De la Législation: Ou Principes des Loix
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Adams#: Adams 273.8 Title: De la législation : ou Principes des loix
Author: Mably
Page: front matter
Marmontel said to me, "M. L'Abbe de Mably n'a jamais ecrit que des choses commune et en style commun."
7-9
Page: 13
This truth is not incompatible with his Lordship's maxims.
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Au contraire.
Aux Diables!
So do the savages of North America.
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Not at all.
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Excellent.
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As passions, are not the love of glory, the love of country, the love of liberty, and the love of law insatiable too?
Douteux. Neither riches nor morals can defend a country without a constitution.
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Vrai.
The entire prosperity of any state is in the discipline of its armies. King of Prussia.
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Chimera!
But neither morals, nor riches nor discipline of armies, nor all these together, will do without a constitution.
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L'Anglois.
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The French are as much alike as the Indians.
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But all men are not Horaces and Marlboroughs.
This is giving up the point.
Yes? Every man of genius has more than a hundred arms? A figure, a face, has a thousand arms.
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A league may be formed to support you.
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Consideration is inequality.
Men have not lost what they never had.
This is giving up the argument. The Abby is in truth very weak upon this subject of equality.
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Of right.
Equal rights, equal laws, but not equal power.
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True! But destruction of your system, Abby!
What is the independence of a child or its mother?
It is only in point of rights that men are born or created either equal or independent. All that he says is sophistry upon this head.
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Fiction.
Because inequality is not equality.
But have they need of any?
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Sparta could not maintain its own population.
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Stark mad.
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Has not nature made men ambitious? is not emulation natural? Man is more sensible to praise than to piety.
If avarice followed property, ambition preceded it.
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An innate passion for war and an innate passion for distinction are different things.
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Ambition is the excess of these.
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Ask the Sachims. Ask the Indians. Who determines this?
Poor Abby!
Ah! Paresse!
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Pas difacile.
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This is to write ambition.
This is greatest of all inequalities.
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Here it always must end.
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Quere.
Vrai.
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Visions!
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Visions!
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Vrai.
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Tres vrai.
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The magistrates were sacred.
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True.
Ridicule.
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Where was this?
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Mistake.
Why?
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Prophecy.
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Principe sure.
Ridicule.
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Thou shalt not steal: nor covet. The Commandments are not sufficient to make property sacred. A balance was wanting in their constitution.
And no arbiter between them.
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The nobility alone in monarchies have made property secure.
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The balance alone can do this.
The Abby has not seen the true source of the passions. Ambition springs from the desire of esteem and from emulation, not from property.
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Smart but not wise.
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Assez ridicule.
Voila.
Les ressorts du Gouvernement are indeed the only remedy. A balance there is the only hope. This the Abby was not enough sensible of.
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Poh!
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Grave coxcomb.
They never had any.
Fire and water may live in peace when wealth and the republic of Sparta can be reconciled.
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Nothing but the balance of government can attach them to justice.
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Peace and no foreign ministers, no expense.
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True.
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Neither the ancient laws nor the new regulations completed nor preserved the balance of the government.
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A measure que propriete croitra.
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Life and limbs and liberty are to be defended as well as property.
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Vrai.
Mais.
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Proh dolor!
That men were different.
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Franklin's hypocrisy.
Marchmont Needham's nonsense.
While Rome had no property, their heroes were poor and proud, but as soon as she had property, laurel and oak would not do.
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Miserable commonplace.
Vrai.
Virtue and talents must have pay where there is property.
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It is not because pomp touches him more than his duties: but because it touches the people more than his virtues.
John De Witt was respected to be sure at last by the people.
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The people had better pay them than let France pay them.
De Mably was only weak. Another teacher of this doctrine was wicked.
Will he know less for not having any legal pay?
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Sans doute.
Whatever can be done to restrain avarice and encourage generosity with discretion should be done.
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But the balance of the government alone can be effectual.
Generosity tends to venality.
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Proh dolor.
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If there is no dike versus the torrent.
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Thou shalt not covet. If that law is not obeyed, what other law will be?
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This is the genuine source of the passions.
It would be better than that the poor should perish. Abby, thou hast it not right.
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There is no need of elogisms on riches. The New Testament makes no elogium on them. An immoderate thirst of them is a vice and is not honorable.
The people would not vote for consuls, orators, praetors, or questors who could not, or would not, entertain them with exhibitions of pictures, statues, and vases.
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The rich would hoard and the poor suffer.
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J'en doute.
Commerce is more in honor in America than in England or even Holland. Merchants give the ton. Is this a good symptom? Our first magistrates and citizens are merchants.
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Slapdash.
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The good Abby thought then of his faithful domestic, to whom he finally gave what he had.
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But would you forbid a man to be worth money?
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The people will never believe that a poor man has the same right as a rich one.
Make the harvest as poor as you will, the republic will still be divided into patricians and plebians.
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Gratis dictum.
Gratis dictum.
All this is gratis dictum.
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Where is the country that is not?
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But not the same property.
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And so it was at its establishment.
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Was there ever a people who possessed riches without esteeming them?
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And the happiness for which men are born.
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Patriots.
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Pour tres peu de temps.
Il en est toujours infecte.
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Dignes de rien.
The Swedish patriots understood not a balance.
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All that is here said of the caprice of fortune is become very interesting from the late revolution in France.
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It seems impossible that a man who could write this should not understand the whole system of government yet.
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Faute of a balance to the avarice and ambition of the Senate or Diet.
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How was no third power to balance between the King and the Diet?
This was absurd.
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If power is not in proportion to dignity, dignity is only a snare to prince and people.
Excellent.
What new laws?
Madness.
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Nothing but a balance can restrain these passions.
What answer has 25 years of time given to this Swedish presumption?
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This is pitiful ignorance and weakness.
As many regulations versus luxury as you will, but without a balance they are idle. Corn would procure popularity and votes in the poorest ages of Rome.
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Who is to be judged?
Strange.
Who is then?
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Infallible.
Infallible.
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When did Lacedaemon love peace?
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It was not these citizens who laid the foundation. They were laid in the Constitution.
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These things will excite pride and ambition and love of war in spite of all your philosophy.
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Vid. our treaty with Prussia.
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Is it possible the Abby should think all this would do?
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I know not what to say to this.
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Certainly, if they had been shut also versus other powers.
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Oh blindness!
Oppression, jealousy, rivalry, divisions, seditions, wars.
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This rivalry should be between the legislative and executive.
This requires great consideration.
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But if they are at the head of a party, that party will support them if the majority.
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This deserves a great consideration.
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There will always arise a Melius, a Cassius, or a Mantius, in such cases. The people will always look out for such a one and stir him up.
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What nation ever had such courage?
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When was Rome far from these passions?
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Because she knew no better.
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Lycurgus was the favorite but Mahomet might have been with as much reason. Lycurgus had ambition for the blood of Hercules as much as William Penn had of avarice of land.
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There is a reciprocity here.
Ah! Melancholy hath.
But, my friend Abby, thou seest not in a true light the distemper nor the remedy. This populace is forever seeking a protector versus the gentlemen and sooner or later will have him.
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How?
Who shall have the appointment of them?
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This total ignorance and error is astounding. The only thing which could preserve Solon's constitution.
The executive in England is not yet so venal.
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Hear him.
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Oh no.
Venice or Poland.
Is lot better than inheritance.
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Most certainly.
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This is not so clear.
Even here there is danger.
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Ballot.
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Ambition is the excess of emulation.
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Ah the secret.
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Near but not quite true.
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True.
True.
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Very true.
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Had the Abby considered the consequences of what he says here?
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Who casts these germs?
True.
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There ought not to be more than three.
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No. No.
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Strange.
Has the Diet, the Cortes, or the States General done less?
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This is not certain, nor probable. The nation would not have acquiesced.
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These ideas have unhappily prevailed in America but are not right.
Ministers are responsible.
Ruin of Sweden.
By making the King absolute?
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The mistakes here have been proved since.
Count de Vergennes's revolution.
Law always the work of passions when any passions are unlimited.
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Avarice and ambition unchecked will work ruin everywhere.
Whether you leave avarice and ambition uncontrolled in the majority of a national assembly, or of a senate, or in a council or a king, ruin is equally certain.
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Has love no evil fruit? Has superstition, enthusiasm? Has vanity none?
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Livy and Tacitus may call it liberty, but it was not. It was patrician tyranny.
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Necker, La Fayette, Mirabeau, who?
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True.
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They would have set up a Cæsar in Melius Cassius or Manlius, or Gracchus.
True.
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Ergo the King ought to have a negative.
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Examine this history.
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This project was as disinterested.
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As that of Lycurgus or William Penn.
Voila!
Gustavus was a favorite character of General Gates and Washington has read his Life.
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President.
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This is more than Parliament can do, according to Coke.
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Turkey.
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Divide these states and see what will be the effect.
I deny the fact. The desires of the ancients were as immoderate as those of the moderns.
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Louis XVI perhaps.
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I should rather say than a mutual check of patricians and plebeians. The patricians loved not liberty or law better than before. The Plebeians loved not liberty or law better than before, but neither could usurp so easily.
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Just.
True.
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This is not the secret. Reform the representatives and the prerogatives of the crown will not be too great.
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A reform of Parliament would reform the manners.
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Voltaire or Vergennes.
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Shortsighted legislator.
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Short sight.
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The majority is omnipotent but not omniscient.
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The majority of the deputies have commonly too much influence over the majority of the nation.
So thinks the National Assembly in 1791. But it is folly.
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Louis XVI
Poor multitude.
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Experience is the best teacher.
These precautions cannot curb an unbridled majority.
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Rules and orders are necessary in all assemblies.
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Good ends but not all.
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Horrid credo.
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Did the creditor or debtor despise riches?
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What barriers?
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Shallow.
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Serious thought.
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Such a law ought never to be made. Money ought never to be despised. Money is a good, though honor is better and virtue best of all.
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What equality is meant here?
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Why is not three contrarieties still more beneficial?
Very just.
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The Abby mistakes.
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This perfect equality can be established only by three branches and no more. The plebeians did think of establishing Melius, Cassius, and Mantius for defenders.
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How is this to be reconciled to the fanatical ideas of love of liberty, country, etc. in other parts of this book?
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This remark is doubtful.
Too strong.
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These were no light punishments. It can only be in times of ignorance that a censor can exist. What would our newspapers make of such an officer?
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How?
I doubt whether kings deserve all this satire. They are like other men.
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If an organization had been given to every natural interest in society which would have enabled it to speak and act, things would have gone better.
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Quelle follie.
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In the time of Richelieu.
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Poh!
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Is not this love of glory the mother of passion?
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This is a commonplace observation but its truth may be doubted.
This idea of boiling blood misled the Abby in his Treatise on Morals in his later days and disgraced [next page]
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him in some degree.
Good. Our custom of wrestling ought to be preserved.
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Is it Such a felicity to be confined in a cage, den or cave? Is this liberty?
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Love of distinction.
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The love of glory will breed sophistry.
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Monkery.
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Love of stature.
Good.
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Good.
Good.
Property, but this is imperfect.
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This is a pity.
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In no sense can this equality be established but by a balanced government.
Good and true.
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Nature has made some strong, some weak, some handsome, some ugly. Abby, thou comprehend it not.
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Strange.
Good.
But will it be equal to the esteem of those who have virtues and riches too?
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Where is that equality that is contended for?
Ah corruption!
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Good.
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Good.
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Good.
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Another system.
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Good.
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True.
Very well.
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Good.
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Good.
Between exterminating Rohillas and scaring Americans.
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Very good.
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Of atheism.
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The National Assembly has not done this yet.
Nonsense certainly.
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What a catechism.
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Good.
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This is admirable!
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Good.
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Good.
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Good.
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Good.
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Good.
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Davila. Esprit du la Ligue.
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The King really never had much power.
Nota.
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Nota.
Nota.
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Nota.