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Which principle did Montesquieu associate with republican government?

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Oval portrait print of Montesquieu by Pierre Michel Alix after Jean Francois Garnerey, showing Montesquieu with long curly white hair and a fur-trimmed robe, facing forward. — Montesquieu Montesquieu.

In his seminal work, The Spirit of Laws, the French political philosopher Montesquieu assigned an animating principle to each of the three types of government he identified. He associated the republican government with the principle of virtue (or "public virtue").12

Montesquieu defined this virtue as a motivation to prioritize the public good over narrow, individual interests. He argued that this quality is essential for the stability of a republic, whether it is structured as a democracy or an aristocracy, as the absence of such virtue leaves the state vulnerable to destruction by competing factions. This stands in contrast to the other forms of government he classified: monarchy, which he associated with the principle of honour, and despotism, which he associated with the principle of fear.21