What Montesquieu would have found essential, and what neither the Articles nor the Iroquois system fully implement, is the necessity of countervailing forces within government itself. The Articles of Confederation create weakness, not equilibrium. The Iroquois system relies on customs rather than structured opposition between branches. A properly designed government, according to Montesquieu, must institutionalize the conflict of interests, ensuring that ambition checks ambition, that no man or group of men can exert dominance without opposition.

The historical verdict is clear. The Articles collapsed under their own inadequacies, necessitating the Constitution’s replacement of a loose confederation with a functional state that adhered far more closely to Montesquieu’s tripartite model. The Iroquois Confederacy endured for centuries, but it did so within a specific cultural framework that prevented factionalism from spiraling into dissolution. Where Montesquieu’s theory holds its greatest weight is in the realization that a system of government cannot rely on virtue or voluntary restraint. It must be constructed in such a way that no force, no matter how well-intentioned, can overpower the others.

In the final analysis, the Articles of Confederation fail because they lack an internal mechanism of balance, offering instead a void where governance should be. The Iroquois Constitution succeeds where cultural traditions reinforce the equilibrium of power but does not create a systemic safeguard against its erosion. Montesquieu’s vision, then, is vindicated by history: liberty is not preserved by good intentions or by mere fragmentation of power, but by a system that institutionalizes resistance to domination.

Anything less is an invitation to either anarchy or autocracy.

4/6
S. Tominaga AKA CSW
Mar 7, 2025
https://x.com/CsTominaga/status/1897922218803560706?t=I0ex9TRvRRBkTHuidGlPzQ&s=19

https://t.me/S_Tominaga/2647