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(Translated from the French by NOT BORED! November 2007. Footnotes by the translator, except where noted.) Eighth Dialogue Machiavelli: I will take the hypothesis that is the most contrary to me: a State constituted as a republic. With a monarchy, the role that I propose to play would be too easy. I will take a republic because, with such a form of government, I would encounter resistance -- apparently almost insurmountable -- in its ideas, customs and laws. Are you opposed to this hypothesis? I will accept from your hand a State, whatever its form, large or small; I will suppose it to be endowed with all the institutions that guarantee liberty and I will address to you a single question: Do you believe it can be protected from a blow or what today one calls a coup d'Etat? Montesquieu: No, this is true, but you will at least grant me that such an enterprise would be singularly difficult in contemporary political societies, such as they are organized. Machiavelli: And why is this? Are not these societies prey to factions at all times? Are there not elements of civil war, parties and pretenders? Montesquieu: This is possible, but I believe I can draw your attention to an error you have made. These usurpations -- which are necessarily very infrequent because they are full of perils and because they are repugnant to modern customs --, supposing that they succeed, do not have the importance that you appear to attribute to them. A change of power does not bring about a change of the institutions. A pretender will trouble the State, true; his party might triumph, I will admit it; power might be in other hands, yes; but public rights and the very foundations of the institutions will remain steady. This is what concerns me. Machiavelli: Is it true that you have such an illusion? Montesquieu: Establish the contrary. Machiavelli: Thus you will, for the moment, grant me the success of an armed enterprise against the establish order? Montesquieu: Yes. Machiavelli: Remark the situation in which I would find myself placed. I have momentarily suppressed all power other than mine. If the institutions still standing can raise some kind of obstacle, it would be purely formal; in fact, the acts of my will cannot encounter any real resistance; finally, I am an extra-legal situation, which the Romans described in a very beautiful and powerfully energetic word: dictatorship. That is to say, I can do everything I want to do, since I am legislator, executor, judge and the head of the army, on horseback. Retain this. I have triumphed through the support of a faction, that is to say, this event could only have been accomplished in the midst of a profound internal dissent. One can say, at random, but without deception, what the cause was. It would be an antagonism between the aristocracy and the people, or between the people and the bourgeoisie. At the basis of things, it could only be this; on the surface, there would have been a jumble of ideas, opinions, influences and contrary currents, as in the States in which liberty has been momentarily unleashed. There would have been political elements of all kinds, sections of previously victorious parties that were vanquished, unbridled ambitions, ardent covetousness, implacable hatreds, terrors everywhere, men of every opinion and every doctrine, restorers of old regimes, demagogues, anarchists, utopians -- all at work, all working equally from their sides on the overthrow of the established order. What must one conclude from such a condition? Two things: first, that the country had a great need for rest and it would have refused nothing to the one who could bring it; second, that, in the midst of this division of parties, there was no real force or, rather, there was only one, namely, the people. I would be a victorious pretender; I suppose that I bear a great historical name, one likely to work upon the imagination of the masses. Such as Pisistratus, Caesar, even Nero;[1] I would lean upon the people; this is the a b c of any usurper. Here is the blind power that will provide the means of doing everything with impunity: authority, the name that will cover for everything. You would see how the people actually care for your legal fictions and your constitutional guarantees! [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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