Precisely! _Law is an aristocratic thing;_ only _the emergency law_, the _decree_, is democratic. For this reason Montesquieu always speaks of a monarchy as being limited, and, at the same time, maintained by its law. What did this mean in his day, when there was no "expression of the general will" to limit monarchy, and when royalty possessed legislative power, and could at will make and remake laws? It could only mean one thing, namely, that Montesquieu's conception of law was the same as that of the ancient sociologists,--law far older than his time, "fundamental laws" as he calls them, of the ancient monarchy, which still bind and ought so to bind the monarch, whose rule without them would be despotism or anarchy. Law is essentially aristocratic. It ordains that rulers should govern the people, and that the dead should govern the rulers. The very essence of aristocracy is the rule of those who have lived over those who live, for the benefit of those who shall live hereafter. Aristocracy, properly so called, is an aristocracy in the flesh. Law is a spiritual aristocracy. Aristocracy, as represented by the aristocrats of to-day, only represents the dead by tradition, inheritance, education, physiological heredity of temperament and characteristics. Law does not represent the dead, it is the dead themselves, it is their very thought perpetuated in immutable script.
A nation is aristocratic both in form and spirit which preserves its old aristocracy and maintains its vitality by careful infusions of new blood. Still more is that nation aristocratic which maintains its old legislation inviolate, adding to it, reverently and discreetly, new laws which combine something of the modern spirit with the spirit of the old. _Homines novi, novæ res. Homo novus_ means the man without ancestors who is worthy to be added to the ranks of the nobly born. _Novæ res_ are things without antecedents, nay revolution itself. _Novæ res_ should only be introduced partially gradually, insensibly and progressively into ancient things, as "new men" into the community of the old nobility. Law is more aristocratic than aristocracy itself, hence democracy is the natural enemy of laws and can only tolerate decrees.