In the preface, the author says that he derives his principles from the very nature of things. The infinite variety of laws and customs is not at all caused by the arbitrariness of fantasy: particular cases are subject to general principles, and the history of every nation follows from them as a result. It is useless to condemn the establishment of a country, and only those people who have received a brilliant gift from birth to penetrate with one glance into the entire organization of the state are entitled to propose changes. The main task is enlightenment, for the prejudices inherent in governing bodies were originally the prejudices of the people. If the author could cure people of their inherent prejudice, he would consider himself the happiest of mortals.

Everything has its own laws: they are in the deity, and in the material world, and in beings of the superhuman mind, and in animals, and in man. The greatest absurdity is to claim that the phenomena of the visible world are governed by blind fate. God refers to the world as the creator and guardian: he creates according to the same laws by which he protects. Consequently, the work of creation only seems an act of arbitrariness, for it presupposes a series of rules - as inevitable as rock atheists. All laws are preceded by laws of nature arising from the very structure of the human being. A man in a natural state feels his weakness, for everything leads him to awe and puts him on the run - therefore the world is the first natural law. The feeling of one’s needs is combined with a feeling of weakness - the desire to earn money for myself is the second natural law. Mutual attraction, inherent in all animals of one breed, gave rise to the third law - a request addressed by man to man. But people are bound by threads that animals don’t have, which is why the desire to live in society is the fourth natural law.

As soon as people unite in society, they lose consciousness of their weakness - equality disappears, and war begins. Each individual society begins to recognize its strength - hence the state of war between peoples. Laws defining relations between them constitute international law. Individuals in every society begin to feel their power - hence the war between citizens. Laws defining relations between them constitute civil law. In addition to international law pertaining to all societies, each of them is individually regulated by its own laws - together they form the political state of the state. The forces of individuals cannot unite without the unity of their will, which forms the civil status of society.

The law, generally speaking, is the human mind, since it governs all the peoples of the earth, and the political and civil laws of each people should be no more than special cases of the application of this mind. These laws are so closely related to the properties of the people for which they are established that only in extremely rare cases can the laws of one people be suitable for another people. Laws must be consistent with the nature and principles of an established government; the physical properties of the country and its climate - cold, hot or moderate; soil qualities; lifestyle of its peoples - farmers, hunters or shepherds; degrees of freedom allowed by the state device; religion of the population, its inclinations, wealth, size, trade, mores and customs. The totality of all these relationships can be called the "spirit of laws."

There are three forms of government: republican, monarchist and despotic. In the republic, the supreme power is in the hands of either the whole nation or part of it; under the monarchy, one person rules, but through established unchanging laws; despotism is characterized by the fact that everything is moved by the will and arbitrariness of one person outside all laws and rules.

If the supreme power in the republic belongs to the whole people, then this is democracy. When the supreme power is in the hands of part of the people, such a government is called the aristocracy. In democracy, the people are in some respects a sovereign, and in some respects a subject. He is the sovereign only by virtue of the vote by which he expresses his will. The will of the sovereign is the sovereign himself, so the laws that determine the right to vote are fundamental to this type of government. In the aristocracy, the supreme power is in the hands of a group of people: these people issue laws and force them to comply, and the rest of the people are the same in relation to them as subjects in the monarchy in relation to the sovereign. The worst of the aristocracy is the one where the part of the people who obey is in civil servitude to the one who commands: the aristocracy of Poland can serve as an example, where the peasants are slaves of the nobility. Excessive power granted in the republic to one citizen forms a monarchy and even more than a monarchy. In the monarchy, laws protect the state system or adapt to it, therefore the sovereign restrains the sovereign - in the republic a citizen who has taken over emergency power has much more opportunities to abuse it, since he does not encounter opposition from laws that did not provide for this circumstance.

In the monarchy, the emperor himself is the source of all political and civil power, but there are also mediating channels through which power moves. Destroy the prerogatives of lords, clergy, nobility and cities in the monarchy, and very soon you will receive a state that is either popular or despotic. In despotic states, where there are no basic laws, there are also no institutions protecting them. This explains the special power that religion usually acquires in these countries: it replaces a continuously operating security institution; sometimes the place of religion is occupied by customs that are revered instead of laws.

Each type of government has its own principles: for the republic, virtue is needed, for the monarchy - honor, for the despotic government - fear. It does not need virtue, and honor would be dangerous to him. When an entire nation lives according to some principles, all its constituent parts, i.e. families, live according to the same principles. The laws of education are the first ones that a person meets in his life. They differ according to the type of government: in monarchies their subject is honor, in the republics virtue, in despotism fear. No government needs education to such an extent as a republican one. Fear in despotic states arises by itself under the influence of threats and punishments. Honor in monarchies finds support in the passions of man and itself serves as support for them. But political virtue is selflessness - a thing is always very difficult. This virtue can be defined as the love of laws and the homeland - love, which requires a constant preference for the public good over the personal, lies at the basis of all private virtues. This love receives special power in democracies, because only there the government is entrusted to every citizen.

Virtue is a very simple thing in the republic: it is love for the republic, it is a feeling, not a series of information. It is as accessible to the last person in the state as to the one who takes first place in it. Love for the republic in democracy is love for democracy, and love for democracy is love for equality. The laws of such a state should in every way support the common desire for equality. In monarchies and in despotic states, no one strives for equality: even the thought of this does not occur to anyone, for everyone there seeks exaltation. People of the lowest position want to get out of it only in order to dominate other people. Since the principle of monarchical rule is honor, laws must support the knowledge of the creator and creation of this honor, so to speak. Under despotic rule, it is not necessary to have many laws: everything rests on two or three ideas, and new ones are not required. When Charles XII, while in Bender, met some opposition to his will from the Senate of Sweden, he wrote to the senators that he would send his boot to command them. This boot would command no worse than a tyrannical sovereign.

The decomposition of each board almost always begins with the decomposition of principles. The principle of democracy is decomposed not only when the spirit of equality is lost, but also when the spirit of equality is taken to extremes and everyone wants to be equal to those whom he has elected as rulers. In this case, the people refuse to recognize the authorities they have appointed themselves and want to do everything themselves: to confer instead of the senate, rule instead of officials and judge instead of judges. Then in the republic there is no longer room for virtue. The people want to fulfill the duties of rulers, which means that rulers are no longer respected. The aristocracy suffers damage when the power of the nobility becomes arbitrary: at the same time, there can no longer be virtues among those who govern or those who govern. Monarchies perish when the prerogatives of the estates and privileges of cities are gradually abolished. In the first case, they go to the despotism of all; in the second, to the despotism of one. The principle of the monarchy also decomposes when the highest posts in the state become the last steps of slavery, when dignitaries deprive the people of respect and turn them into a miserable instrument of arbitrariness. The principle of a despotic state is continuously decomposed, because it is corrupt by its very nature. If the principles of government have decayed, the best laws become bad and turn against the state; when principles are sound, even bad laws produce the same consequences as good ones, the power of the principle conquers everything.

The republic by its nature requires a small territory, otherwise it will not hold on. In a large republic there will be more wealth, and consequently, immoderate desires. A monarchical state should be of medium size: if it were small, it would form as a republic; and if it were too extensive, then the first persons of the state, strong in their very position, far from the sovereign and having their own court, could stop obeying him - they would not be frightened by the threat of too distant and slowed down punishment. The vast size of the empire is a prerequisite for despotic rule. It is necessary that the remoteness of the places where the orders of the ruler are sent be balanced by the speed of their execution; so that fear serves as a barrier against negligence on the part of the rulers of remote areas; so that one person is the personification of the law.

Small republics die from an external enemy, and large ones from an internal ulcer. The republics protect themselves by uniting with each other, while despotic states separate and, one might say, isolate themselves from each other for the same purpose. Sacrificing part of their country, they devastate the outskirts and turn them into the desert, as a result of which the core of the state becomes inaccessible. The monarchy never destroys itself, but a medium-sized state can be invaded - therefore, the monarchy has fortresses to protect the borders and the army to protect these fortresses. The smallest piece of land defends itself there with great skill, perseverance and courage. Despotic states invade each other - wars are fought only between monarchies.

Each state has three kinds of power: legislative, executive, which is in charge of international law, and executive, which is in charge of civil law. The last power can be called judicial, and the second - simply the executive branch of the state. If the legislative and executive powers are combined in one person or institution, then there will be no freedom, since one can fear that this monarch or this senate will create tyrannical laws in order to apply them tyrannically. There will be no freedom even if the judiciary is not separated from the legislative and executive. If it is combined with the legislature, then the life and freedom of the citizen will be in the grip of arbitrariness, for the judge will be the legislator. If the judicial power is connected with the executive, then the judge gets the opportunity to become an oppressor. Sovereigns, aspiring to despotism, always began by uniting in their person all the individual authorities. In the Turks, where these three powers are connected in the person of the Sultan, terrifying despotism reigns. But the British managed through laws to establish an excellent system of equilibrium of powers.

Political slavery depends on the nature of the climate. Excessive heat undermines the strength and vitality of people, and the cold climate gives the mind and body a certain strength, which makes people capable of long, difficult, great and courageous actions. This difference can be observed not only when comparing one people with another, but also when comparing different areas of the same country: the peoples of Northern China are more courageous than the peoples of Southern China; the peoples of South Korea are inferior in this respect to the peoples of North Korea. It should not be surprising that the cowardice of the peoples of the hot climate almost always led them to slavery, while the courage of the peoples of the cold climate kept them free. It must be added that the islanders are more prone to freedom than the inhabitants of the continent. Islands are usually small in size, and it is more difficult to use one part of the population to oppress the other. They are separated from large empires by the sea, which blocks the path to the conquerors and makes it difficult to support tyrannical rule, so it is easier for islanders to maintain their laws. Trade has a great influence on laws, because it heals people from painful prejudices. It can be considered almost a general rule that wherever the morals of the meek are there, there is trade, and wherever there is trade, there are the moles of the meek. Thanks to trade, all nations learned the customs of other nations and were able to compare them. This led to beneficial consequences. But the spirit of commerce, uniting nations, does not unite individuals. In countries where only the spirit of commerce inspires people, all their deeds and even moral virtues become the subject of bargaining. At the same time, the spirit of trade gives rise to a sense of strict justice in people: this feeling is opposite, on the one hand, to looting and, on the other, to those moral virtues that encourage us not only to pursue our own benefits steadily, but also to sacrifice them for the sake of other people. We can say that the laws of trade improve morals for the same reason that they destroy them. Trade corrupts pure morals - Plato talked about this. At the same time, it polishes and softens barbarian customs, for the complete absence of trade leads to robberies. Some nations sacrifice trade interests for political ones. England has always sacrificed political interests for the sake of its trade interests. This people, better than all other peoples of the world, was able to take advantage of three elements of great importance: religion, trade and freedom. Muscovy would like to abandon its despotism - and cannot.Trade, in order to become strong, requires bill transactions, but bill transactions are in conflict with all the laws of this country. The subjects of the empire, like slaves, do not have the right to either go abroad or send their property there without special permission - therefore, the bill exchange rate, which makes it possible to transfer money from one country to another, is contrary to the laws of Muscovy, and trade by nature contradicts such restrictions .

The laws of the country are greatly influenced by religion. Even between false religions, one can find those that are most consistent with the goals of the public good - although they do not lead a person to the afterlife, they can contribute a lot to his earthly happiness. If we compare only the nature of the Christian and Mohammedan religions, we should unconditionally accept the first and reject the second, because it is much more obvious that religion should soften the mores of people than which one is true. Mohammedan sovereigns incessantly sow death around them and themselves die a violent death. Woe to mankind when religion is given by the conqueror. Mohammedan religion continues to inspire people with the same extermination spirit that created it. On the contrary, pure despotism is alien to the Christian religion: thanks to the meekness so insistently prescribed by the gospel, it resists the indomitable anger that prompts the emperor to arbitrariness and cruelty. Only the Christian religion prevented despotism from establishing itself in Ethiopia, despite the vastness of this empire and its bad climate - in this way the customs and laws of Europe were introduced within Africa. When two centuries ago the Christian religion suffered an unfortunate division, the northern peoples adopted Protestantism, while the southern ones remained Catholics. The reason for this is that among the northern peoples there exists and will always exist a spirit of independence and freedom, therefore religion without a visible chapter is more consistent with the spirit of independence of this climate than that which has a similar chapter.

A person’s freedom consists mainly in not being forced to perform actions that the law does not prescribe for him. The principles of state law require that every person obeys the criminal and civil law of the country in which he is located. These principles were brutally violated by the Spaniards in Peru: Atuahalpa incu could only be judged on the basis of international law, and they judged him on the basis of state and civil law. But the height of their recklessness was that they condemned him on the basis of state and civil laws of their country.

The spirit of moderation should be the spirit of the legislator, for the political good, like the moral good, is always between two limits. For example, judicial formalities are necessary for freedom, but their number can be so great that they will impede the goals of the very laws that have established them: in this case, citizens will lose their freedom and security, the prosecutor will not be able to prove the charge, and the accused will be acquitted. When drafting laws, must comply with known rules. Their syllable should be compressed. The laws of the twelve tables served as a model of accuracy - children memorized them for memory. Justinian's short stories were so verbose that they had to be reduced. The syllable of laws should be simple and not allow for various interpretations. The law of Honorius punished the death of the one who bought the freedman as a slave, or caused him anxiety. Such an indefinite expression should not have been used. The concept of anxiety caused to a person entirely depends on the degree of his impressionability. Laws should not go into subtleties: they are intended for mediocre people and do not contain the art of logic, but the sound concepts of the simple father of the family. When the law does not need exceptions, restrictions and modifications, it is best to do without them, since such details entail new details. In no case should the laws be given a form that is contrary to the nature of things: for example, in the scripture of the Prince of Orange, Philip II promised five thousand ecu and nobility to the one who committed the murder - this king at the same time trampled on the concepts of honor, morality and religion. Finally, certain purity must be inherent in laws. Intended to punish human malice, they themselves must possess perfect integrity.