Encyclopedic Liberty. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
have spoken, or only a part of the people.
The method of casting one’s vote is another fundamental law of democracy. One may cast one’s vote by lot or by choice, and even by both. Lot leaves to each citizen a reasonable expectation of serving his Country. But since it is imperfect by itself, the great legislators have always applied themselves to remedying it. With this in mind, Solon determined that only those who presented themselves could be elected; that whoever was elected would be examined by judges, and that each one could accuse him without being unworthy.9 This applied to both lot and choice. On completing his term, the magistrate had to go through a second judgment regarding the way in which he had conducted himself. People without ability, M. de Montesquieu observes here,10 must have been very reluctant to offer their names to be drawn by lot.
The law that determines the way votes are cast is a third fundamental law in democracy. A great question is debated on this score, namely, whether the votes should be public or secret, for both practices are in use in different democracies. It seems they cannot be too secret (to maintain their liberty), nor too public (to make them authentic), so that the lesser people may be enlightened by the leaders and contained by the gravity of certain eminent men. In Geneva, in the election of first magistrates, the citizens cast their votes in public but write them in secret, so that order is then maintained with liberty.11
The people, who have sovereign power, should do by themselves everything they can do well; and what they cannot do well, they should have done by their ministers. But the ministers are not theirs if they do not name
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them. It is thus a fourth fundamental law of this government that the people name their ministers—that is, their magistrates. Like monarchs, and even more so, they need to be guided by a council or senate. But to have confidence in it, they must elect its members, either by choosing them themselves as in Athens, or through some magistrate they have established to elect them, such as was practiced in Rome on occasion. The people are quite fit to choose those in whom they are to entrust some part of their authority. If there could be doubts about their capacity to discern merit, one need only remember that continual series of excellent choices made by the Greeks and Romans, which will surely not be attributed to chance. However, just as most citizens who have enough capacity to elect do not have enough to be elected, so too the people, who have enough capacity to call others to account for their management, are not fit to manage by themselves, nor to conduct public business, which proceeds at a pace with a certain movement that is neither too slow nor too fast. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms they upset everything; sometimes with a hundred thousand feet they move only like insects.
Finally, it is a fundamental law of democracy that the people be the legislator. However, there are countless occasions when it is necessary for the senate to be able to enact laws; it is often even appropriate to test a law before establishing it. The constitutions of Rome and Athens were very wise. The decrees of the senate had the force of law for a year; they became permanent only by the will of the people.12 But although every democracy must inevitably have written laws, ordinances, and stable rules and regulations, nonetheless nothing prevents the people who have provided these from revoking them, or changing them any time they think it necessary, unless they have sworn to observe them in perpetuity. And even in that case, the oath obliges only those citizens who have themselves taken it.
Such are the main fundamental laws of democracy. Let us speak now of the spring or principle that is appropriate for the preservation of this type of government.13 This principle can only be virtue, and it is only by means of this that democracies are maintained. Virtue in a democracy is love of
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the laws and love of Country. Since this love demands self-renunciation, a constant preference of the public interest to one’s own produces all the private virtues; they simply are that preference.14 This love leads to good mores, and good mores lead to love of Country.15 The less we are able to satisfy our private passions, the more we give ourselves up to passions for the general good.
Virtue in a democracy also includes love of equality and of frugality.16 Since everyone there has the same happiness and the same advantages, everyone is bound to taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, things that can be expected only from a generalized frugality. Love of equality limits ambition to the happiness of rendering greater services to one’s Country than other citizens do. They cannot all render it equal services, but they should equally render it services. Thus, distinctions in a democracy arise from the principle of equality, even when equality seems to be erased by successful services or superior talents. Love of frugality limits the desire of possession to the concern required by what is necessary for one’s family, and even by what is surplus for one’s Country.
Love of equality and love of frugality are strongly aroused by equality and frugality themselves, when one lives in a state in which the laws establish both.17 There are nonetheless cases in which equality among democracy’s citizens can be taken away for democracy’s utility.18
The ancient Greeks, persuaded that peoples who lived in a popular government must of necessity be brought up in the practice of the virtues necessary to maintain democracies, created distinctive institutions to inspire these virtues.19 When you read in the life of Lycurgus the laws he gave the Lacedemonians, you think you are reading the history of the Sevarambes.20 The laws of Crete were the originals for the laws of Lacedemon, and Plato’s laws were their correction.
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Private education should also be extremely attentive about inspiring the virtues we have discussed. But there is one sure way for children to have them, and that is for the fathers themselves to have them.21 One is ordinarily in charge of giving one’s knowledge to one’s children, and even more in charge of giving them one’s passions. If this does not happen, it is because what was done in the father’s house is destroyed by impressions from the outside. It is not young people who degenerate; they are ruined only when grown men have already been corrupted.
The principle of democracy is corrupted when love of the laws and of Country begins to deteriorate, when general and individual education are neglected, when honest desires change their goals, when work and duty are called obstacles. From then on, ambition enters those hearts that can admit it, and avarice enters them all.22 These truths are confirmed by history. Athens had in its midst the same forces when it dominated with so much glory as when it served with so much shame. It had twenty thousand citizens when it defended the Greeks against the Persians, when it disputed for empire with Lacedemon, and when it attacked Sicily. It had twenty thousand when Demetrius of Phalereus enumerated them as one counts slaves in a market. When Philip dared dominate in Greece, the Athenians feared him as the enemy not of liberty but of pleasure. They had passed a law to punish by death anyone who might propose that the silver destined for the theaters be converted to the uses of war.
Finally,23 the principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is lost but also when the spirit of extreme equality is taken up and everyone wants to be the equal of those chosen to command. At that point, the people, finding intolerable even the power they entrust to others, want to do everything themselves: deliberate for the senate, execute for the magistrates, and cast off all the judges. This abuse of democracy is with reason called a veritable ochlocracy. See this word. In this abuse, there is no more love of order, no more mores—in a word, no more virtue. Corrupters then emerge, petty tyrants having all the vices of a single one. Soon, a
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single tyrant rises up over the others, and the people lose everything, even the advantages they thought to derive from their corruption.
It would be a fortunate thing if popular government could preserve mores, frugality, love of virtue, execution of the laws; if it could avoid the two excesses—I mean the spirit of inequality that leads to aristocracy, and the spirit of extreme equality that leads to the despotism of one. But it is quite rare that a democracy is able to save itself for long from these two shoals. It is the fate of this government, admirable in its principle, to become almost inevitably