 1510, 1532, 1773, 2697. See for instance Montesquieu’s speeches to the Académie on the functioning of renal glands and on gravitational mass, OCM, vol. 8, pp. 157–70, 225–33. Masson, vol. 3, letter 226, to Cerati (1 March 1730). Zaret, ‘Religion, Science and Printing’, p. 227.

Notes to pages 45–51

187

16. Jacob, ‘Mental Landscape of the Public Sphere’, pp. 105–6; see also T. Broman, ‘The Habermasian Public Sphere and “Science in the Enlightenment”’, History of Science, 36 (1998), pp. 123–49. 17. OCM, vol. 8, p. 223. 18. J. Henry, ‘Science and the Coming of the Enlightenment’, in Fitzpatrick et al. (eds), The Enlightenment World, pp. 10–26. 19. OCM, vol. 8, p. 498. 20. VE, p. 1102. Montesquieu’s method is a variation on that recommended to travellers in guides such as Jean-Antoine Huguetan’s Voyage d’Italie curieux et nouveau (Lyon, 1681), p. 54; or Maximilien Misson’s Nouveau Voyage d’Italie, 4th edn, 4 vols (La Haye: Henry Van Bulderen, 1702), vol. 3, p. 7, of which Montesquieu owned a copy (Catalogue, 2750). 21. J. Starobinski, Montesquieu par lui-même (Paris: Seuil, 1953), pp. 39-40. 22. Abbeele, ‘Montesquieu touriste’, pp. 65–7; Conroy, ‘Reading Montesquieu’s Voyages’, p. 1647, and ‘Philosophe on the road’, p. 313. 23. Locke, Essai, trans. Coste, I.i.2. 24. M. Baridon, ‘Le style de Defoe et l’épistémologie de la “New Science”’, TREMA, 9 (1984), pp. 119–32 (121). 25. VE, pp. 985-6. 26. Baridon, ‘Le style de Defoe’, pp. 126–30. 27. R. Boyle, ‘General Heads for a Natural History of a Countrey, Great or Small’, Philosophical Transactions, 11 (1666), pp. 186–9. 28. VE, p. 1218 29. See among other examples the snatches of Italian dialogue recorded in the text (VE, pp. 993, 1110). 30. Conroy, ‘Philosophe on the Road’, pp. 304–7. 31. VE, pp. 979, 992. 32. D. Carey, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson: Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 14–97. 33. VE, pp. 1215, 981. 34. M. Richter, ‘Montesquieu’s Theory and Practice of the Comparative Method’, History of the Human Sciences, 15:2 (2002), pp. 21–33, p. 24. 35. VE, pp. 1133–4. 36. Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois, ed. J. Brethe de la Gressaye, 4 vols (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1950–61), 14.2. This edition is henceforth referred to as EL and all references are given by book and chapter. 37. C. Jones, ‘Politicising Travel and Climatising Philosophy: Watsuji, Montesquieu and the European Tour’, Japan Forum, 14:1 (2002), pp. 41–62. 38. VE, p. 1290. 39. Locke, Essay, I.i.2; I.ii.9–10. 40. Carey, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson, pp. 206–8. 41. VE, p. 1199. 42. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, pp. 49–52. 43. R. A. Nablow, The Addisonian Tradition in France: Passion and Objectivity in Social Observation (London: Associated University Press, 1990), p. 45. 44. Misson’s work was re-edited eight times between 1691 and 1750 and remained consistently popular; see P. Laubriet, ‘Les Guides de voyages au début du XVIII siècle et la propagande philosophique’, SVEC, 32 (1965), pp. 269–325.

188

Notes to pages 51–6

45. Catalogue, 3071; Montesquieu’s notes on Addison’s Remarks can be found in OCM, vol. 16, pp. 7–22. 46. VE, p. 1337. 47. J. Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. In the Years 1701, 1702, 1703 (London: Jacob Tonson, 1705), pp. 323–4. 48. VE, pp. 1071–2, 1163–4; Addison, Remarks, pp. 235, 41–2. The strong scientific orientation of the Voyages is admirably illustrated in the passage in which Montesquieu deduces how thunder is produced based on his observations of the reverberation of sound in the Baptistery at Pisa. Montesquieu is more concerned with describing his acoustic experiments than with appreciating, like a more typical tourist, the architecture of the monument. 49. Misson, Nouveau Voyage, ‘Avis au Lecteur’. 50. Melton, The Rise of the Public, pp. 27–30. 51. Addison, Remarks, pp. 15–19. 52. OCM, vol. 16, p. 13; Montesquieu refers to Addison’s account of the Genoese banking system in L’Esprit des lois to illustrate how the people can gain a hold on the financial administration of the state under an aristocratic government (EL, 2.3). He cites the relevant page from the Remarks in a footnote. 53. OCM, vol. 16, p. 15. 54. D. Masseau, L’Invention de l’intellectuel dans l’Europe du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1994), pp. 52–3. 55. Blanning, The Culture of Power, pp. 106–7. 56. J. Ehrard, Montesquieu critique d’art (Paris: PUF, 1965), pp. 61–2. 57. VE, pp. 1020, 1055. 58. F. Haskell, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 163–6. 59. VE, pp. 1314. 60. Spectator, 117 (14 July 1711). 61. VE, pp. 1056, 1084–5. 62. Addison, Remarks, pp. 146. See also Nablow, Addisonian Tradition, p. 73. 63. H.-J. Müllenbrock, ‘The Political Implications of the Grand Tour: Aspects of a specifically English contribution to the European travel literature of the Age of Enlightenment’, TREMA, 9 (1984), pp. 7–21. 64. VE, pp. 1095–100; OCM, vol. 9, pp. 67–82. 65. Addison, Remarks, p. 180. 66. VE, p. 1293. 67. VE, p. 1162; Addison, Remarks, pp. 196–7. 68. VE, pp. 1108, 1079. 69. D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 22. 70. Pensées, 339; the complete text of Montesquieu’s Pensées can be found in Masson, vol. 2, pp. 1–679. 71. VE, pp. 1115, 1039. 72. Montesquieu did revise one episode from his travels, seemingly for publication. The Lettre sur Gênes (VE, pp. 1303–12) is noticeably easier to read but no more ideologically charged than the remainder of the Voyages. 73. VE, pp. 980–9. 74. VE, pp. 981, 1307–8.

Notes to pages 56–64 75. 76. 77. 78.

189

Shaftesbury, Characteristics, pp. 31. VE, pp. 1039, 1099, 1103; ‘Sanno puttare queste Romane’: in Italian in original. VE, pp. 1073, 1018. M. de Montaigne, Œuvres complètes, ed. A. Thibaudet and M. Rat (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), pp. 1236–7. 79. VE, pp. 1110. 80. Ibid., pp. 1232, 1244–7, 1275–6, 1286–7. 81. Ibid., pp. 1272–4. 82. Ibid., pp. 1100, 1296. 83. Ibid., pp. 1189, 1290–1300. 84. The Notes sur l’Angleterre appear separately from the rest of the Voyages in Masson, vol. 3, pp. 283–93 (284–5). All references are to this edition, henceforth referred to as NA. 85. EL, 2.2; in this work Montesquieu also famously qualified England as ‘a nation where republicanism is camouflaged under the form of monarchy’ (5.19). 86. Langford, Englishness Identified, p. 267. 87. L. Coulon, Le Fidèle Conducteur pour le voyage d’Angleterre (Troyes: Nicolas Oudot, 1654), ‘Advis au Lecteur’. 88. Voltaire’s work was first published in English in London under the title Letters concerning the English Nation (1733). The fifth volume of Prévost’s Mémoires was published in 1731. On the significance of these works see Goulemot, Discours, révolutions et histoire, pp. 372–9. 89. F.-M. Arouet de Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, ed. G. Lanson rev. André Rousseau (Paris: Didier, 1964), letter 8; A. F. Prévost d’Exiles, Mémoires et avantures d’un homme de qualité qui s’est retiré du monde: Tome V: Séjour en Angleterre, ed. M. E. I. Robertson (Paris: Champion, 1927), p. 95. 90. R. Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, and the Separation of Powers’, in Essays on Montesquieu, pp. 3–15, p. 7 and Montesquieu, pp. 120–7. 91. NA, p. 285; OCM, vol. 13, pp. 457–8, 466–9, 572–3. 92. I. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle: the Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 70–4. 93. NA, pp. 286–9. 94. Ibid., pp. 288–92. 95. Ibid., pp. 288–93. 96. Prévost, Séjour en Angleterre, p. 82. Evidence of Prévost’s admiration for the English press can be found throughout Le Pour et contre (1733–40) the periodical produced by Prévost with the aim of introducing French audiences to English journalistic techniques. See particularly ‘Caractère de quelques Journaux Anglois’, in the second issue of Le Pour et contre, ed. S. Larkin, 2 vols, SVEC 309-10 (1993). 97. NA, p.287; OCM, vol. 18, letter 356, to Cerati (21 December 1729). 98. C. Calhoun, ‘Imagining Solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, Constitutional Patriotism, and the Public Sphere’, Public Culture, 14:1 (2002), pp. 147–71, p. 162. 99. Melton, The Rise of the Public, p. 243. 100. Masson, vol. 3, letter 225, to Chauvelin (12 February 1730). 101. F. Baldensperger, ‘Un jugement diplomatique inédit sur Montesquieu’, RLC, 9 (1929), pp. 348–50. 102. NA, p. 287. 103. Ibid., p. 289 , see W. Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols (London: Hansard, 1806-20), vol. 8, pp. 799–800.

190

Notes to pages 64–70

104. J. Black, The Collapse of the Anglo–French Alliance, 1727–31 (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1987), pp. 199–204. 105. Lyttelton’s work is briefly discussed in R. Ballaster, Fabulous Orients: Fictions of the East in England 1662–1785 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 169–70; C. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry and National Myth, 1725–42 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 39; B. A. Goldgar, Walpole and the Wits: The Relation of Politics to Literature, 1722–1742 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), pp. 140–1; and P. Kra, ‘Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes and George Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian in England’, SVEC, 304 (1992), pp. 871–4. 106. Persian Letters, trans. J. Ozell (London: J. Tonson, 1722), ‘Preface’. Montesquieu owned a copy of this translation, Catalogue, 678. 107. T. Gordon and J. Trenchard, Cato’s Letters: or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and other Important Subjects, ed. R. Hamowy, 2 vols (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1995), vol. 1, pp. xx–xxiv. 108. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle, p. 68 109. Craftsman, 46 (20 May 1727). 110. M. Grenby, ‘Orientalism and Propaganda: The Oriental Tale and Popular Politics in Late-Eighteenth-Century Britain’, The Eighteenth-Century Novel, 2 (2002), pp. 215–37, and J. C. Beasley, ‘Portraits of a Monster: Robert Walpole and Early English Prose Fiction’, ECS, 14 (1981), pp. 406–31. 111. Craftsman, 46 (20 May 1727). 112. LP, letter 94[97]. 113. Craftsman, 159 (19 July 1729) 114. Craftsman, 172 (18 October 1729). The publication of this letter coincided with Montesquieu’s arrival in London. It is the only one of the series to have been noted by Shackleton, who sees it as ‘a delicate compliment’ to Montesquieu on the part of Bolingbroke’s party, Montesquieu, p. 121. 115. LP, letter 138[146]; Craftsman, 47 (27 May 1727). 116. Craftsman, 150 (17 May 1729). 117. A new French edition also appeared London in 1735, see LP, pp. 98–106, 127–8. 118. London Journal, 680 (8 July 1732). 119. See for instance Mist’s Weekly Journal, 175 (24 August 1728). This ‘Persian Letter’ is the only one noted by Christine Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition, p. 39. 120. G. Lyttelton, Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan, 4th edn (London: John Millan, 1735), ‘To the Bookseller’, p. vi. Lyttelton’s work was re-edited four times in the year of its publication. 121. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition, p. 47. 122. Lyttelton, Letters from a Persian, letters 1 and 12. 123. A. Crisafulli, ‘A Neglected English Imitation of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes’, MLQ, 14 (1953), pp. 209–16, p. 216. The comparison of Lyttelton’s Letters with the first French imitation of Montesquieu’s work, Poullain de Saint-Foix’s Lettres d’une Turque à Paris, ecrites a sa sœur au Sérail (1730) confirms Crisafulli’s assessment; Saint-Foix’s work deals mainly with amorous intrigues and the contrast between the mores of Turkish and European women. 124. Lyttelton, Letters from a Persian, letter 23. 125. Ibid., letters 68, 58, 82. 126. Weitzman, ‘The Oriental Tale’, pp. 1848–52. 127. Lyttelton, Letters from a Persian, letters 43, 31, 4, 53.

Notes to pages 70–7

191

128. LP, letter 86[88]. 129. J. Thomson, Liberty, The Castle of Indolence and Other Poems, ed. James Sambrook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 139. 130. The Hyp-Doctor, 230 (15 April 1735). 131. See for instance T. J. Schlereth, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 1694–1790 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977). 132. Calhoun, ‘Imagining Solidarity’, p. 148. 133. OCM, vol. 8, p. 223. 134. A. Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 5–6. 135. Porter, The Enlightenment, pp. 47–8; Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment, p. 38. 136. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 125–6. Montesquieu’s contacts with European intellectuals during his travels are documented in detail by Shackleton, Montesquieu, pp. 90–145. 137. VE, p. 1145. Masson mistakenly reads this as a reference to Victor-Amadeus II of Savoy. However, in the same paragraph Montesquieu refers to the surrender of Maastricht and Pinerolo, territorial losses incurred by France as a result of Louis XIV’s military campaigns. 138. VE, pp. 1016, NA, p. 291.

3 Reconsidering Rome: Considérations sur les … Romains (1734) 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

Voltaire, Correspondence and Related Documents, ed. T. Besterman (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968–77), Best. D803. Shackleton cites critical reviews and other unfavourable comments in Montesquieu, pp. 155–7; further criticisms are collated by C. Volpilhac-Auger (ed.), Montesquieu: Mémoire de la critique (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003) pp. 85–8. Shackleton, Montesquieu, p. 169. P. A. Rahe, ‘The Book that Never Was: Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Romans in Historical Context’, History of Political Thought, 26:1 (2005), pp. 43–89. Rahe, ‘The Book that Never was’, pp. 59–60; see also Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence et Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe, ed. F. Weil et al., OCM, vol. 2, pp. 3–86, 321–37. All references are to this edition, henceforth referred to as CR. CR, pp. 350, 358. Rahe, ‘The Book that Never Was’, p. 55. CR, p. 322. J. Black and J. Lough, ‘The Publication of Montesquieu’s Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence’, BJECS, 11:1 (1988), pp. 71–2. The Herveys admired the Lettres persanes and took advantage of Montesquieu’s residence in London to cultivate his friendship; see R. Halsband, Lord Hervey: Eighteenth-Century Courtier (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 159. Masson, vol. 3, letter 237, to Lady Hervey (28 September 1733). Castel’s corrections to the text are detailed in Masson, vol. 3, letters 240–4 (March–May 1734) and 247 ( July 1734). Masson, vol. 3, letter 248, to *** [Sir Hans Sloane] (4 August 1734).

192

Notes to pages 77–84

14. J. Ehrard, ‘Rome enfin que je hais …?’, and M. Baridon, ‘Rome et l’Angleterre dans les Considérations’, in A. Postigliola (ed.), Storia e Ragione (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1987) pp. 23–32, and 293–309. 15. CR, p. 339. 16. P. Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); C. Grell, Le Dix-Huitième Siècle et l’antiquité en France 1680–1789, 2 vols, SVEC, 330–1 (1995). 17. CR, pp. 105, 89, 200. 18. C. Perrault, Le Siècle de Louis le Grand (Paris: Jean Baptiste Coignard, 1687), p. 3. 19. Gordon and Trenchard, Cato’s Letters, vol. 2, p. 554. 20. B. Magné, Crise de la littérature française sous Louis XIV: humanisme et nationalisme, 2 vols (Paris: Champion, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 745–53. 21. P. Andrivet, Saint-Évremond et l’histoire romaine (Orléans: Paradigme, 1998), and C. Volpilhac-Auger, ‘L’image d’Auguste dans les Considérations’, in Postigliola (ed.), Storia e ragione, pp. 323–5, and 159–68. 22. C. de Saint-Évremond, Œuvres mêlées, ed. L. de Nardis (Rome: Edizione dell’Ateneo, 1966), p. 146. 23. Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome, pp. 19–20. 24. CR, pp. 86-8. 25. Ehrard, ‘Rome enfin que je hais … ?’, pp. 23–5. 26. CR, pp. 197, 256–7. 27. CR, pp. 224–5. 28. Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, letter 8. 29. CR, p. 91. 30. N. Machiavelli, Œuvres de Machiavel, trans. F. Testard, 12 vols (La Haye, 1743), vol. 1, Discours Politiques sur la prémière Décade de Tite-Live, 1.39. Montesquieu owned this same translation of the Discours in an earlier edition, Catalogue, 2400. 31. Rahe, ‘The Book that Never Was’, pp. 62–79; R. Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu and Machiavelli: a Reappraisal’, in Essays on Montesquieu, pp. 117–31; E. Levi-Malvano, Montesquieu e Machiavelli (Paris: Champion, 1912). 32. The French translator of Machiavelli’s works informs readers that ‘the name of Machiavelli is so generally despised … that an honest gentleman exposes himself to censure when he decides to read the work of this author’, Œuvres de Machiavel, vol. 1, ‘Avis du Traducteur’. See also A. Chérel, La Pensée de Machiavel en France (Paris: L’Artisan du livre, 1935), pp. 201–31. 33. Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu and Machiavelli’, pp. 122–8. 34. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, p. 60. 35. A. Pettit, Illusory Consensus: Bolingbroke and the Polemical Response to Walpole, 1730–7 (London: Associated University Presses, 1997), pp. 35–54. 36. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 477–9. 37. H. St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Remarks on the History of England. From the Minutes of Humphry Oldcastle, Esq., 2nd edn (London: R. Francklin, 1747), p.21. 38. CR, p. 152. When modifying his text for publication in France Montesquieu amended the last paragraph of this quotation to read simply ‘the English system of government is commendable, because …’, a change Cecil Courtney considers to be ‘indicative of how sensitive the censorship was at this time concerning anything which praised the English

Notes to pages 84–8

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

193

system of government’, ‘Montesquieu and English Liberty’, in Carrithers (eds.), Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of laws, pp. 273–90 (276). Machiavelli, Discours politiques, 3.9. Spectator, 287 (29 January 1712). CR, p. 152. Ramsay, Essay philosophique, pp. 127–8. M. G. Sullivan, ‘Rapin, Hume and the Identity of the Historian in Eighteenth-Century England’, History of European Ideas, 28 (2002), pp. 145–62, p. 152. P. Langford, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), pp. 62–78. Melton, The Rise of the Public, pp. 27–8, 48–55. See also P. R. Campbell, Power and Politics in Old Regime France 1720–1745 (London: Routledge, 1996). OCM, vol. 13, p. 466 (from Craftsman, 206, 13 June 1730), in English in original. OCM, vol. 13, pp. 457–8 (from Craftsman, 187, 31 January 1730), in English in original. London Journal, 1 December 1733, cited in P. Langford, The Excise Crisis, p. 108. J. Hervey, Ancient and Modern Liberty Stated and Compar’d (1734), The Augustan Reprint Society, 255–6 (1989), pp. 43–5. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution pp. 168–70. Campbell, Power and Politics, pp. 193–4; D. A. Bell, ‘Des stratégies d’opposition sous Louis XV: l’affaire des avocats, 1730–1’, Histoire, économie et société, 9:4 (1999), pp. 567–90. Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, letter 8. CR, p. 156. Machiavelli, Discours politiques, 1.4; see also P. O. Carrese, ‘The Machiavellian Spirit of Montesquieu’s Liberal Republic’, in P. A. Rahe (ed.), Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 121–42. CR, p. 157. After the first edition the adjective ‘Asiatic’ was added to qualify the term ‘despotic government’, presumably to prevent censors from identifying a direct attack on the French state. CR, p. 157. Bolingbroke, Remarks on the History of England, p. 3–8. This debate is continued in the imitation of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes by Bolingbroke’s fellow Patriot Lyttelton, where the protagonist Selim discusses the point with an Englishman: ‘All who have been bred up under absolute Monarchies … are taught, that the superior Advantage of their Form of Government consists in the Strength of Union; and that in other States, where Power is more divided, a pernicious Confusion must ensue. – They argue rightly enough, said the Gentleman …, but they carry the Argument too far. … Parties in Society, are like Tempests in the natural World; they … prevent a Stagnation which would be fatal: All Nations that live in a quiet Slavery, may be properly said to stagnate’, Lyttelton, Letters from a Persian, letter 56. Bolingbroke, Remarks on the History of England, p. 10–11. Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome, pp. 12–24. Machiavelli, Discours politiques, 1.12. CR, p. 181. Montesquieu clarifies this view when he considers the well-known suicidal tendencies of the English in L’Esprit des lois: ‘This action, when performed by the Romans … was justified by their mentality and customs’. However, ‘in an Englishman, it

194

62. 63. 64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82.

Notes to pages 88–93 is a consequence of sickness’, and can therefore have no heroic or virtuous overtones (EL, 14.12–13). CR, p. 110. Ibid., p. 156; Machiavelli, Discours politques, 2.19. The same is true of ‘aggrandisement’, the term which, according to his letter to Lady Hervey (Masson, vol. 3, letter 237), Montesquieu originally intended to use in the title of his work. Rahe, ‘The Book that Never Was’, pp. 68–71. D. Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 170-98; K. J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002), pp. 32–7. CR, p. 144. Ibid., pp. 155–6. J. Shklar, ‘Montesquieu and the New Republicanism’, in G. Bock, Q. Skinner and M. Viroli (eds), Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 265–79, (267). CR, pp. 347, 282. Shackleton, Montesquieu pp. 157–8. Shackleton also points out the titular link between the Considérations and Jacques Marsollier’s Histoire du ministère du cardinal Ximenès, où l’on voit l’origine de la grandeur de la monarchie d’Espagne, les causes de sa décadence … (Catalogue, 456). It is also worth noting a possible English source for this theme in the form of Sir William Temple’s Considérations générales sur l’état et les intérèts de … l’Espagne, de la Hollande, de la France, & de la Flandres par rapport à l’Angleterre … which Montesquieu owned in French translation, (Catalogue, 2355 bis). Temple notes first the ‘causes’ of the ‘Grandeur’ and then of the ‘decadence of Spain’, Œuvres mêlées (Utrecht: Antoine Schouten, 1693), pp. 23–6, first published in English in Temple’s Miscellanea I (1680). OCM, vol. 8, p. 622. N. Vance, ‘Imperial Rome and Britain’s Language of Empire, 1600–1837’, History of European Ideas, 26 (2000), pp. 211–24. CR, p. 200. Ibid., p. 141. Ibid., p. 360. K. O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 11. CR, pp. 263–4. Habermas suggests that the Greek agora and Roman forum were to some extent prototypes of the eighteenth-century public sphere, The Structural Transformation, pp. 3–4. Pettit, Illusory Consensus, p. 38. O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, pp. 12–15; the evolution of historiography in England and France respectively is discussed by L. Okie, Augustan Historical Writing: Histories of England in the English Enlightenment (Lanham: UP of America, 1991), and C. Grell, L’Histoire entre érudition et philosophie: étude sur la connaissance historique à l’âge des Lumières (Paris: PUF, 1993). P. Hicks, ‘Bolingbroke, Clarendon, and the Role of Classical Historian’, ECS, 20:4 (1987), pp. 445–71; see also B. Cottret, Bolingbroke: exil et écriture au siècle des Lumières,

Notes to pages 93–9

195

Angleterre-France (vers 1715–vers 1750), 2 vols (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992), vol. 1, 234– 43. 83. Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. G. Sherburn, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), vol. 2, p. 252. 84. C. Grell, Le Dix-Huitième Siècle et l’antiquité en France 1680-1789, 2 vols, SVEC, pp. 330–1 (1995), vol. 1, pp. 304–6. 85. Masson, vol. 3, letter 242 (23 April 1734). Grell’s bibliography of works on Rome published in eighteenth-century France reinforces Castel’s argument. Catrou and Rouille’s Histoire romaine (1725–32) and Rollin and Crevier’s popular work of the same title (1738–48) ran to twenty-two and sixteen volumes respectively, Le Dix-Huitième Siècle et l’antiquité, vol. 2, pp. 1205–45. 86. Voltaire, Correspondence, Best. D803; see also Shackleton, Montesquieu, pp. 155–7, and Volpilhac-Auger (ed.), Mémoire de la critique, pp. 85–8. 87. Montesquieu drafted a preface but made the decision not to include it when the work was published, CR, p. 315–17. 88. F. Wild, ‘La première réception de Saint-Évremond (1670–1706)’, in S. Guellouz (ed.) Saint-Évremond au miroir du temps (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2005), pp. 249–76. 89. Saint-Évremond, Œuvres mêlées, pp. 92–3. 90. Bolingbroke, Remarks on the History of England, p. 12. 91. CR, pp. 277, 197. 92. Bolingbroke, Remarks on the History of England, p. 95. 93. CR, p. 172. 94. CR, p. 235. 95. Catalogue, 179; see also 3197, J. Chamberlayne, The Present State of Great Britain; with divers Remarks upon the Ancient State thereof (London, 1729). 96. G. Burnet, The Abridgement of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 2 vols (London: J. Walthoe, 1728), vol. 1, pp. iii–v. 97. Montesquieu, Reflections on the Causes of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2 vols (London: W. Innys, 1752), vol. 1, ‘The Printer to the Reader’. 98. B. J. T. Dobbs and M. Jacob, Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism (Ameherst, MA: Humanity Books, 1998), pp. 65–85. 99. J.-F. Baillon, ‘Early Eighteenth-century Newtonianism: the Huguenot Contribution’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 35 (2004), pp. 533–48, p. 544. 100. J. T. Desaguliers, The Newtonian System of the World, the Best Model of Government: An Allegorical Poem (London: A. Campbell, 1728), pp. 3, 17, 33. 101. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle, p. 139. 102. Bolingbroke’s Political Writings: The Conservative Enlightenment, ed. Bernard Cottret (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), p. 197. 103. CR, p. 157. 104. Burnet, Abridgement, vol 1, pp. v–vii. 105. A. Grafton, The Footnote: a curious history (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), pp. 67– 70. 106. CR, pp. 192, 118–19. 107. Pensées, 1462, 1525. 108. C. Volpilhac-Auger, ‘Du bon usage des manchettes et des notes: typographie et genre littéraire chez Montesquieu’, Bulletin du Bibliophile (2003), pp. 257–72, (264–5); see also N. Cronk and C. Mervaud (eds), Les Notes de Voltaire: une écriture polyphonique, SVEC 2003:03.

196

Notes to pages 99–105

109. CR, p. 229. 110. Machiavelli, Discours politiques, 1.11; see also Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu and Machiavelli’, pp. 120–3. 111. OCM, vol. 8, p. 85. 112. CR, pp. 240–1; Campbell, Power and Politics, pp. 237–8. 113. Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, letter 6. 114. In his letter to Lady Hervey (Masson, vol. 3, letter 237), Montesquieu expresses regret that his anonymity has been breached: ‘I wanted to conceal my identity as I did once previously, but my secret was discovered’. 115. Gentleman’s Magazine, 4 (1734), p. 456. 116. J. Spence, Anecdotes, Observations and Characters, of Books and Men. Collected from the Conversation of Mr. Pope, and Other Eminent Persons of his Time (London: W.H. Carpenter, 1820), p. 169. 117. Ogée, ‘“Amicable Collision”’, p. 13. 118. Montesquieu, Reflections on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans (London: W. Innys, 1734), pp. 84, 109. 119. Bolingbroke, Political Writings, pp. 190, 320. 120. Rahe, ‘The Book that Never Was’, pp. 69–70. 121. A. C. Thompson, Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–1756 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), p. 190. 122. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, pp. 52–7. 123. Montesquieu, Reflections (1752), vol. 1, p. 53. 124. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 85, from EL, 21.14. 125. Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment, pp. 370–1. 126. D. Hume, Political Discourses (Edinburgh: R. Fleming, 1752), pp. 4–7. 127. J. Robertson, ‘Universal Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe: Hume’s Critique of an English Whig Doctrine’, in N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner (eds) Political discourse in early modern Britain, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 349–73. 128. Hume, Political Discourses, pp. 112–14. 129. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, pp. 52–9. 130. Montesquieu, Reflections (1752), vol. 1, pp. 144–5, from EL, 11.19. 131. NA, p. 291. 132. T. Lloyd, Empire: The History of the British Empire (London: Hambledon and London, 2001), p. 41. 133. F. J. McLynn, France and the Jacobite Rising of 1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), pp. 75–6; see also U. H. Gonthier, ‘Les Dialogues de Montesquieu et le mouvement jacobite en France’, SVEC, 2005:7, pp. 173–8. 134. T. E. Kaiser, ‘The Drama of Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite Propaganda, and French Political Protest, 1745–1750’, ECS, 30:4 (1997), pp. 365–81 (367–8). 135. OCM, vol. 8, p. 391. 136. Masson, vol. 3, letter 400, to Charles Edward Stuart, n.d. Masson hesitantly dates this letter to March 1748 but Amédée Pichot claims the Considérations were sent to Charles Edward in 1746, see Histoire de Charles-Édouard, dernier prince de la maison de Stuart, précédée d’une histoire de la rivalité de l’Angleterre et de l’Écosse, 2 vols (Paris: Librairie d’Amyot 1845–6), vol. 2, p. 344. 137. L. Nichols, Anecdotes, Biographical and Literary, of the late Mr. William Bowyer, Printer. (London, 1778), p. 12. 138. Montesquieu, Reflections (1752), vol. 1, pp. iv–xxxvi.

Notes to pages 105–11

197

139. Masson, vol. 3, p. 675–89. 140. CR, p. 342.

4 Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism: L’Esprit des lois (1748) 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

EL, 11.6 and 19.27. These two tendencies are best represented by J. Dedieu, Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France and Shackleton, Montesquieu, pp. 284–301. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 21, 173–8. Mona Ozouf also highlights the ‘rapprochement’ between the political cultures of England and France in the last decades of the ancien régime in her article ‘L’opinion publique’, in K. M. Baker (ed.) The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, 4 vols, vol. 1, The Political Culture of the Old Regime (Oxford: Pergamon, 1987), pp. 419–34 (421–2). P. A. Rahe, ‘Forms of Government: Structure, Principle, Object, and Aim’, in Carrithers (ed.), Montesquieu’s Science of Politics, pp. 69–108; Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, pp. 106–26, M. Richter, The Political Theory of Montesquieu, pp. 91–103. An initial connection between England and savagery is suggested early on in L’Esprit des lois when Montesquieu, describing man in the state of nature, footnotes the remark: ‘Witness the savage found in the forests of Hanover who was brought to England during the reign of George I’ (1.2). An account of this incident can be found in M. Newton, Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), pp. 28–45. Courtney, ‘Montesquieu and English Liberty’, pp. 273–6. D. A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 78–95. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, pp. 52–3. P.-A. de La Place, Le Théâtre anglois, 8 vols (London, 1745–9), vol. 1, p. xxxv; see also J. Pemble, Shakespeare goes to Paris: how the Bard conquered France (London: Hambledon and London, 2005), pp. 23–43, and T. Besterman (ed.), Voltaire on Shakespeare, SVEC, 54 (1967). Montesquieu himself was familiar with Shakespeare, though not in La Place’s translation; he owned Pope’s 1728 English edition of his plays, Catalogue, 2152. D. Kelley, ‘Tacitus Noster: The Germania in the Renaissance and Reformation’, in T. J. Luce and A. J. Woodman (eds), Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 152–67, pp. 158–9. C. Volpilhac-Auger, Tacite et Montesquieu, SVEC, 232 (1985), pp. 127–46. H. Weinbrot, ‘Politics, Taste, and National Identity: Some Uses of Tacitism in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, in Luce (ed.) Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition, pp. 168–84, pp. 169–70. T. Gordon, Discours historiques, critiques et politiques sur Tacite, trans. P. Daudé, 2 vols (Amsterdam: F. Changuion, 1742). The Works of Tacitus. To which are prefixed, Political Discourses Upon that Author, ed. and trans. T. Gordon, 2 vols (London: Woodward and Peele, 1728–31), vol. 2, Treatise of Germany, ch. 22. EL, 11.5. Ibid., 14.13. EL, 19.27; Tacitus, Treatise of Germany, ch. 22, 20, 8, 19, 21.

198

Notes to pages 112–19

18. Anon., Faction unmask’d, with Remarks; as Publish’d in the Year 1737. To which is Annex’d, a Short but True Narrative of Several Circumstances Relating to the Late Election of Members of Parliament, for the Borough of Leicester (Leicester: John Gregory, 1755). 19. J.-B. Le Blanc, Lettres d’un François concernant le gouvernement, la politique et des mœurs des Anglois et des François, 3 vols (La Haye: Jean Neaulme, 1745), vol. 3, pp. 264–8. 20. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 349; vol. 3, p. 346. 21. Nablow, The Addisonian Tradition, pp. 79–93. 22. P. A. Rahe, ‘The Enlightenment Indicted: Rousseau’s Response to Montesquieu’, Journal of the Historical Society, 8:2 (2008), pp. 273–302. 23. EL, 11.8. 24. J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: a Study of English historical thought in the seventeenth century: a reissue with a retrospect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 14–17. 25. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition, pp. 117–18. 26. Bolingbroke, Political Writings, pp. 196, 251, 279. 27. Catalogue, 2370; Shackleton, Montesquieu, pp. 297–8. A French translation of the work that also appeared in 1739 would have brought Bolingbroke’s arguments to the attention of readers in France, see D. J. Fletcher, ‘The Fortunes of Bolingbroke in France in the Eighteenth Century’, SVEC, 47 (1966), pp. 207–32 (217–8). 28. R. Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, and the Separation of Powers’, in Essays on Montesquieu, pp. 3–15. 29. EL, 18.23–9. 30. Bibliographers have reached this conclusion based on the fact that chapters 22–31 of book 18 are absent from the manuscript of L’Esprit des lois but are included in the first edition of the work, see H. Barckhausen, Montesquieu: L’Esprit des Lois et les archives de La Brède (Bordeaux: Michel and Forgeot, 1904), pp. 20–1; and EL, vol. 1, pp. xl–lii. 31. EL, 28.4; Montesquieu’s correspondence shows that he was working on the concluding books on Frankish law just a few months before publication, see Masson, vol. 3, letter 401 to Cerati (28 March 1748) and letters 402–5 from Montesquieu’s editor Jacob Vernet ( June-August 1748). 32. P. O. Carrese, The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 82–3. 33. L. Ward, ‘Montesquieu on Federalism and Anglo-Gothic Constitutionalism’, Publius, 37:4 (2007), pp. 551–77. 34. EL, 30.2. 35. Ibid., 28.1–2, 28.27, 30.17. 36. Ibid., 19.5–6. 37. Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, pp. 281–2. 38. EL, 11.6. 39. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition, p. 23; Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle, p. 128. 40. Sidney, Discourses concerning Government, III.28, III.44. Whilst Montesquieu did not own Sidney’s work, his Discourses were reviewed in Huguenot periodicals where his invocation of the myth of the ancient constitution was made clear to French readers; see for instance Henri Basnage de Beauval’s review in his Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans (1702), pp. 63–75 (73). 41. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 224–51. 42. EL, 18.30.

Notes to pages 119–26

199

43. Ibid., 11.5–6. Montesquieu owned a copy of Harrington’s Oceana (Catalogue, 2376); on Harrington’s critique of Germanic government see Pocock, The Ancient Constitution, pp. 128–44. 44. É. Tillet, La Constitution anglaise, un modèle politique et institutionnel dans la France des Lumières (Aix-en-Provence: PU d’Aix-Marseille, 2001), p. 257; Courtney, ‘Montesquieu and English Liberty’, p. 279. 45. The manuscript of L’Esprit des lois reveals that this chapter heading was reworded on at least six occasions, becoming briefer each time, but the word ‘England’ was retained throughout. See C. Volpilhac-Auger, ‘The Art of the Chapter Heading in Montesquieu or “De la constitution d’Angleterre”’, The Journal of Legal History, 25:2 (2004), pp. 169–79. 46. EL, 19.27. 47. S. Mason, ‘Montesquieu on English Constitutionalism Revisited: a Government of Potentiality and Paradoxes’, SVEC, 278 (1990), pp. 105–46. 48. EL, 19.27. 49. Melton, The Rise of the Public, pp. 53–70. 50. EL, 19.27. 51. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 286–8. 52. EL, 19.4. 53. T. E. Kaiser, ‘The Abbé Dubos and the Historical Defence of the Monarchy in Early Eighteenth-Century France’, SVEC, 267 (1989), pp. 77–102, p. 77; Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 31–58. 54. F. L. Ford, Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 225. 55. On the thèse nobiliaire and the thèse parlementaire see Ford, Robe and Sword, pp. 222– 3. 56. J.-B. Dubos, Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie françoise dans les Gaules, 2 vols (Paris: Didot, 1742), vol. 1, p. 39. 57. É. Carcassonne, Montesquieu et le problème de la constitution française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1909). 58. EL, 28.3, 28.12, 30.10. 59. L. Althusser, Montesquieu, la politique et l’histoire (Paris: PUF, 1959), p. 106; Israel, Enlightenment Contested, p. 290. 60. EL, 11.6. 61. Ibid., 30.25, 31.8. 62. Ibid., 30.3, 30.16. 63. E. Russo, ‘Virtuous Economies: Modernity and Noble Expenditure from Montesquieu to Caillois’, in Gordon (ed.), Postmodernism and the Enlightenment, pp. 67–92. 64. EL, 2.4, 11.6. 65. Ibid., 20.21. 66. J. Swann, ‘Robe, Sword and Aristocratic Reaction Revisited: The French Nobility and Political Crisis (1748–1789)’, in R. G. Asch (ed.), Der europäische Adel im Ancien Régime: von der Krise der ständischen Monarchien bis zur Revolution (1600–1789), (Cologne: Böhlau, 2001), pp. 151–78; see also J. Rogister, Louis XV and the Parlement of Paris, 1737–1755 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and J. Egret, Louis XV et l’opposition parlementaire 1715–1774 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970). 67. LP, letter 125[131].

200

Notes to pages 126–34

68. LP, letters 125[131] and 97[100]. A lawyer by training, Montesquieu fully appreciated the dominance of Roman jurisprudence within the French legal system. This is demonstrated by his own legal notebooks or Collectio juris, OCM, vols 11–12. 69. Ibid., 11.6, 11.13. 70. M. Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 108–9. 71. V. de Senarclens, Montesquieu historien de Rome: un tournant pour la réflexion sur le statut de l’histoire au XVIIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 2003), pp. 253–7. 72. EL, 28.22. 73. OCM, vol. 9, pp. 91-2, 97. 74. U. H. Gonthier, ‘Montesquieu’s De la manière gothique, or Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des arts et de leur décadence’, in P. Damian-Grint (ed.), Medievalism and Manière Gothique in Enlightenment France, SVEC, 2006:05, pp. 335–40. 75. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des loix. Nouvelle edition, avec les dernieres corrections & illustrations de l’auteur 2 vols (Edinburgh: Hamilton and Balfour, 1750), vol. 1, ‘Avis au lecteur’. 76. A. D. de Tracy, A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s ‘Spirit of Laws’: To Which Are Annexed, Observations on the Twenty-Ninth Book, by the late M. Condorcet, trans. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia, PA: William Duane, 1811), pp. 45–6. 77. Voltaire, article ‘Lois (Esprit des)’, in Œuvres complètes, ed. L. Moland, 52 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1877–85), vol. 20, p. 5. 78. EL, 30.12 Voltaire, Œuvres complètes, vol. 30, p. 448. 79. T. Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), p. xiii. 80. OCM, vol. 13, p. 466 (from Craftsman no.206, 13 June 1730), in English in original. 81. EL, 14.3, 30.1. 82. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution, pp. 16–20. 83. EL, 29.19, 29.1. 84. Ibid., 31.34.; J. Q. C. Mackrell, The Attack on ‘Feudalism’ in Eighteenth-Century France (London: Routledge, 1973), p. 28. 85. EL, 11.20. 86. Kelley, ‘Tacitus Noster’, p. 162. 87. EL, 18.22. 88. C. Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 217; Kidd also comments (p. 214) that Gothicism had some affinity with the cosmopolitanism of enlightened Grand Tourists, thus suggesting a link between the motivation behind Montesquieu’s travels in Europe and the author’s subsequent support for Gothic liberties. 89. CR, p. 360. 90. Pensées, 1727. 91. Bell, Cult of the Nation, pp. 90–2, and L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 17–25. 92. Kidd, British Identities, pp. 211–13. 93. Bolingbroke, Political Writings, p. 297. 94. EL, 11.6. 95. NA, p. 288. 96. Weinbrot, ‘Politics, Taste and National Identity’, p. 177.

Notes to pages 135–8

201

97. E. Baigent, ‘Nugent, Thomas (c. 1700–1772)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Nugent later published an account of his travels in Germany in which he affirmed that George III’s new Queen, the Princess of Mecklenburg, came from the province where the Germanic ancestors of the English had originated, Travels through Germany, 2 vols (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1768), vol. 1, p. 58; see also Langford, Englishness Identified, p. 9. 98. On the English translation of L’Esprit des lois see Masson, vol. 3, letters 442, from Bulkeley (21 January 1749), 492, from Domville (4 May 1749) and 565, to Thomas Nugent (18 October 1750). 99. Montesquieu, Two Chapters of a Celebrated French work, Intitled, De l’Esprit des loix, translated into English. One, Treating of the Constitution of England; Another, of the Character and Manners which Result from this Constitution (Edinburgh: Hamilton and Balfour, 1750), ‘Advertisement’, n.p.; see also C. P. Courtney, ‘Montesquieu et ses relations anglaises’, in Montesquieu, œuvre ouverte? (1748–55), Cahiers Montesquieu, 9 (2005), pp. 147–62 (150–1). 100. Montesquieu, Two Chapters of a Celebrated French Work, p. 18. 101. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution, pp. 367–70; R. J. Smith, The Gothic Bequest: Medieval Institutions in British Thought, 1688–1863 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 43–5. 102. These episodes are reported to Montesquieu by correspondents, Masson, vol. 3, letter 480, from David Hume (10 April 1749) and 495, from Madame de Tencin (7 June 1749). 103. P. Cheney, ‘Constitution and Economy in David Hume’s Enlightenment’, in C. Wennerlind and M. Schabas (eds), David Hume’s Political Economy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 223–43; F. Oz-Salzberger, ‘The Political Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment’, in A. Broadie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 157–77. 104. D. Lieberman, ‘The Mixed Constitution and the Common Law’, in M. Goldie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, pp. 317–46, pp. 328–30; Ward, ‘Montesquieu on Federalism’, p. 572. 105. Masson, vol. 3, letter 492 (4 June 1749), in French in original. Lord Bulkeley (letter 462) and Charles Yorke (letter 604), express similar sentiments; Yorke thanks Montesquieu ‘as an Englishman, for the honour you have done to the laws and manners of our country. In some respects, you seem to know us better than we do ourselves’. In Yorke’s view, Montesquieu has touched on England’s faults with a ‘friendly’ hand, ‘though the manner is too strong not to be felt’. 106. Masson, vol. 3, letter 499, to Domville (22 July 1749). 107. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle, p. 171; Leiberman, ‘The mixed constitution’, p. 327. 108. Rahe, ‘Forms of Government’, pp. 94–6. 109. D. Desserud, ‘Commerce and political participation in Montesquieu’s Letter to Domville’, History of European Ideas, 25:3 (1999), pp. 135–51 (136). 110. Pensées, 1960. 111. EL, 19.5–6; Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty, pp. 107–16. 112. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 170–2. 113. EL, 11.6, 19.27. 114. D. J. Fletcher, ‘Montesquieu’s Conception of Patriotism’, SVEC, 56 (1967), pp. 541–55, pp. 550–4.

202

Notes to pages 138–44

115. Bolingbroke, Political Writings, pp. 356–7. Dedieu sees a link between Montesquieu’s theory of the ‘esprit général’ and ideas contained in Bolingbroke’s Patriot King. To support this claim he points out that as Bolingbroke’s work was written in the late 1730s and copies were printed and circulated privately by Pope in 1740–1, Montesquieu could potentially have read the text before its official publication in 1749, Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise, pp. 271–3. 116. Pensées,.1860 117. In 1754, Bolingbroke’s adversary William Warburton presented Montesquieu with his critique of Bolingbroke’s recently published Philosophical Works. Montesquieu responded that his own reading of Bolingbroke had given him the impression of an ‘impassioned’ author, but one who only used his passion destructively when it could have been better employed to constructive ends, Masson, vol. 3, letters 701, from Warburton (9 February 1754) and 714, to Warburton (May 1754). 118. Weinbrot, ‘Politics, Taste and National Identity’, p. 184; Tacitus was a Roman consul and was married to the Emperor Agricola’s daughter. 119. EL, 11.6 120. C. Mervaud, ‘Des relations de voyage au mythe anglais des Lettres philosophiques’, SVEC, 296 (1992), pp. 1–15 (12). 121. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, p. 32. 122. Mervaud, ‘Des relations de voyage’, p. 14. 123. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle, p. 152. 124. F. T. H. Fletcher, ‘The Poetics of L’Esprit des lois’, MLR, 37 (1942), pp. 317–26 (322– 3). 125. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution, p. 15. 126. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole, pp. 145–9

5 Aesthetic Allegiances: Essai sur le goût (c. 1753–5) 1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

Masson, vol. 3, letter 691, to D’Alembert (16 September 1753); Masson dates this letter to November 1753 but this has been convincingly revised by R. Condat, ‘Le manuscrit d’une lettre de Montesquieu’, Littératures, 13 (1985), pp. 143–9. The additional sections were published in 1798 and 1804. See Annie Becq’s introduction to Montesquieu, Essai sur le goût, in OCM, vol. 9, pp. 461–86, hereafter referred to as ESG. Voltaire later expanded his article to form the entry ‘Taste’ in his Questions sur l’Encyclopédie (1770–2), whilst D’Alembert’s contribution was based on an address he had given at the Académie française in March 1757. ESG, p. 488. Beyer draws attention to previous judgements of the work as ‘incoherent and inadequately suited to the magnitude of its subject, ‘Montesquieu et le relativisme esthétique’, SVEC, 24 (1963), pp. 171–82 (172–3); whilst Shackleton addresses the question ‘why is the Essai sur le goût so weak?’, ‘Montesquieu et les beaux-arts’, in Essays on Montesquieu, pp. 103–7 (103). OCM, vol. 18, letter 236, to Jean-Jacques Bel (29 September 1726). Shackleton and Beyer also point to extracts from Montesquieu’s Pensées dating from before 1728 which include ‘several ideas … which I did not manage to fit into my work On Taste’ (Pensées, 108–35). Montesquieu’s use of this material when composing the Essai is analysed in detail by Annie Becq, ‘Les Pensées et l’Essai sur le goût’, Revue Montesquieu, 7 (2003–4),

Notes to pages 144–8

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

203

pp. 57–65. Given that no manuscript version of the Essai as it appeared in the Encyclopédie is extant, it is difficult to make conclusive judgements regarding the genesis of the text. Montesquieu, Essai sur le goût, ed. Ch.-J. Beyer, (Geneva: Droz, 1967), introduction, pp. 14–29. Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu et les beaux-arts’, p. 106. ESG, pp. 465–71. D. A. Thomas, ‘Taste, Commonality and Musical Imagination in the Encyclopédie’, in D. Brewer and J. C. Hayes (eds), Using the Encyclopédie: Ways of Knowing, Ways of Reading, SVEC, 2002:05, pp. 187–209, and ‘Negotiating Taste in Montesquieu’, ECS, 39:1 (2005), pp. 71–90. Thomas, ‘Negotiating Taste’, pp. 72–7; on this point see also Céline Spector, ‘Une théorie matérialiste du goût peut-elle produire l’évaluation esthétique? Montesquieu, de L’Esprit des lois à L’Essai sur le goût’, Corpus, 40 (2001), pp. 167–213. Thomas, ‘Taste, Commonality and Musical Imagination’, pp. 198–9. G. Dickie, The Century of Taste: The Philosophical Odyssey of Taste in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 3–18; P. Kivy, The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson and Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). Catalogue, 696–7, 701–2. J.-B. Le Blanc, Observations sur les ouvrages de MM. de l’Académie de peinture et de sculpture exposés au Salon du Louvre en l’année 1753 … (Paris, 1753), p. 120. M. Moriarty, Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 189–90. T. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 1–3. A. Becq, Genèse de l’esthétique française moderne: de la Raison classique à l’Imagination créatrice, 1680–1814, 2 vols (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1984), vol. 2, p. 779–80; Blanning, The Culture of Power, pp. 106–8; and M. Ledbury, ‘Imagining the Salon: Mapping Art Criticism in the Eighteenth Century’, in J. Mallinson (ed.), The Eighteenth Century Now: Boundaries and Perspectives, SVEC, 2005:10, pp. 205–19. On the relationship between literary and artistic criticism and the growth of public opinion in France, see Chartier, Origines culturelles de la Révolution, pp. 192–8. Becq, Genèse de l’esthétique française, vol. 1, pp. 145–70. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, pp. 275–360. Masson, vol. 3, letter 691, to D’Alembert (16 September 1753): ‘It is a powerful piece, a charming piece, very precise; containing more thoughts than words, feeling as well as thought, and I could go on …’ D. Townsend, ‘Lockean Aesthetics’, JAAC, 49:4 (1991), pp. 349–61. Locke, Essay, II.xii.1–5. J. de La Bruyère, Les Caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle (Paris: Estienne Michallet, 1688), pp. 82–3. Locke, Essai, II.xii.1–5. F. Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises, ed. W. Leidhold (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2004), ‘An Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, &c.’, I.17. ESG, p. 487.

204

Notes to pages 149–54

29. Voltaire, Œuvres completes, vol. 19, p. 279. Within the Encyclopédie itself, Voltaire also refers to ‘the famous Addison’ in his article ‘Imagination’ and quotes from ‘the eleven essays on the imagination, with which he enriched the pages of the Spectator’. 30. Spectator, 413 (24 June 1712); ESG, p. 488. 31. ESG, pp. 491–3; Spectator, 411 (21 June 1712). 32. Spectator, no.415 (26 June 1712); ESG, pp. 494–5. 33. Free-holder, 1 (23 December 1715). 34. Spectator, 412 and 414 (23–25 June 1712). 35. EL, 11.3. 36. ESG, pp. 491–2; André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) designed Louis XIV’s gardens at Versailles. 37. Spectator, 411 (21June 1712). 38. Locke, Essay, II.xxxiii.5–7; M. Kallich, ‘The association of ideas and critical theory: Hobbes, Locke, and Addison’, ELH, 12:4 (1945), pp. 290–315. 39. Spectator, 417 (28 June 1712). 40. ESG, pp. 498–501. 41. Spectator, 412 (23 June 1712); ESG, p. 489. 42. Hutcheson, ‘Inquiry concerning Beauty’, VI.1; C. W. Korsmeyer, ‘Relativism and Hutcheson’s Aesthetic Theory’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 36:2 (1975), pp. 319–30. 43. ESG, p. 488. 44. The elitist note of Voltaire’s article was enhanced when he lengthened it for inclusion in the Questions sur l’Encyclopédie. Here he adds: ‘The home of taste is an exclusive residence to which the populace cannot gain entry … Taste is like philosophy, it is in the hands of a very small number of privileged beings’, Œuvres complètes, vol. 19, p. 282. 45. EL, 19.8–9. 46. Hutcheson, ‘Inquiry concerning Beauty’, V.1. 47. Hutcheson, ‘Inquiry concerning Beauty’, I.13. 48. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 202. 49. J. Stolnitz, ‘On the Origins of “Aesthetic Disinterestedness”’, JAAC, 20:2 (1961), pp. 131–43, and ‘On the Significance of Lord Shaftesbury in Modern Aesthetic Theory’, Philosophical Quarterly, 11:43 (1961), pp. 97–113. 50. ESG, p. 487. 51. E. A. Bohls, ‘Disinterestedness and denial of the particular: Locke, Adam Smith, and the subject of aesthetics’, in P. Mattick Jr (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 16–51. 52. J. Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘The Body of the Public’ (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 1–6; P. De Bolla, N. Leask and D. Simpson (eds), introduction to Land, Nation and Culture, 1740–1840: Thinking the Republic of Taste (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 1–11. 53. ESG, pp. 487–8. 54. Spectator, 409 (19 June 1712). 55. C. A. Knight, ‘The Spectator’s Generalizing Discourse’, in J. A. Downie and T. N. Corns (eds), Telling People What to Think: Early Eighteenth-Century Periodicals from the Review to the Rambler (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 44–57, pp. 51–2. 56. ESG, p. 488. 57. Montesquieu’s selection of works is consistent with his view that those who wish to ‘direct the taste or judgement of the public‘ should measure aesthetic value in terms of works ‘that have stood the test of time’, Pensées, 1541.

Notes to pages 154–8

205

58. T. Dykstal, ‘The Politics of Taste in the Spectator’, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 35:1 (1994), pp. 46–63 (51–4). 59. D. Marshall, ‘Shaftesbury and Addison: criticism and the public taste’, in H. B. Nisbet and C. Rawson (eds), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, 9 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989-), vol. 4, The Eighteenth Century, pp. 633–57. 60. OCM, vol. 18, letter 339, to Mme de Lambert (26 December 1728). 61. Crow, Painters and Public Life, pp. 2–3. 62. Stolnitz, ‘Origins of “Aesthetic Disinterestedness”’, p. 131. 63. Blanning, The Culture of Power, pp. 13, 106–8. 64. ESG, pp. 489, 509. 65. Shaftesbury, Characteristics, pp. 66–7; Stolnitz, ‘Significance of Lord Shaftesbury’, p. 99. 66. Spectator, 419 (1 July 1712); M. H. Abrams, ‘From Addison to Kant: Modern Aesthetics and the Exemplary Art’, in R. Cohen, (ed.), Studies in Eighteenth-Century British Art and Aesthetics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 16–48 (34–7). 67. ESG, pp. 513–4. This passage can usefully be compared to the notes made by Montesquieu from Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, which include comments on Italian opera. Addison also considered Italian productions to be in poor taste. Montesquieu notes his critical remarks on ‘the opera which was most popular when he was in Venice, which depicted the rivalry between Caesar and Scipio for Cato’s daughter’, OCM, vol. 16, p. 15. 68. Stolnitz, ‘Origins of “Aesthetic Disinterestedness”’, pp. 142–3. 69. Hutcheson, ‘Inquiry concerning Beauty’, III.1–5. 70. ESG, pp. 488–90. 71. Stolnitz, ‘Origins of “Aesthetic Disinterestedness”’, p. 143; Spectator, 412 (23 June 1712). 72. For Voltaire, taste is the instinctive ability to sense ‘the beauty of an artwork’, while D’Alembert’s definition is more restrictive: ‘Taste … cannot be said to apply to all the beauties which a work of art might contain’. 73. ESG, p. 487. 74. Shaftesbury’s Notion of a Tablature was first published in French in the Amsterdam edition of the Journal des Sçavans in November 1712. An English version was appended to the 1714 edition of the Characteristics which Diderot is said to have consulted when translating Shaftesbury’s Inquiry into French in the 1740s; see F. Badelon, ‘Son pittor anch’io: traduction et composition chez Diderot’, La Lettre clandestine, 9 (2000), pp. 227–41. 75. Shaftesbury, A Notion of a Tablature, or The Judgement of Hercules, in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 2nd edn, 3 vols (London: John Darby, 1714), vol. 3, p. 348. 76. M. Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 83–9 77. ESG, pp. 495–6. Montesquieu may have encountered Diderot’s article as well as Shaftesbury’s original work. Although the catalogue of the library at La Brède makes no mention of the Encyclopédie Montesquieu’s letter to D’Alembert shows that he was familiar with the editors’ preliminary discourse and he could well have had access to successive volumes as they appeared. 78. Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, pp. 89–90. 79. Shaftesbury, Characteristicks (1714), vol. 3, p. 377. 80. ESG, p. 493.

206

Notes to pages 159–69

81. Shaftesbury, Characteristicks (1714), vol. 3, p. 390. 82. ESG, pp. 502–4. This unmistakeable application of the doctrine ut pictura poesis comes direct from Horace’s Ars poetica, where the poet proclaims: ‘Poems are like pictures; … some please only once, others still provide new pleasures on the tenth viewing’, Horace, Epistles II, l.361–5 (my translation). 83. Barrell, Political Theory of Painting, pp. 27–43. 84. Hutcheson, ‘An Inquiry concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good’, III.8. 85. J.-B. Dubos, Réflexions sur la poésie et sur la peinture, 3 vols (Paris: P.-J. Mariette, 1733), vol. 1, p. 38; vol. 2, p. 334. 86. OCM, vol. 18, letter 236, to Jean-Jacques Bel (29 September 1726) 87. ESG, pp. 507, 488. 88. Dubos, Réflexions, vol. 2, pp. 325–6. Jean-Jacques Bel published a Dissertation où l’on examine le sentiment de M. l’abbé Dubos … in the Bibliothèque françoise in 1726, to which Montesquieu was responding in his correspondence. Bel points out the obvious flaw in Dubos’s argument, which is that he claims artistic ‘sentiment’ to be an innate instinct possessed only by those who have received a gentleman’s education. See Becq, Genèse de l’esthétique française, vol. 1, p. 313. 89. Kaiser, ‘The Abbé Dubos and the Historical Defence of the Monarchy’, p. 101. 90. W. Ray, ‘Talking About Art: the French Royal Academy Salons and the Formation of the Discursive Citizen’, ECS, 37:4 (2004), pp. 527–52, p. 530. 91. J. Le Rond d’Alembert, Œuvres complètes, 5 vols (Paris: Bossange, 1821–22), vol. 4, p. 372. 92. Chartier, Origines culturelles de la Révolution, pp. 192–8. 93. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, pp. 42–3; Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 168–70. 94. A. Gerard, An Essay on Taste with Three Dissertations on the same Subject by Mr. De Voltaire, Mr. D’Alembert, F.R.S. & Mr. de Montesquieu (London: A. Millar, 1759), pp. 100, 189; see also Marjorie Grene, ‘Gerard’s “Essay on Taste”’, Modern Philology, 41:1 (1943), pp. 45–58. 95. Gerard, An Essay on Taste, pp. 212, 253, 259. 96. S. P. Donlan, ‘”Language is the Eye of Society”’: Edmund Burke on the Origins of the Polite and the Civil’, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 18 (2003), pp. 80–96 (86–7). 97. E. Burke, ‘On Taste’, introduction to A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 2nd edn (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1759), p. 31. 98. E. Burke, (ed.), The Annual Register or a View of the History, Politics and Literature, for the Year 1758 (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1758), p. 311. 99. ESG, pp. 487–8. 100. T. Furniss, Edmund Burke’s Aesthetic Ideology: Language, Gender and Political Economy in Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 23, 33, 68–9. 101. Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke, pp. 53, 182. 102. J. G. Rosso, ‘Montesquieu, Diderot et l’Encyclopédie’, Diderot Studies, 25 (1993), pp. 63–74 (69); R. Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: a Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979), p. 10. 103. Bell, Cult of the Nation, pp. 107–39; J.-C. Bonnet, Naissance du Panthéon: Essai sur le culte des grands hommes (Paris: Fayard, 1998), pp. 55–66.

Notes to pages 165–73

207

104. R. Chartier, ‘L’homme de lettres’, in M. Vovelle (ed.), L’homme des Lumières (Paris: Seuil, 1996), pp. 159–209; J.-M. Goulemot and D. Oster, Gens de lettres, écrivains et bohèmes: l’imaginaire littéraire 1630-1900 (Paris: Minerve, 1992), pp. 7–8. 105. Bell, Cult of the Nation, pp. 116–17. 106. In 1752 the state council issued a writ denouncing the first two volumes of the Encyclopédie as containing ‘several maxims designed to destroy royal authority, to usher in a spirit of independence and revolt, and … to instate error, moral corruption, irreligion and scepticism’, see Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, p. 10. 107. R. Morrissey, ‘The Encyclopédie: monument for a nation’, in Brewer (ed.) Using the Encyclopédie, pp. 143–61, pp. 151–3. 108. E. Dziembowski, Un Nouveau Patriotisme français, 1750–1770: la France face à la puissance anglaise à l’époque de la guerre de Sept Ans, SVEC, 365 (1998), pp. 59–110. 109. Bell, Cult of the Nation, pp. 78–95. 110. L. Perret, ‘Le succès paradoxal d’une préface militante: l’Éloge de Montesquieu par D’Alembert’, in I. Galleron (ed.), L’Art de la Préface au Siècle des Lumières, (Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2007), pp. 69–77 (75). For a longer excerpt from Chesterfield’s obituary, see p. 1 above. Interestingly, D’Alembert quotes the text of the obituary as originally composed by Chesterfield, rather than the version published in the English press. 111. Dziembowski, Un Nouveau Patriotisme, p. 111. 112. Ibid., pp. 29–34. 113. Shackleton, Montesquieu, p. 379. 114. For a reproduction of Dassier’s model, see the frontispiece in Shackleton, Montesquieu; Bell comments on the popularity of such representations, which conveyed independence, virtue and dedication to the common good in accordance with contemporary notions of republican citizenship, Cult of the Nation, pp. 126–7.

Conclusion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

Dziembowski, ‘The English Political Model’, pp. 152–5. Ibid., p. 156. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 31–58. Dziembowski, ‘The English Political Model’, pp. 162–4. EL, 11.20. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 185–6. Melton, The Rise of the Public, pp. 54–5. Claude-Carloman de Rulhière, Discours de réception à l’Académie française (1787), cited in M. Ozouf, ‘“Public Opinion” at the End of the Old Regime’, Journal of Modern History, 60 (suppl.) (1988), pp. S1–S21, (S6). Habermas, The Structural Transformation, p. 42.

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INDEX

absolutism, 4–5, 8, 13–15, 19–20, 23, 25–7, 31, 34, 63, 65, 85, 87, 105, 112, 118, 120–2, 129, 146, 155, 161, 170–2 academies, 45, 70, 72 Académie de Bordeaux, 45, 53–4 Académie française, 36 Act of Settlement, 105 Act of Toleration, 100 Act of Union, 102 Addison, Joseph, 8, 32, 51, 53, 56, 73, 159–60, 162, 163, 172 anti-Catholicism, 54–5, 150 Cato, 16 Free-Holder, 150 ‘On the Pleasures of the Imagination’, 145, 148–51, 153–4, 156–7 Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, 50–2, 54 Spectator, 6–7, 28–32, 34, 41, 50–1, 84, 155, 162 see also Whig ideology aesthetics, 10, 143, 146–7, 150–4, 156, 159–60, 163–4 aesthetic disinterestedness, 152–3, 155 Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 108 Althusser, Louis, 123 America see New World Amsterdam, 13, 19, 58, 76–7 ancient constitution, 42, 83, 114–5, 118–9, 125–6, 130, 135–7, 140–1, 170, 172 André, Yves-Marie, père, 145 Anglicanism see Protestantism anglomanie, 6–7, 168 anglophilia, 6, 10, 166–8

anglophobia, 6, 19, 40, 59, 108–9, 112, 167 see also savagery, English Anglo–French relations, 2, 6–7, 28, 40, 44, 59–60, 64, 68, 70–3, 75–6, 89, 92, 102, 104–8, 112, 116, 132–3, 137, 139, 166–73 alliance, 9, 13, 15, 42–3, 59, 64, 71–3, 75, 89, 102, 106 intellectual exchange, 15, 26, 35, 44, 68, 73, 101, 105, 110, 143, 146–7, 149, 158–9, 163, 169–73 Anne, Queen, 13 antiquarianism, 51, 93–4, 105 antiquity, 77–9, 82, 106, 127, 129, 170 see also quarrel of the ancients and the moderns aristocracy, 49, 56, 70, 82, 122–5, 136 Aristotle, 30–1 architecture, 149, 154, 157 art, 10, 48, 52–3, 57, 127, 144, 146–7, 149, 154–8 Arthur, King, 124 Asia, 21, 67–8, 90 see also Orientalism association of ideas, 150–1 Augustus, Emperor, 76, 79–81, 84, 88–9, 94 Austria, 43, 56–7, 64, 102 alliance with England, 64, 83, 102 authority, 21, 25, 27–8, 34, 36, 38, 52, 55, 62, 97, 125, 138, 154–5, 161–2, 171–2 Bacon, Francis, 45–6, 143 Baker, Keith Michael, 2, 5, 86, 107, 140, 170–1

– 229 –

230

Index

Basnage de Beauval, Henri, 6, 17 Batteux, Charles, abbé, 145, 157 Bavaria, 57 Bayle, Pierre, 17, 99, 121 beauty, 145, 147–8, 151, 156–7 Bel, Jean-Jacques, 144, 160 Bellegarde, Jean-Baptiste Morvan de, 44 Bible see Christianity Black, Jeremy, 15 Bolingbroke, Henry St John, Viscount, 43, 60–1, 65, 70, 72, 86, 88, 96, 101, 118, 121, 125, 132–3, 135–6, 138–41, 172 Craftsman, 7, 60–1, 65–8, 83, 85, 87, 93, 97, 104, 115, 172 Dissertation upon Parties, 97, 102, 115–6, 133, 141 Idea of a Patriot King, 138 Remarks on the History of England, 83–5, 78, 93–4, 101, 104, 130, 172 see also Patriot party book trade, 93, 95 Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 9, 15, 18, 79 Bouhier, Jean, 112 Boulainvilliers, Henri, comte de, 122–3 Bowyer, William, 103–5 Boyle, Robert, 45, 48 Bribery in Elections Act, 61 Burke, Edmund, 163–4 Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques, 134 Burnet, Gilbert, 95–7, 99, 101 Caesar, Julius, Emperor, 95, 156 Camden, William, 115 Canada, 104 Caroline, Queen, 59, 63 Carteret, John, Baron, 135 Cartesianism, 35–6, 144 Cassirer, Ernst, 3, 147 Castel, Louis-Bertrand, père, 77, 94 Catholicism see religion Cato, 88, 156 Cato’s Letters see Gordon, Thomas Caylus, comte de, 158 censorship, 19, 33–4, 37, 76–7, 98–100, 106 Chambers, Ephraim, 143 Charles I, 15, 21, 88, 114 Charles II, 80 Chartier, Roger, 2, 162

Chauvelin, Germain Louis, 63 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of, 1, 59, 167–8 Christianity, 38 in Rome, 80, 99 biblical teaching on obedience, 25 see also religion climate, 49, 54, 111, 121, 139–40 Clovis, 122–3 clubs, 4, 29–30 see also Entresol Civil War, English, 15, 25–6, 59, 80–1, 108 coffee-houses, 4, 29, 31–2, 63 Colombier, Claude Jordan de, 15–16 Columbus, Christopher, 91 colonisation see empire commerce, 20, 55, 57–8, 67, 103, 125, 128, 136 common people, 49, 56, 58–9, 62–3, 111, 123, 161 Constantine, Emperor, 99 corruption, 5, 56, 58, 60–1, 65, 67, 133, 136, 140 Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, marquis de, 127 Coulon, Louis, 59 Country party, 112, 136 court, 4, 31–2, 34, 56, 68, 70, 81, 136, 146 cosmopolitanism, 9, 71–2, 106, 131, 165, 168, 172 Coste, Pierre, 35, 47 Craftsman see Bolingbroke Cromwell, Oliver, 15, 59, 80, 102 Crousaz, Jean-Pierre de, 144 Crusades, 90 cultural relativism, 29, 49–50, 78, 88 D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 143–4, 147, 152, 154, 157, 162–3, 165 ‘Éloge de Montesquieu’, 165–8 see also Encyclopédie Darnton, Robert, 2 Dassier, Jacques Antoine, 168 De Broglie, François-Marie, Duke, 63 Desaguliers, John Theophilus, 96–7 despotism, 20, 22, 57, 67, 69, 81, 129, 143, 154 D’Iberville, Charles François de la Bonde, 63

Index Diderot, Denis, 143, 145–6, 151, 157–9, 165 see also Encyclopédie Dion Cassius, 98 diplomacy, 43, 59, 63, 72, 76 diversity, 3, 50–1, 131, 144 Domville, William, 136–7 D’Orléans, Pierre Joseph, père, 15, 18, 22, 26 D’Orléans, Philippe, Duke, 13–14, 31, 41 see also Regency Dubois, Guillaume, cardinal, 13 Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, abbé Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie françoise dans les Gaules, 122–4, 161 Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, 144, 146, 157, 159–62 Dunkirk, 43, 64, 70 economy, 67 English, 5, 13–14, 20, 40, 66, 120, 136, 170 see also South Sea Bubble French, 7, 13–14, 20 see also Law, John elections, 16, 61, 63, 86, 112 empire, 20, 89–91, 103–6, 109 see also Roman Empire empiricism, 35, 45–8, 50, 53, 73, 95, 97–8, 101, 171–2 Encyclopédie, 10, 37, 143–5, 147, 154, 156–7, 161–2, 164–8, 171 England anti-French sentiment, 31, 55, 64, 70–2, 102, 115, 132–3 as myth, 140–1, 170, 172 as republic, 19, 25, 72 constitution, 1, 9–10, 62–3, 69, 84–5, 96, 106–8, 110–13, 115–21, 123–6, 128–9, 131, 133–7, 161, 166–70, 172–3 exceptionalism, 18, 21, 62, 66, 70, 132 society, 44, 56, 59–61, 64, 67–9, 80, 107, 119–20 see also parliament, liberty and savagery, English Enlightenment, 2–3, 10, 14, 35, 71–2, 121, 135, 147, 162, 172–3

231

postmodern critique of, 3 Entresol, Club de l’, 43, 60 esprit général, 94, 96, 121 Europe, 1–2, 4–5, 8–9, 19–22, 27, 32, 34, 40, 42–44, 48–49, 55, 57, 59, 62, 64, 71, 73, 75–9, 82, 89, 92, 113, 170 united, 72, 91, 106, 131– Excise Crisis, 85–6 federalism, 116 feudalism, 55, 116, 118, 122, 130–1, 141 Filmer, Robert, 25 Florence, 51, 53, 55 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 121 footnotes, subversive use of, 97–9 Franklin, Benjamin, 104 France constitution, 42, 107–8, 113, 115–9, 121–6, 131, 137, 139, 170, 172 see also Germanist thesis national character, 49, 60, 117, 139 society, 31, 36, 41–2, 70, 137 François I, 91 Franks, 9, 115–7, 121–5, 128, 131, 137, 139, 141 Fréart de Chambray, Roland, 149 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 68, 138 French Revolution, 2, 164 Fronde, 26, 80 Gaultier, Jean-Baptiste, abbé, 37 Gay, Peter, 3 Genoa, 52, 56–7 George I, 13, 115 George II, 58–9, 68, 96 Gerard, Alexander, 163–4 Germanist thesis, 122–3, 126, 139, 141 Germany, 43, 49, 57–8, 114, 130, 134, 140 see also savagery, German Gibbon, Edward, 99 Glorious Revolution, 2, 4, 7, 13, 15, 19, 27, 52, 76, 88, 102, 135, 169–70 Bill of Rights, 7, 16, 69, 102, 170 Gordon, Thomas Cato’s Letters, 65, 79 Political Discourses on Tacitus, 110 Gothicism in art, 127, 141, 149

232

Index

in government, 108, 113, 115–8, 121–33, 137, 139–41 see also identity, national and cultural Grand Tour, 8, 43–5, 51, 54–5, 64, 72–3, 75, 154, 165 Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, baron, 158

journalism see press jurisprudence, 116, 126–7 Justinian, Emperor, 81 Kidd, Colin, 132–3

La Bruyère, Jean de, 148 La Place, Pierre-Antoine de, 109 Lambert, Anne-Thérèse, marquise de, 154 Latin, 45, 52, 57, 93, 130, 154 Law, John, 14, 20, 67 Le Blanc, Jean-Bernard, abbé, 112, 146 Le Clerc, Jean, 6, 17, 23, 39 Leicester, 112 lese-majesté, 21, 25–6, 80 liberty, 56–8, 73, 85, 87–8, 90, 92, 94, 104–5, 114, 118, 130, 132, 150, 168 in England, 7, 15–16, 18, 20, 24, 42, 59, 61–2, 64, 66–8, 70, 72–3, 81, 87, 110–12, 118–9, 133–8, 140, 150 see also press, freedom of libraries, 20, 29, 31, 72 Licensing Act, 4, 28 Livorno, 57 Livy, 56, 82–3, 86, 99 Locke, John, 7–8, 26, 34, 40–1, 45, 48, 50–1, 53, 73, 99, 143, 146, 150–1, 155, 162, 175 Essay concerning Human Understanding, 35–7, 44, 47, 49, 147–8 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, 18 Letter concerning Toleration, 39 Some Thoughts concerning Education, 45 identity, national and cultural, 20, 42, 49, 55, Two Treatises of Civil Government, 25 71, 110, 129–33 London, 29, 32, 43, 62, 66, 77, 79–80, 134, India, 104 167–8 Israel, Jonathan, 2–3, 6, 10, 35, 72, 121, 123, Louis XIV, 13–15, 17, 26–7, 32–3, 56, 72, 147 75–6, 79–80, 114 Islam, 34, 37–8, 69, 100 see also Augustus, Emperor Italy, 43, 49, 51–2, 54–7, 73, 131, 154 Louis XV, 85–6, 125 Lucan, 159 Jacobites, 16, 18, 62–3, 104–5, 112, 134 Lyttelton, George, Baron, 71 Rebellion 1715, 13, 16, 150 Letters from a Persian in London, 8, 65, Rebellion 1745, 9, 104–5, 108–9, 116, 68–70, 72 132 James II, 13, 15, 88 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 82–4, 86, 88–9, 99 Jefferson, Thomas, 127 Mandeville, Bernard, 23–4, 152 Habermas, Jürgen, 3–5, 7, 41, 83, 162, 173 see also public sphere Hague, The, 59 Hanover, 58 Hanoverian dynasty, 9, 13, 16, 62, 72, 80, 96, 105, 115, 134–5, 173 Harrington, James, 7, 119, 121, 130–1 Henley, John, 71 Henrietta-Maria, Queen, 15 Henry VII, 82 heroism, 88, 105 Hervey, John, Baron, 77, 86 Hervey, Lady Mary, 77 historiography, 9, 20, 75, 77, 92–3, 97–8, 101, 105, 173 Hobbes, Thomas, 7, 22, 152–3 Holland, 17, 19, 43, 49, 58–9, 77 Homer, 154 Hotman, François, 122 Huguenots, 6, 8, 17–18, 27, 39, 81, 96 as journalists see press human nature, 50, 145, 152, 161 Hume, David, 103, 135–6 Hungary, 43, 55, 57 Hutcheson, Francis, 7, 10, 50, 145–6, 148, 151–3, 155, 157, 160, 162–3, 172

Index Marana, Giovanni Paulo, 31–3 Marius, 104 Marxism, 5, 123 medieval period see Middle Ages Mexico, 90 Michelangelo, 156 Middle Ages, 55, 127, 129 middle classes, 136–7 Middle East see Asia miracles, 55 Misson, Maximilien, 51–2 modernity, 55, 58, 77, 79, 82, 127–9, 169–70 monarchy, 20, 25, 72, 124, 129 Montaigne, Michel de, 57 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de anonymity, 13, 33, 76, 100 and international relations see diplomacy and Europe, united knowledge of English, 23, 57 library holdings, 17, 25, 28, 35, 45, 47, 82, 95, 97, 115, 145, 157, obituary, 1, 167 and posterity, 3, 10, 165–8 reception of work in England, 7–8, 65, 68–73, 77, 101–6, 108, 163–4, 173 visit to England, 1, 8, 43–4, 57, 59–65, 73, 170 Considérations sur les … Romains, 9, 53, 73, 75–106, 111, 126, 131–2, 166, 170–3 translation of, 77–8, 101–6, 130 Considérations sur les richesse de l’Espagne, 90 De la manière gothique, 127 Dialogue de Sylla et d’Eucrate, 104–5 Discours sur les motifs qui doivent nous encourager aux sciences, 46 Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion, 99 Essai d’observations sur l’histoire naturelle, 45–6, 71 Essai sur le goût, 10, 52, 143–68, 171–2 translation of, 163–4 L’Esprit des lois, 1, 9, 14, 37, 42, 49, 103–4, 106, 107–41, 152, 161, 166, 170–3

233

translation of, 134–5 see also ‘Querelle de l’Esprit des lois’ Lettres persanes, 8, 13–42, 51, 59–60, 75, 77, 99–101, 125, 129, 131, 145, 165, 170–3 translation and imitation of, 8, 44, 65–73, 77, 173 Notes sur l’Angleterre, 43, 59–65, 73, 170 ‘Quelques réflexions sur les Lettres persanes’, 37–8 Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe, 75–6, 78, 89–91, 98, 106, 132 Réflexions sur la sobriété des habitans de Rome, 54 Remarques sur certaines objections que m’a faites un homme qui m’a traduit mes Romains en Angleterre, 105 Spicilège, 60, 83, 85, 93, 130 Voyages en Europe, 8, 43–73, 171–2 More, Thomas, 130–1 Muralt, Béat Louis de, 42, 60 Naples, 55 national character, 49 nationalism, 132 neo-classicism, 148 Nero, Emperor, 79 Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of, 102 Newton, Isaac, 45–6, 66, 96, 143, 165 Newtonianism, 96–7 New World, 77, 89, 91, 104, 109 noblesse de robe see aristocracy Nugent, Thomas, 134–5 opera, 156 Orientalism, 29, 65–7, 69–70, 81, 129 Ovid, 154 Ozell, John, 65, 68 Padua, 57 papacy, 38, 42, 54–5 Paris, 30–2, 34–6, 41, 66, 77 Parma, 48 parlements, 5, 14, 26, 28, 86, 100, 120, 136, 170 Paris, 26, 85–6, 99

234

Index

Bordeaux, 14 parliament, 61–2, 64, 71, 73, 85, 118, 133–6, 161 Lords, 61, 119–20, 123, 125 Commons, 52, 61–2, 64, 70, 119–20, 125, 128, 134 see also corruption, patriotism, 4, 71, 137–8, 165, 167, 172 Patriot party, 43, 60, 65, 68, 70–1, 86, 96–7, 102, 115, 118, 121, 133, 138–9 patronage artistic, 146, 155 literary, 32–3, 68, 100, 138, 166, 172 political, 61, 65, 134, 136 Perrault, Charles, 79 Persia, 19, 21, 32, 36, 66–7 Plato, 138 Pocock, John G. A., 83, 114, 130 Poland, 91 politeness, political parties, 16, 68, 85–7, 96, 106, 111–2 Pompey, 95 Pope, Alexander, 93, 101 Porter, Roy, 3, 72 press, 60, 62–3, 67, 72, 77, 83, 92–3, 173 freedom of, 28, 62–4, 70, 73, 120, 170, 172 French, 16–18, 28, 104–5 Huguenot periodicals, 4, 6, 17–18, 23, 25, 27–8, 38–9, 41, 43, 45, 169, 173 and Montesquieu, 17, 60, 83, 85, 93, 104–5 Pretender see James II Prévost d’Exiles, Antoine-François, abbé, 60, 62, 64, 70, 80 printing, 92, 98 Protestant Succession see Hanoverian dynasty Protestantism, 6, 13, 15–17, 39, 55, 57, 69, 81, 100, 133 see also Huguenots Prussia, 57–8 public opinion, 16, 65, 93, 104, 120, 140, 160, 162, 170–1 public sphere, 3–5, 9–10, 19, 21, 30–4, 37–8, 40–1, 45–6, 52, 54, 56, 62–5,

70–1, 73, 77, 81, 83, 88, 92, 96, 100–2, 106–7, 120–1, 126, 137, 139, 146, 160, 162, 165, 169–73 Pulteney, William, 60, 135 Quadruple alliance, 72 Quakers, 100 Quarrel of the ancients and moderns, 79 ‘Querelle de l’Esprit des Lois’, 37, 166 Ramsay, Andrew, 16, 43, 84 Raphael, 159 Rapin de Thoyras, Paul Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys, 16 Histoire d’Angleterre, 60, 84 Regency, 13–15, 17, 26–7, 31, 33, 41, 69, 120 regime change, 15, 21 religion, 5, 15, 36–40, 55, 57, 66, 78, 80–1, 100, 106, 121, 146, 156, 165 social influence, 34, 54, 100 see also tolerance and Unigenitus Renaissance, 57, 82, 114, 129, 154 republicanism, 19–20, 25, 56, 58–9, 87 see also England, Rome Republic of Letters, 3–4, 71–2, 131, 168 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes see Huguenots Rica, 19–20, 30–1, 33–9, 42, 67, 126 Robertson, John, 2–3, 72, 103 Romanist thesis see Germanist thesis Romanticism, 140–1 Rome, 9, 53–8, 75–106, 109, 112, 122–3, 126–7, 129–30, 138, 140, 170, 172 Roman Republic, 76, 83–4, 86, 88–9, 95–6, 104, 112–3, 126 Roman Empire, 31, 54, 73, 76, 78–9, 81, 88–90, 92, 99–100, 104, 106, 114, 122, 125–6, 129 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 113, 127, 134 Royal Society, 45, 47, 53, 77, 95–6 Philosophical Transactions, 18, 45 Russia, 91 Saint Augustine, 100 Saint-Évremond, Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, sieur de, 9, 79, 94 salons, 31, 34, 137

Index Salon (art exhibition), 146, 161 Sardinia, 56, 102 savagery, 129, 140–1 English, 8, 15, 18, 27, 59, 108–13, 116–7, 121–2, 128, 133, 139, 167 German, 57, 108–11, 113, 121, 128 Saxons, 118, 131 Scandinavia, 131 science, 18, 45–7, 53–4, 66, 71, 95, 100, 106, 166 scientific revolution, 5 see also empiricism Scottish Enlightenment, 135 secularity, 3, 34, 37, 99–101, 127, 146, 152 separation of powers, 4, 10, 84, 97, 110, 115 Servius Tullius, 82 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 7–8, 10, 32–3, 45, 50, 99, 172 aesthetics, 145–6, 148, 152–3, 155–60, 163 sociability, 22–4, 26, 28, 30–1, 39, 41, 56, 69, 153, 155 politeness, 28, 30, 41, 56 and religion, 38–40 Shackleton, Robert, 1, 60, 75, 83, 90, 115, 144 Shakespeare, William, 109 Shippen, William, 62 Sidney, Algernon, 7, 25, 118, 172 Skinner, Quentin, 10 slavery, 3, 91 Sloane, Sir Hans, 77 sociability, 28, 33–4, 56, 137 Socrates, 29, 138, 165 Spain, 13, 90–1, 102, 131 Spectator see Addison Spence, Joseph, 101 Spinoza, Benedict, 35, 121 South Sea Bubble, 20, 65 standing army, 62 Starobinski, Jean, 14, 46 Steele, Joseph, 28 stock exchange, 58, 67, 70, 100 Stuarts, 16, 80, 105, 109, 116, 134–5 Charles Edward, 105 see also Jacobites sublime, 144, 157, 164 Sulla, 104–5

235

Swift, Jonathan, 67 Tacitus, Cornelius, 128, 138, 140–1 Germania, 9, 108–11, 113, 115–7, 121–2, 131–2, 134, 138–9 taste, 10, 143–67, 172 Temple, William, theatre, 16, 31, 99, 109 Thomson, James, 71 Tiberius, Emperor, 80 tolerance, 38–40, 60, 80, 91, 100, 120, 170 Tory party, 16, 62–3, 112 Townshend, Charles, Viscount, 58 trade see commerce translation, 8–9, 101 Trenchard, John, 65 Troglodytes, 23–4, 29–30, 41, 69 Unigenitus, 85–6, 99 universal monarchy, 75–6, 92, 102–4 Usbek, 19–27, 29–31, 33–40, 42, 66–9, 129 Utrecht, Treaty of, 13, 15, 42–3, 64 see also Dunkirk Venice, 19, 47–9, 52, 56, 58–9, 159 Versailles, 56, 81, 150 Vesuvius, 51 Vienna, 32 Treaty of, 83 Virgil, 154, 159 Voltaire, 80, 99, 108, 125, 127, 134, 141 critique of Montesquieu, 75, 94, 128, 131 Lettres philosophiques, 18, 60, 64, 70, 72, 76, 81, 86, 100, 128, 140 and taste, 144, 148–9, 152, 155, 157, 163 Waldegrave, James, Earl, 43, 58, 76 Walpole, Robert, 43, 60–1, 64, 66–71, 83, 85–8, 102, 115, 133 War of the Austrian Succession, 102–3, 108, 132 War of the Polish Succession, 102 War of the Spanish Succession, 8, 75 War, Nine Years’, 8 War, Second Hundred Years’, 7, 170 War, Seven Years’, 2, 7, 10, 167 Wars of Religion, 26 Whig

236 political party, 16, 60, 63, 112, 115, 135–6 ideology, 25, 54, 56, 79, 84, 110, 118

Index William of Orange, 135 women, influence in society, 111