Montesquieu on Quebec’s Secularism Bill 21

Here is an excerpt from Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) – a satirical narrative of two Persians who travelled to Europe and what they learned there.  Letter 85 explains Montesquieu’s position on religious intolerance and is a thinly-veiled criticism of Louis XIV’s ‘zealous’ act in his Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which forced Protestant Huguenots to flee France in large numbers, who became the modern world’s first ‘refugees’.  Perhaps Quebec’s CAQ government needs to consult with the wisdom of Montesquieu before implementing its Secularism Bill 21, as backed by the so-called ‘constitutional’ use of the Notwithstanding Clause.

Letter 85
Usbeck to Mirza, at Ispahan

Once, as you know, Mirza, some of Shah Suleiman’s made a plan to force all the Armenians in Persia either to leave the kingdom or to become Muslims, in the belief that our empire would be contaminated as long as infidels remained within it.

  It would have put an end to the greatness of Persia if blind religious piety had had its way on this occasion.

     Nobody knows why the plan came to nothing. Neither those who made the proposal, nor those who rejected it, foresaw the consequences; it was chance that took over the functions of reason and good government, and saved the empire rom a danger greater than if it had been defeated in battle and suffered the loss of two towns.

     To have proscribed the Armenians would have meant wiping out in a single day all the businessmen and almost all the skilled workers in the kingdom.  I am sure that the great Shah Abbas would sooner have had his two arms cut off than to have signed such a decree, and that in sending his most highly-skilled subjects away to the Mogul and other Indian kings he would have felt as if  he were presenting them with half his territory.

     The persecution that our Muslim zealots have inflicted on the Gabars have forced large numbers of them to emigrate to India, causing Persia to lose a nation which was dedicated to agriculture: they were the only people capable of doing the work necessary to overcome the sterility of our soil.

     All that the zealots needed to do was to strike a second blow and wreck our industry, thus ensuring that the empire fell of its own accord, and with it, by inevitable consequence, that same religion whose growth it was intended to encourage so vigorously.

     Assuming that we should reason without prejudice, Mizra, I think it just as well for there to be several religions in a state.

     It is noticeable that the adherents of a tolerated minority religion normally make themselves more useful to their country than the adherents of the dominant religion, because they are disqualified from high office and can distinguish themselves only by having money and possessions; they are therefore likely to work to work in order to acquire these things, and will undertake the most ungrateful social functions.

     Furthermore, since in every religion there are precepts which are useful to society, it is well that they should be obeyed with enthusiasm, and what is more likely to encourage this enthusiasm than a multiplicity of religions?

     They are rivals which forgive each other nothing.  This emulation influences even private individuals: everyone is on his guard, afraid of doing something which would dishonor his side, and expose it to the pitiless contempt and criticism of the other side.

     That is why it has always been observed that the introduction of a new sect into a society was the surest method of remedying all the defects of the old one.

     It is no use to say that it is not in the king’s interest to allow more than one religion in the state.  Even if every religion in the world gathered together there it would not do him any harm, since every single one of them commands obedience and preaches respect for authority.

     I admit that the history books are full of religious wars; but it should be carefully noted that these wars are not produced by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance, urging on the one which believed itself to be dominant.

     It is this proselytizing spirit that the Jews acquired from the Egyptians and which from them passed like a nation-wide epidemic to the Muslims and the Christians.

     It is in sum a spirit of dizzy madness, the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

     For after all, even if there were no inhumanity in doing violence to other people’s consciences, even if it produced none of the bad effects which flow from it in thousands, one would have to be out of one’s mind to think of the idea.  Someone who tries to make me change my religion does so only, I presume, because he would not change his own, even if attempts were made to compel him; so that he finds it strange  that I will not do something he would not do himself, perhaps not eve to be ruler of the world.[1]

Montesquieu, Persian Letters (1721)

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[1] Montesquieu, Persian Letters, tr. C.J. Betts (Toronto: Penguin, 1973), pp. 164-166.