in true that in all the advanced communities
the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of
government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do
them if left to themselves.

Letting alone, in short, should be the practice; every departure from
it, unless required by some great good, is a certain evil.

MONTESQUIEU

The Spirit of Laws

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu, was
born near Bordeaux, in France, Jan. 18, 1689. For ten years he was
president of the Bordeaux court of justice, but it was the
philosophy of laws that interested him rather than the
administration of them. He travelled over Europe and studied the
political systems of the various countries, and found at last in
England the form of free government which, it seemed to him, ought
to be introduced into France. For twenty years he worked at his
masterpiece, "The Spirit of Laws" ("De l'Esprit des Lois"), which
was published anonymously in 1748, and in which he surveys every
political system, ancient and modern, and after examining their
principles and defects, proposes the English constitution as a
model for the universe. It may be doubted if any book has produced
such far-reaching effects. Not only did it help on the movement
that ended in the French Revolution, but it induced those nations
who sought for some mean between despotism and mob-rule to adopt
the English system of parliamentary government. "The Spirit of
Laws" is rather hard reading, but it still remains the finest and
the soundest introduction to the philosophical study of history.
Montesquieu died on February 10, 1755.

_I.--On a Republic_

There are three kinds of governments: the republican, the monarchical,
and the despotic. Under a republic, the people, or a part of the people,
has the sovereign power; under a monarchy, one man alone rules, but by
fixed and established laws; under a despotism, a single man, without law
or regulation, impels everything according to his will or his caprice.

When, in a republic, the whole people possesses sovereign power, it is a
democracy. When this power is in the hands of only a part of the people
it is an aristocracy. In a democracy the people is in certain respects
the monarch, in others it is the subject. It cannot reign except by its
votes, and the laws which establish the