Politics & Power Quote by Charles de Secondat

International relations, in Montesquieu's hands, stops being a romance of honor and becomes a discipline of incentives. The sentence pretends to be humane, almost pastoral: do good in peace, do minimal harm in war. Then he snaps the leash tight with the qualifying clause that matters: "without prejudicing their real interests". This is Enlightenment moral language wired to a realist chassis. Virtue is permitted, even encouraged, but only up to the point where it costs too much.

The intent is less to moralize than to domesticate state behavior. By calling the law of nations "naturally founded", he’s smuggling in a claim of universality: these norms aren’t optional etiquette, they’re the logical outgrowth of how polities survive. Yet the subtext is skeptical about pious talk. He anticipates the loophole every government will reach for: define "real interests" broadly enough and you can justify almost anything. The quote works because it acknowledges that loophole while trying to narrow it, pushing states toward restraint by tying restraint to self-interest rather than saintliness.

Context sharpens the edge. Montesquieu is writing in a Europe where war is routine policy, commerce is exploding, and the modern state is consolidating power. His broader project in The Spirit of the Laws is to show that laws and institutions follow from climate, economy, and custom - not divine decree. Here, the law of nations becomes a pragmatic ethic for an interdependent world: trade makes peace profitable; war should be bounded because even enemies share a system they must return to once the cannons cool.