[In this essay, first published in 1964, Shakleton details Machiavelli's influence on Montesquieu, noting the similarities in several passages from many of Montesquieu's earlier works. Shakleton suggests that while Montesquieu took much from Machiavelli on religion and the republic, many of the borrowed ideas were merely a stimulus for Montesquieu to develop a broader philosophy.]

The names of the President of the Parlement of Bordeaux and of the Florentine Secretary have often been linked together, both in the realm of the history of literature and ideas, and in relation to practical politics. A nineteenth-century political writer, Maurice Joly, a fighter for freedom and a victim of oppression, died by his own hand in 1877, having published thirteen years before, almost clandestinely, a Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu. This robust political pamphlet in the form of a dialogue of the dead, originally directed against Napoleon III, was plagiarised curiously in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and met a more honourable and more suitable fate in being reissued in 1948 by the publishing house Calmann-Lévy in a collection directed by Raymond Aron and entitled Liberté de l'esprit. It was to support a different cause that Marc Duconseil published in 1943 his Machiavel et Montesquieu: recherche sur un principe d'autorité. This is an attack on democracy inspired by the ideologies dominant on the European continent in the year of its publication, and it is certainly best forgotten. But at least, when considered along with Joly's Dialogue aux enfers, it shows how varied are the causes served by confrontation or comparison of Montesquieu and Machiavelli. These two philosophers have each been the object of the most widely differing interpretations. Each has been regarded as reactionary, each as progressive; but however habituated one has become to paradoxes of judgment, one is still surprised to be reminded that, for all his Whig loyalties, it was to Montesquieu that Macaulay ascribed ‘a lively and ingenious, but an unsound mind’ and Machiavelli whom he called ‘judicious and candid’.

The study of the relationship of two persons who are both, in a sense, sub judice could perhaps throw some light on each of them; and assessing Montesquieu's attitude and debt to Machiavelli is an important task and one which has been effectively undertaken already. It is the aim of this paper to clarify, to correct, and to add to what has been written on Montesquieu's debt to Machiavelli, and to do so especially by using the method of chronological study of Montesquieu's manuscripts.

The essential work on this subject is E. Levi-Malvano, Montesquieu et Machiavelli (Paris 1912). This monograph supersedes everything previously written on the subject and is itself far from being superseded. The author, known also to eighteenth-century specialists for his researches on the Encyclopédie in Tuscany, knew well the works of both Montesquieu and Machiavelli. He had access to documents at Bordeaux which are subsequently lost and have only recently come to light again; and if sometimes he announces as certain an influence which is probable, and as probable one which is just possible, his work is still solid as well as suggestive. Since then important contributions have been made by Friedrich Meinecke in Die Entstehung des Historismus (München 1959; first edition 1936), by V. De Caprariis in his article ‘I “Romani” del Saint-Evremond’ (Rivista storica italiana, 1955), and by Sergio Cotta in his Montesquieu e la scienza della società (Torino 1953) as well as in his translation, Lo Spirito delle leggi (Torino 1952). Interesting suggestions have been made by J. H. Whitfield in his Machiavelli (Oxford 1947). Some new facts were disclosed in my Montesquieu: a critical biography (Oxford 1961). An important article, ‘Montesquieu, lecteur de Machiavel’ by A. Bertière, appeared in the Actes du Congrès Montesquieu [of 1955] (Bordeaux 1956). Finally, all serious work on Montesquieu owes much to the critical edition of L'Esprit des lois of J. Brethe de La Gressaye (Paris 1950-1961).

Levi-Malvano had been able to set eyes on the catalogue of the library of La Brède, made under the direction of Montesquieu. This catalogue was subsequently lost, rediscovered in 1950,¹ and published in 1954.² It is thus possible to correct Levi-Malvano's list of editions of Machiavelli owned by Montesquieu. This I do on the strength of the manuscript catalogue and, in two cases, from the actual books which I have seen at La Brède. I have further identified, so far as possible, the works in question in the Machiavelli bibliography of Gerber.³ Montesquieu's holdings were as follows:

1. Princeps. Ursellis 1600, 12°. This Latin translation by Tegli contains also Possevino's Judicium de Nicolai Machiavelli et Joannis Bodini quibusdam scriptis, the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, and an anonymous treatise entitled De jure magistratuum in subditos et officio subditorum erga magistratus, which is a translation of a French work Des droits des magistrats sur leurs sujets, publié par ceux de Magdebourg. The first edition of Tegli's translation of the Principe appeared in 1560. (Cf. Gerber, iii.74, no.7.)
2. Discours politiques sur les Décades de Tite-Live. Amsterdam 1692, 12°. The further description traduit par A.D.L.H. (sc. Amelot de La Houssaye) is inaccurate. Amelot did not translate the Discorsi, and this French rendering was by Tétard or Testard, a Huguenot doctor or minister living in exile in Holland. (Cf. Gerber, iii.56, no.1, where the translator is not named.)
3. Le Prince. Amsterdam 1684, 12°. Translated by Amelot de La Houssaye. (Gerber, iii.53, no.2.) This copy is still present at La Brède.
4. Discours de l'état de paix et de guerre. [Paris 1614]; followed by Le Prince. [Paris] 1613; followed by L'Art de la guerre. Paris 1614, 8°. This is incorrectly described in the catalogue, where the presence of the translation of the Discorsi has not been noted. The first title page in the volume is misplaced and mentions only L'Art de la guerre, though the first work in the volume is the Discours. My description is based on the actual book, which is still at La Brède. (Gerber, iii.42, no.1, which identifies the translators as Gohory for the Discours, Gaspard d'Auvergne for the Prince, and Charrier for L'Art de la guerre.)⁴
5. Disputationum de re publica quas discursus nuncupavit, libri tres. Mompelgarti 1589, 8°. (Cf. Gerber, iii.82, no.1.)
6. Opere. Nell'Haya 1726. 4 vols, 12°. (Not in Gerber.)

All six of these entries appear in the catalogue in the same handwriting, which is that of secretary d, the abbé Duval.⁵ This means that all these works were acquired before the end of 1731; and since the last entry, for the edition of 1726, though in the same hand, is clearly a later addition and is written in a different ink, it would be reasonable tentatively to conclude, on the basis of frequent analogies in the catalogue, that the first five works were the original stock of the library and that Montesquieu acquired the sixth between its date of publication (1726) and 1731. It is seen, then, that it was not until 1726 at the earliest that he possessed the works of Machiavelli in Italian, and that previously he owned Il Principe and the Discorsi in Latin, two French translations of the Principe, two of the Discorsi, and one of L'Arte della guerra. It should be added that the post mortem inventory of his library in Paris (as opposed to La Brède) lists, in the uncommunicative manner of the day, ‘neuf volumes indouze, dont Machiavel’,⁶ and that the library of the Academy of Bordeaux, frequently used by Montesquieu, was rich in editions of Machiavelli, the catalogue of 1790 listing as many as ten editions published before 1750, of which it is not possible to say which were translations and which the original Italian.⁷

How did he use these abundant resources? In answering this question it will be fruitful to divide his life into chronological phases and to begin with the earlier years of his life, preceding his departure on his travels in 1728.

The first sign of awareness of the works of Machiavelli which Montesquieu displays occurs in his first surviving work, the Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion, which (though it was not published until 1796) he read to the Academy of Bordeaux in 1716. Levi-Malvano's demonstration of Montesquieu's extensive utilisation of the Discorsi in this work is conclusive. Those chapters of the first book of the Discorsi where the religion of the ancient Romans is discussed are so close in general theme and argument to Montesquieu's ideas that when verbal resemblances are added there can be no reasonable doubt of the President's indebtedness. The praise given to Numa for instituting religion in Rome, the discussion of the auguries, the mocking of reliance placed on the behaviour of a chicken, the viewing of religion as a means of social discipline—all are cases where Montesquieu and Machiavelli meet, and their meetings are more striking when the French translation of the Discorsi by Testard, rather than the original Italian, is compared with Montesquieu's text. For example:

Numa, voyant donc un peuple féroce, et voulant le réduire à se soumettre aux lois de l'Etat, et à savoir vivre en paix, il se tourna du côté de la religion, parce que c'est une chose absolument nécessaire, pour conduire un peuple et pour conserver une république; et il ordonna si bien les choses que, pendant plusieurs siècles, il n'y eut point d'Etat où la crainte de Dieu régnât tant que dans celui-ci.

[Discours, I, xi, in Œuvres, La Haye 1743, i.82-83]

Ce ne fut ni la crainte ni la piété qui établit la religion chez les Romains, mais la nécessité où sont toutes les sociétés d'en avoir une […] Romulus, Tatius, et Numa asservirent les dieux à la politique: le culte et les cérémonies qu'ils instituèrent furent trouvés si sages que, lorsque les rois furent chassés, le joug de la religion fut le seul dont ce peuple, dans sa fureur pour la liberté, n'osa s'affranchir.

[Nagel, iii.38; Pléiade, i.81]

A more striking case, not cited by Levi-Malvano and not to be explained by a common indebtedness to Livy, occurs in chapter XXV of the first book of the Discorsi:

Comme il se faisait tous les ans un sacrifice à Rome, qui ne pouvait être fait que par la personne du roi, et les Romains ne voulant pas que le peuple trouvât que l'absence des rois eût apporté aucun changement à une institution ancienne, ils créèrent un chef de ce sacrifice, qu'ils appelèrent Roi sacrificateur, et ils le soumirent au souverain pontife.

[Œuvres, i.154]

Les rois de Rome avaient une espèce de sacerdoce: il y avait de certaines cérémonies qui ne pouvaient être faites que par eux. Lorsque les Tarquins furent chassés, on craignait que le peuple ne s'aperçût de quelque changement dans la religion; cela fit établir un magistrat appelé rex sacrorum, et dont la femme était appelée regina sacrorum, qui, dans les sacrifices, faisaient les fonctions des anciens rois.

[Nagel, iii.48; Pléiade, i.90]

Montesquieu's utilisation of the Discorsi in 1716 is clear and evident.

It is surprising also, and the obscurity of these earliest years of Montesquieu's life permits one only to speculate on the circumstances which drew him to the Discorsi. Perhaps they included the reading of Saint-Evremond's Réflexions sur les divers génies du peuple romain, where many points of encounter with Machiavelli appear. Perhaps the Italian abbé Oliva, his friend in these early years, recommended the book to him. Perhaps, likelier still, he had read the famous article ‘Machiavel’ in Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique.⁸ But in the years following the Dissertation this interest in the Discorsi was to suffer an eclipse. Cotta has drawn an interesting and suggestive parallel between the allegory of the Troglodytes in the Lettres persanes and a passage in the Discorsi;⁹ and Pensée 184, dating probably from about 1726, cites Machiavelli's warning against sudden changes in States.¹⁰ But Montesquieu's thought is taking now an orientation which leads it to attitudes very different from those of the Florentine Secretary.

In the years around 1725 Montesquieu's major intellectual concern was to refute the doctrines of Hobbes and Spinoza, and in particular to attack the notion, with which their doctrines were by an over-simplification equated, that justice and right lay simply in the positive law of the civil magistrate. In opposition to this view Montesquieu, at this stage of his career, greatly stressed the concept of natural law and showed, in the only partially extant Traité des devoirs of 1725, a great indebtedness to Pufendorf. He argued, as he had already argued in the Lettres persanes, that justice was anterior to human society and existed independently of all human conventions, that there was a rationally based moral law to which all—and not least princes—were subject, and that politics must be held incompatible with morality, reason, and justice.¹¹ The author of Il Principe could not, in these circumstances, be regarded otherwise than as a teacher of evil, and Montesquieu, in Pensée 207 (c.1727), referring to a passage in the Lettres persanes, specifically deplores the Machiavélistes. And though Montesquieu (as Cotta astutely points out)¹² agrees tacitly with Machiavelli in regarding politics as an autonomous discipline, his opposition to raison d'Etat and utilitarianism and of course to political dissembling is intense at this stage of his career.

In this opposition and in the consequent opposition to the author of Il Principe, Montesquieu was in harmony with his friends and contemporaries in France. The role in French thought of Télémaque was completely opposed to Machiavellianism,¹³ and the influence of Fénelon was strong in the salon of madame de Lambert, of which Montesquieu was an habitué. Ramsay, deducing a political system from the writings of Fénelon in his Essai de politique (1719), the abbé de Saint-Pierre with his cult of bienfaisance and his Projet de paix perpétuelle, and their associate in the Club de l'Entresol, the marquis d'Argenson, can all be regarded as opponents of Machiavelli. Nor did this attitude end in the early part of the century. The marquis d'Argens writes in the Lettres juives that if he were a monarch he would order the burning of the works of Machiavelli since he seeks to enslave truth to interest;¹⁴ Legendre de Saint-Aubin, a modest compiler but not destitute of intelligence, describes the Florentine as ‘ce maître fameux d'une politique criminelle’.¹⁵ The eighteenth century's standard biographical dictionary accuses him of teaching murder and poisoning;¹⁶ Moréri says, ‘les maximes de sa politique sont extrêmement dangereuses’.¹⁷ Niceron, an imperturbable scholar, gives the lie to the defenders of Machiavelli.¹⁸ Nor does Diderot, in the article ‘Machiavélisme’ in the Encyclopédie, or Jaucourt, in the article ‘Florence’, write differently. The general attitude of the French Enlightenment to Machiavelli was hostile.¹⁹ He was the supporter of despotism, the apologist for raison d'Etat, and the advocate of deceit; and as the Enlightenment was to condemn him, so did Montesquieu condemn him during the first years of the personal reign of Louis XV.

This was not, however, his final attitude. In 1728 Montesquieu departed on travels which took him to Italy and to England, and he returned to France in 1731. He then proceeded to write, first the Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, and then the first books of L'Esprit des lois; and these are impregnated with the influence of the Florentine Secretary.

The extent of this influence has been sufficiently demonstrated by Levi-Malvano for it to be unnecessary to rehearse his evidence here. Two examples, from many adduced, may suffice; they are examples from the Discorsi, that former source of inspiration to which Montesquieu now returned. First:

Je soutiens qu'il était nécessaire d'abolir la royauté à Rome, ou que, ne le faisant pas, l'Etat serait en très peu de temps devenu faible et de nulle valeur.

[Discours, I, xvii, in Œuvres, 1743, i.119]

Il devait arriver de deux choses l'une: ou que Rome changerait son gouvernement, ou qu'elle resterait une petite et pauvre monarchie.

[Nagel, i, C, p. 354; Pléiade, ii.71]

The second example:

Il est, ce me semble, nécessaire de parler des brouilleries qu'il y eut dans Rome depuis la mort des Tarquins jusqu'à la création des Tribuns, et de dire ensuite quelque chose contre l'opinion de ceux qui soutiennent que cette république fut si sujette aux séditions et si remplie de désordres, qui si sa bonne fortune et la valeur de ses soldats n'eussent pas suppléé à ces désordres, c'eût été une république inférieure à toutes les autres.

[Discours, I, iv, in >Œuvres, 1743, i.30]

On n'entend parler, dans les auteurs, que des divisions qui perdirent Rome; mais on ne voit pas que ces divisions y étaient nécessaires, qu'elles y avaient toujours été et qu'elles y devaient toujours être.

[Nagel, i, C, p. 414; Pléiade, ii.119]

And one example not cited by Levi-Malvano:

Les Romains ne négligèrent rien pour se faire des intelligences dans les pays qu'ils voulaient conquérir, afin qu'elles leur servissent de porte pour y entrer, et ensuite de moyens pour les conserver.

[Discours, II, i, in Œuvres, 1743, i.342-43]

Ils ne faisaient jamais de guerres éloignées sans s'être procuré quelque allié auprès de l'ennemi qu'ils attaquaient, qui pût joindre ses troupes à l'armée qu'ils envoyaient.

[Nagel, i, C, p. 396; Pléiade, ii.104]

These examples are only indications. The debt of Montesquieu in the Considérations to the Discorsi of Machiavelli is most extensive both in general lines of thought and in points of detail. The mode of thought, the nature of the questions raised, the moralistic approach to history—all these indicate a revival of an interest and a sympathy which had been evident at the time of the Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion but which subsequently had not merely dwindled but had been effaced by an adhesion to a simple, traditional, superficial anti-Machiavellianism. What factors brought about this change of attitude?

One interesting possibility has been indicated in the fascinating article already mentioned, ‘Montesquieu, lecteur de Machiavel’, by A. Bertière. Louis Machon had been secretary to Richelieu, at whose request he had indited an Apologie pour Machiavelle.²⁰ This work, still unpublished, selected from the canon of Machiavelli passages among those which had been held most reprehensive. He divided his text into twenty-three chapters, each headed by a maxim extracted, in thirteen cases from the Discorsi, in ten cases from Il Principe, using the translations of Gohory and Gaspard d'Auvergne respectively. His Apologie is at the same time a vigorous defence of Machiavelli and a work of personal and independent reflection with Machiavelli's text as a starting point.

The manuscript of the Apologie pour Machiavelle is to be found in the municipal library of Bordeaux, where it bears the shelfmark 935. The detailed comparison of the text of Machon with the works of Montesquieu does, to say the very least, establish a prima facie case that Montesquieu knew and used the Apologie pour Machiavelle. Bertière has effected this comparison with skill and caution and has taken care not to exaggerate the finality of his conclusion. But a consideration of such passages as that where Machon compares Tiberius and Louis XI, which Montesquieu likewise does in his Réflexions sur le caractère de quelques princes, argues strongly for Montesquieu's knowledge of the manuscript of Machon. Bertière is unable to suggest a date at which Montesquieu read the Apologie pour Machiavelle; but he has established for the relevant period the history of the manuscript. It was to be found in the library of the Pontac family until the death, in 1694, of the son of Arnaud de Pontac. Then it passed into the hands of the marquis de La Tresne and was in 1707 bought by the conseiller Duplessis or Duplessy. On his death at an unknown date it was acquired by a bookseller, Bergeret, from whom it was purchased by Barbot; and in 1747 it was given by Barbot, with the rest of his library, to the Academy of Bordeaux. With all these families Montesquieu was well acquainted: Pontac, Le Comte de La Tresne, Duplessy, Barbot. He was particularly friendly with the Duplessy family, especially with madame Duplessy whose father-in-law Pierre-Michel was the purchaser of the manuscript,²¹ and above all with Barbot who was a close ally and from whom he borrowed books. Even if it can be proved that Pierre-Michel Duplessy was dead in 1724,²² nothing conclusive can come from that investigation about the date of Montesquieu's seeing the manuscript.

More useful information is arrived at by another approach. Bertière has listed seven borrowings by Montesquieu from the Apologie which seem more decisive than the others. These seven occur in different works of the President. Two of them are later than the rest: Pensée 1794, which is subsequent to 1748, and a passage from book X of L'Esprit des lois which can be dated from the handwriting of the manuscript as belonging to the years 1741-1743. The other three passages come from Pensée 540, from the Réflexions sur le caractère de quelques princes, and from Pensée 1302. These passages can be dated, with all necessary reserve, in 1730-1733, 1731-1733, and approximately 1738, respectively.²³ If to these can be added a less conclusive general borrowing in the collected fragments known as Les Princes, it appears that Montesquieu took cognisance of the manuscript of Machon's Apologie pour Machiavelle in the early years of the fourth decade of the century. These are the years immediately following his return from England, the years of the preparation of the Considérations sur les Romains. If this demonstration, which cannot be held final, gives at least tentative assurance, then Montesquieu's reading of Machon, as proved by Bertière, falls into a coherent and balanced pattern.

To understand the other elements in this pattern, it is necessary to note that though the reputation of Machiavelli in France, even with the relatively advanced thinkers, was unsavoury, opinions abroad were different. Writers outside the limits of France, even when French themselves and using the French language, were often favourable. The article ‘Machiavel’ in Bayle's dictionary has already been mentioned. Written with ambiguities characteristic of the author, it offered material for a friendly and sympathetic interpretation. And Bayle likewise, in his review in the Nouvelles de la République des lettres in 1687 of Amelot de La Houssaye's translation of Il Principe, had expressed surprise at the number of those who believed that Machiavelli was advocating a dangerous policy for princes to pursue; it was, on the other hand, from princes that he learned his policy and he was narrating and not approving.²⁴ The other two principal French-language journals of Holland had made their comment on the Florentine Secretary. Le Clerc's Bibliothèque universelle,²⁵ reviewing Testard's translation of the Discorsi, had quoted the preface's contention that the maxims of the Inquisition were far worse than those of Machiavelli; the Histoire des ouvrages des savants,²⁶ discussing the same work, begins its essay with the words, ‘Le nom de Machiavel effarouche d'abord les gens,’ and goes on to show that this judgement is unjust, alluding once again to the comparison between the Inquisition and Machiavelli. More than half a century later the exiled Prosper Marchand was to defend Machiavelli in his Dictionnaire historique.²⁷ The Protestant sympathy for Machiavelli was naturally not less marked in England, and indeed he had his protagonists of note in the seventeenth century, starting with Bacon, who, opposing the current of hostility of the Elizabethan age,²⁸ had written, ‘we are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do and not what they ought to do’.²⁹ Of the political writers of the later seventeenth century several were indebted to Machiavelli. Even of Locke it has been said³⁰ that he, rather than Hobbes, ‘could perhaps be looked on as Machiavelli's philosopher’. The more radical thinkers had a greater debt to Machiavelli. To Harrington's Oceana have been attributed, as its three bases, ‘ancient prudence, Machiavelli the retriever, and Venice the exemplifier’;³¹ and certainly the work is strongly marked with the imprint of the Discorsi. The classification of Commonwealths into two groups, ‘the one for preservation, as Lacedemon and Venice, the other for increase, as Rome’, and the division of governments into absolute monarchy, aristocratic monarchy, and commonwealth are both derived by Harrington from Machiavelli, and both bear close affinity to Montesquieu's system.³² Montesquieu could not fail to hear of Harrington during his stay in England; he was acquainted with his works, possessed the first edition of the Oceana, cited it twice in L'Esprit des lois,³³ and inevitably had his recollection of Machiavelli refreshed by reading it. And it was the author of the Discorsi rather than of Il Principe that Harrington presented to him.³⁴

The debt to Machiavelli of Algernon Sidney is more marked still. The Florentine is cited in relation to several problems, especially in connection with corruption in governments and virtue in princes, and particularly in passages which express thoughts that Montesquieu was later to develop. The abbé Dedieu, while indicating some resemblances between Sidney and Montesquieu, was inclined to minimise the possibility of influence.³⁵ But since his day it has been discovered that Montesquieu had made a written analysis of the works of Sidney (which had been translated into French in 1702). Without that knowledge, indeed, some similarities are so marked as to argue for Montesquieu's knowledge of Sidney. Such a case is found in relation to corruption in a despotic State:

Nothing can better illustrate how far absolute monarchies are more subject to […] venality and corruption than the regular and popular governments, than that they are rooted in the principle of the one, which cannot subsist without them; and are so contrary to the others, that they must certainly perish unless they defend themselves from them.

[Discourses concerning Government, London 1704, p. 184]

Le principe du gouvernement despotique se corrompt sans cesse, parce qu'il est corrompu par sa nature.

Les autres gouvernements périssent, parce que des accidents particuliers en violent le principe.

[Lois, VIII, 10]

Other passages are closely akin to both Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Sidney's section XIV declares, ‘No sedition was hurtful to Rome, till through their prosperity some men gained a power above the laws,’ an idea expressed by the Florentine in the Discorsi (I, 4). An echo of Machiavelli and a foretaste of Montesquieu alike are found in these words:

All human constitutions are subject to corruption, and must perish, unless timely renewed and reduced to their first principles.³⁶

Before travelling to England Montesquieu had spent almost a year in Italy. He entered on the road from Graz to Venice early in August 1728, and left by the Brenner at the end of July 1729. He had acquired sufficient skill in the language to write it as well as to read it. His stay in Tuscany might well have revived his interest in Machiavelli; and his visit to Naples is still likelier to have done so, especially if he made the acquaintance of Paolo Mattia Doria whose work La Vita civile abounds in echoes of the author of the Discorsi.³⁷ But Machiavelli's fame in the early eighteenth century was greater in England than in his own country; and when Montesquieu was plunged into the excitement of English political controversy, he found Machiavelli cited again and again. Not only did he read his name repeatedly in such republican writers of the previous age as Harrington and Sidney, but also he found him frequently quoted in the current pamphlets of party politics. Extracts from Bolingbroke's polemical journal The Craftsman appear so frequently in Montesquieu's notebook the Spicilège as to make it clear that the President was a regular and attentive reader, and indeed the genesis of Montesquieu's doctrine of the separation of the powers appears to be found in that journal.³⁸ In The Craftsman for 27 June 1730 one reads:

Though I would not advise you to admit the works of Machiavel into your canon of political writings; yet since in them, as in other apocryphal books, many excellent things are interspersed, let us begin by improving an hint taken from the Discourses of the Italian Secretary on the first decade of Livy.

He observes that of all governments those are the best which, by the natural effect of their original constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back, as he explains his meaning, to their first principles; and that no government can be of a long duration where this does not happen from time to time, either from the cause just mentioned or from some accidental cause.

These words, quoted in a journal which Montesquieu is known to have read, as they had been quoted by Sidney in his Discourses which Montesquieu likewise is known to have read, are strikingly similar to his own:

Quand une république est corrompue, on ne peut remédier à aucun des maux qui naissent, qu'en ôtant la corruption et en rappelant les principes.

[Lois, VIII, 12]

Machiavelli's own words were these:

E' cosa più chiara che la luce, che non si rinovando questi corpi, non durano. Il modo di rinovargli è […] ridurgli verso i principii suoi.

[Discorsi, III, i, in Opere, Nell'Haya 1726, iii.282]

And in the translation of Testard:

Il est manifeste que, si ces grands corps ne se renouvellent point, il faut qu'ils périssent. La manière de les renouveler, […] c'est de les ramener à leurs principes.

[>Œuvres, 1743, ii.2]

Is it not clear that it was the English reading of Montesquieu which rekindled his interest in Machiavelli? There are three further relevant passages in the Spicilège, the notebook which Montesquieu took with him on his travels. One of these includes the name Machiavelli under the heading ‘Livres originaux que j'ai à lire’.³⁹ All the books listed being by non-French authors, the meaning would appear to be that the books are to be read in the original text, not in translation or vicariously through commentaries. Doubtless this text, probably dating from 1731, is connected with Montesquieu's acquisition of his first Italian edition of Machiavelli, the Hague edition of 1726. About the same time the Spicilège quotes a fairly long paragraph from the Istorie fiorentine, the text being clearly Montesquieu's own translation from the Italian original.⁴⁰ Finally, the Spicilège includes the entry:

Machiavel n'a parlé des princes que comme Samuel en a parlé, sans les approuver. Il était grand républicain. (Cleland).⁴¹

Cleland was a friend of Pope, Chesterfield, and Arbuthnot, and was known to Montesquieu in England.

After his return to France, Montesquieu applied himself unremittingly to his literary tasks. The Considérations sur les Romains, the Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle, and the chapter on the English Constitution were his first occupations. These finished and (in the case of the Considérations) published, he began the enormous task of preparing L'Esprit des lois. He worked quietly and secretively, so that only his closest friends were aware of what he was engaged on: his son; Guasco and Cerati, who were Italians; and Barbot who owned the manuscript of Machon's Apologie pour Machiavelle. As he pursued his labours the works of the Florentine Secretary were never far from his mind. He read them in whatever edition was at a given moment most convenient: sometimes in Italian, as was just now seen; frequently (as verbal similarities show) in French; from time to time—perhaps, indeed, most often of all—in Latin.⁴² It was in the years following the publication of the Considérations and after the composition of the essay on the British Constitution, and not before, that the first books of L'Esprit des lois were written.⁴³ It was then that Montesquieu stressed the utility of brigue in the republic, as Machiavelli had done before. It was then that he argued for the return to the principles of government as a remedy for corruption in a State; it was then that he stressed the dependability of the people in making election: ‘le peuple est admirable pour choisir ceux à qui il doit confier quelque partie de son autorité’ (Lois, II, 2). This reliance on Machiavelli continues through the following decade, both on points of detail and on points of substance. If meanwhile Frederick the Great, assisted by Voltaire, produced a refutation of Machiavelli, even relying in some measure on Montesquieu's own writing for his arguments,⁴⁴ the President is undeterred. He is advancing, in relation to Machiavelli, a new attitude, more sophisticated than the simple condemnation produced by others, and based on wider reading.

It is not, of course, an attitude of adulation without alloy. He remains hostile to the simple, bare doctrines of Il Principe. He reproaches Machiavelli for his infatuation with Cesare Borgia.⁴⁵ He remarks with approval that le machiavélisme is waning in France.⁴⁶ But when he wishes, in a letter to madame Du Deffand, to praise her friend Hénault, he compares him with Machiavelli.⁴⁷ And when he seeks to praise liberty in the Pensées, he selects words—‘ce bien qui fait jouir des autres biens’—strangely reminiscent of the Discorsi's words, ‘la liberté consiste à pouvoir jouir de son bien en sûreté’.⁴⁸

It is possible to sum up Montesquieu's attitude to Machiavelli and the help derived from his doctrines. Factual information about Roman and Italian history is derived from the Discorsi and the Istorie. Much is taken from him in relation to the social and historical role of religion in the State, and Montesquieu's empirical, utilitarian attitude to religion as a social phenomenon came from the Italian. Montesquieu's pragmatic attitude to climate and terrain is in part inspired by Machiavelli, and this borrowing of ideas reaches its peak in the Considérations and in the years immediately following their publication.

The role of Machiavelli's influence in the elaboration of L'Esprit des lois is important but limited. The great, synthesising principles of the masterpiece owe little to the Italian. Montesquieu's study of historical causation greatly transcends Machiavelli's as does the range of his documentation. It is in the preliminary books of L'Esprit des lois, where Montesquieu examines his three governments, monarchy, despotism, and the republic, that Machiavelli's mark is most felt; but not in the description of despotism, where Montesquieu seeks non-European examples; only briefly in the description of monarchy, for he did not need to go to the Florentine to study the French parlements and fundamental law.⁴⁹ Indeed, in a passage which he excised from L'Esprit des lois he expressly accuses Machiavelli of confusing monarchy and despotism:

C'est le délire de Machiavel d'avoir donné aux princes pour le maintien de leur grandeur des principes qui ne sont nécessaires que dans le gouvernement despotique, et qui sont inutiles, dangereux, et même impracticables dans le monarchique. Cela vient de ce qu'il n'en a pas bien connu la nature et les distinctions; ce qui n'est pas digne de son grand esprit.⁵⁰

It was on the republic that Montesquieu thought Machiavelli a greater authority, and it was his pronouncements on the republic, contained in the Discorsi, which he mainly utilised. But the importance of Machiavelli's influence on Montesquieu exceeds the role, in Montesquieu's thought, of the republic, which, though it is more than peripheral, is primarily a dialectical complement to more important things. Reading Machiavelli stimulated Montesquieu to reflect on the extent and on the limits of personal policies in the history of States, on historical causation, and above all on the relation between history and politics. In seeking this inspiration in Machiavelli, in turning to the Disorsi as well as to Il Principe, Montesquieu was giving a modern and mature orientation to the French Enlightenment, and the occasion for his doing so was in significant measure afforded by his stay in England.

Notes

1. See Robert Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu: two unpublished documents’, French studies 4 (1950) [and above, p. 41-48].

2. Catalogue de la bibliothèque de Montesquieu, ed. L. Desgraves (Genève, Lille 1954).

3. A. Gerber, Niccolò Machiavelli: die Handschriften, Ausgaben, und Übersetzungen seiner Werke im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (München 1912-1913).

4. The La Brède copy of this edition of the Discorsi has a number of underlinings and two marginal annotations. These are not in a known hand, and the incidence of the passages in question throws no light on Montesquieu's reading.

5. See Shackleton, ‘Les secrétaires de Montesquieu’, in >Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. A. Masson (Paris, Nagel, 1950-1955), i.XXXV-XLIII [see above, p. 65-72]. The volumes of this edition are referred to below as Nagel, i, ii, and iii. The >Œuvres complètes, ed. R. Caillois, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris 1949-1951), are referred to as Pléiade, i and ii.

6. Catalogue de la bibliothèque de Montesquieu, p. 243.

7. Bibliothèque municipale de Bordeaux, Ms.834; see also P. Barrière, L'Académie de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, Paris 1951), p. 105ff.

8. See Shackleton, ‘Bayle and Montesquieu’, in Pierre Bayle, le philosophe de Rotterdam, ed. P. Dibon (Amsterdam 1959); and cf. S. Cotta, Montesquieu e la scienza della società (Torino 1953), p. 24-25, where the influence of Bayle is viewed as having been greater than that of Machiavelli.

9. Cotta, p. 309.

10. Nagel, ii.65; Pléiade, i.1460; cf. Discorsi, I, xvi.

11. Nagel, iii.165; Pléiade, ii.112.

12. Pléiade, ii.203, and Lo Spirito delle leggi, i.20-21.

13. See A. Cherel, La Pensée de Machiavel en France (Paris 1935), p. 201-41.

14. Lettres juives (La Haye 1738), ii.298.

15. Traité de l'opinion (Paris 1735), v.276.

16. Chaudon, Nouveau dictionnaire historique-portatif (Amsterdam 1769), iii.8.

17. Le Grand dictionnaire historique (Amsterdam 1740), vi.11.

18. ‘Amelot de La Houssaye’, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres (Paris 1736), xxxv.

19. Cf., inter alia, A. Panella, Gli Antimachiavellici (Firenze 1943), p. 84-93.

20. See also K. T. Butler, ‘Louis Machon's Apologie pour Machiavelle—1643 and 1668’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 3 (1939-1940), p. 208-27.

21. See A. Grellet-Dumazeau, La Société bordelaise sous Louis XV et le salon de Mme Duplessy (Bordeaux, Paris 1897).

22. E. Féret, Statistique génerale […] du département de la Gironde (Bordeaux, Paris 1889), iii, Première partie: biographie, p. 218. Duplessy's son is stated to be conseiller in 1724, having presumably succeeded his father.

23. These dates are based primarily on the handwriting of the manuscripts. See the bibliography in Shackleton, Montesquieu: a critical biography (Oxford 1961), p. 400-408, and Shackleton, ‘Genèse de l'Esprit des lois', Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 52 (1952), p. 425-38 [see above, p. 49-63].

24. >Œuvres diverses (La Haye 1737), i.740-41.

25. Vol.xx (suite), 1693 (seconde édition, Amsterdam 1698), p. 328-32.

26. Juillet 1691 (troisième édition, Rotterdam 1698), p. 483-85.

27. ‘Anti-Machiavel’ (La Haye 1758).

28. See M. Praz, Machiavelli in Inghilterra (Roma 1943).

29. Advancement of learning (1605), in Philosophical works, ed. J. M. Robertson (London 1905), p. 140.

30. P. Laslett (ed.), Two treatises of government, by John Locke (Cambridge 1960), p. 87.

31. Z. S. Fink, The Classical republicans (Evanston 1945), p. 54. See also R. Polin, ‘Economique et politique au XVIIe siècle: l'Oceana de James Harrington’, Revue française de science politique 2 (1952), p. 24-41.

32. Harrington, Oceana and other works (London 1747), p. 147 and 275.

33. Lois, XI, 6, and XXIX, 19.

34. Cf. Fink, p. xi: ‘The Machiavelli of the Discourses […] had, I made bold to assert, far more influence in English political thought in the seventeenth century than the Machiavelli of The Prince.’

35. J. Dedieu, Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France (Paris 1909), p. 314-26.

36. Discourses, p. 103.

37. See Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu et Doria’, Revue de littérature comparée 29 (1955) [and above, p. 93-101].

38. See Shackleton, ‘Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, and the separation of powers’, French studies 3 (1949) [and above, p. 3-15].

39. Spicilège § 561 (Nagel, ii.847; Pléiade, ii.1369).

40. Spicilège § 513 (Nagel, ii.831; Pléiade, ii.1353).

41. Spicilège § 529 (Nagel, ii.836; Pléiade, ii.1358).

42. One direct quotation can come only from the Latin of the Discorsi. This is the phrase ‘peu sont corrompus par peu’ (Lois, VI, 5). The Italian reads, ‘pochi sempre fanno a modo de' pochi’; Testard's French, ‘le petit nombre agit toujours comme font les petites compagnies’; the Latin text, ‘ubi pauci judices sunt, facile a paucis corrumpi queant’ (Discorsi, I, vii). A second case occurs in a reference to Discorsi, I, iv, where Montesquieu's ‘sac’ corresponds more readily to the Latin ‘arca’ than to the Italian ‘coffre’.

43. See Montesquieu: a critical biography, p. 265.

44. See L'Anti-Machiavel par Frédéric II, ed. C. Fleischauer, Studies on Voltaire 5 (Genève 1958).

45. Lois, XXIX, 19.

46. Lois, XXI, 20.

47. Nagel, iii.1383.

48. Pensée 1574 (Nagel, ii.453; Pléiade, i.1430). Cf. Discours, tr. Testard, I, xvi, in >Œuvres, i.113.

49. Cf. Discorsi, III, i.

50. Nagel, iii.580; Pléiade, ii.996.