Montesquieu and Spinoza on Federalism (with a whiff of Adam Smith)
It is well known that in (1748) The Spirit of the Laws (Pt. 2, Bk 9, ch. 1), Montesquieu offers federalism as a response to the problem of small states being “able to resist external force,” and that they “can be maintained at…size without internal corruption.” (I am quoting from the Cambridge edition translated by Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn, Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone, p. 132.) It is important for Montesquieu, the federation is created by political bodies not particular citizens. In fact, the entities that contract into the federation become citizens themselves: “This form of government is an agreement by which many political bodies consent to become citizens of the larger state that they want to form.” Notice that the federated state is composed of many such bodies.
Now, most seventeenth and eighteenth century plans for pacific political union, actually involve a different kind of arrangement. These involve a parliament or assembly in which great powers (and sometimes the smaller ones) send ambassadors or representatives. And then this becomes the basis for a kind of functional integration (through common court and common laws as well as passport free travel and trade). (Recall my posts on William Penn, The New Cynias, etc.) It is much rarer to see federalism through contract.
In my view Montesquieu is here very much influenced by Spinoza’s posthumous (1677) Political Treatise, chapter III, and what Spinoza says about “an agreement of peace.”* For, while Spinoza treats ordinary alliances between two or a small number of states as dissolvable when circumstances that gave rise to them do not longer obain, the situation is different when it comes to such agreements involving many political entities. Here’s Spinoza’s text:
The greater the number of Commonwealths which enter into an agreement for peace with one another, the less each one must be feared by the others, or the less is the 'power each one has to make war, and the more it is bound to observe the conditions of peace, i.e. (by iii, 13), the less it is its own master and the more it is bound to accommodate itself to the common will of the allies. TP 3.15 (quoting Curley's translation throughout)
In a federation oriented toward peace, each of the constituent political bodies risk the other political bodies ganging up on it in order to police good behavior. And fear of the collective creates/induces anticipatory good behavior. (This fear is wholly absent in a mutual defense pact once the common enemy is defeated.) Montesquieu actually elaborates on Spinoza’s mechanism as follows (in a passage that clearly much impressed Madison):
One who might want to usurp could scarcely have equal credit in all the confederated states. If he became too strong in one state, he would alarm all the others; if he subjugated a part, me part still free could resist him with forces independent of those he had usurped and overwhelm him before he had completely established himself. If a sedition occurs in one of the members of the confederation, the others can pacify it. If some abuses are introduced somewhere, they are corrected by the healthy parts. This state can perish in one place without perishing in another; the confederation can be dissolved and the confederates remain sovereign. (Pt. Bk 9, ch. 1, p. 132)
In fact, the last quoted sentence here is very much Spinoza’s view.
Now, a skeptical reader may think this is all too slender a thread to claim any influence given the popularity (as Montesquieu says) of “Holland, Germany, and the Swiss leagues…as eternal republics.” (p. 131.) In the accompanying footnote Montesquieu cites Janicon, and he notes that the Dutch republic is itself composed of fifty political bodies (and not the mere seven provinces represented in the States General).
But Montesquieu’s next chapter starts with the claim that “The Canaanites were destroyed because they were small monarchies that had not confederated and did not have a common defense.” (p. 132) This very much echoes Spinoza's TTP XVII: 45, “an army, formed from the rest of the twelve tribes, was commanded to invade the domain of the Canaanites, to divide it into twelve parts, and to distribute it to the tribes by lots.” The offensive federation is then described as it conquers the Canaanites. And for good measure, Spinoza ends his discussion by suggesting that the Hebrew confederates were an alliance “almost in the same way as the Sovereign Federated States of the Netherlands.” (TTP XVII:54) Now Spinoza doesn’t make the contrast with Canaanite monarchy explicit here, but it is pretty obvious in the larger narrative (and with modest familiarity with the Hebrew Bible).
In fact, the contrast with Canaanites goes deeper here. Montesquieu’s main concern is about finding mechanisms to combat corruption (including the corruption induced by luxury). This is, as I have argued, one of the main themes that ties Spinoza Ethics, TTP, and TP together. And Spinoza singles out the Canaanites downfall “on account of” — inter alia — “their extravagant living,” (TTP III.49) that is corruption.**
I don’t mean to imply that Montesquieu follows Spinoza slavishly. In particular, Montesquieu proposes — inspired by Strabo’s treatment of the Lycian federation — representation by towns in proportion to the tax base. Montesquieu actually puts it the other way around: “The republic of the Lycians was an association of twenty-three towns; the large ones had three votes in the common council; the medium-sized ones, two; the small ones, one…The towns of Lycia paid the costs in proportion to their votes.” (p. 133) I don’t recall every seeing this structure analysed in Spinoza.
Interestingly enough, this particular feature of Montesquieu’s framework is taken over by Adam Smith in his (1776) proposal for federal parliamentary union, when he proposes to apply “the British system of taxation…to all the different provinces of the empire” (WN 5.3.68, 933) and base representation on it:
This, however, could scarce, perhaps, be done, consistently with the principles of the British constitution, without admitting into the British parliament, or if you will into the states-general of the British Empire, a fair and equal representation of all those different provinces, that of each province bearing the same proportion to the produce of its taxes, as the representation of Great Britain might bear to the produce of the taxes levied upon Great Britain. (WN 5.3.68, 933)
Notice that in Smith here the taxes are not represented as falling on individuals (who elsewhere are supposed to treat taxes as “badges” of individual “liberty” (WN 5.2.g.11, 857), but on political bodies (“different provinces…each province”).
*See also Gross, George M. "Spinoza and the federal polity." Publius: The Journal of Federalism 26.1 (1996): 117-136.
**Partially anticipating Constant, Montesquieu goes on to contrast the spirit of war (which he associated with monarchies) and spirit of peace (which he associates with commercial republics). Constant inscribes this into a stadial theory that he derives from the Scottish Englinghtenment.