Céline Spector

Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws in the History of Liberalism

The Spirit of the Laws is often cited among the founding works of political liberalism. Emile Faguet, Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aron, Thomas Pangle, Pierre Manent, Bernard Manin and Lucien Jaume all regard Montesquieu as one of the founding fathers, together with Locke, of modern liberalism. 1 The work features among the classics of the repertoire. As such, the quintessence of Montesquieu's philosophy rests in the "distribution of powers", condition of political liberty: since "constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go", it is necessary that, "from the very nature of things, power should be a check to power" (XI, 4). The free constitution is a system where rival ambitions oppose but do not destroy one another. The critique of despotism also appears to support this interpretation. Montesquieu gave this regime its philosophical dignity, in which man, overwhelmed by fear, is reduced to the blind obedience of power's commandments. The figure of despotism, which has caused "infinite pains" to human nature, is undoubtedly a powerful foil: despotism is the place of the concentration and of the confusion of powers, it is also that of the negation of law, of the absence of rapid economic development and social ties, and, for the individual subjugated to the governor's whims, of violence and torment.

The liberal interpretation of Montesquieu, however, extends beyond this defence of the government of liberty. For when faced with despotism, true limit of the political, the republic does not seem to provide a model. The Spirit of the Laws insists on the requirements associated with republican virtue. Setting aside the institution of slavery, 2 the people's participation in power demands the "continual sacrifice of our persons" and of our interests, 3 and the abandonment of a large part of citizens' private lives and personal safety, all in the name of virtue. The equality and frugality required by virtue entail the renunciation of the self and of its pleasures, an "ever arduous" task that only the perpetual constraint of customs can make possible. 4 The corruption of men, finally, can only be avoided, in ancient cities, by the maintenance of a martial discipline. 5 According to Leo Strauss's disciples, Thomas Pangle and Pierre Manent, the "secret design" of The Spirit of the Laws reveals itself in the critique of classical republicanism and in the praise of the modern liberal regime, considered better adapted to human nature: the commercial English republic. 6 Viewed in this way, Montesquieu's liberalism is not only based on the defence of a system of laws and counter-powers susceptible of protecting man and the citizen. It is also centred on customs, and rests on the concealed praise of modern England and the defence of its "spirit of commerce". Far more than virtue, the blossoming of interest ensures the main objectives of the State (peace, prosperity, liberty).

But what, precisely, can be said of Montesquieu's liberalism? The use of the concept implies a retrospective reading of the work and always runs the risk of projecting onto it the interpreters' ideological choices. Dating from the early 19 th century, 7 the notion of liberalism is evidently foreign to Montesquieu, and he cannot be as comfortably included in this school of thought as Benjamin Constant or Alexis de Tocqueville, whom his work inspired. "Liberalism before liberalism" is a protean phenomenon, and it is certainly better to speak of a constellation than of a rigorous definition of the concept. 8 However, as long as a conventional definition can be agreed upon (classical liberalism as the theory of limited government, the protection of rights and the positive effects of interest, in the absence of virtue 9 ), it is legitimate to question Montesquieu's membership in the liberal "tradition". It is therefore the interpretation of a liberal Montesquieu, which is not only the liberal interpretation of Montesquieu in the sense that it is shared by non-liberal thinkers (Straussians, republicans), which I would like to test here. Questioning the meaning of liberty, as well as the presence of a theory of "doux commerce" and of the "invisible hand" in The Spirit of the Laws will help to determine the relevance of the liberal interpretation and, at the same time, highlight the masking effects it produces.

I. A philosophy of liberty

The liberal reading of Montesquieu often mentions the various parts of his work where he praises liberty -« la liberté, ce bien qui fait jouir des autres biens » (MP, 1797) -4 SL, IV, 5 ; V, 2. For an analysis of how this conception is embedded in the republican tradition, see C. Larrère, « Montesquieu et le républicanisme », Bulletin de la Société Montesquieu, n° 5, 1993, p. 12-28.

5

SL, IV, 8. "As a certain kind of confidence forms the glory and stability of monarchies, republics, on the contrary, must have something to apprehend" (VIII, 5). and refers to his vision of the constitution of England and of the distribution of the state's powers. 10 Without necessarily emphasising his violent denunciation of religious intolerance, his diatribe against the Inquisition or his early denunciation of slavery, the liberal interpretation insists on the distance that separates Montesquieu from a republican conception of liberty. 11 Liberty, as defined in The Spirit of the Laws, breaks with the republican topos: the liberty of the people is not the power of the people, but dependence on the laws and security under the laws. Autonomy and participation in power do not equate to political liberty. 12 With his art of writing, Montesquieu, it is argued, expresses his preference for the "liberal republic", representative and mercantile as in England. This comes at the expense of the "participatory republic" of the ancients, and of the monarchy crippled by the vestiges of feudalism. 13 The Spirit of the Laws, in this way, is deemed to hold up the English model as the one best suited to human nature, the one that best guarantees the security of individuals, and the one that best satisfies the primordial desire of preservation. Republican autonomy gives way to a negative liberty, defined as independence within a sphere protected by the law, guaranteed by the distribution of powers within a representative system, and enabling the unfettered development of "private" behaviour. Such would be the sense of Montesquieu's liberalism: the praise of liberty under the law, combined with the praise of commerce, is a clear choice in favour of modernity.

Though appealing, this reading must be put to the test. In what sense does Montesquieu defend liberty? Chapter 2 of Book XI begins with a sceptical-sounding enumeration, expressing the diversity of opinion on the matter:

There is no word that admits of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on the human mind, than that of liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority: others, for the power of choosing a superior whom they are obliged to obey; others, for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence: others, in fine, for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country, or by their own laws. A certain nation, for a long time, thought liberty consisted in the privilege of wearing a long beard. Some have annexed this name to one form of government exclusive of others: those who had a republican taste applied it to this species of polity: those who liked a monarchical state gave it to monarchy (XI, 2).

In the civil state, man is the measure of liberty, which he interprets according to his passions and his beliefs, according to that which he is accustomed to: "Thus they have all applied the name of liberty to the government most suitable to their own customs and inclinations" (ibid.). But in place of this rhapsody, Montesquieu does not propose a simple and single definition of political liberty, which he distinguishes from philosophical liberty. 14 Political liberty is not defined as permission or as independence, but as liberty under the 10 This reading was already that of E. Faguet, for whom Montesquieu was also the precursor of human rights (Politique comparée de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire, op. cit., p. 14-17). It undoubtedly contributed to the interest which a liberal publicist, Edouard de Laboulaye, had in the work of Montesquieu, editing, in 1875, his OEuvres completes.

11 On these two points, which I am unable to develop here, I would like to refer to my articles, ""Il est impossible que nous supposions que ces gens-là soient des hommes" : la théorie de l'esclavage au livre XV de L'Esprit des lois", Lumières, n° 3, 2004, p. 15-51 ; "Naturalisation des croyances, religion naturelle et histoire naturelle de la religion : le statut du fait religieux dans L'Esprit des lois", dans Montesquieu, l'Etat et la Religion, J. Ehrard éd., Actes du colloque de Sofia, 6-8 octobre 2005, Sofia, Editions Iztok-Zapad, 2007, p. 40-109.

12 "Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free" (SL, XI, 4). See SL, XI, 2-6; XII, 1-2; XXVI, 20; Mes pensées (désormais MP), 32, 884. law: "Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit" (XI, 3). Citizens are "really free" when they are "subject only to the power of the law". 15 According to Montesquieu, it is necessary to distinguish between the political laws which protect the constitution (Book XI) and the civil laws which protect the citizen (Book XII). This distinction is crucial: "The constitution may happen to be free, and the subject not", and inversely (XII, 1). It may be that the judiciary power is separate and well placed -which is the "master-piece of legislation" among a free people (XI, 11) -but that it rules along iniquitous laws. Yet the freedom of the citizen is based on the justice of the criminal procedure and on the presumption of innocence: "When the subject has no fence to secure his innocence, he has none for his liberty" (XII, 2). In order to preserve moderation, man must be protected from arbitrary laws as much as from arbitrary powers. This implies the strict limitation of "lese-majesty" and protecting the freedom of opinion. It is here that Montesquieu is closest to an individual rights theory and to a human rights philosophy: 16 "The knowledge already acquired in some countries, or that may be hereafter attained in others, concerning the surest rules to be observed in criminal judgements, is more interesting to mankind than any other thing in the world. Liberty can be founded on the practice of this knowledge only" (ibid.). Against despotism's extreme methods, Montesquieu supports a moderate usage of the power to punish (VI, 12): great care in the qualification of crimes is necessary, alongside a range of sanctions, which are, to the extent possible, sparing in their severity. 17 This is the meaning, for Montesquieu, of liberty under the law. Such a definition is indeed contrary to the "republican tradition" which founds political liberty on the collective exercise of power and on civic participation: the power of the people is not the liberty of the people (XI, 2). The liberty invoked by The Spirit of the Laws is undoubtedly conceived of as obedience to the law which one has given oneself, be it in ancient popular regimes or in contemporary England: "As, in a country of liberty, every man who is supposed a free agent ought to be his own governor, the legislative power should reside in the whole body of the people" (XI, 6). But the "spirit of liberty" also exists in the constitutions of monarchies (XI, 7).

Nevertheless, it is at this point that the liberal interpretations, however different they may be, stumble: for it is in appearance only that Montesquieu comes to share the Lockean definition of liberty as liberty under the law. 18 Montesquieu insists on the subjective perception that men have of their liberty: liberty is not security but "the opinion people have of their security" (XI, 6; XII, 1). It is a form of "tranquillity of spirit", which is the opposite of despotic fear:

"Les hommes qui jouissent du gouvernement dont j'ai parlé [l'Angleterre] sont comme les poissons qui nagent dans la mer sans contrainte. Ceux qui vivent dans une monarchie ou aristocratie sage et modérée semblent être dans de grands filets, dans lesquels ils sont pris, mais se croient libres. Mais ceux qui vivent dans les Etats purement despotiques sont dans des filets si serrés que d'abord ils se sentent pris" (MP, 828).

15 SL, XI, 6. There are other such formulations: "Liberty consists principally in not being forced to do a thing, here the laws do not oblige: people are in this state, only as they are governed by civil laws" (XXVI, 20, see MP, 884); liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will" (XI, 3).

16 See E. Faguet, Politique comparée de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire, op. cit., p. 14-17. 17 Contrary to Beccaria, Montesquieu nonetheless justifies the capital punishment for prejudices to security (SL, XII, 4).

18

SL, XI, 6; XII, 1-2. For Locke, "the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others..." (The Second Treatise of Civil Government, § 57).

Montesquieu thus repeatedly alludes to the feeling of liberty, which is not an abstract conscience. Concerning taxes, for example, he argues that "the duties felt least by the people are those on merchandise" (XIII, 7); yet the value of the duty must nonetheless be proportionate to that of the merchandise, for otherwise "the prince removes the disguise" from his subjects "which renders them most exquisitely sensible of their servile condition" (XIII, 8). Other expressions seem to suggest that liberty stems from government manipulation, aimed at putting to rest the subjects' potential resistance: "The whole felicity of monarchies consists in the opinion which the subjects entertain of the lenity of the government. A weak minister is ever ready to remind us of our slavery. But, granting even that we are slaves, he should endeavour to conceal our misery from us" (XII, 25).

Therefore, one must wonder whether Montesquieu defends a real liberty, or if, in fine, the illusion of liberty is sufficient. Should we distinguish between a real liberty, in virtue of which the feeling of security is justified by a genuine protection of rights, and a liberty of opinion, in the manner in which real tyranny is opposed to the "tyranny of opinion"? 19 Book XIX of The Spirit of the Laws, which defends soft and moderate political action, supports this approach: "There are two sorts of tyranny; one real, which arises from oppression; the other is seated in opinion, and is sure to be felt whenever those who govern establish things shocking to the present ideas of a nation" (XIX, 3). In this second acceptation, liberty is experienced when a people is free to follow its traditions and customs: it no longer concerns the subject of law but the subject of customs, whose belief in his liberty depends on the preservation of his customs. As such, according to Montesquieu, a people like the Romans "have a more lively sense of tyranny when a player is banished than when they are deprived of their laws" (ibid.). Does it follow that the art of politics is an art of manipulation designed to make men believe that they are free -or, further still, to have them consent to their servitude? If this were the case, the liberal interpretation of Montesquieu would have to make way for a Machiavellian interpretation of the author.

In reality, things are more complex and these two interpretations must be rejected together: Montesquieu is neither a liberal looking to edify a universal theory of the protection of individuals' rights in opposition to state sovereignty nor a Machiavellian seeking to defend an illusory liberty that the art of governing cunningly preserves. On the one hand, The Spirit of the Laws does not confer on institutions alone the care of protecting men against the abuse of power. Montesquieu rules out any purely constitutional defense of liberty. In England itself, only civic vigilance enables the nation to escape servitude: through the confrontation of parties and factions, it is jealousy of liberty which, accompanied by an irrational fear of abuses of power, preserves liberty. 20 If one can make a claim for Montesquieu's liberalism, it is therefore a liberalism of "counter-powers" supported by customs, rather than a liberalism of rights. 21 The only universal natural laws are those of natural defense and of natural modesty, which give rise to negative prescriptions (avoid corporal or sexual punishments). As such, all liberty must be thought in situation, and the only principles that can be laid down to protect it must be formal ones (distribution of powers, presumption of innocence, strict qualification of crimes, etc.). On the other hand, Montesquieu is not strictly Machiavellian either. It is not the objective of The Spirit of the Laws to reflect on the conditions of the manipulation of men, and to thereby enable governors to conserve their power. Rather, it theorises the conditions of moderation, for 19 This is the hypothesis of B. Binoche, op. cit., p. 290-294. the benefit of peoples as much as that of princes or magistrates. Montesquieu is anti-Machiavellian on Machiavelli's ground -that of power relations in situation. The crucial concept of his philosophy, the one that enables an understanding of his struggle against Machiavellianism as well as against absolutism, is the concept of moderation: "I say it, and methinks I have undertaken this work with no other view than to prove it; the spirit of a legislator ought to be that of moderation; political, like moral evil, lying always between two extremes" (XXIX, 1). This defense of the spirit of moderation clarifies the status of the English model, the cornerstone of the liberal interpretation. To what extent is it a model? Just as the love of equality in democracies can be corrupted into the love of extreme equality (refusal of all hierarchy) and topple into tyranny, so too can the love of liberty degenerate into the "delirium of liberty". In certain aspects, extreme liberty is similar to absolute government: partisan divisions enslave public opinion. 22 Furthermore, the liberty that the English enjoy is in essence precarious and does not necessarily lead to the happiness of the people. 23 Not only does extreme liberty not satisfy all conditions of the political good, which is to be a middle way, but the English pay the price for their fanatical individualism -one of the reasons for their suicidal tendencies. The "free nation" is therefore not a model to be universalized -this would run counter to Montesquieu's concern for suitability to particular circumstances. 24 The theory of "the general spirit" of peoples leads to a liberty pluralised according to customs. Moderation, which requires a "master-piece of legislation" to balance the powers (V, 14), makes political liberty possible. 25 In this respect, there is no "best regime" capable of revealing its quintessence -just a "mirror" in which the principles of liberty appear, where liberty is the "direct end" of the constitution. 26 There is no best in politics, only a plurality of relative goods, dependent on the situation: "Human laws appoint for some good; those of religion for the best: good may have another object, because there are many kinds of good: but the best is but one, it cannot therefore change". 27 Against all perfectionism, Montesquieu sets out the plural conditions of liberty. He sees man as a being of beliefs and passions, and it is his ways of thinking and of acting which form the fabric of his liberty -which is in no way the abstract liberty of a disembodied subject. II. The theory of "doux commerce": social order without virtue However, there is a different way of considering the question of the liberalism in The Spirit of the Laws. When reflecting on modern experience, Montesquieu highlights the 22 « In monarchies extremely absolute, historians betray the truth, because they are not at liberty to speak it; in states remarkably free, they betray the truth, because of their liberty itself, which always produces divisions, every one becoming as great a slave to the prejudices of his faction as he could be in a despotic state » (SL, XIX, 27, i. f.). "Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power: but constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. Is it not strange, though true, to say, that virtue itself has need of limits? To prevent this abuse, it is necessary, from the very nature of things, power should be a check to power." (SL, XI, 4).

26

SL, XI, 5. This "model", like that of Rome, serves as a yardstick to judge constitutions (XI, 20). importance of softness (douceur): it is in these terms that the advantage of modern times over ancient times is expressed, be it in the politics of conquest 28 or in relation to manners and customs. 29 But where does this apparent softness of modernity come from? According to Montesquieu, it proceeds from multiple factors, and Christianity, by its contribution to political law and to the law of the nations, has its part to play (X, 3). Provided the normative regimes are well separated (by distinguishing, in particular, civil law from religious law), Christianity can moderate the power of princes and temper their cruelty. But, for the most part, the softness of the moderns proceeds, in Montesquieu's eyes, from commerce. The softness linked to the rapid expansion of the economy and the preeminence of interest replaces the regulation of virtue: "The politic Greeks, who lived under a popular government, knew no other support than virtue: the modern inhabitants of that country are entirely taken up with manufacture, commerce, finances, opulence, and luxury". 30 This would be the new justification of Montesquieu's liberalism, apostle of modernity: in order to produce peace and liberty, modernity has no need of virtue. 31 The liberal interpretation, the Straussian interpretation and the republican interpretation 32 all converge here: in each case, the theory of "doux commerce" is a key element of the argumentation which seeks to found political liberty and social ties on economic trade relations. 33 Montesquieu underlines the moral and political effects of interest (qualified, in Persian Letters, as "the greatest monarch upon earth"). 34 In the absence of virtue, the selfish love of profit reinforces the security of people and goods.

Firstly, commerce is soft as "a cure for the most destructive prejudices", thus appeasing the barbarity towards other peoples. The spirit of tolerance stems from the comparison of nations, as navigation brings them into contact with one another: it is therefore "almost a general rule, that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners" (XX, 1). Commerce is soft, secondly, in that its effects -the "spirits" or dispositions which it favours -lead naturally to peace. This is due to the substitution, within acquisition, of predation with negotiation. Commerce "unites" nations, each of which finds its interest (one in buying, the other in selling), more so given that the interests cannot but satisfy 28 Romains, XV. See SL, X, 3; XXIV, 3.

29

For the Greeks, "society of wrestlers and boxers" who refused to apply themselves to trade, music only could dampen their natural savagery and soften manners: "these [military] exercises having a natural tendency to render people hardy and fierce, there was a necessity for tempering them with others that might soften their manners" (SL, IV, 8). 30 SL, III, 3. The phrase would be adopted by Rousseau in his Discours sur les sciences et les arts, as well as by Benjamin Constant, who refers back to Montesquieu in his critique of Rousseau.

31

Trade republics, however, represent a separate case, in which a form of ascetic ethics reigns: "This is because the spirit of commerce is naturally attended with that of frugality, economy, moderation, labour, prudence, tranquility, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsists, the riches it produces have no bad effect" (SL, V, 6).

32

The latter cites a "merchant humanism". See J. G. A. Pocock, Le Moment Machiavélien, trad. L. Borot, Paris, P.U.F., 1997 ; « Vertu, droits et moeurs », in Vertu, Commerce et Histoire, trad. H. Aji, Paris, P.U.F., 1998, p. 57-72 ; J.-F. Spitz, La Liberté politique, Paris, P.U.F., 1995, chap. VII. Among the historians of liberalism who also consider « soft commerce » to be a key element of Montequieu's argumentation, see P. Rosanvallon, Le Libéralisme économique. Histoire de l'idée de marché, Paris, Seuil, 1989, p. IV, 29.

33

Without using the expression, Montesquieu establishes a correlation between commerce and softness (SL, XX, 1). But it is A. O. Hirschman, followed by P. Rosanvallon and many others, who speaks of Montesquieu's "doux commerce" (Les Passions et les Intérêts, trad. P. Andler, Paris, P.U.F., 1997 ; « Le concept d'intérêt : de l'euphémisme à la tautologie », in Vers une économie politique élargie, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1986, p. 7-29). I also allow myself the use of this convenient turn of phrase. themselves mutually, on the basis of a genuine reciprocity. 35 Commerce is soft, finally, in that it tames civil violence. Within nations, the development of certain instruments of commerce and of finance condemns to powerlessness the "great exertions of authority" of which princes, through persecution and plundering, were culpable. The invention by the Jews of the bill of exchange enabled commerce to escape sovereignty's formidable grasp and, thanks to the globalisation of financial flows, people to protect themselves, therefore to strengthen liberty as the opinion one has of one's security (XXI, 20). 36 In this way, and as already underlined by A. O. Hirschman, the desire of profit acquires a new dignity. Avarice now appears as the salutary remedy for the disorder of passions (in particular princely) that moral injunctions are unable to regulate. At a time when the heroic love of glory is replaced with the lure of gains, ostentation with utility, and prestige with profit, 37 Montesquieu highlights the beneficial effects of interest: the increase of exchanges (material, cultural) and the increase of relations of interdependence are favourable, not just to prosperity, but to peace and to political liberty.

However, the liberal reading of Montesquieu risks, there again, omitting the subtleties and nuances of his work. Not only should his admiration for the greatness of the ancients not be underestimated, but his ambivalence with regard to the effects of the commercial society should not be overlooked. 38 The two are linked: Greece and Rome provide the example of noble motives, compared to the baseness of modern ambition and greed; friendship, the foundation of social ties, is in sharp contrast to contemporary individualism, itself associated with "lowly interest, which is exactly the animal instinct of all men". 39 Commerce, by encouraging individuals to turn to their private interests, harms the expression of virtues and "corrupts the purest morals" (XX, 1). Far from being a characteristic of a free regime, self-centred behaviour thrives in despotic states, where, without honour or virtue, "people cannot be determined to act but through hope of the conveniences of life" (V, 17). Despotism only can reduce passion to its simplest expression, rewards to money and sanctions to corporal punishment -abolishing, in this reign of the material and quantitative, the social and political dimension of man. Furthermore, although commerce can pacify customs between men of foreign lands, it cannot be credited with a beneficial role in the formation of social ties. Not only does virtue suffer from the deployment of self-interested rationality: sociability, politeness and the improvement of taste also seem incompatible with the spirit of calculation and of "exact justice" associated with cupidity. This is Montesquieu's assessment of Holland, where all services, even those requested by "humanity", are for sale. But it is just as much his opinion of England. During his stay there, Montesquieu noted that social atomism and the absence of politeness were the rule: "the English are almost only ever united by ties of hatred and the hope of revenge"; "the English are busy; they do not have the time to be polite". 40 Similarly, in the "commercial society" described by The Spirit of the Laws, where Comment les Anglais aimeraient-ils les étrangers ? ils ne s'aiment pas eux-mêmes […] Il faut donc faire comme eux, vivre pour soi, comme eux, ne se soucier de personne, n'aimer personne, et ne compter sur personne » ; "Les Anglais vous font peu de politesses, mais jamais d'impolitesses"; « Comme on ne s'aime "many people […] have no desire of pleasing", the refinement of manners is excluded. The commercial society is governed by that which is useful rather than agreeable, by work not laziness, solitude not sociability, debauchery not gallantry, strength not grace. 41 In The Spirit of the Laws, economic ties play in this regard a contradictory role: principle of association, interest is also a principle of dissociation in the civil space. At a time when, in Europe, wealth becomes the very substance of power -to the point where "nothing in history can be compared to it" 42 -modern states cannot rely on interest to improve culture and maintain social ties. When, of a nation's nature, Montesquieu commands the legislator to "leave it be", it is not England that he evokes, but the nation of a "sociable character", France, governed by honour, luxury and politeness (XIX, 5-6).

III. A theory of the "invisible hand"? However, it is still true that Montesquieu's liberalism could find more fertile ground elsewhere: The Spirit of the Laws contains a traditional motif of liberalism, that of the "invisible hand". The famous expression appears in The Spirit of the Laws: "each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest" (III, 7). Where passions and interests spontaneously contribute to prosperity and liberty, the art of politics seems useless. If the republic requires a reorientation of passions, the monarchy, in Montesquieu's eyes, is less demanding: "In monarchies, policy effects great things with as little virtue as possible. Thus, in the nicest machines, art has reduced the number of movements, springs, and wheels. The state subsists independently of the love of our country, of the thirst of true glory, of self-denial, of the sacrifice of our dearest interests, and of all those heroic virtues which we admire in the ancients, and to us are known only by story" (III, 5).

It would nonetheless be unwise to project onto The Spirit of the Laws the paradigm of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It is honour that Montesquieu conceives according to the paradigm of the invisible hand: "It is with this kind of government as with the system of the universe, in which there is a power that constantly repels all bodies from the centre, and a power of gravitation, that attracts them to it. Honour sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and, by its very action, connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest" (III, 7). Private vices, public virtues: in The Spirit of the Laws, the dominant passion of monarchies enables modern politics to do "great things with as little virtue as possible" and to avoid the unconditional obedience that characterises despotism. 43 It is a matter of honour, and not of interest in the strictest sense: the motivation behind action includes an interest in prestige and social recognition, and not simply an interest in goods. The motive of great acts in modern monarchies cannot be reduced to the desire of profit; it carries with it a symbolic and public dimension, in virtue of which the individual can define himself according to his code, as well as the reputation which he claims to obtain. Montesquieu notably brings into play the possibility of resistance to abuses of power, governed by honour, which can be "false" (irrational, arbitrary, even barbaric) but still "useful to the public" (enabling society as a whole to benefit from a spirit of rebellion when confronted with abuses of power). 44 Publicly defending their status and eager to prove they are worthy of their rank, great men offer resistance to vile actions, involuntarily producing political liberty. [START_REF] Sl | Liberalism with Honor[END_REF] Turning now to economic matters, Montesquieu certainly seems to subscribe to the liberal critique of mercantile practices. [START_REF]Montesquieu et l'émergence de l'économie politique[END_REF] Regarding commerce as an exchange generally beneficial to the various parties, he renounces the bellicose vision of the economy advocated by Colbert, who argued for customs and the naval fleet to be put at the disposal of a commercial hegemony. Book XX of The Spirit of the Laws is controversial: competitive trade is no longer considered a zero-sum game (the gain of one is the loss of the other), but as a place of reciprocal advantages. The riches of some create openings for others:

[…] un Etat qui ruine les autres se ruine lui-même, et que, s'il manque à la prospérité commune, il manque à la sienne. La raison en est claire. Un Etat ruiné ne peut faire d'échanges avec les autres ; les autres ne peuvent pas non plus faire d'échanges avec lui. Ce qui fait que l'on ne sent pas bien cela, c'est que l'on ne sent bien que le mal qui nous vient de la perte du commerce immédiat. Toutes les nations tiennent à une chaîne et se communiquent leurs maux et leurs biens. Je ne fais point une déclamation ; je dis une vérité : la prospérité de l'Univers fera toujours la nôtre ; et, comme dit Marc-Antonin : « ce qui n'est point utile à l'essaim n'est point utile à l'abeille ». [START_REF] Pensées | [END_REF] However, this critique of mercantile practices in no way implies that the state should abstain from all regulation. The freedom of commerce is not that of the traders. It is not "the power granted to the merchants to do what they please", irrespective of the law and beyond all state regulation: "It is in the freest countries that the merchant finds innumerable obstacles; and he is never less crossed by laws, than in a country of slaves" (XX, 12). In Montesquieu's eyes, economic and demographic regulation remain necessary not only in republics, which must maintain equality and frugality by a strict regulation of property, but also in modern monarchies, where the state must look after its interests while guaranteeing the conditions of a decent life for all: "The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health". [START_REF] Sl | This chapter gave rise to a progressive reading of Montesquieu (M. Leroy[END_REF] Contrary to the liberal representation, in which the political must not intervene in the self-regulation of the market, it is not simply a matter of "laisser-faire": in wealthy countries where the rapid development of commerce and manufactures generates chronic recessions, the government finds itself invested with important duties. Incitement must replace constraint, without leading to abstention. [START_REF]Deleule opposes the liberalism of Hume with that of the Physiocrats (Hume et la naissance du libéralisme économique[END_REF] There is nothing analogous, in this theory, to the singular liberalism of the Physiocrats, who argued for a "natural right" to property (which Montesquieu, for his part, rejects 50 ) and made a case for a spontaneous harmony of private interests. * Was Montesquieu a liberal? The historiographical problem is inseparable from the philosophical question. 51 However, despite the strong theses which lead the historians to include The Spirit of the Laws among the classics of liberalism -critique of despotism and of mercantilism, theory of the distribution and of the balance of powers, praise of social and political pluralism, defence of a "merchant humanism" which extols the advantages of commerce -, one should acknowledge the illusions of perspective and the masking effects produced by the liberal reading. Isolating certain familiar themes in a retrospective approach, it neglects the complexity of an author who seeks not only to offer an explanation for all existing institutions, but also to evaluate their effects, beneficial and harmful.

The question of the English model is in this regard crucial. In The Spirit of the Laws, England is not a model to be universalized but a privileged paradigm of the distribution of powers favourable to political liberty. The anglophile in Montesquieu, though real, must not be overestimated. 52 Coming from an apostle of moderation, to qualify English liberty as "extreme" is not to sing its praise. Montesquieu's prudence is not only due to his art of writing: "Neither do I pretend by this to undervalue other governments, nor to say that this extreme political liberty ought to give uneasiness to those who have only a moderate share of it. How should I have any such design; I who think that even the highest refinement of reason is not always desirable, and that mankind generally find their account better in mediums than in extremes?" (XI, 6). Although it achieves the harmonisation of interests, the commercial society does not abolish internal discord through the softness of civility.

In the end, the liberal interpretation cannot account for the formation of social ties. In The Spirit of the Laws, neither the cohesion of society nor the refinement of customs stem from instrumental rationality: they proceed from a sociability founded on politeness, the effect of pride and not enlightened interest. Finally, the liberal reading does not manage to expose in all their complexity the relations between economy and politics. Montesquieu neither defends the individual conceived as a rights-holder, nor advocates the minimal state: moderation, like liberty, presupposes a "master-piece of legislation" and of prudence in order to reconcile, in situation, the power of the state and the liberty of the people.

  13T. Pangle, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism, op. cit. ; P. Manent, La Cité de l'homme, op. cit., chap. 1-2: P. Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, Yale, Yale University Press, 2009.

  20 SL, XIX, 27. See C. Spector, « Montesquieu: Critique of Republicanism? », in Republicanism: History, Theory and Practice, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 6, n° 1, Spring 2003, p. 38-53. 21 See B. Manin, « Les deux libéralismes : marché ou contre-pouvoirs », art. cit.

23

  See Sh. Krause, « The Spirit of Separate Powers in Montesquieu », The Review of Politics, n° 62, Spring 2000, p. 231-265.

  25

  27 SL, XXVI, 2. See B. Manin, « Montesquieu et la politique moderne », in Cahiers de Philosophie politique, Reims, n° 2-3, OUSIA, 1985, p. 197-229, published again in Lectures de « L'Esprit des lois », T. Hoquet et C. Spector éds., Bordeaux, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2004, p. 171-231 ; C. Larrère, « Montesquieu and Liberalism », art. cit.

35SL,

  XX, 2. On this mechanism, see C. Spector, Montesquieu et l'émergence de l'économie politique, Paris, Champion, 2006, chap. 4. 36 Ibid., chap. 4 and 5.

37«

  C'est l'esprit de commerce qui domine aujourd'hui » (MP, 810). « Ce qu'on appelait autrefois gloire, lauriers, trophées, triomphes, couronnes, est aujourd'hui de l'argent comptant » (MP, 1602). See MP, 575, 760-761. 38 See J.-F. Spitz, La Liberté politique, op. cit., chapter VII ; D. Carrithers, « Montesquieu and the Spirit of Modernity », in Montesquieu's Spirit of Modernity, D. Carrithers and P. Coleman éds., Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2002, p. 1-33. 39 MP, 1253, see MP, 221. 40 Notes sur l'Angleterre, in OEuvres complètes de Montesquieu, A. Masson éd., Paris, Nagel, t. I, 1950, p. 292. Other texts suggest a similar view: "Ces gens-là [les Français] veulent que les Anglais soient faits comme eux.

50

  See C. Spector, « Variations de la propriété : Montesquieu contre l'individualisme possessif », in Inventions et critiques du libéralisme, op. cit., p. 95-116. 51 See J.-F. Spitz, La Liberté politique, op. cit. 52 See D. Carrithers, « Montesquieu et l'étude comparée des constitutions : analyses des régimes anglais et français, in Actes du Colloque international de Bordeaux 1998, Académie de Bordeaux, 1999, p. 235-242. As a counterpoint, see J. Dedieu, Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France (1909), Genève, Slatkine Reprints, 1971.

6

  See T. Pangle, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism, op. cit.; P. Manent, La Cité de l'homme, op. cit.; Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme, Paris, Hachette, 1987, chap. 5; Les Libéraux, Paris, Hachette, 1986, t. I, p. 218-288. See B. Bachofen's introduction to Inventions et critiques du libéralisme. Le pouvoir, la personne, la propriété, B. Bachofen éd., Lyon, ENS Éditions, 2008, p. 7-27, as well as the contributions to this volume.

	7	See D. Deleule, « Libéralisme », Dictionnaire européen des Lumières, M. Delon éd., Paris, P.U.F., 1997,
	p. 645-648 ; Ph. Raynaud, « Libéralisme », in Dictionnaire de philosophie politique, Ph. Raynaud et S. Rials éds., Paris, P.U.F., 1996, p. 338-344.

8 9

This classical political liberalism, of course, is very different to that of Rawls and his followers. On this point see R. F. Thiemann, « Montesquieu and the Future of Liberalism », in Montesquieu and his Legacy, op. cit., p. 271-278. On the articulation with economic liberalism as the theory of the spontaneous harmony of private interests, see C. Spector, « Qu'est-ce que le libéralisme ? Le grand récit des origines », in Les Libéralismes, F. Brugère et G. Leblanc éds., Bordeaux, Le Bord de l'Eau, forthcoming.

  XIX, 27, in fine. See C. Spector, Montesquieu, Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés, op. cit., chap. 2. III, 5 ; III, 10. On the report to Mandeville, see C. Spector, « Vices privés, vertus publiques : de la Fable des abeilles à L'Esprit des lois », in Montesquieu and the Spirit of Modernity, D. Carrithers and P. Coleman éds., Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2002, p. 127-157.

	point ici, à force de craindre d'être dupe, on devient dur" (ibid., p. 285-287, voir également MP, 1136 ; MP, 780).

41

SL,

42 SL, XXI, 21. 43 SL,

See B. Binoche, Introduction à « De l'esprit des lois » de Montesquieu, op. cit., p. 286-296.

Persian Letters, 106.


This book does not exactly follow any particular person.' Should we take seriously this statement at the end of the introduction to Democracy in America, Volume One? Or should we see it, more subtly, as just an echo of the quotation from Ovid that Montesquieu places at the end of his preface to The Spirit of Laws: prolem sine matre creatam, 'a work created without a mother'? For Tocqueville, as for Montesquieu, the point is by no means to forgo the inspiration of past sources, but rather to announce a new method -the 'new political science for a totally new world', which he evokes in keeping with the science of society for which The Spirit of Laws laid the groundwork. 1 From the first volume of Democracy in America 2 (which weaves together geographical causes, laws and customs) to The Ancien Regime and the Revolution (which redeploys the method of Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline), Tocqueville pursues Montesquieu's project: to determine the causes of institutions (laws, customs) and assess their effects in a comparative light; to theorize the adaptation of legislation to the 'genius' of the people it is meant to govern; 3 and to explain the deep causes of radical historical breaks, without denying any leeway to the human will.

Nevertheless, it is not sufficient to quote Tocqueville's famous phrase about his three 'fetish authors': Montesquieu, Rousseau and Pascal. 4 Beyond the parallels, we need to revisit an affinity that his contemporaries recognized but that has since been dropped from the picture. 5 Together with American Constitutionalists such as Madison and Hamilton, Tocqueville knew his debt to the 'rarest political writer' of all time. But in his eyes, Montesquieu was never a politician and would doubtless not have known how to be one. 6 It is therefore necessary to separate theory and practice. As a political theorist,

Tocqueville drew on analyses of England as a free, trade-oriented nation; and he suggested that the French should study the 'American model', to see liberty 'as if in a mirror' and judge how free were their own institutions. 7 As a politician, Tocqueville gradually distanced himself from the author of The Spirit of the Laws: his role in the debate on the colonization of Algeria led him to reject the conception of commercial colonization that Montesquieu had defended in relation to the England of his time. The purpose of this article, then, will be to identify the breaking points in Tocqueville's exploration of the new frontier between democratic society and the unprecedented growth of imperial rivalries.

I. Commerce, Freedom and Empire in

The Spirit of the Laws a) Spirit of conquest and spirit of commerce Montesquieu's critique of territorial empire is well known. 8 Whereas the Roman Considerations show that the expansion of empire can only lead to its decline, the Reflections on Universal Monarchy provide a lesson for the use of modern politics: no constant hegemony such as that of the Romans is possible any longer in Europe. 9 The theme reappears in The Spirit of the Laws: universal monarchy is now meaningless, and if the project of Louis XIV had succeeded 'nothing would have been more fatal to Europe'. 10 To increase absolute greatness at the expense of relative greatness is absurd -territorial expansion makes a prince more vulnerable, not more powerful. 11 Modern conquests testify to the failure of such enterprises. On the pretext of civilizing and converting other peoples, Spain and Portugal were more fearsome than Rome in their cruelty and barbarity. 12 France should not follow the example of Spain, which 'in order to hold America […] did what despotism itself does not do': enslave or destroy the conquered peoples. 13 In this respect, the failure of the Hispanic model expresses the law of every rarest of political writers, he would have been only a pretty bad minister, and not very rare at all.' 'Discours prononcé à la séance publique annuelle de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques du 3 avril 1852', OC, XVI, p. 231. 7 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (henceforth SL), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; here Book XI, pp. 156-7. See Paul Rahe, Soft Despotism. Democracy's Drift, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009; Annelien de Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 (which emphasizes the concept of 'aristocratic liberalism'). 8 See the various contributions in C. Spector, ed., 'Montesquieu et l'empire', special issue of Revue Montesquieu, No. 8, 2005-2006. 9 See C. Larrère, 'Introduction' to the Réflexions sur la Monarchie universelle, in P. Andrivet and C. Volpilhac-Auger, eds., Oeuvres completes, vol. 2, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000. 10 SL, IX:7, p. 136. 11 SL, IV:2; IX:6-9. (Cf. Montesquieu, Pensées, No. 271, with the deleted footnote 'mis cela dans les Romains'.) Book Eight of The Spirit of the Laws raises the question of maintaining principles in such as way as to exclude the link between monarchical ethos and spirit of conquest (VIII:17-18). If monarchies agree to conquer only so much that they remain within the 'natural limits' of their rule, they are rewarded with the national homogeneity of prosperity (X:9). 12 Persian Letters (henceforth PL), London: Penguin, 1973, No. 121, pp. 216-19; Pensées, No. 1268. On Spain, see G. Barrera, 'Espagne', in Dictionnaire Montesquieu, ed. by C. Volpilhac-Auger, http://Dictionnaire-Montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr, 2008. 13 SL, VIII:18; X:3-4. Montesquieu severs the usual associations between monarchy and colonialism, honour and heroism. Even if 'the spirit of monarchy is war and expansion' (IX:2), he no longer considers its wellspring to be exploits of conquest. As regards honour, the reader may like to refer to Chapter One of conquering empire: there are 'natural' limits to the expansion of republics and monarchies, beyond which their power declines. If empires are too large, they can guarantee neither external nor internal security. Unless one man can 'hold' a vast territory at every moment (as was the case, exceptionally, with Alexander the Great or Charlemagne), any earthly empire runs the dual risk of invasion and insurrection. It is doomed to dissolution or despotism: 'the quick establishment of unlimited power is the remedy which can prevent dissolution: a new misfortune after that of expansion!' 14 Yet Montesquieu also conceived of an empire that served the 'good' of men, respecting their liberty and beneficial to their reason. In the famous example of Alexander, an empire does not merely preserve the diversity of laws, customs and mores but enables the progress of enlightenment and the destruction of 'barbarous' superstitions. 15 Similarly, instead of 'infinite woes', might the Spanish not have brought real goods such as the abolition of destructive prejudices and an improvement in the lot of conquered peoples? Such a line of thinking is doubtless not without its risks -and we seem to see here the glimmerings of an apologia for 'enlightened despotism', so remote from Montesquieu and his critique of the 'tyranny of opinion'. 16 But The Spirit of the Laws upholds a certain figure of reason in history: the philosopher's judgement bears not so much on intentions (building an empire 'for the sake of good', albeit at the price of violence and war) as on the beneficial or harmful effects of institutions. Thus, while underlining the 'immense debt' that conquerors incur, Montesquieu also speaks of certain 'advantages' for a 'vanquished people', either because the conquest frees it of tyrannical rule, or because it allays its oppression and poverty, or because it brings civilizing effects in its train: 'a conquest can destroy harmful prejudices, and, if I dare speak in this way, can put a nation under a better presiding genius.' 17 This tension appears more than once, and an evolution might be traced from Montesquieu's early ideas about the laws 'fittest to make a republic or colony prosper'. 18 Decisive in this context are the chapters on the colonies that he finally withdrew from the printed edition of The Spirit of the Laws. 19 He notes of these: 'Here is a piece on the colonies, part of which will go into my second book on commerce, part at the end of the book on the number of inhabitants, and part into Book 11 on conquests. We shall see where is best.' 20 The planned 'book on the colonies' never saw the light of day; and its content -which Montesquieu contemplates distributing among Books XXI, XXIII and X -was not published in its entirety. 21 In the 'piece' in question, using a typological 19 According to Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, these chapters (in the writing of secretary H.) were composed between 1741 and 1742 and discarded during the revision of 1743-1744, but it is not impossible -given the remarks of secretary O., who was active between 1745 and 1747 -that Montesquieu intended to put some fragments back into The Spirit of the Laws. See C. Volpilhac-Auger, ed., Montesquieu. Manuscrits inédits de La Brède, Naples: Liguori, 2002, pp. 43-67, and the updated version in her introduction to De l'esprit des loix (manuscrits), Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, vol. 4, 2008, pp. 766-67. 20 Ibid., p. 766. 21 Marginal notes in the hand of secretary L ('I think this is good for bk. eleven'; 'taken from bk. on the colonies, moved to bk. 11') indicate that this would have been Book 11. Some chapters on confederations would also have been meant for this Book.

approach, Montesquieu makes it clear that settler colonies are only suitable for 'republican' (not absolute-monarchical or despotic) states; only republics benefit from their capacity to relieve overpopulated states of the 'burden of poor citizens'. 22 On certain conditions, the implantations may represent a gain in power: 'The colonies should keep the form of government of their mother country: this creates an alliance and a natural amity that is often stronger than one based on covenants. So it is that the various colonies of America have various governments in keeping with the one of the peoples that established them. They should keep the religion, customs and manners of the mother country.'23 Settler colonies may be beneficial, so long as they contrive 'wise' laws (intermarriages, trade legislation, religious community, balance between home country and colonies); they may be useful, in so far as they are not 'under the domination' of a central power but 'united' with it in upholding its interests 'in principle'. 24 The demographic danger is then under control: 'We have seen, in their settlements founded in the two Indies, that the English and Dutch have established themselves in Asia and America without being weakened in Europe, and that they have shed only what was too much for them.' 25 On the other hand, the colonies of (absolute) monarchical or despotic states only depopulate and weaken them and inordinately extend the body politic, as was the case with the Spanish and Portuguese, who did not increase but divided their power. To the question of whether 'it is advantageous for France to have colonies', Montesquieu therefore gives a negative reply. Was it out of prudence that he refrained from publishing such a verdict at a time when the French colonial empire was expanding? 26 No doubt. For modern monarchies, the conquering empire was from now on destined for tragedy, if not for myth. b) Land empire and sea empire However, Montesquieu did not dwell on this vigorous opposition to France's imperial ambitions. Far from any sweeping condemnation, The Spirit of the Laws draws a distinction between land empire and sea empire, in which the former leads to poverty and servitude, the latter to power and liberty. In Anthony Pagden's fine eulogy, The Spirit of the Laws offered the eighteenth century's most lucid analysis of the conquering empire and the trading empire, the transition from war to commerce being the only possible solution for Europe's imperial future. 27 Let us look at this more closely.

In Book XXI, Montesquieu develops his distinction between land empires and maritime empires. The sea gives rise to a dynamic of communication among peoples, which Montesquieu constantly counterposes to the dynamic of separation that characterizes conquering empires: 'the history of commerce is that of communication among peoples' (XXI:5). It is a polemical statement: the mercantilism of Colbert and Monthchrétien deemed colonization necessary to unburden the kingdom of its surplus population, to work for the glory of God, to spread civilization among savage peoples, and to acquire endless riches from the supply of raw materials. 28 Colbert wanted to extend the project of universal monarchy to Canada and the Caribbean, through a state unified by language, customs, religion, laws and blood -in short, a cultural unity of empire. 29 In his 'Treatise on Political Economy', Montchrétien supported this conception: France is 'the glory of the world, to which not only all lands but all seas owe obedience'. 30 To be sure, like many of his contemporaries, he invoked the model of the Roman Empire, but he thought the Spanish model of territorial aggrandizement through navigation to be a mark of the superiority of the moderns over the ancients. 31 Now, whereas this model involves applying the art of war to commerce, Montesquieu turns it around and sees commercial colonization as essentially peaceful and indicative of the greater 'refinement' of the moderns. Some modern nations have known how to change 'objects of conquest' into 'objects of trade', delegating sovereignty to the trading companies in order to ensure the blossoming of commerce:

Many peoples acted so wisely that they granted empire to trading companies who, governing these distant states only for trade, made a great secondary power without encumbering the principal state. The colonies formed there are in a kind of dependence of which there are very few examples among the ancient colonies, because those of today belong either to the state itself or to some commercial company established in that state. The purpose of these colonies is to engage in commerce under better conditions than one has with neighbouring peoples with whom all advantages are reciprocal. It has been established that only the mother country can trade with the colony, and this was done with very good reason, for the goal of the establishment was to extend commerce, not to found a town or a new empire (XXI:21).

Far from its being the case that land empire is confined to the ancients and sea empire to the moderns, both the one and the other are horizons of modernity. 32 Whereas colonies of conquest are subject to control or settlement by people from the metropolis, colonies of commerce are mere trading posts administered by the East and West Indies companies. In his Essai politique sur le commerce, Melon already drew this distinction and attacked the Spanish model that led to depopulation and extermination of the Amerindians. 33 With this in mind, Montesquieu argued that the dividing line in the modern world ran between the Spanish empire (in the 'ancient' mould of the Romans) and the empire of 'peoples more refined than they', who knew how to use colonial expeditions only for economic growth, so that external trade fuelled the development of their internal trade (XXI:21).

In this regard, Montesquieu's history of commerce in Book XXI castigates the mercantilist vision of empire. Whereas Père Huet dedicated a Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens to Colbert, 34 seeking to show the superiority of the Roman model as an inspiration for the French, the author of The Spirit of the Laws identified wholeheartedly with the Athenian model (which he distinguished from the Roman) and claimed that England was its modern representative. In his view, then, the dividing line ran between two types of empire in antiquity itself: the Greek empire, unlike the Roman, was a sea 29 After 1663, when the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales established itself in Canada, the Antilles, and so on, French settlers were encouraged to marry native people. This Gallicization of the 'savages' was intended to increase the population in the colonies, and hence the forces available against the English (see the 'Mémoire à Jean Talon', 6 April 1607, quoted in Pagden, Lords of all the World, pp. 149-50). 30 empire, and its sway was proportional to the number of nations that it managed to form. Greece was at the heart of an economic world open to the outside, endowed with secondary zones and a periphery (XXI:7). The colonial domination attained by the Greek cities (Athens, Corinth, Rhodes, Orchomenus), quite contrary to that of the Romans, 35 symbolized the solid and beneficial foundation of prosperity. Greece treated other peoples as subject but did so without subjugating them. Its settler colonies were organized not for destruction but for conservation and prosperity, in keeping with the true spirit of conquest (X:3; XXI:12). Whereas the Romans established inequality between citizens and vanquished, resorting to tyranny and pillage, the Greeks carried the independent spirit characteristic of republican government to Italy, Spain, Asia Minor and Gaul; 'these Greek settlements brought with them a spirit of freedom which they had acquired in their own delightful country.' [START_REF] Pl | Adam Smith takes the distinction further in The Wealth of Nations[END_REF] The English paradigm -which went outside the original typology of regimes [START_REF]England is a 'nation where the republic hides under the form of monarchy[END_REF] therefore needed to be reappraised. In the Persian Letters, Montesquieu describes England as 'mistress of the seas (a thing without precedent), combining trade with empire'. [START_REF] Pl | On the question of whether the England described by Montesquieu is an example[END_REF] Like Athens, Carthage and Holland, England embodies the maritime figure of empire, destined for commerce, not domination:

If this nation inhabited an island, it would not be a conquering nation, because overseas conquests would weaken it. It would be even less a conqueror if the terrain of this island were good, because it would not need war to enrich it. […] This nation, made comfortable by peace and liberty, would be inclined to become commercial. If it had some one of the primary commodities used to make things that owe their high price to the hand of the worker, it could set up establishments apt to procure for itself the full enjoyment of this gift of heaven. [START_REF] Sl | ). According to Bernard Manin, the source of the 'sea empire' concept is a text entitled The Constitution of Athens, which is not really by Xenophon (as people believed in the eighteenth century) but by an unknown author now known as 'pseudo-Xenophon' ('Montesquieu, la république[END_REF] Athens, enamoured of glory, did not take things very far in terms of trade; it was 'more attentive to extending its maritime empire than to using it.' [START_REF] Sl | XXI: 7. In these lines, Manin also hears an echo of Thucydides[END_REF] But England knew how to create a productive and cooperative community that led to prosperity and freedom. Should we see in this an embodiment of le doux commerce? Montesquieu certainly cannot be accused of naïve irenicism: England practises 'sea warfare' and has the natural pride of those who possess a 'maritime empire'. Driven by commercial jealousies, the British believe that, while their power is limited internally, it is externally as boundless as the ocean.

The dominant nation, inhabiting a big island and being in possession of a great commerce, would have all sorts of facilities for forces upon the seas; and as the preservation of its liberty would require it to have neither strongholds, nor fortresses, nor land armies, it would need an army on the sea to protect itself from invasions; and its navy would be superior to that of all other powers, which, needing to employ their finances for a land war, would no longer have enough for a sea war. A naval empire has always given the peoples who have possessed it a natural pride, because, feeling themselves able to insult others everywhere, they believe that their power is as boundless as the ocean. 41 Far from abandoning empire, England aims to expand its power together with its liberty. In the case of America, the mother country communicates its political regime to its distant colonies: 'as one likes to establish elsewhere what is established at home, it could give the form of its own government to the people of its colonies; and as this government would carry prosperity with it, one would see the formation of great peoples, even in the forests to which it had sent inhabitants.' 42 This judgement, on which Montesquieu himself cast doubt, 43 would be challenged in later years, in so far as commercial rivalries among European nations turned into armed confrontation. [START_REF] Platania | Dynamiques des empires et dynamiques du commerce: inflexions de la pensée de Montesquieu (1734-1802)[END_REF]

II. Commerce, Honour and Empire in Tocqueville's Work

To what extent did Tocqueville inherit this conception of the benefits of maritime trading empires? To what extent did he break with the distinction between 'spirit of conquest' and 'spirit of commerce' that Benjamin Constant, for one, took over from The Spirit of the Laws? [START_REF]The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation[END_REF] a) Liberty and empire As his work and political career progressed, Tocqueville gradually distanced himself from Montesquieu's critique of territorial empire. [START_REF]On the chronology of this distancing process, see Melvin Richter[END_REF] In a page in the first volume of Democracy in America where Montesquieu's inspiration is especially strong, Tocqueville praised the advantages of small republics, the 'cradle of political liberty', in which there is no reason for self-glory. And he lucidly observed: 'Most of them happen to have lost this liberty as they increased in size.' 47 The passions that are fatal to a republic increase with the size of its territory: 'It is therefore permissible to say that in general terms nothing opposes the prosperity and freedom of men as much as great empires.' 48 Following the example of Montesquieu and the Federalists (Hamilton, Madison), he therefore put forward the federal model on the grounds that it combined the advantages of large and small states. 49 The famous chapter on 'the three races which live in the territory of the United States' offers another glimpse of Montesquieu's legacy. On the one hand, Tocqueville seems more convinced than his predecessor that it is impossible to civilize a people by conquest; indeed, barbarian peoples rise to civilization or absorb enlightenment from other nations only when they dominate them militarily. [START_REF] Da | Montesquieu had a favourable view of the Jesuit 'reductions[END_REF] On the other hand, the author of Democracy in America blurs the distinction between colonies of conquest and colonies of commerce: North American Indians cannot integrate with dignity into the colonizing nation, even commercially, since the relationship of material and intellectual forces is unfavourable to them. The effects of 'competition' are 'disastrous', driving them into poverty and servitude. 51 Aware, like Montesquieu, of the tyranny of government and the greed of the settlers, Tocqueville further denounces the imposition of 'free' institutions on the Amerindians without their consent -which impels them towards savagery, not civilization. 52 In contrast to The Spirit of the Laws, the first volume of Democracy in America no longer uses Spanish-style colonization as a negative foil to the more 'refined' colonization stemming from free republican institutions. On the contrary, Tocqueville suggests that the Indian populations in Latin America which escaped massacre ended up 'mixing with their conquerors and adopting their religion and customs', whereas the legalism of the North Americans led to a still more pernicious policy of deportation and extinction:

The Spanish, using unparalleled atrocities which bring an indelible shame upon themselves, have not succeeded in exterminating the Indian race, nor even in preventing them from sharing their rights; the Americans of the United States have attained both these results with amazing ease, quietly, legally, and generously, with no spilling of blood, with no violation to the great moral principles in the eyes of the world. Men could not be destroyed with more respect for the laws of humanity. 53 Once he became a politician, however, Tocqueville went back on this outright condemnation of colonization and 'race war'. [START_REF] Nestor | Tocqueville et les frontières de la démocratie[END_REF] With India no longer just a trading post but a territorial conquest, he drew all the consequences implied for the rivalry between England and France. But Algeria gave him the opportunity for a defence of empire. Unless one colonizes a country, one's domination will always be unproductive and precarious: 'It has often been said that the French should limit themselves to dominating Algeria without trying to colonize it, and some people still think so. Studying the question has given me an entirely contrary position.' [START_REF]Essay on Algeria[END_REF] The distance from Montesquieu is evident here: Book XXI, Chapter 8 of The Spirit of the Laws answered negatively to the question 'must a country be conquered to trade in it?'; Tocqueville answers positively to the question 'must a country be conquered to dominate it?' Neglecting the modern theory of prudence that he had developed as a philosopher, the politician now argues that military victory is the prerequisite for economic domination and, above all, political power.

Of course, one should not minimize the hesitations that some pernicious effects of colonization aroused in Tocqueville. After a moment of enthusiasm for the idea of cultural fusion between colonizers and colonized, his first trip to Algeria, in 1841, made him aware of the insurmountable obstacles to the harmonious blending of peoples. The danger was not only that military high-handedness and administrative despotism would feed the settlers' hatred, making it bubble over so much externally that it had to be choked back inside; the conquered semi-nomadic, tribal people would never become reconciled to colonial domination, which would tend to kindle a sense of national unity that had not previously existed. [START_REF] Ewa | Tocqueville's Algeria and the Final Frontier[END_REF] No government, however just or well-meaning, can immediately unite peoples so different in their history, religion, laws and practices. For all that, Tocqueville does end up justifying what his chapter on the 'three races' tended to exclude: the need to use 'all means to ruin the tribes' (a trading ban, pillaging and crop destruction, military raids, seizure of old people, women and children). Although he disapproves of gratuitous violence, the politician is concerned to quieten the 'shouts' heard in France against such practices. He even invokes an ad hoc 'law of war', such as Montesquieu, following Locke, vigorously dismissed. 57 b) The softening of mores: a new curse? One reason for this parting of the ways is doubtless Tocqueville's unease over the mediocrity of democratic passions. In Democracy in America, he deflects Montesquieu's reflections on le doux commerce -that is, the beneficial effects of trade for peace and liberty. [START_REF] Albert | The Passions and the Interests[END_REF] In a chapter in the second volume entitled 'Why Great Revolutions Will Happen Less Often', he points out that commerce leads to greater liberty and keeps revolutions at a distance: 'I know of nothing more hostile to revolutionary conditions than commercial ones. Commerce is a natural opponent of all violent passions. It likes moderation, delights in compromise, carefully avoids angry outbursts. It is patient, flexible, subtle, and has recourse to extreme measures only when absolute necessity obliges it to do so. Commerce makes men independent of each other, gives them quite another idea of their personal value, persuades them to manage their own affairs, and teaches them to be successful. Hence it inclines them to liberty but draws them away from revolutions.' 59 Could commerce replace honour in giving people a high idea of their worth and preserving their liberty against the threat of despotism? Montesquieu had held that trade and finance, being independent of their international circuits, could contribute to political liberty. [START_REF]What makes traders more independent is the fact that sovereigns are less able to get their hands on their goods' (Pensées, No. 776)[END_REF] While it considers the rule-abiding and fanciful 'realm' of honour to be incompatible with the conditions that underpin despotism (III:5), The Spirit of the Laws places its main emphasis on the 'realm' of commerce: 'Commerce, sometimes destroyed by conquerors, sometimes hampered by monarchs, wanders across the earth, flees from where it is oppressed, and remains where it is left to breathe: it reigns today where one used to see only deserted places, seas, and rocks; there where it used to reign are now only deserted places' (XXI:5). Thanks to the deterritorialization of wealth and the mobility of credit, the violent acts of princes (persecution, confiscation) are now condemned to impotence. 61 Noting the decline of honour in democratic societies, Tocqueville faces up to a new political fact: the real danger is no longer a moderation of princely power but revolution and popular revolt. And from this point of view, the growing importance of movable property is a factor weighing against revolutionary violence. 62 In this particular set of circumstances, the movable property that Montesquieu saw as a guarantee against despotism becomes its trump card, since this form of property makes it possible for the State to appropriate and control private wealth. At the moment when the Industrial Revolution is taking off, the ever-growing 'industrial class' that is gaining the upper hand over the 'merchant class' 'carries despotism within its ranks', and this 'naturally spreads as the class grows'. 63 Tocqueville, then, takes Montesquieu's analysis in a novel direction: on the one hand, he too asserts that commercial institutions produce a real taste for liberty; 64 on the other hand, he draws out the consequences of the Industrial Revolution and the redefinition of democratic despotism. As to the 'new physiognomy of servitude', associated not with violence and cruelty but with the weakness of political passions and the softening of mores, there is a move away from the vision of The Spirit of the Laws: a softening of mores is no longer only the trump card of modernity; it is also a risk against which the democratic centuries have to be on their guard. The evolution of mores dictates a profound shift. Montesquieu saw only the beginnings of a tendency in which the heroic love of glory gives way to the lure of gain, ostentation to utility, prestige to profit; 65 Tocqueville, faced with the continuing decline of honour and community associations, fears that the enslaving love of well-being will tame the heroic political passions. 66 This different vision of modernity opens the way for the restoration of greatness by means of empire. It is expressed in a disagreement with Tocqueville's friend and correspondent, John Stuart Mill, in March 1841: I do not have to tell you, my dear Mill, that the greatest malady that threatens a people organized as we are is the gradual softening of mores, the abasement of the mind, the mediocrity of tastes (…) one cannot let this nation take up easily the habit of sacrificing what it believes to be its grandeur to its repose, great matters to petty ones; it is not healthy to allow such a nation to believe that its place in the world is smaller, that it is fallen from the level on which its ancestors had put it, but that it must console itself by building railroads and by making the well-being of each private individual prosper amidst peace, under whatever condition the peace is obtained. It is necessary that those who march at the head of such a nation would always keep a proud attitude, if they do not wish to allow the level of national mores to fall very low. 67 c) A resurgence of honour? 63 DA, II, 4:5, p. 797-98. 64 Sur la démocratie en Amérique, Fragments inédits, p. 8. 'Commercial institutions produce not only skill in making use of liberty, but also a real taste for it. Without commerce, such a taste for political liberty amount to no more than childish desires or youthful fears.' 65 'It is the commercial spirit that prevails today' (Pensées, No. 810); 'what used to be called glory, laurels, trophies, triumphs, crowns, is today ready cash' (Pensées, No. 1602). See also Pensées, Nos. 575, 760 and 761. 66 DA, II, 3:18; The Ancien Regime, London: J. M. Dent, 1988, ch. 20, p. 168. 67 Letter of 18 March 1841 (OC VI.1, p. 335), translation modified by Pitts from Roger Boesche, ed., Selected Letters on Politics and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p. 151. According to Jennifer Pitts (A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 195), 'Mill responded to Tocqueville's confidence with a scolding. He agreed reluctantly "that the feeling of orgueil national is the only feeling of a public-spirited and elevating kind which remains and that it ought not therefore be permitted to go down". But French politicians -and Mill did not exclude Tocqueville -had offered the French public only "low and grovelling" ideas of what "constitutes national glory and national importance"; they had sacrificed good government and solid achievement for boisterous self-importance.' Beyond any factors related to the immediate situation, Tocqueville's ambivalence towards Montesquieu's legacy should be understood as follows. Faced with the fait accompli of French colonization following a long period of Ottoman rule, the politician thought he saw an opportunity for France to regain its glorious reputation. Whereas his speech supporting the abolition of slavery presented this as a 'question of honour' for democratic France as the bearer of human rights, 68 his letters and speeches on Algeria adopt a different tone. Beginning in 1841, he is mainly concerned with a strategic, even tactical, question: how to prevail militarily at the least cost, and how to administer in the most effective (that is, decentralized) manner. In line with Marshal Bugeaud or General Lamorcière, he approved of the war to defeat Abd-el-Kader and Arab 'fanaticism', while at the same time attaching importance to the settlement of French civilians in the newly conquered colony. 69 Yet he began to develop a justification beyond immediate interest, arguing that France's honour was at stake in the rivalry with Britain.

How should we interpret the appeal to 'honour'? Again, the distance from Democracy in America (which nevertheless was published around the same time) needs to be emphasized; in the second volume, the lesson Tocqueville drew from Montesquieu was transposed to the new context that he saw as inevitably transforming honour in the democratic centuries. 70 Inspired by Saint-Lambert's article 'Honneur' in the Encyclopédie, by notes from Tocqueville père and by private conversations with Kergolay, the famous chapter on honour is impregnated with the analyses of The Spirit of the Laws. 71 But feudal honour, which he considers to have been 'extraordinary', is now explained in terms of the very special needs of an aristocratic caste. Democratic societies cannot but renounce the ethos of distinction and promote a morality of likeness and resemblance. The rules for the allocation of praise and blame are no longer 'bizarrely' particular, subject to peer assessment of one's reputation, but are internalized and generalized; the disappearance of nations will lead to the disappearance of national honour itself. The particularist ethic of the aristocratic centuries is being supplanted by a universalistic morality of conscience. 72 In his writings on Algeria, however, Tocqueville is a long way from looking beyond the nation-state and endorsing the peaceful industrial future of honour (as he did in the second volume of Democracy in America 73 ). The Algerian question is now an 68 Intervention in the debate on the law governing slaves in the colonies, 30 May 1845: Oeuvres completes (OC), III.1, p. 124. 69 Richter, 'The Uses of Theory', art. cit., p. 377. Richter mentions Tocqueville's silence in 1846 when it was discovered that hundreds of Arabs had been smoked to death during raids that he had described as humane -a policy that Lamartine, for instance, fervently opposed (pp. 389-90). 70 Here I would disagree with Paul Rahe, who argues that Montesquieu had predicted the decline of the 'ridiculous' prejudice of honour in the age of Enlightenment, and that Tocqueville was merely following him on this point (Soft Despotism, p. 170). 71 In January 1838, during a four-day visit to Baugy, Louis de Kergolay probably helped Tocqueville in the drafting of this chapter. On 18 January Tocqueville wrote to Gustave de Beaumont: 'Louis has just spent four days here; I was bricked up in a system of ideas and unable to break free. It was a real intellectual cul de sac, which he got me out of in just a few hours' (OC, VIII.1, p. 279). As the editors note, Tocqueville had previously asked his father to consult the librarian at the Institut Royal de France for information about the feudal code of honour. But M. Feuillet had done no more than refer him to the relevant article in the Encyclopédie and to Books III, IV and XXVIII of The Spirit of the Laws. Hervé de Tocqueville then compiled some notes of his own and sent them to his son on 17 January 1838 (see the Pléiade edition of the Oeuvres, pp. 1150-53). This thoughtful chapter on honour should not be underestimated. In his 'Discours de rentrée des tribunaux sur le duel', which he delivered in November 1828 before the judges at the Versailles law courts, Tocqueville had argued that 'a state perishes if it [honour] does not reign where virtue is no longer' (OC, XVI, pp. 49-65; here p. 63). The speech should be read in its entirety. 72 DA, II, 3:18, pp. 716-19. 73 DA, II, 3:10-12. opportunity to impart new vigour to the national honour. [START_REF]Tocqueville turned to the conquest of Algeria as a facet of his political efforts to generate in France the national pride and public virtue he believed the nation required[END_REF] From 1837 on, honour helps to justify the direct domination of civilian populations: 'Independent of the tribes over whom it is in our interest to attempt to exercise no more than an indirect influence at present, there is a considerable enough part of the country that our security as much as our honour obliges us keep under our immediate power and to govern without intermediaries.' [START_REF]Second Letter on Algeria[END_REF] As the reporter of the parliamentary commission on Algeria, Tocqueville preferred to argue in terms of honour rather than financial, agricultural or commercial interest (acquiring the treasury of the Dey of Algiers, fertile lands and manufacturing markets, control over the Mediterranean). He scarcely ever used the much-heard rhetoric about France's 'civilizing mission' to free the Christian slaves and oppressed peoples of the Ottoman Empire, to dispel fanaticism and spread enlightenment. [START_REF]These two arguments are already found in Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes[END_REF] For Tocqueville, the cardinal issue is that France must preserve its great power status on the international stage: 'I do not think France can think seriously of leaving Algeria. In the eyes of the world, such an abandonment would be the clear indication of our decline. It would be far less disturbing to see our conquest taken from us by a rival nation.' [START_REF] Welch | Colonial Violence and the Rhetoric of Evasion: Tocqueville on Algeria[END_REF] In the aftermath of the Anglo-French crisis of 1840, he was hostile to Guizot's policy of appeasement overseas:

If France shrank from such an enterprise in which she found nothing but the natural difficulties of the terrain and the opposition of little barbarous tribes, she would seem in the eyes of the world to be yielding to her own impotence and succumbing to her own lack of courage. Any people that easily gives up what it has taken and chooses to retire peacefully to its original borders proclaims that its age of greatness is over. It visibly enters the period of its decline. If France ever abandons Algeria, it is clear that she could do it only at a moment when she is seen to be doing great things in Europe, and not at a time such as our own, when she appears to be falling to the second rank and seems resigned to let the control of European affairs pass into other hands. 78 Not only would this invite France's rivals to step in and take over; the loss of Algiers would be damaging to the nation's honour: 'Our action in the world will be suspended, and it is as though the arms of France were paralysed -a state of affairs that we must quickly bring to an end, for our security as much as for our honour.' 79 Tocqueville's attitude not only differs from that of a left critic of the colonial adventure in Algeria (who would see honour being manipulated by those with an economic interest in the conquest [START_REF] Pitts | On the opposition of Amédée Desjobert[END_REF] ), but also diverges from the principles of another great liberal inheritor of Montesquieu: Benjamin Constant. For Constant was much more suspicious of the illusions of grandeur and honour present in colonial policy. 81 Without being justified, Tocqueville's turn on the question of empire is understandable in light of his role as a politician directly embroiled in the tragedies of history. Montesquieu considered that territorial conquest threatened to lead to the worst genocide and, ultimately, to the decline of the conquering nation; he criticized France's expansionist urges and held up Britain as an example of modern commercial colonization, more 'refined' than that of countries which imitated the Roman model. Faced with a shift in Britain's colonial policy, Tocqueville too sought to take it as his principal model, while remaining as aware as his predecessor of the peculiarities of the French national character -more capable of dazzling feats than of lasting conquests. 82 But the British model was now carrying all before it, as we can see from Tocqueville's preparatory work on the colonization of India: 'India. A great position, from which England dominates all Asia. A glory which revives the entire English nation. What a sense of grandeur and power this possession creates in every part of that people! The value of a conquest ought not to be calculated only in terms of financial and commercial considerations.' 83 In relation to colonization more than in internal affairs, Tocqueville's aristocratic liberalism only sorrowfully accepted the individualism and 'honest materialism' of the democratic centuries.

The difference between Tocqueville and Montesquieu is therefore not only due to the change in historical circumstances; it also has to do with Tocqueville's loyalty to certain aristocratic values, even as he defended the new spirit of democracy. This loyalty, which is also a loyalty to Montesquieu, sometimes sets Tocqueville at odds with himself. Can one preserve a form of honour in a society which has replaced honour with clearsighted self-interest as the dominant passion? Nothing is less evident. Compare, for example, a letter to Corcelle from 1840 (in which Tocqueville excludes any option other than abandonment or complete domination) with one written to the same correspondent six years later: 'How can we manage to create in Africa a French population with our laws, our mores, our civilization, while still preserving vis-à-vis the indigenous people all the considerations that justice, humanity, our interest well understood, and, as you have said, our honour strictly oblige us to preserve?' 84 Honour has changed sides: its weak prescriptions can no longer guide our conduct. 81 Constant died in December 1830, shortly after the conquest of Algeria. We therefore have only one text by him on the question ('Alger et les élections', Le Temps, 20 June 1930), in which he describes it as a matter of honour between the Dey of Algiers and Charles X but remains alert to the dangers of political manipulation and increased oppression (J. Pitts, A Turn to Empire, p. 184). 82 The Ancien Regime, pp. 168-69; cf. SL, IX:7. 83

  See P. Briand, 'Montesquieu, Mably et Alexandre le Grand : aux sources de l'histoire hellénistique', Revue Montesquieu No. 8, pp. 151-97. 16 SL, XIX:3. See C. Larrère, 'L'empire, entre fédération et république', Revue Montesquieu 8, pp. 111-36.

	17 SL, X:4. See M. Mosher, 'Montesquieu on Conquest: Three Cartesian Heroes and Five Good
	Enough Empires', Revue Montesquieu 8, pp. 81-110.
	18 Pensées, 185 (written in 1731?). The evolution of Montesquieu's thinking on the right of conquest is
	brought out in J. Terrel, 'A propos de la conquête: droit et politique chez Montesquieu', Revue Montesquieu
	8, 2005-2006, pp. 137-50.

my Montesquieu. Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004; reed. Hermann, 2011. 14 SL, VIII:17.

15

  Montchrétien, Traicté de l'oeconomie politique, p. 279. 31 Ibid., p. 282. 32 See Carl Schmitt, Land and Sea, Washington: Plutarch Press, 1977.

33

Melon, 'Essai politique sur le commerce', in E. Daire, ed., Economistes et financiers du XVIII e siècle, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1971, ch. IV, pp. 677-78.

34

Huet, Histoire du commerce et de la navigation des anciens, Paris: Fournier, 1716 (the work was written at an earlier date). See C. Larrère, 'L'histoire du commerce dans L'Esprit des lois', in M. Porret and C. Volpilhac-Auger eds., Le Temps de Montesquieu, Geneva: Droz, 2002, pp. 319-36 ; and C. Spector, Montesquieu et l'émergence de l'économie politique, ch. 8.

  OC III.1, p. 478; Jean Alphonse Bernard, Tocqueville in India, Paris: Les Éditions d'En Face, 2006. Tocqueville also now sought to derive inspiration from the American model of colonization (Letter to F. Lieber, 22 July 1846, in OC VII, p. 111). 84 Letter to Corcelle, 10 October 1846.

Ibid., pp. 775-76.

Ibid., p. 779.

This is the case when the settlers are granted citizenship rights (ibid., p. 775).

Ibid., p. 776.

It never went beyond a note in the original manuscript. .

A. Pagden, Lords of all the World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 115-23. See also his Peoples and Empires, New York: The Modern Library, 2001, Ch. 7.

See A. de Montchrétien, Traicté de l'oeconomie politique, ed. by Th. Funck-Brentano, Paris: Plon, 1889, pp. 315-29.