“Le système de John Law” and the Spectre of Modern Despotism in the Political Thought of Montesquieu

In the early eighteenth century, Europe was rattled by a series of financial shocks, stemming from the impropriety of government and economic actors who grew increasingly interdependent as governments relied on private lenders for imperial expansion.New institutional arrangements redefined the relationship between class and power and led to original notions of political justice, inconceivable in the premodern economic era.Political thinkers increasingly placed emphasis on how existing notions of freedom could be squared with bringing unwieldy and chaotic economic situations under political control.Some concerned themselves with how commerce stifled the civic character, while others held a more optimistic view, suggesting commerce was a source of political stability that engendered certain forms of virtue commensurate with eighteenth-century political exigencies.Among these thinkers, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu astutely observed France's transition from an orderly but stultifying feudal order towards a progressive but often unstable commercial society, and he sought to reconcile these two positions throughout his political works.Montesquieu observed that France's debt crisis following the War of Spanish Succession made government actors more amenable to "financial engineering" schemes, which in turn opened new avenues for corruption in the private and public sectors.In an infamous episode simply known as "Le système" (System), John Law's influence over the 1.A number of Montesquieu's interpreters recognize the central importance of John Law's System in Montesquieu's political thought.Agnès Raymond emphasizes the intentional ordering of Montesquieu's Persian Letters (1721), which juxtaposes John Law's System (Letter 146) with the collapse of Usbek's Seraglio (Letter 147); cited in Jonathan Walsh, "A Cultural Numismatics: the 'Chain' of Economics in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes," Australian Journal of French Studies 46.1-2 (2009): 139-54, 140; Theodore Braun, "'La Chaîne Secrète': A Decade of Interpretations," French Studies 42.3 (1988): 278-91 provides an overview of various perspectives concerning John Law's System in relation to Montesquieu's broader political thought.

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