Colloquium on Violence & Religion

- Amsterdam 4-8 juli 2007 -

Tréteaux de Port-Royal

presents

Dialogue in Underworld

A movie by Daniel Coche

based upon the dialogue

« Dialogue in Underworld between Machiavelli and Montesquieu »

of Maurice Joly (1829-1878)

Scheme, adaptation & stage direction

Christian Nardin

- september 2006 -

The first production of

“The Dialogue in Underworld”

in Strasbourg.

For the first time since the coming of the Comédie Française in Strasbourg in February 1983, the Dialogue in Underworld between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly (1829-1878) was put on again in May 2004 in a new adaptation by Christian Nardin, initiator of the plan with the Tréteaux de Port-Royal.

Initially composed as a lampoon against the Second Empire, perceived by Mau-rice Joly as a fraudulent abuse of the ideals of the Enlightenment, the work takes up again the ancient inspiration of the encounter in the kingdom of the dead of two great historic figures whose verbal duel of a high standard makes of that summit encounter a kind of torch intended to throw light on the general issues in the world.

Written and published secretly in 1865 under the guise of anonymity, the work did not meet with an easy destiny. Maurice Joly was a lawyer and militant republican at a time when such commitment constituted a risk and did not favour any career. Like Victor Hugo he started exposing the abuse - fraudulent according to him - of the political values and ideals of the Enlightenment by Napoleon III in the running of his affairs,the Second Empire, inaugurated by the bloody coup of December 2 1851.Rapidly spotted by censorship, he was imprisoned and his book pulped.

Consequently the book might have purely and simply disappeared without a curious and happy stroke of good fortune: a tsarist officer who had fled from the soviet regime to settle in Constantinople where he found that time passed slowly, had asked one of his companions, he too a refugee, to send him books. In reply to his question, he recei-ved a trunk of books among which he found a copy of The Dialogue in Underworld. It is one of the rare books that escaped the pestle and which constitutes the text we have at our disposal today.

A sinister circumstance very nearly compromised permanently the work : the publica-tion towards the end of the 19th century of the Jewish Peril : Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion, an an-tisemitic lampoon which was a tremendous success in the course of the 20^th century and which explainned the issues of the time as being the result of a plot hatched by the Jewish to seize power on the planet...Investigations made in 1920 by a journalist of the Times revealed that the text of the Jewish Peril : Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion was the work of the tsar’s secret police and that it was the censoring of the Dialogue in Underworld between Machiavelli and Montesquieu !

The “censoring” was coupled with a serious abuse of the meaning since Maurice Joly’s intention was to draw attention on the possibility to see modernity beget new despotisms – violent or muffled – on account of human foibles and the variety of the means of manipulation, but without ever attributing them to ideology or to a specific religion! Recent research work of the most distin-guishhed researchers (Pierre-André Taguieff) entirely confirm that “factory of forgeries” achieved to the detriment of Maurice Joly, who died two decades before the publication of that plagiarism the consequences of which were sinister.

It is only in 1980 that the Comédie Française brought for the first time the Dialogue in Underworld to the attention of the public, dedicating them an unforgettable theatrical adaptation with two great voices departed today in the title roles: François Chaumette and Michel Etchever-ry. It is a new adaptation - not founded on the rewriting of the text but on the linking of its most eloquent passages - that formed the subject of the show played in May 2004 in Strasbourg. Here the encounter of these two famous European champions of political thought confronts two strong visions of the social game, and plays in a panting exchange the signifycance of modernity : after two centuries of a slow difficult birth of democracy, is our modern world eventually shaped by the ideals of the Florentine diplomat or by those of the distinguished philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment ? Which one has a right vision of Man and Socie-ty ? The ethical stake in that joust where the clear-mindedness of both speakers vies with intellectual daring is based on an initial challenge which provokes an uncompromising examination of facts. The game between the “prosecutor” and the “lawyer” of modernity creates a “race for truth” incessantly relaunched by objections which by and by reveal an unexpected “civilizational” scene.

The dramatic dimension of the work could not hide the courageous acceptance of human realities. It is all the more strong since the text which dates from 1864 proves to be of a stunning actuality. It is likely to stimulate the reflection of our contemporaries on the stake of our contemporary world and the defence of an authentic democratic spirit.

Hence the concern of the Tréteaux de Port-Royal and Christian Nardin about rooting that initiative in the political, cultural and educational life of Strasbourg. That is why a civic forum on Modern forms of Power was organized at the same time as on the performances in collaboration with researchers, diplomats and actors of economic life (Jean-Baptiste de Foucauld, Pierre Karli, Jean-Marie Muller, Jacques Warin), as well as distinguished Alsatian town councillors (Jean-Laurent Vonau, Roland Ries). Conceived with the support of Marc Bloch University, the Institute for Social Advancement and the Lycée International, the colloquium was patronized by M.Gérald Chaix, Chief education officer of Strasbourg, a patronage which ratified and prolonged the support of the Regional Pedagogic Inspectorate of language teachers and the one of the General Inspectorate of Paris.

Thinking about that work since 1992, it is only in 2002 that Christian Nardin got to now M. Luc Michel, President of the Actors of the Rhine and initiator of numerous shows in Stras-bourg. The enthusiastic adherence of Luc Michel to the plan led him to accept the role of Montes-quieu, and to propose to the Tréteaux of Port-Royal a partnership with the Actors of the Rhine so as to better overcome the difficulties of such an undertaking.

That is the way how one and a half year’s toil allowed the two actors, helped by their company to surround themselves with authorized specialists to ensure the creation of the sceno-graphy, the light effects and the costumes.

The plan was supported by the Council of Europe, the National Coordination for the Decade of Peace, the Regional Council of Alsace, the General Council of Bas-Rhin, Strasbourg City and the Regional Direction for Cultural Affairs (DRAC).

The project aroused much interest. Announced and relayed by leading articles, the dramatic dimension of the work could not hide the courageous acceptance of humans in Saisons d’Alsace and in Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, it aroused the revival of the show in February 2005 and incited M. Daniel Coche, manager of Dora Films, to shoot an original recording of the production, so as to make the work known to a large public.

At the present time, the film has never been released. It is the only film document dedicated to the Dialogue in Underworld between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly.

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Dialogue in Underworld

HOME PAGE

An introduction to the movie (an interview of Christian Nardin by Jean-Pierre Meyer)

The movie itself

Chapters

Entering the dialogue …..……………………………………………….. p. 6-9

The debate over “the people’s sovereignty” ………………………….. p. 9-11

Machiavelli foretells the advent of a new form of despotism….…….. p. 11-13

Seizing power in an unconventional way……………………………… p. 13-16

Montesquieu’s objections to the founding of that new-styled despotism

How to keep safe from the 4th power ?............................................. p. 16-19

How to keep safe from any likely riot ?............................................. p. 19-22

How to keep safe from universal suffrage?....................................... p. 22-23

How to keep safe from the University, the Clergy, the Bar

and how to keep one’s police force in hiding ?.................................. p. 23-26

How to survive in a modern economic framework ?.......................... p. 26-28

Machiavelli’s victory

Machiavelli’s works : « forceful powers »……………………………… p. 28-30

Machiavelli’s works : « softer means »…………………………. …….. p. 30-31

Machiavelli’s achievement……………………………………………… p. 31-32

Nous contacter

© Christian Nardin 2004 - Tous droits réservés

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DIALOGUE IN UNDERWORLD

Entering the dialogue

MACHIAVELLI On the bank of this deserted coast, they told me, I would encounter the shade of the great Montesquieu. Is it he who stands before me?

MONTESQUIEU The name "great" belongs to no one here, O Machiavelli. But I am the one you seek.

MACHIAVELLI Of all the illustrious personages whose shades people the resting place of darkness, there is none I would rather meet than Montesquieu.

MONTESQUIEU But what can those who have traversed these dark shores exchange, save anguish and regrets?

MACHIAVELLI Is it the philosopher, or is it the statesman who speaks thus? What does death matter to those who have lived by thought, since thought never dies? Oblivion itself could not break all the bonds which attach us to the earth, for posterity still speaks of those who, like you, have imprinted the great movements upon the human soul. Your political principles reign at the present time over almost half Europe…

MONTESQUIEU You do not speak for yourself, Machiavelli: you show too much modesty for one who leaves behind him the tremendous renown of the author of The Prince.

MACHIAVELLI I believe I understand the irony which is hidden beneath your words. That book made me responsible for all tyrannies; it drew down upon me the maledictions of those peoples who personified in me their hatred for despotism; it poisoned my last days… But what have I done? Fostered by liberty, I succumbed with her; I lived as one proscribed, without the regard of a single prince deigning to be turned on me. I died poor and forgotten. That was my life…

MONTESQUIEU I have never been able to understand how the Florentine patriot, how the servant of a republic, had made himself the founder of this sombre school that has made all the crowned heads your disciples, but which is qualified to justify the most heinous crimes of tyrants.

MACHIAVELLI And what if I told you that this book was but the fantasy of a diplomat; that it was not written to be printed; that it received a fame that its author did not wish for it...

MONTESQUIEU Is that really your thought?

MACHIAVELLI My single crime was to say the truth to the people as to the kings; not the moral truth, but the political truth; not truth such as it should have been, but such as it is, such as it will always be. It is not I who am the founder of the doctrine the paternity of which is attributed to me; it is the human heart. “Machiavellism ” preceded Machiavelli.

MONTESQUIEU From the moment you do not erect despotism in principle, from the moment you yourself consider it an evil, it seems to me that by that you condemn it, and on this point at least we can be in accord.

MACHIAVELLI That we are not, Montesquieu. All men seek power, and there is none who would not be an oppressor if he could. This word "justice" itself, by the way, do you not see that it is infinitely vague? Where does it begin, where does it end? Pisistratus captures the citadel by a sudden attack and lays the ground for the age of Pericles. Brutus violates the monarchi-cal constitution of Rome, expels the Tarquins, and with a stab founds a republic whose grandeur is the most imposing spectacle that has ever been presented to the universe. Everything is good or evil, according to the use one makes of it and the fruit one harvests from it; the end justifies the means. And the thing that is made clear from these considerations is that good can come from evil, that one arrives at good through evil. Are violence and cunning an evil? Yes; but it is necessary to use them in governing men, so long as men are not angels.

MONTESQUIEU Your doctrines are not new to me, Machiavelli; and if I find some difficulty in refuting them, it is, whether wrong or right, rather because they have no philosophical basis than because they disturb my thoughts. You give no place in your political system to morals, to religion, or to justice; you have in your mouth but two words: force and cunning. You elevate violence to a principle, cunning to a maxim of government. Your principle is that good can come from evil. Thus, you do not say: It is good in itself to go back on one's word; it is good to use corruption, violence and murder. But you do say: One can deceive when it is useful to do so, kill when that is necessary, take the property of others when that is advantageous. I hasten to add that, in your system, these maxims are applied only to principles, and when it is a question of their interests or of those of the State.

MACHIAVELLI But was it not you who said that in autocratic states fear was necessary, virtue useless, honour dangerous.

MONTESQUIEU Yes, I said that; but when I discovered, as you did, the frightful conditions upon which tyrannical power maintains itself, it was to disgrace it and not to build altars to it; it was to inspire horror! It is not only in the name of interest, it is in the name of duty that all oppressors act. They violate it, but they invoke it; the doctrine of interest is thus just as impotent by itself as are the means which it employs.

MACHIAVELLI I interrupt you here; you take interest into account; that is enough to justify all the necessary policies which are not in accord with justice.

MONTESQUIEU I bag your pardon ! You admit the existence of morality, you admit justice in the relations among human beings, and you throw to the ground all these rules when the question of the State or the prince arises. In a word, politics, according to you, has nothing to do with moral-ity. You permit the monarch to do what you forbid the subject. You believe that the subject will keep his promises when he sees his sovereign break his; that he will respect the law when he knows that the man who handed it down to him has violated it and continually violates it; you be-lieve he will hesitate to follow the road to violence, corruption and fraud when he sees those who are supposed to lead him following it at all times? Learn the truth; know that each usurpation of the prince in public affairs authorizes an equal infraction on the part of the subject; that every political perfidy engenders a social perfidy; that every violence on high legitimizes a violence lower down. You admire the great men; I admire only the great institutions. No doubt, the tempests of liberty will always exist, and a good number of crimes will yet be committed in her name: but political fatalism no longer exists. If you were able to say, in your times, that despotism was a necessary evil, you could not say it today, for, in the actual state of customs and political institutions among the principal peoples of Europe, despotism has become impossible.

MACHIAVELLI Impossible...? If you can manage to prove that to me, I agree to make a step in the direction of your ideas.

MONTESQUIEU I will prove it to you very easily.

MACHIAVELLI Take care: I believe you are attempting a great deal.

MONTESQUIEU The States, like sovereigns, are governed today only by the rules of justice. The modern minister who is inspired by your teachings would not stay in power one year; the monarch who put into practice the maxims of The Prince would rouse against him the reprobation of his subjects; he would be exiled from Europe.

MACHIAVELLI You think so? Your political system, consists in giving a practically equal part of the action to different groups of forces of which nations are composed. However, the temper of your institutions is to give more force to the aristocracy than to the people, more force to the prince than to the aristocracy, thus adjusting the powers to the political capacity of those who must exercise them.

MONTESQUIEU You are right.

MACHIAVELLI On the surface one sees a monarchical society, but all is fundamentally democratic; for, in reality, there is no barrier between the classes, and labour is the instrument of all fortunes. Is it not that, approximately?

MONTESQUIEU Yes, Machiavelli; and you can at least understand the opinions which you do not share.

MACHIAVELLI Well, all these fine things have passed or will pass like a dream; for you have a new principle with which all institutions undergo a change with a startling rapidity.

MONTESQUIEU What is that principle?

The debate over “the people’s sovereignty”

MACHIAVELLI It is that of popular sovereignty. The people, by an absolutely inevitable cones-quence, will one day or another take possession of all the powers which have been recognized as resting in it. Will it be to keep them? No. After several days of madness, it will throw them, out of weariness, to the first soldier of fortune who finds himself in its road. The principle of popular sove-reignty is destructive of all stability, that it indefinitely perpe-tuates the right to revolution. It puts nations into open war against all human powers and even against God; it is the very incarnation of violence. And this is the invariable progress which then follows the communities whose movement is ruled by this principle: popular sovereignty engenders demagogy, demagogy engenders anar-chy, anarchy brings back despotism. Despotism, to you, is barbarity. Well, you see that the people returns to barbari-ty by way of civilization.

From the weariness of ideas and the shock of revolutions have come cold and disillusioned societies, which have achieved indifference in politics as in religion, which have no other stimulant than material satisfactions, which live only in their own interest, which have no other cult than that of gold. Do you believe that it is for love of liberty in itself that the inferior classes are trying to rise to the assault on power? It is by hatred of those who possess; in reality, it is to take away their riches, an instrument of enjoyment which they envy. Those who possess invoke from all sides a strong arm, a forceful power; they demand only one thing, to give to themselves the necessary security so that they may enjoy and do business. What forms of government would you apply to societies in which corruption has stolen everywhere, in which morality has no guarantee save in repressive laws? I see no salvation in these societies, veritable giants with feet of clay, except in the institution of an extreme centralization, which puts all public force at the disposition of those who govern; in a vast system of legislation which takes up in detail all the liberties that have been imprudently bestowed.

MONTESQUIEU I hesitate in answering you, Machiavelli, for there is in your words I know not what satanic mockery, which gives me the inward suspicion that your discourse is not in complete accord with your secret thoughts. You have just drawn a really sinister picture of modern society; I cannot know whether it is faithful, you have only shown me the evil; moreover, you have not given me the means to verify how far you are right, for I know neither of what peoples nor of what states you wished to speak…

MACHIAVELLI I see that you avoid the reefs like an able pilot. Generalities are a great help in argument; but I confess that I am very impatient to know how you extricate with the principle of popular sovereignty. I could not tell, until now, whether or not it was a part of your system. Do you or do you not admit it?

MONTESQUIEU I cannot answer a question couched in those terms.

MACHIAVELLI I knew that even your mind would be disturbed before this phantom.

MONTESQUIEU You are wrong, Machiavelli! If sovereignty rests anywhere, it rests upon the entire nation; I will therefore in the first place call it national sovereignty. But the idea of this sovereignty is not an absolute truth, it is only relative. The sovereignty of human power corres-ponds to an idea profoundly subversive. It is not correct to say that the nations are the absolute masters of their destinies, for their sovereign master is God Himself, and they will never be beyond His power. But the principle of divine right is a no less fatal principle, for it links the people to obscurantism, to despotism, to the void; it reconstitutes logically the regime of castes, it makes of the people a herd of slaves, conducted, as in India, by the hand of the priests, and trembling beneath the whip of the master. Sovereignty is human in the sense that it is given by men, and it is men who exercise it; it is divine in the sense that it is instituted by God, and that it can only be exercised in accordance with the precepts that He has established.

MACHIAVELLI I would like to come to definite conclusions. How far does the hand of God extend over humanity? Who makes the sovereigns?

MONTESQUIEU The people.

MACHIAVELLI It is written “God makes kings”…

MONTESQUIEU That is a translation in the manner of The Prince, O Machiavelli, but it is not from the Holy Scripture! God instituted sovereignty, he did not institute sovereigns. His all-powerful hand stopped there, because there begins the free human arbiter.

MACHIAVELLI Well, according to you, it is the people who dispose of sovereign authority?

MONTESQUIEU Be careful, in contesting it, of setting yourself up against a truth of pure common sense.

MACHIAVELLI But if it is the people who choose their masters, cannot they, therefore, also overthrow them? If they have the right to establish the form of government which satisfies them, what will stop them from changing at the behest of their caprice?

MONTESQUIEU You confound justice with the abuse that can result from its exercise, the principles with their application; those are fundamental distinctions, without which we cannot agree.

MACHIAVELLI Do not hope to escape me, I demand of you logical deductions; refuse me them if you wish. I wish to know if, according to your principles, the people have the right to overthrow their sovereign?

MONTESQUIEU Yes, in extreme cases and for just causes.

MACHIAVELLI Who will be the judge of these extreme cases and of the justice of these extremes?

MONTESQUIEU And who would you wish it to be, if not the people themselves? Have things happened otherwise since the beginning of world? That is a formidable sanction, no doubt, but beneficial and inevitable.

MACHIAVELLI Your system has but one inconvenience, that it supposes the infallibility of reason among the people; but have they not, like individuals, their passions, their mistakes, their injustices?

MONTESQUIEU When the people will make mistakes, they will be punished. 

MACHIAVELLI In what way?

MONTESQUIEU They will be punished by the scourges of dissension, anarchy, even despotism!

MACHIAVELLI You have just uttered the word “despotism”, you see that one returns to it.

MONTESQUIEU That objection is not worthy of your great mind, Machiavelli! Tell me, how you would go about organizing despotism amongst peoples whose public rights rest essentially on liberty, whose morals and religion develop all progress in the same direction, among Christian nations who live by commerce and industry, in states whose political bodies are in the presence of the publicity of the press which throws floods of light into the most obscure corners of power; call upon all the resources of your powerful imagination, seek, invent, and if you resolve the problem, I will say with you that the modern spirit is conquered.

MACHIAVELLI Take care, you give me a fine chance, I may take you at your word.

MONTESQUIEU Do so, I beseech you!

Machiavelli foretells the advent of a new form of despotism

MACHIAVELLI Despotism always presents itself before your eyes in the decayed forms of oriental monarchy, but it is not thus that I think of it; with new societies, new procedures must be employed. Today there is no question, in order to govern, of committing violent iniquities, decapitating one's enemies, stripping one's subjects of their possessions, sprea-ding punishment; no, death, spoliation and physical torture cannot play a role secondary enough in the interior policies of modern states.

MONTESQUIEU That is fortunate.

MACHIAVELLI No doubt I have little admiration, I confess, for your civilizations of cylin-ders and shafts; but I advance with the centuries; the power of the doctrines to which my name is attached is that they accommodate themselves to all times and all situations. Ma-chiavelli today has grandchildren who know the price of his lessons. I am believed very old, and every day I grow younger on earth.

MONTESQUIEU You are jesting?

MACHIAVELLI You shall judge. Today it is less a question of doing men violence than of disarming them. The principal secret of government consists in enfeebling the public spirit to the point of disinteresting it entirely in the ideas and the principles with which revolutions are made nowadays. In all times, peoples, like individuals, have been paid in words. Appearances nearly always are sufficient for them; they demand no more. One can, then, establish artificial institutions which correspond to a language and to ideas equally artificial; it is necessary to have the talent to strip the parties of that liberal phraseology with which they arm themselves against the government. It is necessary to satiate the people with it until they are weary, until they are disgusted. One speaks often today of the power of public opinion. I shall show you that it is made to express whatever one wants when one knows well the hidden resources of power.

MONTESQUIEU Where are you going with these words whose obscurity has in it something sinister?

MACHIAVELLI If the wise Montesquieu means to put sentiment in the place of politics, I should perhaps stop here; I have not pretended to place myself on the terrain of morals. Do you wish to let me say how I would solve the problem? You can put aside your scruples in accepting this thesis as a question of pure curiosity.

MONTESQUIEU So be it.

MACHIAVELLI Permit me to tell you first under what essential conditions the Prince can hope today to consolidate his power. He will have to endeavour above all to destroy the parties, to dissolve the collective forces wherever they exist, to paralyse in all its manifestations individual initiative; then the level of character would descend to himself, and all knees will soon bend in servitude. Absolute power will no longer be an accident, it will become a need. A large number of these results can be obtained by simple regulations of the police and the administration. With the aid of the sole regulating power, I would institute, for example, huge financial monopolies, reservoirs of the public wealth, on which depends so closely the fate of all the private fortunes that they would be swallowed up with the credit of the state the day after any political catastrophe. You are an economist, Montesquieu, weigh the value of this combination. Head of the government, all my edicts, all my ordinances would constantly tend toward the same goal: to annihilate collective and individual forces; to develop excessively the preponderance of the state, to make of it the sovereign protector, promoter and remunerator. It is necessary to arrive at the existence in the state only of proletarians, several millionaires, and soldiers.

MONTESQUIEU Continue.

MACHIAVELLI The power of which I dream, far, as you see, from having barbarian customs, must draw to itself all the forces and all the talents of the civilization in the heart of which it lives. It must surround itself with publicists, lawyers, juris-consults, practical men and administrators, men who know thoroughly all the secrets, all the strength of social life, who speak all languages, who have studied man in all circles. They must be taken from anywhere and everywhere, for these men give surprising service through the ingenious procedures they apply to politics. With that, a whole world of economists is necessary, of bankers, of industrialists, of capitalists, of men of vision, of men with millions, for all funda-mentally resolves itself into a question of figures.

MONTESQUIEU I make but one observation to you. The use of these methods presup-poses the existence of absolute power, and I have asked you precisely how you could establish it in political societies which rest upon liberal institutions.

MACHIAVELL I take the hypothesis which is most contrary to me; I take a state constituted as a republic, because with such a form of government, I will encounter resistance almost insurmountable in appearance, in ideas, in custom, in laws. This hypothesis is not accepta-ble to you? I accept from your hands a state of no matter what form, great or small; I imagine it endowed with all the institutions that guarantee liberty, and I ask you this single question: Do you believe power is protected from a blow or from what is today called a “coup d'Etat”?

MONTESQUIEU No, that is true; but you will at least admit that such an enterprise would be singularly difficult in the political society of our times, as it is organized.

MACHIAVELLI And why? Are not these societies, as in all times, prey to factions? Are there not everywhere the elements of civil war, between parties, between pretenders?

MONTESQUIEU That is possible. A pretender will trouble the state; his party will triumph, I admit it; the power is in other hands, that is all; but the public rights and very foundation of the institutions remain upright.

MACHIAVELLI Is it true that you have such an illusion?

MONTESQUIEU Prove the contrary.

MACHIAVELLI You grant me, for the moment, the success of an armed enterprise against the established power?

MONTESQUIEU Yes.

Seizing power in an unconventional way

MACHIAVELLI Then note in what situation I find myself placed. I have for the moment suppressed all power other than my own. If the institutions still standing can erect some obstacle before me, it is pure form. Therefore, I will not destroy institutions directly, but I will reach them one by one by an unseen blow which will throw the mechanism into confusion. Above the primitive laws I will have passed a whole new legislation which, without exactly abrogating the old, will mask it first, and soon make it disappear completely.

MONTESQUIEU Well, you have arrived at the day after your “coup d'Etat” : what are you going to do?

MACHIAVELLI One great thing, then a very little one.

MONTESQUIEU Let us see the great one first.

MACHIAVELLI The moment has come to impress terror which will strike the entire city and will make the most intrepid souls shrink back.

MONTESQUIEU You told me that you repudiated bloodshed.

MACHIAVELLI It is not a question of false humanity here. Society is menaced, it is in a state of lawful defence. I only do this by necessity, and I suffer from it.

MONTESQUIEU But who will start this blood flowing?

MACHIAVELLI The army, that great justiciary of the state, whose hand never dishonours its victims.

MONTESQUIEU And you think that this blood will not fall back on you?

MACHIAVELLI No, for in the eyes of the people, the sovereign, definitely, is a stranger to the excesses of the soldiery. Those who could be held responsible are the generals, the ministers who had executed my orders. These men, I assure you, will be devoted to me until their last breath.

MONTESQUIEU That is, therefore, your first act as sovereign? Now let us hear the second.

MACHIAVELLI I will make another constitution, that is all.

MONTESQUIEU And you think that that will not be difficult?

MACHIAVELLI Wherein will lie the difficulty? For the moment, there is no other will, no other force than mine and I have the popular element as a basis of action.

MONTESQUIEU Do you think that a single lucky violence will be sufficient to ravish all the rights of a nation, all her con-quests, all her institutions, all the principles with which she has been in the habit of living?

MACHIAVELLI I see no reason why I should not proclaim these principles; if you wish, I will even make them the preamble to my constitution.

MONTESQUIEU You have already proved to me that you are a great magician.

MACHIAVELLI There is no magic here, only political “savoir faire”.

MONTESQUIEU But how, having inscribed these principles at the head of your constitution, are you going to go about without applying them?

MACHIAVELLI Ah, take care, I have told you that I would proclaim these principles, but I have not said I would inscribe them or even that I would expressly designate them.

MONTESQUIEU What do you mean?

MACHIAVELLI I will in no way sum up; I will take care to declare to the people that I recognize and confirm the great principles of modern justice.

MONTESQUIEU The import of this reticence escapes me.

MACHLAVELLI If I expressly enumerated these rights, my freedom of action will be chained to those I have mentioned; that is what I do not want. In not naming them, I seem to accord all and I do not specially accord any; this permits me to set aside later, by means of exception, those that I may judge dangerous.

MONTESQUIEU I understand.

MACHIAVELLI If my power were threatened, it could be only because of factions. I am guarded against them by two basic rights which I have placed in my constitution.

MONTESQUIEU And what are those rights?

MACHIAVELLI The appeal to the people, the right to put the country in a state of siege. I am head of the army, I have the entire public force in my hands; at the first insurrection against my power, the bayonets would be an answer to resistance and I would again find in the ballot-box a new sanction of my authority.

MONTESQUIEU You have unanswerable arguments.

MACHIAVELLI I wrote in the treatise of The Prince a maxim which should serve as a rule of conduct in such cases: "The usurper of a state must commit, all at one time, the acts of severity which his safety necessitates, for later he will not be able to change either for the better or the worse. The very next day after the promulgation of my constitution, I shall issue a succession of decrees, having the force of laws, which will suppress at a single stroke all the liberties and rights the exercise of which might be dangerous.

MONTESQUIEU The moment would indeed be well chosen. The country would still be terror-stricken at your coup d'Etat. As for your constitution, nothing would be refused you, since you would be in a position to take everything; and as for your decrees, there would be nothing to grant you, since you ask for nothing and take all.

MACHIAVELLI You have a quick tongue.

MONTESQUIEU Not so quick as your action. In spite of your strength and penetration, I must admit that I have difficulty in believing that the country would not rise up in a second “coup d'Etat” prepared behind your back.

MACHIAVELLI The country would voluntarily close its eyes; for, according to my hypothe-sis, it would be tired of strife, it would yearn for rest like the sand in the desert after the shower which follows the storm. I hasten to add that the liberties which I suppress I would promise solemnly to restore after the agitation dies down.

MONTESQUIEU In the meanwhile, you would directly suppress all the liberties.

MACHIAVELLI Directly is no word for a statesman; I would suppress nothing directly; it is just at this point that the fox's skin must be sewed on to the lion's skin. Of what use is politics if one could not reach by oblique means the goal which cannot be attained by a straight line?

MONTESQUIEU I see that we are entering a new phase.

MACHIAVELLI You wisely mention, in your “Esprit des Lois“ that the word liberty is a word to which one attaches greatly varied meanings. I am told that the following proposition may be found in your book: "Liberty is the right to do that which the laws permit." I am well pleased with that definition which I consider a good one, and I assure you that my laws will permit only what is necessary.

MONTESQUIEU I do not always recognize my language when it passes through your lips!... I should not mind seeing first of all how you will defend yourself against the press.

How to keep safe from the 4th power ?

MACHIAVELLI If I decided to suppress newspapers purely and simply, I would very imprudently shock public sensibility which it is always dangerous to oppose openly; I should proceed by a series of provisions which would seem to be simple measures of precaution and policy. I would decree that in the future no newspaper could be founded except by authorization of the government. 

MONTESQUIEU But, since you are going into all details, allow me this question: the spirit of a newspaper changes with the personnel of its editorial staff; how would you get rid of a staff hostile to your power?

MONTESQUIEU But the old papers, which have remained enemies of your government, and whose staff has not changed, will speak aloud.

MACHIAVELLI I would reach all newspapers, present or future, by fiscal measures which would check when needed all publicity enterprises.

MONTESQUIEU I see with astonishment that it is not exactly the journalist who is hit in this system; it is the newspaper, the ruin of which includes the interests that are grouped about it.

MACHIAVELLI Let them group themselves elsewhere! We do not bother about such trifles.

MONTESQUIEU That seems to me a little hard.

MACHIAVELLI Then they will look twice before stirring up the public.

MONTESQUIEU If you cannot be fought by newspapers in the country, they can fight you by papers abroad.

MACHIAVELLI Those of my subjects convicted of having written abroad anything against the government will be sought out, upon their return to the kingdom, and severely punished. It is really an infamy to write against the government when one is out of the country.

MONTESQUIEU But the foreign press of the bordering states will have something to say.

MACHIAVELLI We are supposing that I am reigning over a great kingdom. The little states which border my frontier will tremble before me, I assure you.

MONTESQUIEU I see that I was right in saying, in the Esprit des Lois, that the frontiers of a despot ought to be laid waste. According to Benjamin Constant, you will make of the kingdom an island where one will be ignorant of what goes on in Europe, and you will make of the capital another island where one will be ignorant of what goes on in the provinces.

MACHIAVELLI I do not want my kingdom to be disturbed by noises from abroad.

MONTESQUIEU Then you are through with the press, I gather.

MACHIAVELLI Oh, not at all!

MONTESQUIEU Why, what is there left?

MACHIAVELLI The other half of the task! In parliamentary countries, it is almost always because of the press that the governments fail; well, I foresee the possibility of counteracting the press by the press itself. Since journalism is such a great force, do you know what my government would do? It would turn journalist, it would become journalism incarnate.

MONTESQUIEU I am very curious, I must admit, to see how you will go about putting into effect this new program.

MACHIAVELLI I shall count the number of newspapers which represent what you call the opposition. If there are ten for the opposition, I shall have twenty for the government; if there are twenty, I shall have forty; if there are forty, I shall have eighty.

MONTESQUIEU Really, that is very simple.

MACHIAVELLI Not quite as simple as you think, though, because the masses must have no suspicion of these tactics; public opinion would shy at newspapers which openly defended my policies. I shall divide in three or four categories the papers devoted to my power. In first rank I shall put a certain number of newspapers whose tone will be frankly official and which, at any encounter, will defend my deeds to the death. I tell you right from the start, these will not be the ones which will have the greatest influence on public opinion. In the second rank I shall place another series of newspapers the character of which will be no more than officious and the purposes of which will be to rally to my power that mass of luke-warm and indifferent persons who accept without scruple what is established.

It is in the newspaper categories which follow that will be found the most powerful suppor-ters of my power. Here, the official or officious tone is completely dropped, in appearance, that is, for the newspapers of which I am going to speak will all be attached by the same chain to my government. I shall count on a devoted organ in each opinion, in each party; I shall have an aristocratic organ in the aristocratic party, a republican organ in the republic-can party, a revolu-tionary organ in the revolutionary party, an anarchist organ, if necessary, in the anarchist party. Everyone will be of my party whether he knows it or not.

MONTESQUIEU It is enough to make one dizzy.

MACHIAVELLI Spare your strength, for you have not yet come to the end! That is only a question of organization; I shall institute, for instance, under the title of division of printing and the press, a centre of operation to which one will come for orders. They will see sheets, devoted to my government, which will attack me, which will shout, which will stir up a tur-moil of confusion.

MONTESQUIEU This is beyond me; I no longer follow.

MACHIAVELLI You will notice that the foundation and the principles of my government will never be attacked by the news-papers of which I am speaking; they will never go in for anything more than a polemic skirmish, a dynastic opposition within the narrowest limits.

MONTESQUIEU And what advantage do you find in that?

MACHIAVELLI Your question is rather ingenuous. The result, considerable enough, will be to make the greatest number say: "But you see, one is free, one may speak under this regi-me, it tolerates these things!" Here are newspapers which allow themselves the greatest freedom of speech; well, they never attack the established institutions. They must be above the injustices of human passions, since the very enemies of the government cannot help rendering homage to them."

MONTESQUIEU Nevertheless, I should like to comment on something : Do you not think that theses newspapers will finally succeed in raising some of the veils which cover so many myste-rious forces?

MACHIAVELLI Not at all; you must know that journalism is a sort of free-masonry; those who live by it are all more or less attached to one another by the bonds of professional discretion; like the ancient soothsayers, they do not readily divulge the secret of their oracles. They would gain nothing by betraying one another, for the majority of them have some more or less shameful secrets. It is quite probable, I agree, that at the heart of the capital, within a certain radius of people, these things will be no mystery; but, everywhere else, no one will suspect, and the great majority of the nation will follow, with the utmost confidence, the trail of the leaders which I will have given them.

MONTESQUIEU The fact still remains, in spite of all you have just said, that there still is in the capital a certain number of independent newspapers. It will be practically impossible for them to talk politics, that is certain, but they may still wage a war of details.

MACHIAVELLI I am not afraid of that.

MONTESQUIEU It is true that you have increased to such an extent the means of repression that you have but to choose your method.

MACHIAVELLI I do not even wish to be obliged to have ceaseless recourse to repression: I wish, through a simple injunction, to make it possible to put an end to any discussion on a subject concerning the administration.

MONTESQUIEU And how do you expect to go about that?

MACHIAVELLI I shall oblige the newspapers to put at the head of their columns the corrections which the government will impart to them. That will be, as you see, a loyal and open censure.

MONTESQUIEU To which, of course, there will be no reply.

MACHIAVELLI Obviously not; discussion will be closed.

MONTESQUIEU In this way you will always have the last word, and you will have it without the use of violence - it is very ingenious.

MACHIAVELLI To make use of the press, to make use of it in all its forms! Such is, today, the law of the powers which wish to exist.

MONTESQUIEU Then you are through with it?

MACHIAVELLI Yes, and to my regrets.

How to keep safe from any likely riot ?

MONTESQUIEU You outlined a formidable legislation concerning the press. You extinguished all voices, with the exception of your own. Here are the mute parties before you - do you fear no conspiracies?

MACHIAVELLI No, for I should not be very foresighted if, with one twist of the hand, I did not disarm them all at once.

MONTESQUIEU In that case, what are your methods ?

MACHIAVELLI I would begin by deporting by the hundreds those who, with gun in hand, greeted the accession of my power.

MONTESQUIEU And for the secret societies?

MACHIAVELLI I shall expel, for public safety, all those who have been definitely known to have been members. I shall put through a law which will permit the government to deport, by administrative means, all who may have been affiliated with such societies.

MONTESQUIEU That is, without judgment.

MACHIAVELLI Why do you say: without judgment? Is not the decision of a government a judgment? In countries continually troubled by civil discord, peace must be brought about by implacable acts of vigour; if there is a reckoning of victims to be made in order to insure tranquillity, it will be made.

MONTESQUIEU I hardly dare to make an observation. However, it seems to me that, even in following your plans, you could be less severe.

MACHIAVELLI If my clemency were called upon, I should see.

MONTESQUIEU Your clemency reassures me a little; there are moments when, if some mortal were to hear you, you would freeze his blood.

MACHIAVELLI Why? I lived very close to Cesar Borgia who left behind him a terrible repute-tion, which he well deserved; yet I assure you that once the necessity for execution was passed, he was good-tempered enough. The same could be said of almost all the absolute monarchs; at bottom they are good, especially so when it comes to children.

MONTESQUIEU I am not sure that I do not prefer you at the height of your wrath: your gentle-ness is more frightening. But to return, you have destroyed the secret societies.

MACHIAVELLI I prohibited secret societies the character and actions of which would escape the supervision of my government, but I foresee the possibility of giving to a certain number of these societies a sort of legal existence or, rather, to centralise them all under a single one the supreme head of which will be appointed by myself. In this way I shall hold in my hand the various revolutionary elements in the country. It will be like a branch of my police force about which I shall soon tell you. You do not understand, Montesquieu, how much impotence and even simplicity is to be found among the majority of the men of demagoguism. These tigers have the souls of sheep; one need only speak their language to be admitted to their ranks. Besides, almost all their ideas have an incredible affinity with the doctrines of absolute power. Their dream is the absorption of the individual into a symbolic unity. They demand the complete realization of equality by virtue of a power which can, after all, be in the hands of only a single man. You see that even here I am the head of their school!

MONTESQUIEU I see definitely that you are well guarded against conspiracies.

MACHIAVELLI Yes, for it is just as well to tell you that the legislation will not permit reunions or secret meetings which exceed a certain number of persons.

MONTESQUIEU How many?

MACHIAVELLI You insist upon details? No group of more than fifteen or twenty people, if that satisfies you.

MONTESQUIEU What! Friends numbering more than fifteen or twenty will not be able to dine together?

MACHIAVELLI You are already becoming alarmed, I see, in the name of gallic gayety. Well, yes, they may gather, for my rule will not be as savage as you think, but with one condition - that politics is not discussed.

MONTESQUIEU They may discuss literature?

MACHIAVELLI Yes, but on condition that under cover of literature they do not gather for a political purpose.

MONTESQUIEU In such a system it is difficult for the citizens to live without being suspected by the government!

MACHIAVELLI You are mistaken then; none but rebels will suffer from these restrictions. It goes without saying that here I have nothing to do with acts of rebellion against my power, or of attempts to overthrow it, or of attacks either against the person of the prince.

MONTESQUIEU Still it is not enough to establish a Draconian legislation; one must have a magistracy which is willing to apply it; that point is not without its difficulties.

MACHIAVELLI There are no difficulties there.

MONTESQUIEU Then you are going to destroy the judicial organization?

MACHIAVELLI I destroy nothing: I modify and I initiate.

MONTESQUIEU Then you are going to establish martial, exceptional tribunals?

MACHIAVELLI No.

MONTESQUIEU What then?

MACHIAVELLI I shall not need to decree a great many severe laws whose application. Many of them will already exist and will still be in force; for all governments, liberal or absolute, are obliged, in critical moments, to have recourse to rigorous laws some of which remain, others of which are weakened, depending on the needs which cause them. One must make use of both. You see that violence plays no role; I take my point of support where everyone takes it nowadays-from the law.

MONTESQUIEU From the law of the strongest.

MACHIAVELLI The law which is obeyed is always the law of the strongest: I know of no excep-tion to this rule.

How to keep safe from universal suffrage?

MONTESQUIEU Although we have surveyed a great sphere and you have organized almost everything, I need not conceal from you that there still remains much for you to do in order to reassure me completely as to the continuance of your power. That which astonishes me the most in the world is that you have based it on universal suffrage, that is, the most inconsistent element of its nature of which I am aware. I should like to see is the way you would manage with this suffrage when it is a question of applying it to the nomination of public officers.

MACHIAVELLI What public officers? You know very well that, in monarchical states, it is the government which appoints the officials of all ranks.

MONTESQUIEU That depends on which officials. Those which have to do with the administration of the townships are, in general, elected by the inhabitants, even under monarchical governments.

MACHIAVELLI In the future they will be appointed by the government.

MONTESQUIEU And you will also appoint the representatives of the nation?

MACHIAVELLI You know that that is not possible.

MONTESQUIEU Then I pity you, for if you leave the voting to itself, if you do not arrange for some new plan, the assembly of the representatives of the people will not be long, under the influence of the parties, in filling up with deputies hostile to your power.

MACHIAVELLI Just for that reason I had not the slightest intention of leaving the voting to itself.

MONTESQUIEU I expected that. But what plan will you adopt?

MACHIAVELLI I shall impose upon the candidates the solemnity of the oath. I want an oath of loyalty to the prince himself and to his constitution.

MONTESQUIEU But since in politics you do not fear to violate your own, how can you expect that they should be more scrupulous than yourself on this point?

MACHIAVELLI I count little on the political conscience of men; I count on the power of opinion: no one will dare to debase himself before it by openly proving false to his sworn oath. They will dare still less since the oath which I shall place upon them will precede the election instead of following it, and they will be without any excuse for seeking votes, under these conditions, if they are not decided in advance to serve me. Do not concern yourself with the voters - those who are animated by good intentions will always know for whom to vote. I should be very much surprised if, under this system, many capable or talented men were produced.

MACHIAVELLI Public order has less need of talented men than of men devoted to the government. Great ability holds sway from the throne and among those who surround it - elsewhere it is useless.

MONTESQUIEU Your aphorisms cut like a sword. Yet I see all around you some things which you have not even touched upon. You have not dealt with the clergy, nor the University, nor the bar; yet it seems to me that there is more than one dangerous element in all that.

How to keep safe from the University, the Clergy, the Bar and how to keep one’s police force in hiding ?

MACHIAVELLI As for the University, the present order of things is practically satisfactory. The heads as well as the members of the teaching body of all degrees are appointed by the government; they are attached to it, they depend upon it, that suffices. Yet I must not leave this subject without telling you that I consider it very important to proscribe the studies of constitutional politics in the teaching of law.

MONTESQUIEU Indeed you have good reasons for that.

MACHIAVELLI I do not wish the young people, on leaving school, to busy themselves with politics at random; at the age of eighteen, one goes about making constitutions as one makes tragedies. The generations which are born under my reign must be brought up in the respect of established institutions, in the love of the prince. I should like to have the history of my reign, of myself while living, taught in the schools.

MONTESQUIEU That would, of course, be a continual apology for all your deeds?

MACHIAVELLI It is obvious that I would not have myself disparaged.

MONTESQUIEU In other words, you absorb, you confiscate for your profit even the last gleams of independent thought.

MACHIAVELLI I confiscate nothing at all.

MONTESQUIEU Let us go on to something else!

MACHIAVELLI You have called my attention to the bar. I am aware that this order will be a centre of influences constantly hostile to my power. This profession - and you know it better than I, Montesquieu - develops characters which are cold and stubborn, for I am not forget-ting that I am face to face with a descendant of the great magistrates who upheld the throne of the monarchy in France with such brilliance.

MONTESQUIEU And who rarely lent themselves to the registration of decrees when they violated the law of the state.

MACHIAVELLI That is how they ended by overthrowing the state itself. I do not want my courts of justice to be parliaments and the lawyers, under immunity of their gowns, to play politics there. I shall issue a decree which, while respecting the independence of the corpo-ration, will nevertheless arrange for the lawyers to receive the investiture of their profession from the sovereign.

MONTESQUIEU It is only too true that one may lend to the most detestable measures the language of reason! But look here, what are you going to do now in connection with the clergy? Beware of the priest: he depends only upon God, and his influence is everywhere, in the sanctua-ry, in the family, in the school. You can do nothing to him: his hierarchy is not yours, he obeys a constitution which is decided neither by the law nor by the sword. If you reign over a Catholic nation and you have the clergy for enemy, you will perish sooner or later, even if all the people were for you.

MACHIAVELLI I am not quite sure why you are pleased to make of the priest an apostle of liberty. I have never seen that, neither in ancient nor in modern times; I have always found in the priesthood a natural support of absolute power. Nonetheless, I am king by the grace of God. In view of this, the clergy must support me, for my principles of authority conform to their own. If, however, they show themselves rebellious, if they take advantage of their influence to carry on an underhand war against my government...

MONTESQUIEU Well, what then?

MACHIAVELLI I could provoke a schism in the Church which would break all the bonds which attach the clergy to the court of Rome. I would have the following words circulated: "Christianity is independent of Catholicism; what Catholicism forbids, Christianity permits. This protectorate of the people as children can no longer be reconciled with the virile genius of modern civilization, with its wisdom and its independence. Why go to Rome to seek a director of conscience? Why should the head of the political authority not be at the same time the head of the religious authority? Why should the sovereign not be pontiff?" In the present day, you know, temporal power is gravely threatened, both by irreligious hate and by the ambition of the countries north of Italy. Well, I would say to the Holy Father: "I shall support you against all of them, I shall save you - it is my duty, it is my mission. But at least do not attack me - support me with your moral influence."

MONTESQUIEU Your royal aspect is standing out more and more. In the same way that you touch everything, are you also able to see everything?

MACHIAVELLI Yes, for I shall make of the police an institution so vast that in the heart of my kingdom half of the people shall see the other half. May I give you some details on the organization of my police?

MONTESQUIEU Go ahead.

MACHIAVELLI I shall begin by creating a ministry of police which will be the most important of my ministries and which will centralize, as much for the exterior as for the interior, the numerous functions which I give over to that part of my administration.

MONTESQUIEU But if you do that, your subjects will see immediately that they are caught in a prodigious net.

MACHIAVELLI If this ministry incurs displeasure, I shall abolish it. I shall organize in other ministries corresponding functions the greater part of which will be quietly blended in with what you call nowadays the ministry of the interior and the ministry of foreign affairs. You understand perfectly that here I am not interested in diplomacy but only in the proper means to assure my security against the factions, foreign as well as domestic. In order to have well in hand the thread of revolutionary intrigues, I am dreaming of a plan which would, I think, be rather clever.

MONTESQUIEU Good God, what may that be!

MACHIAVELLI I should like to have a prince of my house, seated on the steps of my throne, who would play at being a malcontent. His mission would be to hold himself up as a liberal, a slanderer of my government and thus to rally (in order to observe them more closely) those who, in the highest ranks of my kingdom, might go in a little for demagogy. Riding above domestic and foreign intrigues, the prince to whom I would confide this mission would thus play the game of dupe to those who would not be in the secret of the comedy.

MONTESQUIEU If I continue to listen to you, Machiavelli, it is only to have the last word of this shocking wager. Yet, you have left a gap in your decrees. You have not touched individual liberty.

MACHIAVELLI I shall not touch it. If I respect individual liberty, I did not forbid the judiciary organization to make some useful modifications in this regard.

MONTESQUIEU I was well aware of that!

MACHIAVELLI Oh! It will be the easiest thing in the world. Who is it who generally makes the laws on individual liberty in your parliamentary states?

MONTESQUIEU It is a council of magistrates, the number and independence of whom are the guarantee of those brought before the courts.

MACHIAVELLI It is certainly a vicious organization, for how do you expect that, with the slow-ness of the deliberations of a council, justice can have the necessary rapidity of apprehension of evil-doers?

MONTESQUIEU Which evil-doers?

MACHIAVELLI I am speaking of those who commit murder, robbery, crimes and misdemea-nours which come under the common law. This tribunal must be given the unity of action which is necessary to it; I replace your council by a single magistrate, charged with making laws concer-ning the arrest of criminals.

MONTESQUIEU But it is not a question now of criminals; with the aid of this regulation, you threaten the liberty of all the citizens. At least make a distinction in the cause of accusation.  

MACHIAVELLI That is just what I do not wish to do. Is the one who undertakes something against the government not as guilty as, if not more so than, the one who commits an ordi-nary crime or misdemeanour? In my kingdom, the insolent journalist and the conspirator will be seated before the criminal jury, side by side with the counterfeiter and the murderer. That is an excellent legislative modification, you must notice, for public opinion, seeing the conspirator treated as the equal of the ordinary criminal, will end up by confusing the two types in the same scorn.

How to survive in a modern economic framework ?

MONTESQUIEU There still remains the most difficult of all problems. 

MACHIAVELLI And what is this problem?

MONTESQUIEU The problem of your finances; here it is the very nature of the thing which will resist you.

MACHIAVELLI You disturb me, I confess, for I date from a century of barbarism concerning political economy and I under-stand very little of those things.

MONTESQUIEU If I question the past, I see very clearly that it can exist only under the following conditions: in the first place, the absolute monarch must be a military chief, and he must be a victor, for it is from war that he must demand the principal resources which are necessary to maintain his pomp and his armies. If he demanded them by taxation, he would crush his subjects. Now, today, war no longer brings in profits to those who wage it: it ruins the victors as well as the vanquished. That is a source of revenue which is out of your reach. Taxes are left. But, if the people of the present day are as indifferent as you say to the loss of their liberties, that does not mean that they will be so when it comes to their interests; their interests are bound to an economic regime exclusive of despotism.

MACHIAVELLI As a basis of action I have the proletariat of whom the mass possesses nothing. The burdens of the state scarcely weigh upon them and I would even arrange that these expenses should not touch them at all.

MONTESQUIEU If I understand correctly, that is all very clear: the possessors will be forced to pay by the sovereign will of those who possess nothing.

MACHIAVELLI Is that not just?

MONTESQUIEU It is not even true, for in present-day society, from the economic point of view, there are neither rich nor poor. The artisan of yesterday is the bourgeois of tomorrow, by virtue of the labour law. It is an aberration to believe that the proletariat can profit by blows struck at pro-duction. By impoverishing, through fiscal laws, those who have possessions, unnatural situations are created and, in time, even those who possess nothing become still poorer. In other hand, the civilized peoples of Europe have surrounded the administration of their finances with guarantees so binding, so jealous, so multiple, that they leave no more room for collection than for the arbitrary use of public funds.

MACHIAVELLI Even in constitutional states is it not expressly reserved for the sovereign to set up, through decrees, supplementary or unusual credits in the interval between legislative ses-sions?

MONTESQUIEU That is true, but on one condition, which is that these decrees are con-verted into laws at the meeting of the chambers. Their approval must intervene.

MACHIAVELLI If it intervenes after the expenditure is pledged!

MONTESQUIEU Unfortunately, expenses cannot be pledged without the intervention of the legislative power!

MACHIAVELLI But in that case one can no longer even govern.

MONTESQUIEU It seems that one can.

MACHIAVELLI I am still overwhelmed, I admit, by this financial inroad. On the day follo-wing my accession, there will be no question of voting upon the budget; I shall issue a special decree, I shall dictatorially open the necessary accounts and I shall have them approved by my council of state.

MONTESQUIEU And you expect to continue in this manner?

MACHIAVELLI Not at all. Beginning with the following year I shall return to legality. Rules have been made before me, I shall make rules in my turn. Sometimes, you know, in finance there are words ready made, stereotyped phrases, which have a great effect on the public, calming and reassuring the people. Thus, in artfully presenting such and such a debt, one says: this figure is not at all exorbitant - it is normal, it conforms to previous budgets - the figure of the floating debt is very reassuring. When the budget can no longer be balanced and one wishes to prepare public spirit for some disappointment for the following year, one says in advance, in a report, next year the deficit will only be so and so much. If the deficit is less than the estimate, it is a veritable triumph; if it is greater, one says: "the deficit was greater than was estimated, but it was still higher last year; altogether the situation is better, because less has been spent and yet we have gone through exceptionally difficult circums-tances. But, next year, the increase of revenues will, in all probability, permit the attainment of a balance which has been so long sought: the debt will be reduced, the budget suitably balanced. This progress will continue, it may be hoped, and, save for extraordinary events, balance will become the custom of our finances, as it is the rule."

MONTESQUIEU Your mockery has something infernal in it.

MACHIAVELLI You forget where we are.

MONTESQUIEU You defy heaven.

MACHIAVELLI God fathoms the heart.

Machiavelli’s works : « forceful powers »

MONTESQUIEU You hold in your hands the greatest power of modern times, money. You are able to procure practically as much of it as you wish. With such prodigious resources you will undoubtedly do great things; here is finally an opportunity of showing that good may come from evil.

MACHIAVELLI The greatest of my good deeds will be, first of all, that of having given domestic peace to my people. Under my reign the wicked passions are restrained, the good people are reassured and the bad ones tremble. I render liberty, dignity, strength to a country torn by factions before my time.

MONTESQUIEU After having changed so many things, will you not end by changing the meaning of words?

MACHIAVELLI I give prodigious scope to the spirit of enterprise; my reign would be the reign of business. I would launch speculation into directions new and hitherto unknown. My administera-tion would even unlock some of its links. I would free a host of industries from regulations; the butchers, the bakers and the theatrical managers would be free.

MONTESQUIEU Free to do what?

MACHIAVELLI Free to make bread, free to sell meat and free to organize theatrical enterprises, without the permission of the authority.

MONTESQUIEU Have you nothing better to tell me?

MACHIAVELLI You seem always to believe that people of today are starved for liberty. Have you foreseen the case when they wish no more of it, and can you demand of the princes more passion for it than the people? Now, in your societies so deeply liberated, in which the individual only lives in the sphere of his egoism and his material interests, ques-tion the greatest number, and you will see whether, from every side, you will not be answe-red: “What has politics to do with me? What has liberty to do with me? Are not all govern-ments the same?” Note this well, more-over, it is not even the people who will speak thus; it will be the bourgeois, the industrialists, the educated men, the rich, the literati, all those who are in a position to appreciate your fine doctrines of public rights. I would be constantly occupied with the condition of the people. My government would procure work for them.

MONTESQUIEU Govern the least possible and the people will have nothing to ask of you because they will have no need of you.

MACHIAVELLI I do all that I can to improve the material condition of the workers.

MONTESQUIEU Well, begin by giving them the resources which you are appropriating for the salaries of your grand dignitaries, your ministers, your consular personages. Set aside for them the bounties which you lavish recklessly upon your pages, your courtesans, your mistresses. Still better, remove the purple, the sight of which is an affront to the equality of men. Get rid of your titles of Majesty, Highness, Excellency, which enter proud ears like pointed steel. Call yourself protector as Cromwell did, but do the deeds of the apostles; sleep in hospitals, stretch yourself on sickbeds like godly Louis. It is too easy to do evangelical charity when one passes his life in the midst of feasts, when one rests on sumptuous beds, with beautiful women, when, upon rising and upon going to sleep, one has great personages who rush to put on one's shirt. Be head of the family and not despot, patriarch and not prince. If this role does not suit you, be the chief of a democratic republic, grant liberty, introduce it into the habits of the people, by force if that is your temperament. Be Lycurgus, be Agesilaus, be a Gracchus; but I do not know what it is in this soft civilization where everything bends, where everything fades near a prince, where every spirit is cast in the same mould, every soul in the same uniform; I can understand that one aspires to reign over men but not over automatons.

MACHIAVELLI To say to a sovereign: "Will you be kind enough to descend from your throne for the happiness of your people?" Is that not madness? To say to him: "Since you are an emanation of popular suffrage, give yourself up to these fluctuations, let yourself be discussed." Is that possible? After all, is not a government which has sprung from universal suffrage the expression of the will of the majority? You will tell me that this principle is destructive of public liberties; what can I do about it? When this principle has entered into the customs of the people, do you know how to tear it out? And, if it cannot be torn out, do you know how to realize it in the great European societies other than by the arm of a single man? You are severe in your judgment of the methods of government: point out to me another means of execution and, if there is no other than absolute power, tell me how this power can separate itself from the special imperfections to which its prin-ceple condemns it. No, I am not a Saint Vincent de Paul, for my subjects need not an evangelical soul, but an arm; and I am not an Agesilaus, nor a Lycurgus, nor a Gracchus, for I am neither among the Spartans nor among the Romans; I am in the heart of voluptuous societies which ally the fury of pleasures to that of arms, the transports of force to those of the senses, which no longer desire divine authority, paternal authority, religious restraint. Is it I who have created the world in the midst of which I live? I am such because it is such. Would I have the power to stop its inclination? No, I can only prolong its life because it would dissolve still more quickly if it were left to itself. I take this society by its vices because it presents only vices to me; if it had virtues, I should take it by its virtues. But if austere principles can affront my power, can they disregard the real services that I render ? I am the arm, I am the sword of the Revolutions which the harbinger breath of final destruction is leading astray. I contain insane forces which have no other motive power, at bottom, than the brutality of the instincts, which hunt plunder under the veil of principles. If I discipline these forces, if I arrest their expansion in my country, even for only a century, have I not deserved well of it?

Let us go on to other subjects. What is going to astonish you is that I am returning to structures, the theory of the organization of permanent work for the labouring classes. My reign promises them an indefinite salary. Myself dead, my system abandoned, no more work; the people are on strike and rise to assault the wealthy classes. They are in the midst of a peasant rising: industrial perturbation, overthrow of credit, insurrection in my State, revolt around it; Europe is aflame. I pause. Tell me if the privileged classes, which very naturally tremble for their fortunes, will not make common cause, very close cause, with the working classes to maintain me, me or my dynasty.

You have guessed my aim: I shall support the rising of the working classes; that is the other army which I need against the factions. But this mass of proletarians which is in my hand must not be able to turn against me. I take care of that by the buildings themselves. The worker who builds for me at the same time builds the necessary means of defence against him-self. The result of great buildings is, indeed, to rarefy the space in which the artisan may live, to force him to the suburbs, and soon to cause him to leave even those; for living expenses increase with the increase in rent. To build for the people huge cities where the rent would be very low and where the masses would find themselves reunited by bands.

MONTESQUIEU Mouse-traps!

Machiavelli’s works : « softer means »

MACHIAVELLI Here I am at petty means. One cannot conceal that this century is a century of money. On every hand people aspire to material pleasures. You will not forbid me to cheer my people by games, by festivals; that is how I expect to modify the customs. Misery clamps them as in a vice, luxury crushes them; ambition devours them, they are mine. I can assure you that people will never be bored in my kingdom. I will give the people the spectacle of my equipages and the pomp of my Court; great ceremonies will be prepared; I will lay out gardens; I will offer my hospitality to Kings.

MONTESQUIEU Since you are painting your portrait, you must have still other vices and other virtues to exhibit.

MACHIAVELLI I ask you to forgive luxury. The passion for women serves a sovereign far more than you think. Henri IV owed a part of his popularity to his incontinence. Men are so made that this propensity among those who govern them pleases them. These ideas are French, and I do not think that they are too displeasing to the illustrious author of the “Lettres Persanes”. I am not permitted to fall into reflections that are too vulgar, but nevertheless I cannot refrain from telling you that the most real result of the Prince's gallantry is to attract the sympathy of the more beauty-ful half of his subjects.

MONTESQUIEU You are composing madrigals.

MACHIAVELLI One can be serious and yet gallant: you have furnished the proof. Certain weaknesses, and even certain vices, moreover, serve the Prince as much as virtues do. If it is often opportune to employ clemency or magnanimity, it is necessary that at certain moments his anger should bear down in a terrible manner. He will always find judges ready to sacrifice their conscience to projects of vengeance or hate. Do not fear that the people will ever be moved by the things I do to it. First, it loves to feel the vigour of the arm that com-mands, and then it hates by na-ture whoever rises above it, and it instinctively rejoices when one strikes above it. Perhaps you do not know, moreover, with what facility one forgets. If it is indispensable to punish with an inflexible ruthlessness, it is necessary to recompense with the same punctuality. Whoever renders a service to my government will be recompen-sed the very next day. In the army, in the magistrature, in all public works, advancement will be calculated upon the shade of opinion and the degree of zeal for my government... You are silent.

MONTESQUIEU Continue…

MACHIAVELLI In the states which have been monarchic, I have observed that there is a veritable frenzy for decorations, for ribbons. These things cost the prince scarcely anything and he can make happy people. A man decorated is a man bought. In this way I realize, as far as possible, the instincts of equality of the nation. Note carefully the more a nation in general sticks to equality, the more the individual has a passion for distinctions. I insist that they will do more for the consolidation of my dynasty than the wisest laws.

Machiavelli’s achievement

Yes, I shall call forth good from evil; I shall exploit materialism to the profit of concord and civilization. I claim to have as servants of my reign those who, under previous governments, will have made the most noise in the name of liberty. Those who resist money will not resist honours; those who resist honours will not resist money. In seeing those whom it believes the purest fall in their turn, public opinion will weaken so much that it will end up by abdicating comple-tely. One thing alone could perhaps compromise my for-tune at some moment; that will be the day when it is realized on every side that my policies are not honest, that my every act is marked by the stamp of cunning.

MONTESQUIEU Who will be the blind who will not see that?

MACHIAVELLI My entire people. I can assure you that if I carefully follow the rules that I have just laid down, liberty will be little desired in my kingdom. The austere will do nothing about it; they will follow the crowd; and more important, the independent men will be placed on the index: people will keep away from them. No one will believe either in their character or in their disinterest. They will pass for malcontents who wish to be bought. In the same time, in every branch of government there will be men of no consequence, or of very little consequence, who will dissimulate, who will lie with an imperturbable cold-bloodedness; truth will not be able to see light anywhere. To put it correctly, I have left the period of terror, and I am entering the way of tolerance; I can do it without danger; I could even give real liberties to the people, for my legislation has borne all its fruits. I have fulfilled the goal that I announced to you; the character of the nation has changed; the unim-portant powers that I have given back have been for me the plumb with which I have measured the depth of the result. All is done, all is completed, there is no longer any possible resistance. There is no danger, there is nothing!

MONTESQUIEU After having destroyed political conscience, you ought to undertake to destroy moral conscience; you have killed society, now you are killing man.

MACHIAVELLI Allow me to finish. I have now only to indicate to you certain particulars concer-ning my method of action, certain habits of conduct which will give my government its final counte-nance. The innumerable edifices that I shall construct must be marked with my name; my arms, my monogram, must be woven in everywhere. My statue, my bust, my portraits to be in every public establishment, especially in the auditorium of the courts.

MONTESQUIEU Beside the image of Christ…

MACHIAVELLI Opposite it! For sovereign power is an image of divine power. I wish my aims to be impenetrable even to those who are closest to me. I would be, in this manner, like Alexander VI and Cesar Borgia, of whom it was said proverbially in the court of Rome, of the former, "that he never did what he said"; of the latter, "that he never said what he did."  What prestige such a power of dissimulation gives to the Prince, when it is combined with vigorous action. A supersti-tious respect surrounds me; my counsellors ask one ano-ther secretly what I will think of next, the people place their confidence only in me; I perso-nify in their eyes the Providence whose ways are inscrutable. In the mind as in the soul of my people, I personify virtue, and more, I personify liberty, do you hear, as I personify revolution, progress, the modern spirit, all that is good at the bottom of modern civilization. I do not say that I am respected, I do not say that I am loved, I say that the people adore me; that if I wished it, I could have altars erected to me, for. I am a king of Egypt, I am Pharaoh, I am Cyrus, I am Alexander, I am Sardanapalus; the soul of the people expands when I pass. When the unhappy is oppressed, he says: If the king but knew! They will invoke my name like that of a god; in periods of want, in great fires, I hasten to them, the people throw themselves at my feet, they would carry me to the heavens in their arms, if God gave them wings…

MONTESQUIEU Has this frightful vision ended?

MACHIAVELLI Vision! Ah! Montesquieu! you will shed tears for a long time: there was no vision in what I have just told you. What I have just described, this gathering of monstrous things before which the mind recoils in fright, this work that only hell itself could accomplish, all this is fact, all this exists, all this prospers in the face of the sun, at this very moment, in a part of the globe which we have left.

MONTESQUIEU Machiavelli !!

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