As Peter Gay demonstrated, Voltaire had no penchant for despots of any kind, including the “enlightened” variety, but having lived under absolute monarchs in France and Prussia, a constitutional monarchy in England, the oligarchic republic of Geneva, and having been to Holland many times, what mattered to him were just laws applicable to everyone, including kings. Some strongly democratic thinking came to the forefront, however, during the uprising in Geneva of the citizens against the wealthy ruling classes. Voltaire espouses their cause in this piece, one of his most widely-quoted pamphlets. These extracts omit the articles concerning Rousseau's Social Contract, Montesquieu, or details pertaining to the conflict. Only general reflections on government and religion are retained.1

I

Pure despotism is the punishment of the bad conduct of humankind. If a community is submitted to the control of one person or of several, it is visibly because it has not had the courage or ability to govern itself.

II

A society governed arbitrarily perfectly resembles a herd of cows placed under a yoke for the service of a master. He only feeds them enough to put them in condition to serve. He only treats their illnesses insofar as their health can be useful to him. He only fattens them in order to feed off of them, and he uses the skin of some to harness others to the plough.

III

A nation is subdued this way either by a skillful compatriot who takes advantage of its imbecility and factions or by a thief called a conqueror who has come with other thieves to take over their lands, who has murdered those who resisted and made slaves of the cowards he let live.

IV

This thief, who deserves the rack, sometimes has altars raised to him. Those who are oppressed see in the children of this thief a race of gods. They see blasphemy in the examination of their authority, and sacrilege in the slightest effort made for freedom.

V

The most absurd of all despotisms, the most humiliating for human nature, the most contradictory and fatal is that of priests; and of all the priestly empires, the most criminal is unquestionably that of the priests of the Christian religion. It is an outrage made to our Gospels where Jesus Christ says in twenty places, “There will be no first or last among you; My kingdom is not of this world; The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve,” etc.2

VI

When our bishop, made to serve and not to be served, made to relieve the poor and not to devour their subsistence, made to catechize and not to dominate, dared, in a time of anarchy, to have himself decreed prince of a town of which he was only the pastor, he was manifestly guilty of rebellion and tyranny.

VII

Thus the bishops of Rome, who were the first to give this fatal example, made both their domination and their sect odious throughout half of Europe; hence several bishops in Germany sometimes became the oppressors of the people they should have served as fathers to.

VIII

Why does human nature abhor those who have subjected us by dupery more than those who have subjected us with arms? It is because there is courage at least in tyrants who cow people, whereas there is only cowardice in those who deceive them. We hate the valor of conquerors, but we esteem it. We hate trickery, and we despise it. Hatred joined to contempt can shake off all the yokes.

IX

When we destroyed part of the papist superstitions in our town, such as the worship of cadavers, the tax on sin, the outrage made to God of buying off the punishments with which God threatens crimes, and so many other inventions that besotted human nature; when in shattering the servitude of these monstrous errors we expelled the papal bishop who dared declare himself our sovereign,3 we did nothing more than to reinstate the rights of reason and liberty of which we had been despoiled.

X

We resumed a municipal government, more or less as it had been under the Romans, and it became illustrious and secured by the liberty bought with our blood. We did not experience that odious and humiliating distinction between nobles and commoners, which in its origins means only lords and slaves. Born equal, we remained so, and we only gave dignities, that is to say the burden of public responsibilities, to those we deemed most apt to uphold them.

XI

We instituted priests to be uniquely what they should be: teachers of morals for our children. These tutors should be paid and enjoy consideration, but they must not claim jurisdiction, authority, control, or honors. They must not under any circumstances equate themselves with the magistracy. An ecclesiastical assembly that would make a citizen kneel before it would be playing the role of a pedant punishing children or of a tyrant chastising slaves.

XII

It is an insult to reason and to the laws to say the words: civil and ecclesiastical government. One must say civil government and ecclesiastical rules, and not a single one of these rules should be made by any but the civil powers.

XIII

Civil government is the will of everyone, executed by one or several, in virtue of the laws made by all.

XIV

The laws that constitute government are all directed against ambition: people everywhere have thought to erect a dam against this torrent that would inundate the earth. This is why, in republics, the first laws regulate the rights of each body; it is why kings swear at their coronation to protect the privileges of their subjects. There is only the king of Denmark in all Europe who is, per the law itself, above the laws. The states, assembled in 1660, declared him the absolute arbitrator. It seems they were foreseeing that Denmark would have wise and just kings for over a century. Perhaps this law will have to be changed in ensuing centuries.

XV

Some theologians have claimed that popes had, by divine right, the same power over all the earth that Danish monarchs have over a small part of it. But they are theologians…the whole world booed them loudly, and the Capitoline rumbled at seeing the monk Hildebrand4 speak as master in the sanctuary of laws where the Catos, the Scipios, and the Ciceros had spoken as citizens.

XVI

The laws that concern distributive justice, properly called jurisprudence, have been insufficient, equivocal, and uncertain everywhere, because men placed at the heads of state have always been busier with their own interests than with the public's interest. In the twelve grand tribunals in France, there are twelve different jurisprudences. What is true in Aragon [Spain] becomes false in Castile; what is just on the banks of the Danube is unjust on the banks of the Elbe. Even the Roman laws, demanded in all the tribunals today, are sometimes contradictory.

XVII

When a law is obscure, everyone must interpret it because everyone enacted it, unless some have been expressly entrusted with interpreting the laws.

XVIII

When times have changed appreciably, there are laws that should be changed. Accordingly, when Triptolemus brought the usage of plows to Athens, the policing of acorns was abolished. In the days when academies were composed only of priests, and they alone possessed the jargon of science, it was fitting that they choose all the professors: it was the policing of acorns. But now that the laity is enlightened, the civil power must resume its right to appoint all university chairs.

XIX

The law that would allow a citizen to be imprisoned on assumptions, before the facts, and without judicial formalities, would be tolerable in a time of disruption and war; but it is the work of torturers and tyrants in times of peace.

XL

A tribunal must have set laws, both criminal and civil. Nothing can be arbitrary, and even less so when it concerns one's honor and one's life than when one is pleading only over money.

XLI

A criminal code is absolutely necessary for citizens and for magistrates. Citizens then have no cause to complain of judgments and the magistrates will not have to fear incurring hatred, for it will not be their will that condemns, it will be the law. One power is needed to judge by this law alone, and another power to pardon.

XLIII

There has never been a perfect government because men are subject to passions, and if they had no passions there would be no need of government. The most tolerable of all is no doubt republican, because it is the one that brings people closest to natural equality. Every family's father should be master in his own house, but not in his neighbor's house. A society being composed of several houses and the land attached to them, it is contradictory that a single man should be the master of these houses and these lands, and it accords with nature that each master has a vote for the good of society.

XLIV

Should those who have neither land nor house in this society have their say? They have no more a right to it than a clerk paid by merchants would have to regulate their commerce, but they can be associated, either for services rendered or by paying for their association.

XLV

This land, governed in common, should be richer and more populated than if it were governed by a master because, in a true republic, each person, being secure in his or her possessions and of his person, works for him or herself with confidence and, by bettering his or her condition, betters that of the public. The opposite can happen under a master. A man can be quite astonished to hear that neither his person nor his goods belong to him.

XLVIII

Let us compare what we were under our bishop to what we are today. We slept in hovels, ate off wooden plates in our kitchens. Our bishop alone had silver-plated dishes and strolled with forty horses through his diocese, which he called his states. Today we have citizens who have three times his revenue and we possess, both in town and in the country, houses much finer than what he called his palaces, which we have made into prisons.

LV

“Lowly commerce was vile among the Greeks.” I don't know what the author means by lowly commerce, but I do know that in Athens all citizens were engaged in trade.5 Plato sold oil and the father of the demagogue, Demosthenes, was an iron merchant. Most of the workers were foreigners or slaves. It is important for us to note that trade was not incompatible with prestigious posts in the republics of Greece, except among the Spartans, who had no commerce.

LXII

Despite its faults, this volume should always be dear to men because the author has sincerely said what he thinks, whereas most writers of his country, beginning with the great Bossuet, have often said what they did not think. He has everywhere reminded men that they are free, he presents to human nature its titles that she has lost over the greater part of earth. He combats superstition and inspires morals.

LXIII

Will it be through books that destroy superstition and make virtue loveable that we will manage to make humanity better? Yes; if young people read these books with attention, they will be preserved from every species of fanaticism. They will sense that peace is the fruit of tolerance and the true goal of every society.

LXIV

Tolerance is as necessary to politics as to religion. It is pride alone that is intolerant. It is pride that revolts minds, in trying to force others to think like us. It is the secret source of all factions.

LXV

Politeness, circumspection, and indulgence strengthen the union between friends and families. They will have the same effect in a little state, which is one big family.