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Thus Charlemagne had scarcely founded his empire when he was obliged to divide it; whether the governors of the provinces refused to obey; or whether, in order to keep them more under subjection, there was a necessity of parcelling the empire into several kingdoms.

After the decease of Alexander his empire was divided. How was it possible for those Greek and Macedonian chiefs, who were each of them free and independent, or commanders at least of the victorious bands dispersed throughout that vast extent of conquered land -- how was it possible, I say, for them to obey?

Attila's empire was dissolved soon after his death; such a number of kings, who were no longer under restraint, could not resume their fetters.

The sudden establishment of unlimited power is a remedy, which in those cases may prevent a dissolution: but how dreadful the remedy, which after the enlargement of dominion opens a new scene of misery!

The rivers hasten to mingle their waters with the sea; and monarchies lose themselves in despotic power.

18. Particular Case of the Spanish Monarchy. Let not the example of Spain be produced against me, it rather proves what I affirm. To preserve America she did what even despotic power itself does not attempt: she destroyed the inhabitants. To preserve her colony, she was obliged to keep it dependent even for its subsistence.

In the Netherlands, she essayed to render herself arbitrary; and as soon as she abandoned the attempt, her perplexity increased. On the one hand the Walloons would not be governed by Spaniards; and on the other, the Spanish soldiers refused to submit to Walloon officers.[30]

In Italy she maintained her ground, merely by exhausting herself and by enriching that country. For those who would have been pleased to have got rid of the king of Spain were not in a humour to refuse his gold.

19. Distinctive Properties of a despotic Government. A large empire supposes a despotic authority in the person who governs. It is necessary that the quickness of the prince's resolutions should supply the distance of the places they are sent to; that fear should prevent the remissness of the distant governor or magistrate; that the law should be derived from a single person, and should shift continually, according to the accidents which necessarily multiply in a state in proportion to its extent.

20. Consequence of the preceding Chapters. If it be, therefore, the natural property of small states to be governed as a republic, of middling ones to be subject to a monarch, and of large empires to be swayed by a despotic prince; the consequence is, that in order to preserve the principles of the established government, the state must be supported in the extent it has acquired, and that the spirit of this state will alter in proportion as it contracts or extends its limits.

21. Of the Empire of China. Before I conclude this book, I shall answer an objection that may be made to the foregoing doctrine.

Our missionaries inform us that the government of the vast empire of China is admirable, and that it has a proper mixture of fear, honour, and virtue. Consequently I must have given an idle distinction in establishing the principles of the three governments.

But I cannot conceive what this honour can be among a people who act only through fear of being bastinadoed.[31]

Again, our merchants are far from giving us any such accounts of the virtue so much talked of by the missionaries; we need only consult them in relation to the robberies and extortions of the mandarins.[32] I likewise appeal to another unexceptional witness, the great Lord Anson.

Besides, Father Perennin's letters concerning the emperor's proceedings against some of the princes of the blood[33] who had incurred his displeasure by their conversion, plainly show us a settled plan of tyranny, and barbarities committed by rule, that is, in cold blood.

We have likewise Monsieur de Mairan's, and the same Father Perennin's, letters on the government of China. I find therefore that after a few proper questions and answers the whole mystery is unfolded.

Might not our missionaries have been deceived by an appearance of order? Might not they have been struck with that constant exercise of a single person's will -- an exercise by which they themselves are governed, and which they are so pleased to find in the courts of the Indian princes; because as they go thither only in order to introduce great changes, it is much easier to persuade those princes that there are no bounds to their power, than to convince the people that there are none to their submission.[34]

In fine, there is frequently some kind of truth even in errors themselves. It may be owing to particular and, perhaps, very extraordinary circumstances that the Chinese government is not so corrupt as one might naturally expect. The climate and some other physical causes may, in that country, have had so strong an influence on their morals as in some measure to produce wonders.

The climate of China is surprisingly favourable to the propagation of the human species.[35] The women are the most prolific in the whole world. The most barbarous tyranny can put no stop to the progress of propagation. The prince cannot say there like Pharaoh, "Let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply." He would be rather reduced to Nero's wish, that mankind had all but one head. In spite of tyranny, China by the force of its climate will be ever populous, and triumph over the tyrannical oppressor.

China, like all other countries that live chiefly upon rice, is subject to frequent famines. When the people are ready to starve, they disperse in order to seek for nourishment; in consequence of which, gangs of robbers are formed on every side. Most of them are extirpated in their very infancy; others swell, and are likewise suppressed. And yet in so great a number of such distant provinces, some band or other may happen to meet with success. In that case they maintain their ground, strengthen their party, form themselves into a military body, march up to the capital, and place their leader on the throne.

From the very nature of things, a bad administration is here immediately punished. The want of subsistence in so populous a country produces sudden disorders. The reason why the redress of abuses in other countries is attended with such difficulty is because their effects are not immediately felt; the prince is not informed in so sudden and sensible a manner as in China.

The Emperor of China is not taught like our princes that if he governs ill he will be less happy in the other life, less powerful and less opulent in this. He knows that if his government be not just he will be stripped both of empire and life.

As China grows every day more populous, notwithstanding the exposing of children,[36] the inhabitants are incessantly employed in tilling the lands for their subsistence. This requires a very extraordinary attention in the government. It is their perpetual concern that every man should have it in his power to work, without the apprehension of being deprived of the fruits of his labour. Consequently this is not so much a civil as a domestic government.

Such has been the origin of those regulations which have been so greatly extolled. They wanted to make the laws reign in conjunction with despotic power; but whatever is joined to the latter loses all its force. In vain did this arbitrary sway, labouring under its own inconveniences, desire to be fettered; it armed itself with its chains, and has become still more terrible.

China is therefore a despotic state, whose principle is fear. Perhaps in the earliest dynasties, when the empire had not so large an extent, the government might have deviated a little from this spirit; but the case is otherwise at present.

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1. See Plutarch in Timoleon and Dion.

2. It was that of the Six Hundred, of whom mention is made by Diodorus, xix. 5.

3. Upon the expulsions of the tyrants, they made citizens of strangers and mercenary troops, which gave rise to civil wars. -- Aristotle, Politics, v. 3. The people having been the cause of the victory over the Athenians, the republic was changed. -- Ibid., 4. The passion of two young magistrates, one of whom carried off the other's boy, and in revenge the other debauched his wife, was attended with a change in the form of this republic. -- Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. The aristocracy is changed into an oligarchy.

7. Venice is one of those republics that has enacted the best laws for correcting the inconveniences of an hereditary aristocracy.

8. Justin attributes the extinction of Athenian virtue to the death of Epaminondas. Having no further emulation, they spent their revenues in feasts, frequentius coenam, quam castra visentes. Then it was that the Macedonians emerged from obscurity, 9, 1. 6.

9. Compilation of works made under the Mings, related by Father Du Halde, Description of China, ii, p. 648.

10. During the reign of Tiberius statues were erected to, and triumphal ornaments conferred on, informers; which debased these honours to such a degree that those who had really merited them disdained to accept them. Frag. of Dio, lviii. 14, taken from the Extract of Virtues and Vices, by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. See in Tacitus in what manner Nero, on the discovery and punishment of a pretended conspiracy, bestowed triumphal ornaments on Petronius Turpilianus, Nerva, and Tigellinus. -- Annals, xiv. 72. See likewise how the generals refused to serve, because they condemned the military honours: pervulgatis triumphi insignibus -- Ibid., xiii. 53.

11. In this state the prince knew extremely well the principle of his government.

12. Herodian.

13. Aristotle, Politics, ii. 10.

14. They always united immediately against foreign enemies, which was called Syncretism. -- Plutarch Moralia, p. 88.

15. Republic, ix.

16. Plutarch, Whether a Man Advanced in Years Ought to Meddle with Public Affairs.

17. Republic, v.

18. The Gymnic art was divided into two parts, dancing and wrestling. In Crete they had the armed dances of the Curetes; at Sparta they had those of Castor and Pollux; at Athens the armed dances of Pallas, which were extremely proper for those that were not yet of age for military service. Wrestling is the image of war, said Plato Laws, vii. He commends antiquity for having established only two dances, the pacific and the Pyrrhic. See how the latter dance was applied to the military art, Plato, ibid.

19. Aut libidinosce. Lad?as Lacedamonis pal?stras. -- Mutual, iv, 55.

20. Plutarch, in the treatise entitled Questions Concerning the Affairs of the Romans, question 40.

21. Ibid.

22. Plutarch, Table Propositions, book ii, question 5.

23. Book i, pref.

24. Livy, iii. 20.

25. Ibid., 32.

26. About a hundred years after.

27. See xi, 12.

28. See Dio, xxxviii, Cicero in Plutarch, Cicero to Atticus, iv. 10, 15. Asconius on Cicero, De Divinatione.

29. As when a petty sovereign supports himself between two great powers by means of their mutual jealousy; but then he has only a precarious existence.

30. See M. Le Clerc, the History of the United Provinces.

31. "It is the cudgel that governs China," says Father Du Halde, Disc. de la Chine, ii, p. 134.

32. Among others, De Lange's account.

33. Of the Family of Sourniama, Edifying Letters, coll. xviii.

34. See in Father Du Halde how the missionaries availed themselves of the authority of Canhi to silence the mandarins, who constantly declared that by the laws of the country no foreign worship could be established in the empire.

35. See Lettres persanes, 210.

36. See the order of Tsongtou for tilling the land, in the Edifying Letters, coll. xxi.

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Book IX. Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to a Defensive Force

1. In what Manner Republics provide for their Safety. If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection.

To this twofold inconvenience democracies and aristocracies are equally liable, whether they be good or bad. The evil is in the very thing itself, and no form can redress it.

It is, therefore, very probable that mankind would have been, at length, obliged to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical, government. I mean a confederate republic.

This form of government is a convention by which several petty states agree to become members of a larger one, which they intend to establish. It is a kind of assemblage of societies, that constitute a new one, capable of increasing by means of further associations, till they arrive at such a degree of power as to be able to provide for the security of the whole body.

It was these associations that so long contributed to the prosperity of Greece. By these the Romans attacked the whole globe, and by these alone the whole globe withstood them; for when Rome had arrived at her highest pitch of grandeur, it was the associations beyond the Danube and the Rhine -- associations formed by the terror of her arms -- that enabled the barbarians to resist her.

Hence it proceeds that Holland,[1] Germany, and the Swiss cantons are considered in Europe as perpetual republics.

The associations of cities were formerly more necessary than in our times. A weak, defenceless town was exposed to greater danger. By conquest it was deprived not only of the executive and legislative power, as at present, but moreover of all human property.[2]

A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruption; the form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.

If a single member should attempt to usurp the supreme power, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great an influence over one, this would alarm the rest; were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped, and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation.

Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states, the others are able to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side, and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty.

As this government is composed of petty republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each; and with regard to its external situation, by means of the association, it possesses all the advantages of large monarchies.

2. That a confederate Government ought to be composed of States of the same Nature, especially of the republican Kind. The Canaanites were destroyed by reason that they were petty monarchies, that had no union or confederacy for their common defence; and, indeed, a confederacy is not agreeable to the nature of petty monarchies.