Encyclopedic Liberty. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert

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       Despotism ^†

       (Despotisme)

      DESPOTISM (Political law), tyrannical, arbitrary, and absolute government of a single man: such is the government of Turkey, the Mogol, Japan, Persia, and virtually all of Asia. Following some celebrated writers, let us unfold its principle and its character, and let us give thanks to heaven for causing us to be born under a different government, where we obey with joy a monarch that it makes us love.

      The principle of despotic states is that a lone prince governs everything according to his will, having absolutely no other law to dominate him but that of his whims. It is in the nature of this power that it passes entirely into the hands of the person in whom it is entrusted.¹ This person, this vizir, becomes the despot himself, and each individual officer becomes the vizir. The establishment of a vizir flows from the fundamental principle of despotic states.² When eunuchs have weakened the hearts and minds of the eastern princes, and have often left them ignorant even of their status, these princes are withdrawn from the palace to be placed on the throne. They then appoint a vizir, in order to give themselves up in their seraglio to all the excesses of their most stupid passions. Thus, the more people the prince has to govern, the less he thinks about government; the greater the matters of business, the less he deliberates about them, since this concern belongs to the vizir. The latter, incompetent in his position, can neither express his fears about a future event to the sultan nor blame his lack of success on the

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      caprice of fortune.³ In such a government, the lot of men is no different from that of beasts: instinct, obedience, punishment. In Persia, when the Sophi⁴ has dismissed someone from favor, it would show a lack of respect to present a petition on the latter’s behalf. When he has condemned him, no one may speak to him further about it or ask for a pardon. If he were drunk or mad, the decree would have to be carried out just the same; otherwise, he would be contradicting himself, and the Sophi cannot contradict himself.

      But if, in despotic states, the prince is made a prisoner, he is supposed dead, and another ascends the throne.⁵ The treaties he makes as a prisoner are null; his successor would not ratify them. Indeed, since he is the law, the state, and the prince, and since as soon as he is no longer the prince he is nothing, if he were not considered dead, the state would be destroyed. The preservation of the state rests only in the preservation of the prince, or rather of the palace in which he is enclosed. This is why he rarely wages war in person.

      Despite so many precautions, the succession to dominion in despotic states is no more assured by them, and indeed it cannot be.⁶ It would be vain to establish inheritance by the eldest; the prince can always choose another. Since each prince of the royal family is equally entitled to be elected, it happens that the one who ascends to the throne has his brothers strangled immediately, as in Turkey; or blinded, as in Persia; or driven mad, as with the Moguls; and if these precautions are not taken, as in Morocco, then each time the throne is vacated a horrible civil war ensues. In this way, no one is monarch except by fact in despotic states.

      It is clear that neither natural law nor the law of nations is the principle of such states, nor is honor.⁷ As the men there are all equal, one cannot prefer oneself to others; as the men there are all slaves, one cannot prefer oneself to anything. Still less would we look there for some spark of magnanimity—would the prince give out a share of what he is so far from

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      having?⁸ Neither grandeur nor glory are found in him. The whole support of his government is based on fear of his vengeance; this beats down all courage; it extinguishes the least feeling of ambition.⁹ Religion, or rather superstition, does the rest, because this is a new fear added to the first.¹⁰ In the Mohammedan empire, the people derive the principal part of the respect they have for their prince from religion.

      Let us go into more detail, to better unveil the nature of and problems with the despotic governments of the Orient.

      First of all, since despotic government is exercised over peoples that are timid and beaten down, everything turns on a small number of ideas; education is limited to putting fear in their hearts, and servitude in practice. Knowledge is dangerous there, emulation lethal. It is equally pernicious whether one reasons well or badly; that one is reasoning is enough to offend this kind of government.¹¹ Education is therefore nothing there; one could only make a bad subject by wanting to make a good slave:

      Knowledge, talents, public liberty, All is dead under the yoke of despotic power.¹²

      Women are slaves there, and since having many of them is permitted, countless considerations oblige them to be enclosed. Since sovereigns take as many as they want, they have such a large number of children by them that they can scarcely have affection for them, nor the latter for their brothers.¹³ Moreover, there are so many intrigues in their seraglios—those places where artifice, wickedness, and deceit reign in silence—that the prince himself, becoming daily more imbecilic, is in fact only the first prisoner of his palace.

      It is an established custom in despotic countries not to approach any superior without giving him presents.¹⁴ The emperor of the Moguls does not accept requests from his subjects unless he has received something from them. This is bound to be the way in a government where one is filled with

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      the idea that the superior owes nothing to the inferior, in a government where men believe themselves bound only by the punishments that the former mete out to the latter.

      Poverty and the uncertainty of fortunes naturalizes usury there, as each one increases the price of his money in proportion to the peril involved in lending it.¹⁵ Destitution is omnipresent in these miserable countries; everything is taken away, including the recourse to borrowing. Government could not be unjust without hands to inflict its injustices. Now it is impossible for these hands not to be used on their own behalf; therefore, embezzlement is inevitable there. In countries where the prince declares himself owner of all the land and heir to all his subjects, cultivation of the land is always abandoned. All is fallow, all is deserted.¹⁶

      When the Savages of Louisiana want fruit, they cut down the tree and gather the fruit.¹⁷

      There you have despotic government, says the author of the Spirit of the Laws; Raphael did no better in painting the School of Athens.

      In a despotic government of that nature, there are no civil laws on landed property, since it all belongs to the despot.¹⁸ Nor are there any on inheritance, because the sovereign has the sole right of succession. Because trade belongs exclusively to the despot in some countries, all types of laws concerning commerce are rendered useless. Since extreme servitude cannot be increased, new laws to increase taxes in wartime do not make their appearance in the despotic countries of the Orient, as they do in republics and monarchies, where the science of government can procure an increase in wealth for the government in time of need.¹⁹ Because marriages are contracted with female slaves in Oriental countries, there are scarcely any civil laws about dowries or the privileges of wives.²⁰ In Masulipatam,²¹ the

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      existence of written laws has not been discovered; the Vedas and other similar books contain no civil laws. In Turkey, where