Montesquieu and De Tocqueville and Corporative Individualism

Article 16 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, prefixed to the French Constitution of 1791, reads as follows: “Every society in which a guarantee of rights is not assured nor a separation of powers determined does not have a constitution.” Without question the men of 1789 had come under the influence of Montesquieu as well as of John Locke. It is true that a separation of powers is to be found in the Two Treatises of Government; but that doctrine is set out in bolder relief and more sharply defined by Montesquieu than by Locke. However, the men of 1789 took only one half the teachings of Montesquieu; the other half they rejected. The exclusive, oligarchical, tyrannical spirit of the corporations of the ancient régime, the abuse of the principle of aristocracy—privileges without services, as Taine puts it—the growth of the spirit of equality as a result of the industrial revolution, all set men stoutly against a “corporative” (in contrast with a pulverized) structure of society. Rousseau, Turgot and the Physiocrats demanded a leveling of hierarchized society: the mountains must be brought low, the valleys filled up and a highway made for the plain man to walk thereon. It was only with the Restoration that the value of an aristocratic element—from Montesquieu's point of view a corporative element—came into prominence. It was widely discussed during that period, and Montesquieu was the authority of the day.