Aristocratic government is a monarchy whose throne is vacant. Sovereignty there is in regency.
The regents who administer sovereignty are hereditary, so that it is perfectly separate from the people, and in this respect aristocratic government approaches monarchical. It cannot, however, attain the vigour of the latter, but in wisdom it has no equal. Antiquity has left us no model of this government. In Rome, in Sparta, aristocracy no doubt played a very great role as in all governments, but it did not reign alone.
In general, it can be said that all non-monarchical governments are aristocratic since democracy is only an elective aristocracy.
“The first societies”, says Rousseau, “governed themselves aristocratically”.1 This is false, if by the words “first societies” Rousseau means the first peoples, the first nations proper, which were all governed by kings. All observers have remarked that monarchy was the most ancient government known.
And if he means to speak of the first gatherings that preceded the formation of peoples into bodies of nations, he speaks of what he does not know and what none can know. Besides, in that age there was no government properly speaking; man was not yet what he must become; this point has been sufficiently discussed in the first book.
The savages of North America still govern themselves in this way today (aristocratically) and are very well governed.2
The savages of America are not quite men, precisely because they are savages; they are, moreover, beings visibly degraded physically and morally, and, on this point at least, I do not see that the ingenious author of Philosophical Investigations on the Americans3 has been answered.
It is false, too, that these savages are governed aristocratically. Tacitus gave a history of all the savage peoples when he said: “They choose kings out of nobility, generals out of virtue: and kings have not unlimited or arbitrary power.”4 Tacitus’ book on the customs of the Germans and the Journal historique d’un voyage en Amérique by Father de Charlevoix present a host of analogies.5 Among these peoples we find not aristocratic government, but the rudiments of a moderate monarchy.
Leaving aside the natural aristocracy which results from physical strength and talents, which is quite unnecessary to attend to, there are only two kinds of aristocracy, elective and hereditary, as Rousseau observes, but the same narrow notions, the same childish prejudices which led him astray about monarchy, made him no more reasonable about aristocratic government.
The elective aristocracy is the best, it is aristocracy proper.6
This is not an error, a misunderstanding, a distraction; it is an absolute lack of reasoning; it is a shameful blunder.
Monarchy is sovereignty vested in one man alone; and aristocracy is that same sovereignty vested in a few men (more or less).
But since elective monarchy is the weakest and least tranquil of governments, and since experience has clearly shown the superiority of hereditary monarchy, it follows, by an incontestable analogy, that hereditary aristocracy is preferable to elective. Let us repeat with Tacitus that it is better to receive a sovereign than to seek one.7
Election is the means by which probity, enlightenment, experience, and all other reasons of preference and public esteem, are so many fresh guarantees that one will be wisely governed.8
This argument comports exactly with hereditary monarchy, and with monarchs created before they reached the age of reason.
The power being transmitted to the children with the property of the father makes the government hereditary, and we see twenty-year old senators.9
Further on he will say, speaking of hereditary monarchy; “There is a risk of having children as rulers.”10 This is always the same sagacity; it must be observed, however, that the argument is worse with regard to hereditary aristocracy, since the inexperience of twenty-year-old senators is amply compensated for by the wisdom of the elders.
And since the occasion presents itself naturally, I shall observe that the mixture of children and men is precisely one of the beautiful aspects of aristocratic government; all roles are wisely distributed in the world—that of youth is to do good, and that of old age to prevent evil; the impetuosity of the young, who demand only action and creation, is very useful to the State, but they are too inclined to innovate, to demolish, and they would do much harm without old age, which is there to stop them. Old age in turn opposes even useful reforms; it is too rigid, it knows not how to adapt to circumstances, and sometimes a twenty-year old senator can be placed very appropriately next to one of eighty.
All in all, hereditary aristocratic government is perhaps the most advantageous to what is called the people; sovereignty is concentrated enough to impose itself on them; but as it has fewer needs and less splendour, it demands less of them: if it is sometimes timid, it is because it is never imprudent; between the people and the sovereign there may be malcontents, but their sufferings are not the work of the government; they are only a matter of opinion, and this is an inestimable advantage for the mass whose happiness is a surety.
The mortal enemy of experience thinks quite differently; according to him, hereditary aristocracy “is the worst of all governments.”11
The dominant sentiment in all Rousseau’s works is a certain plebeian anger which chafes at any kind of superiority. The energetic submission of the wise man nobly bends under the indispensable empire of social distinctions, and he never appears greater than when he bows; but Rousseau had no such elevation: weak and surly, he spent his life hurling insults at the great, as he would have hurled them at the people if he had been born a great lord.
This character explains his political heresies; it is not truth that inspires him, but mood; wherever he sees greatness, and especially hereditary greatness, he foams at the mouth and loses the faculty of reason: this is what happens to him especially when speaking of aristocratic government.
To say that this kind of government is the worst of all is to say nothing: it must be proved. Venice and Bern first come to mind, and one is not a little surprised to learn that there is no worse government than that of these two states.
But history and experience never embarrass Rousseau; he begins by laying down general maxims which he does not prove, and then he says: I have proved it. If experience contradicts him, he is little bothered, or he wriggles out of it with a little dance. Berne, for example, embarrasses him not at all. Dare we ask why? It is “maintained by the extreme wisdom of the senate and forms an honourable and highly dangerous exception.”12
But the Bernese Senate forms precisely the essence of the Bernese government. It is the head of the body politic; it is the principal part without which this government would not be what it is: it is therefore just as if Rousseau had said:
Hereditary aristocratic government is detestable; the esteem of the world accorded for several centuries to that of Berne in no way contradicts my theory, for what makes this government not bad is that it is excellent. — O profundity!13
The judgement on Venice is no less curious: “Venice,” he says, “has fallen into hereditary aristocracy, and so has long been a dissolved state.”14
Certainly, Europe was not aware of this; but what everyone is aware of is that Venice has subsisted for a thousand years, and that its power cast a shadow over all its neighbours when it was shaken by the League of Cambrai and had the skill to escape this peril at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The Venetian government has grown old, no doubt, like all the governments of Europe, but the youth of Milo of Croton15 renders his old age venerable, and no one has the right to insult it.
Venice has shone with all manner of brilliance: in laws, in trade, in arms, in the arts and in letters; its monetary system is an example to Europe. It played a dazzling role in the Middle Ages.16 If Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Storms, if commerce took another route, it is not the fault of the Senate; and if at this moment Venice is obliged to put prudence in place of force, once again, let us respect her old age: after thirteen hundred years of life and health, one can be ill, one can even die with honour.17
Declamations on the state inquisition, which Rousseau calls a tribunal of blood,18 are scarecrows for weaklings. Have we not heard that the state inquisitors shed human blood for their own amusement? This imposing magistracy is necessary because it exists, and it must not be so terrible because it belongs to one of the gentlest, most cheerful, and most friendly peoples in Europe. The malicious and the thoughtless can only complain when it comes to themselves; but it is a constant fact, attested by all sensible travellers, that there is perhaps no country where the people are happier, more tranquil, more free than in Venice: the foreigner shares this freedom, and at this moment it is under the laws of this peaceful government that the honourable victims of the French Revolution enjoy the kindest and most generous hospitality.
If the state inquisitors have sometimes ordered severe executions, severity did not exclude justice, and it is often to spare blood that blood is shed. As for errors and injustices, they are everywhere; but the state inquisitors did not give the hemlock to Morosini19 on his return from the Peloponnese.
Rousseau, in saying that Venice had fallen into hereditary aristocracy, proves that he knew very little about the growth of empires. If he had known, instead of fallen, he would have said achieved. While the Venetians were only unfortunate refugees, living in shacks on those islets destined one day to support so many palaces, it is quite clear that their constitution was not mature, strictly speaking; they had none, since they did not yet enjoy absolute independence, which had been contested for so long. But in 697 they already had a leader powerful enough to have given us to think that he was sovereign: now, wherever there is a leader, at least a non-despotic leader, there is an hereditary aristocracy between this leader and the people; this aristocracy formed itself imperceptibly like a language and matured in silence. Finally, at the beginning of the twelfth century, it took on a legal form, and the government was what it must be. Under this form of sovereignty, Venice filled the world with its fame. To say that this government degenerated20 by thus attaining its natural dimensions is to say that the government of Rome degenerated when the institution of the tribunes, as I have noted concerning Cicero, gave legal form to the constitutional but disordered power of the people.
Moreover, if we are to believe Rousseau, it is not only Venice that had fallen into hereditary aristocracy. Berne suffered the same fate; its government was similarly contracted, and consequently it degenerated, the day the people made the mistake of abandoning to the prince the election of magistrates.21 If one asks in what annals this important fact is to be found, and how Berne fell from democracy or elective aristocracy into hereditary aristocracy, no one can answer; no one has heard of this fall revealed at the end of time in the Contrat Social. This Rousseau is a strange man: sometimes he contradicts history, and sometimes he invents it.
In treating of hereditary aristocratic governments, we must not pass over Genoa in silence. It may be that, from certain points of view, it cannot stand comparison with other governments of the same class; it may be that the people are less happy there than in Venice or Berne; nevertheless, Genoa has had its fine moments and its great men; and for the rest, every people always has the government and the happiness it deserves.
After having examined the action of hereditary aristocracy on countries of a certain extent, it is good to see it acting in a more restricted theatre and to study it within the walls of a city. Lucca and Ragusa present themselves first to the observer. It has been said that democracy is best suited to small states; it would be more accurate to say that only small states can support it; but hereditary aristocracy suits them perfectly: here are two small states, two isolated cities in the middle of an inconspicuous territory, peaceful, happy, and distinguished by a host of talents. Geneva, with its turbulent democracy, presents an interesting object of comparison. Let us throw these political grains into the balance and see without prejudice on which side there is more wisdom and stability.
It is proved, by theory and still more by experience, that hereditary aristocratic government is perhaps the most favourable to the mass of the people, that it has much consistency, wisdom, and stability, and that it adapts itself to countries of very different size. Like all governments, it is good wherever it is established, and it is a crime to disenchant its subjects with it.
1 Contrat social, 3, V.
2 Contrat social, 3, V.
3 Cornelius de Pauw, ethnologist and author of Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains, considered the foremost expert on the Americas at the time, who offered an environmental theory for what he took to be the inferiority of indigenous North Americans.
4 Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt: nec regibus infinita aut libera potestas. (Tacitus, Germania, VII)
5 Si Germanorum Canadensiumque principum potestatem conferas, eamdem omnino reperies. [“If you compare the power of German and Canadian leaders, you will discover that it is altogether the same.”] (See P. de Charlevoix, letter 18; Brottier, ad Tac. de Mor. Germ. VII et passim) [Pierre François-Xavier Charlevoix, author of the cited work in 1744; “Brottier” refers to the 1771 edition of Tacitus.]
6 Contrat social, 3, V.
7 Minore discrimine sumitur princeps quam quaeritur. [“It is much less trouble to acquire a prince than to seek one.”]
8 Contrat social, 3, V.
9 Contrat social, 3, V.
10 Contrat social, 3, VI: de la Monarchie.
11 Contrat social, 3, V.
12 Contrat social, 3, V.
13 Montesquieu paid special homage to the government of Berne. “There is at present,” he says, “in the world a republic that no one knows about, and which in secrecy and silence increases its strength every day. It is certain that if it ever reaches the state of greatness for which its wisdom destines it, it will necessarily change its laws, etc.”. (Grandeur et décadence des Romains, ch. X) Let us put aside the prophecies; I believe only in those of the Bible. But it seems to me that we owe a compliment to the government wise enough to be praised simultaneously by wisdom and folly.
14 Contrat social, 3, V, note.
15 [Milo of Croton, a sixth century BCE Greek wrestler and, according to Diodorus Siculus, military commander. He won many victories in the Olympiad and other competitions and was said to have been devoured by wild beasts when, hubristically demonstrating his strength, his hand was caught in a tree trunk.]
16 Count Carli, one of the ornaments of Italy, has said some curious things about the ancient splendour of Venice; we may consult his works, which are full of stunning erudition, sed Graecis incognitas qui sua tantum mirantur [“but (these things are) unknown to the Greeks, who admire only their own”].
17 Sola Veneta est (respublica) quae aevum millenarium jactet: felix fati, sed et legum atque institutorum felix quibus velut vinculis firmata est adhuc contra lapsum. Maneat, floreat, favemus, et vovemus. [“Venice is the sole republic that has lasted a thousand years: blessed in fate, but also in its laws and institutions which are like chains that have hitherto stayed it from collapse. We applaud it and wish that it should endure and flourish.”] (Justus Lipsius, Monita et exempla politica, 2, I)
18 Contrat social, 4, V.
19 [Francesco Morosini, captain of the Venetian forces during the siege of Candia on Crete. He surrendered the city and was accused of cowardice and treason but was eventually acquitted of the charges. He was later rehabilitated and became Doge from 1688–1694.]
20 Contrat social, 3, X, note 1.
21 Contrat social, 3, X, note 2. When Rousseau sees the truth, he never sees it in its entirety, and in that case his decisions are more dangerous, for four fifths of the readers, than perfect blunders, for example, when he says that the government which is tightening, is corrupting, he is wrong and he is right he is right with regard to the democratic government which departs from its nature; he is wrong with regard to the aristocratic government which approaches it: in the latter case, it is a movement of organization in the former, it is a movement of dissolution.