Montesquieu über Vor- und Nachteile der Wirtschaft
1. Of Commerce.
The following subjects deserve to be treated in a more extensive manner than the nature of this work will permit. Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners.
Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now less savage than formerly. Commerce has everywhere diffused a knowledge of the manners of all nations: these are compared one with another, and from this comparison arise the greatest advantages.
Commercial laws, it may be said, improve manners tor the same reason that they destroy them. They corrupt the purest morals.(1) This was the subject of Plato's complaints; and we every day see that they polish and refine the most barbarous.
2. Of the Spirit of Commerce.
Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling: and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.
But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same manner unite individuals. We see that in countries (2) where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money.
The spirit of trade produces in the mind of a man a certain sense of exact justice, opposite, on the one hand, to robbery, and on the other to those moral virtues which forbid our always adhering rigidly to the rules of private interest, and suffer us to neglect this for the advantage of others.
The total privation of trade, on the contrary, produces robbery, which Aristotle ranks in the number of means of acquiring; yet it is not at all inconsistent with certain moral virtues. Hospitality, for instance, is most rare in trading countries, while it is found in the most admirable perfection among nations of vagabonds.
(1) Cæsar said of the Gauls that they were spoiled by the neighbourhood and commerce of Marseilles; insomuch that they who formerly always conquered the Germans had now become inferior to them. — De Bello Gall., vi. 23.
(2) Holland
in: Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu: "Spirit of Laws"; 1748; Book XX ("Of Laws in Relation to Commerce, Considered in its Nature and Distinctions"); translated by Thomas Nugent (1752);
The following subjects deserve to be treated in a more extensive manner than the nature of this work will permit. Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.
Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners.
Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now less savage than formerly. Commerce has everywhere diffused a knowledge of the manners of all nations: these are compared one with another, and from this comparison arise the greatest advantages.
Commercial laws, it may be said, improve manners tor the same reason that they destroy them. They corrupt the purest morals.(1) This was the subject of Plato's complaints; and we every day see that they polish and refine the most barbarous.
2. Of the Spirit of Commerce.
Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling: and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.
But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same manner unite individuals. We see that in countries (2) where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money.
The spirit of trade produces in the mind of a man a certain sense of exact justice, opposite, on the one hand, to robbery, and on the other to those moral virtues which forbid our always adhering rigidly to the rules of private interest, and suffer us to neglect this for the advantage of others.
The total privation of trade, on the contrary, produces robbery, which Aristotle ranks in the number of means of acquiring; yet it is not at all inconsistent with certain moral virtues. Hospitality, for instance, is most rare in trading countries, while it is found in the most admirable perfection among nations of vagabonds.
(1) Cæsar said of the Gauls that they were spoiled by the neighbourhood and commerce of Marseilles; insomuch that they who formerly always conquered the Germans had now become inferior to them. — De Bello Gall., vi. 23.
(2) Holland
in: Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu: "Spirit of Laws"; 1748; Book XX ("Of Laws in Relation to Commerce, Considered in its Nature and Distinctions"); translated by Thomas Nugent (1752);
Julio Lambing - Sa, Mai 28, 2005 - Zettelkasten: Wirtschaft
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