We may there see to what an extreme the vices of a climate indulged in

full liberty will carry licentiousness. It is there that nature has a

force and modesty a weakness, which exceeds all comprehension. At

Patan[17] the wanton desires of the women are so outrageous, that the

men are obliged to make use of a certain apparel to shelter them from

their designs.[18] According to Mr. Smith,[19] things are not better

conducted in the petty kingdoms of Guinea. In these countries the two

sexes lose even those laws which properly belong to each.

11. Of domestic Slavery independently of Polygamy. It is not only a

plurality of wives which in certain places of the East requires their

confinement, but also the climate itself. Those who consider the

horrible crimes, the treachery, the dark villainies, the poisonings, the

assassinations, which the liberty of women has occasioned at Goa and in

the Portuguese settlements in the Indies, where religion permits only

one wife; and who compare them with the innocence and purity of manners

of the women of Turkey, Persia, Hindostan, China, and Japan, will

clearly see that it is frequently as necessary to separate them from the

men, when they have but one, as when they have many.

These are things which ought to be decided by the climate. What purpose

would it answer to shut up women in our northern countries, where their

manners are naturally good; where all their passions are calm; and where

love rules over the heart with so regular and gentle an empire that the

least degree of prudence is sufficient to conduct it?

It is a happiness to live in those climates which permit such freedom of

converse, where that sex which has most charms seems to embellish

society, and where wives, reserving themselves for the pleasures of one,

contribute to the amusement of all.

12. Of natural Modesty. All nations are equally agreed in fixing

contempt and ignominy on the incontinence of women. Nature has dictated

this to all. She has established the attack, and she has established too

the resistance; and having implanted desires in both, she has given to

the one boldness, and to the other shame. To individuals she has granted

a long succession of years to attend to their preservation: but to

continue the species, she has granted only a moment.

It is then far from being true that to be incontinent is to follow the

laws of nature; on the contrary, it is a violation of these laws, which

can be observed only by behaving with modesty and discretion.



Besides, it is natural for intelligent beings to feel their

imperfections. Nature has, therefore, fixed shame in our minds -- a

shame of our imperfections.

When, therefore, the physical power of certain climates violates the

natural law of the two sexes, and that of intelligent beings, it belongs

to the legislature to make civil laws, with a view to opposing the

nature of the climate and re-establishing the primitive laws.

13. Of Jealousy. With respect to nations, we ought to distinguish

between the passion of jealousy and a jealousy arising from customs,

manners, and laws. The one is a hot raging fever; the other, cold, but

sometimes terrible, may be joined with indifference and contempt.



The one, an abuse of love, derives its source from love itself. The

other depends only on manners, on the customs of a nation, on the laws

of the country, and sometimes even on religion.[20]

It is generally the effect of the physical power of the climate; and, at

the same time, the remedy of this physical power.

14. Of the Eastern Manner of domestic Government. Wives are changed so

often in the East that they cannot have the power of domestic

government. This care is, therefore, committed to the eunuchs, whom they

entrust with their keys and the management of their families. "In

Persia," says Sir John Chardin, "married women are furnished with

clothes as they want them, after the manner of children." Thus that care

which seems so well to become them, that care which everywhere else is

the first of their concern, does not at all regard them.

15. Of Divorce and Repudiation. There is this difference between a

divorce and a repudiation, that the former is made by mutual consent,

arising from a mutual antipathy; while the latter is formed by the will,

and for the advantage of one of the two parties, independently of the

will and advantage of the other.

The necessity there is sometimes for women to repudiate, and the

difficulty there always is in doing it, render that law very tyrannical

which gives this right to men without granting it to women. A husband is

the master of the house; he has a thousand ways of confining his wife to

her duty, or of bringing her back to it; so that in his hands it seems

as if repudiation could be only a fresh abuse of power. But a wife who

repudiates only makes use of a dreadful kind of remedy. It is always a

great misfortune for her to go in search of a second husband, when she

has lost the most part of her attractions with another. One of the

advantages attending the charms of youth in the female sex is that in an

advanced age the husband is led to complacency and love by the

remembrance of past pleasures.

It is then a general rule that in all countries where the laws have

given to men the power of repudiating, they ought also to grant it to

women. Nay, in climates where women live in domestic slavery, one would

think that the law ought to favour women with the right of repudiation,

and husbands only with that of divorce.

When wives are confined in a seraglio, the husband ought not to

repudiate on account of an opposition of manners; it is the husband's

fault if their manners are incompatible.

Repudiation on account of the barrenness of the woman ought never to

take place except where there is only one wife:[21] when there are many,

this is of no importance to the husband.

A law of the Maldivians permitted them to take again a wife whom they

had repudiated.[22] A law of Mexico[23] forbade their being reunited

under pain of death. The law of Mexico was more rational than that of

the Maldivians: at the time even of the dissolution, it attended to the

perpetuity of marriage; instead of this, the law of the Maldivians

seemed equally to sport with marriage and repudiation.

The law of Mexico admitted only of divorce. This was a particular reason

for their not permitting those who were voluntarily separated to be ever

reunited. Repudiation seems chiefly to proceed from a hastiness of

temper, and from the dictates of passion; while divorce appears to be an

affair of deliberation.

Divorces are frequently of great political use: but as to the civil

utility, they are established only for the advantage of the husband and

wife, and are not always favourable to their children.

16. Of Repudiation and Divorce amongst the Romans. Romulus permitted a

husband to repudiate his wife, if she had committed adultery, prepared

poison, or procured false keys. He did not grant to women the right of

repudiating their husbands. Plutarch[24] calls this a law extremely

severe.

As the Athenian law[25] gave the power of repudiation to the wife as

well as to the husband, and as this right was obtained by the women

among the primitive Romans, notwithstanding the law of Romulus, it is

evident that this institution was one of those which the deputies of

Rome brought from Athens, and which were inserted in the laws of the

Twelve Tables.

Cicero says that the reasons of repudiation sprang from the law of the

Twelve Tables.[26] We cannot then doubt but that this law increased the

number of the reasons for repudiation established by Romulus.

The power of divorce was also an appointment, or at least a consequence,

of the law of the Twelve Tables. For from the moment that the wife or

the husband had separately the right of repudiation, there was a much

stronger reason for their having the power of quitting each other by

mutual consent.

The law did not require that they should lay open the causes of

divorce[27] In the nature of the thing, the reasons for repudiation

should be given, while those for a divorce are unnecessary; because,

whatever causes the law may admit as sufficient to break a marriage, a

mutual antipathy must be stronger than them all.

The following fact, mentioned by Dionysius Halicarnassus,[28] Valerius

Maximus,[29] and Aulus Gellius,[30] does not appear to me to have the

least degree of probability: though they had at Rome, say they, the

power of repudiating a wife, yet they had so much respect for the

auspices that nobody for the space of five hundred and twenty years ever

made[31] use of this right, till Carvilius Ruga repudiated his, because

of her sterility. We need only be sensible of the nature of the human

mind to perceive how very extraordinary it must be for a law to grant

such right to a whole nation, and yet for nobody to make use of it.

Coriolanus, setting out on his exile, advised his[32] wife to marry a

man more happy than himself. We have just been seeing that the law of

the Twelve Tables and the manners of the Romans greatly extended the law

of Romulus. But to what purpose were these extensions if they never made

use of a power to repudiate? Besides, if the citizens had such a respect

for the auspices that they would never repudiate, how came the

legislators of Rome to have less than they? And how came the laws

incessantly to corrupt their manners?

All that is surprising in the fact in question will soon disappear, only

by comparing two passages in Plutarch. The regal law[33] permitted a

husband to repudiate in the three cases already mentioned, and "it

enjoined," says Plutarch,[34] "that he who repudiated in any other case

should be obliged to give the half of his substance to his wife, and

that the other half should be consecrated to Ceres." They might then

repudiate in all cases, if they were but willing to submit to the

penalty. Nobody had done this before Carvilius Ruga,[35] who, as

Plutarch says in another place,[36] "put away his wife for her sterility

two hundred and thirty years after Romulus." That is, she was repudiated

seventy-one years before the law of the Twelve Tables, which extended

both the power and causes of repudiation.

The authors I have cited say that Carvilius Ruga loved his wife, but

that the censors made him take an oath to put her away, because of her

barrenness, to the end that he might give children to the republic; and

that this rendered him odious to the people. We must know the genius and

temper of the Romans before we can discover the true cause of the hatred

they had conceived against Carvilius. He did not fall into disgrace with

the people for repudiating his wife; this was an affair that did not at

all concern them. But Carvilius had taken an oath to the censors, that

by reason of the sterility of his wife he would repudiate her to give

children to the republic. This was a yoke which the people saw the

censors were going to put upon them. I shall discover, in the

prosecution of this work,[37] the repugnance which they always felt to

regulations of the like kind. But whence can such a contradiction

between those authors arise? It is because Plutarch examined into a

fact, and the others have recounted a prodigy.

______

------------------------------------------------------------------------

______

1. Father Du Halde, i, p. 112.

2. The Chinese books make mention of this. Ibid., iv, p. 448.

3. See Travels to the North, viii; the History of the Tartars; and

Father Du Halde, iv.

4. Tartary is, then, a kind of flat mountain.

5. As Vouty V, emperor of the fifth dynasty.

6. The Scythians thrice conquered Asia, and thrice were driven thence.

Justin, ii. 3.

7. This is in no way contrary to what I shall say in book xxviii. 20

concerning the manner of thinking among the German nations in respect to

the cudgel; let the instrument be what it will, the power or action of

beating was always considered by them as an affront.

8. The waters lose themselves or evaporate before or after their streams

are united.

9. The petty barbarous nations of America are called by the Spaniards

Indios Bravos and are much more difficult to subdue than the great

empires of Mexico and Peru.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book XVIII. Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to the Nature

of the Soil

1. How the Nature of the Soil has an Influence on the Laws. The goodness

of the land, in any country, naturally establishes subjection and

dependence. The husbandmen, who compose the principal part of the

people, are not very jealous of their liberty; they are too busy and too

intent on their own private affairs. A country which overflows with

wealth is afraid of pillage, afraid of an army. "Who is there that forms

this goodly party?" said Cicero to Atticus;[1] "are they the men of

commerce and husbandry? Let us not imagine that these are averse to

monarchy -- these to whom all governments are equal, as soon as they

bestow tranquillity."

Thus monarchy is more frequently found in fruitful countries, and a

republican government in those which are not so; and this is sometimes a

sufficient compensation for the inconveniences they suffer by the

sterility of the land.

The barrenness of the Attic soil established there a democracy; and the

fertility of that of Lacedæmonia an aristocratic constitution. For in

those times Greece was averse to the government of a single person, and

aristocracy bore the nearest resemblance to that government.



Plutarch says[2] that the Cilonian sedition having been appeased at

Athens, the city fell into its ancient dissensions, and was divided into

as many parties as there were kinds of land in Attica. The men who

inhabited the eminences would, by all means, have a popular government;

those of the flat, open country demanded a government composed of the

chiefs; and they who were near the sea desired a mixture of both.

2. The same Subject continued. These fertile provinces are always of a

level surface, where the inhabitants are unable to dispute against a

stronger power; they are then obliged to submit; and when they have once

submitted, the spirit of liberty cannot return; the wealth of the

country is a pledge of their fidelity. But in mountainous districts, as

they have but little, they may preserve what they have. The liberty they

enjoy, or, in other words, the government they are under, is the only

blessing worthy of their defence. It reigns, therefore, more in

mountainous and rugged countries than in those which nature seems to

have most favoured.

The mountaineers preserve a more moderate government, because they are

not so liable to be conquered. They defend themselves easily, and are

attacked with difficulty; ammunition and provisions are collected and

carried against them with great expense, for the country furnishes none.

It is, then, a more arduous, a more dangerous, enterprise to make war

against them; and all the laws that can be enacted for the safety of the

people are there of least use.

3. What Countries are best cultivated. Countries are not cultivated in

proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty; and if we make an

imaginary division of the earth, we shall be astonished to see in most

ages deserts in the most fruitful parts, and great nations in those

where nature seems to refuse everything.

It is natural for a people to leave a bad soil to seek a better, and not

to leave a good soil to go in search of worse. Most invasions have,

therefore, been made in countries which nature seems to have formed for

happiness; and as nothing is more nearly allied than desolation and

invasion, the best provinces are most frequently depopulated, while the

frightful countries of the north continue always inhabited, from their

being almost uninhabitable.

We find by what historians tell us of the passage of the people of

Scandinavia along the banks of the Danube that this was not a conquest,

but only a migration into desert countries.

These happy climates must therefore have been depopulated by other

migrations, though we know not the tragic scenes that happened. "It

appears by many monuments of antiquity," says Aristotle,[3] "that the

Sardinians were a Grecian colony. They were formerly very rich; and

Aristeus, so famed for his love of agriculture, was their law-giver. But

they have since fallen to decay; for the Carthaginians, becoming their

masters, destroyed everything proper tor the nourishment of man, and

forbade the cultivation of the lands on pain of death." Sardinia was not

recovered in the time of Aristotle, nor is it to this day.

The most temperate parts of Persia, Turkey, Muscovy, and Poland have not

been able to recover perfectly from the devastations of the Tartars.

4. New Effects of the Fertility and Barrenness of Countries. The

barrenness of the earth renders men industrious, sober, inured to

hardship, courageous, and fit for war; they are obliged to procure by

labour what the earth refuses to bestow spontaneously. The fertility of

a country gives ease, effeminacy, and a certain fondness for the

preservation of life. It has been remarked that the German troops raised

in those places where the peasants are rich, as, for instance, in

Saxony, are not so good as the others. Military laws may provide against

this inconvenience by a more severe discipline.

5. Of the Inhabitants of Islands. The inhabitants of islands have a

higher relish for liberty than those of the continent. Islands are

commonly of small extent;[4] one part of the people cannot be so easily

employed to oppress the other; the sea separates them from great

empires; tyranny cannot so well support itself within a small compass:

conquerors are stopped by the sea; and the islanders, being without the

reach of their arms, more easily preserve their own laws.

6. Of Countries raised by the Industry of Man. Those countries which the

industry of man has rendered habitable, and which stand in need of the

same industry to provide for their subsistence, require a mild and

moderate government. There are principally three of this species: the

two fine provinces of Kiang-nan and Tsekiang in China; Egypt, and

Holland.

The ancient emperors of China were not conquerors. The first thing they

did to aggrandise themselves was what gave the highest proof of their

wisdom. They raised from beneath the waters two of the finest provinces

of the empire; these owe their existence to the labour of man. And it is

the inexpressible fertility of these two provinces which has given

Europe such ideas of the felicity of that vast country. But a continual

and necessary care to preserve from destruction so considerable a part

of the empire demanded rather the manners of a wise than of a voluptuous

nation, rather the lawful authority of a monarch than the tyrannic sway

of a despotic prince. Power was, therefore, necessarily moderated in

that country, as it was formerly in Egypt, and as it is now in Holland,

which nature has made to attend to herself, and not to be abandoned to

negligence or caprice.

Thus, in spite of the climate of China, where they are naturally led to

a servile obedience; in spite of the apprehensions which follow too

great an extent of empire, the first legislators of this country were

obliged to make excellent laws, and the government was frequently

obliged to follow them.

7. Of human Industry. Mankind by their industry, and by the influence of

good laws, have rendered the earth more proper for their abode. We see

rivers flow where there have been lakes and marshes: this is a benefit

which nature has not bestowed; but it is a benefit maintained and

supplied by nature. When the Persians[5] were masters of Asia, they

permitted those who conveyed a spring to any place which had not been

watered before to enjoy the benefit for five generations; and as a

number of rivulets flowed from Mount Taurus, they spared no expense in

directing the course of their streams. At this day, without knowing how

they came thither, they are found in the fields and gardens.



Thus, as destructive nations produce evils more durable than themselves,

the actions of an industrious people are the source of blessings which

last when they are no more.

8. The general Relation of Laws. The laws have a very great relation to

the manner in which the several nations procure their subsistence. There

should be a code of laws of a much larger extent for a nation attached

to trade and navigation than for people who are content with cultivating

the earth. There should be a much greater for the latter than for those

who subsist by their flocks and herds. There must be a still greater for

these than for such as live by hunting.

9. Of the Soil of America. The cause of there being such a number of

savage nations in America is the fertility of the earth, which

spontaneously produces many fruits capable of affording them

nourishment. If the women cultivate a spot of land around their

cottages, the maize grows up presently; and hunting and fishing put the

men in a state of complete abundance. Besides, black cattle, as cows,

buffaloes, &c., thrive there better than carnivorous beasts. The latter

have always reigned in Africa.

We should not, I believe, have all these advantages in Europe if the

land was left uncultivated; it would scarcely produce anything besides

forests of oaks and other barren trees.

10. Of Population in the Relation it bears to the Manner of procuring

Subsistence. Let us see in what proportion countries are peopled where

the inhabitants do not cultivate the earth. As the produce of

uncultivated land is to that of land improved by culture, so the number

of savages in one country is to that of husbandmen in another: and when

the people who cultivate the land cultivate also the arts, this is also

in such proportions as would require a minute detail.

They can scarcely form a great nation. If they are herdsmen and

shepherds, they have need of an extensive country to furnish subsistence

for a small number; if they live by hunting, their number must be still

less, and in order to find the means of life they must constitute a very

small nation.

Their country commonly abounds with forests, which, as the inhabitants

have not the art of draining off the waters, are filled with bogs; here

each troop canton themselves, and form a petty nation.

11. Of savage and barbarous Nations. There is this difference between

savage and barbarous nations: the former are dispersed clans, which for

some particular reason cannot be joined in a body; and the latter are

commonly small nations, capable of being united. The savages are

generally hunters; the barbarians are herdsmen and shepherds.



This appears plain in the north of Asia. The people of Siberia cannot

live in bodies, because they are unable to find subsistence; the Tartars

may live in bodies for some time, because their herds and flocks may for

a time be reassembled. All the clans may then be reunited, and this is

effected when one chief has subdued many others; after which they may do

two things -- either separate, or set out with a design to make a great

conquest in some southern empire.

12. Of the Law of Nations among People who do not cultivate the Earth.

As these people do not live in circumscribed territories, many causes of

strife arise between them; they quarrel about waste land as we about

inheritances. Thus they find frequent occasions for war, in disputes in

relation either to their hunting, their fishing, the pasture for their

cattle, or the violent seizing of their slaves; and as they are not

possessed of landed property, they have many things to regulate by the

law of nations, and but few to decide by the civil law.

13. Of the Civil Laws of those Nations who do not cultivate the Earth.

The division of lands is what principally increases the civil code.

Among nations where they have not made this division there are very few

civil laws.

The institutions of these people may be called manners rather than laws.



Among such nations as these the old men, who remember things past, have

great authority; they cannot there be distinguished by wealth, but by

wisdom and valour.

These people wander and disperse themselves in pasture grounds or in

forests. Marriage cannot there have the security which it has among us,

where it is fixed by the habitation, and where the wife continues in one

house; they may then more easily change their wives, possess many, and

sometimes mix indifferently like brutes.

Nations of herdsmen and shepherds cannot leave their cattle, which are

their subsistence; neither can they separate themselves from their

wives, who look after them. All this ought, then, to go together,

especially as living generally in a flat open country, where there are

few places of considerable strength, their wives, their children, their

flocks, may become the prey of their enemies.

The laws regulate the division of plunder, and give, like our Salic

laws, a particular attention to theft.

14. Of the political State of the People who do not cultivate the Land.

These people enjoy great liberty; for as they do not cultivate the

earth, they are not fixed: they are wanderers and vagabonds; and if a

chief should deprive them of their liberty, they would immediately go

and seek it under another, or retire into the woods, and there live with

their families. The liberty of the man is so great among these people

that it necessarily draws after it that of the citizen.

15. Of People who know the Use of Money. Aristippus, being cast away,

swam and got safely to the next shore, where, beholding geometrical

figures traced in the sand, he was seized with a transport of joy,

judging that he was among Greeks, and not in a nation of barbarians.



Should you ever happen to be cast by some adventure among an unknown

people; upon seeing a piece of money you may be assured that you have

arrived in a civilised country.

The culture of lands requires the use of money. This culture supposes

many inventions and many degrees of knowledge; and we always see

ingenuity, the arts, and a sense of want making their progress with an

equal pace. All this conduces to the establishment of a sign of value.



Torrents and eruptions have made the discovery that metals are contained

in the bowels of the earth.[6] When once they have been separated, they

have easily been applied to their proper use.

16. Of Civil Laws among People who know not the Use of Money. When a

people have not the use of money, they are seldom acquainted with any

other injustice than that which arises from violence; and the weak, by

uniting, defend themselves from its effects. They have nothing there but

political regulations. But where money is established, they are subject

to that injustice which proceeds from craft -- an injustice that may be

exercised in a thousand ways. Hence they are forced to have good civil

laws, which spring up with the new practices of iniquity.

In countries where they have no specie, the robber takes only bare

movables, which have no mutual resemblance. But where they make use of

money, the robber takes the signs, and these always resemble each other.

In the former nothing can be concealed, because the robber takes along

with him the proofs of his conviction; but in the latter it is quite the

contrary.

17. Of political Laws among Nations who have not the Use of Money. The

greatest security of the liberties of a people who do not cultivate the

earth is their not knowing the use of money. What is gained by hunting,

fishing, or keeping herds of cattle cannot be assembled in such great

quantity, nor be sufficiently preserved, for one man to find himself in

a condition to corrupt many others: but when, instead of this, a man has

a sign of riches, he may obtain a large quantity of these signs, and

distribute them as he pleases.

The people who have no money have but few wants; and these are supplied

with ease, and in an equal manner. Equality is then unavoidable; and

hence it proceeds that their chiefs are not despotic.

If what travellers tell us be true, the constitution of a nation of

Louisiana, called the Natches, is an exception to this. Their chief

disposes of the goods of all his subjects, and obliges them to work and

toil, according to his pleasure.[7] He has a power like that of the

grand signior, and they cannot even refuse him their heads. When the

presumptive heir enters the world, they devote all the sucking children

to his service during his life. One would imagine that this is the great

Sesostris. He is treated in his cottage with as much ceremony as an

emperor of Japan or China.

18. Of the Power of Superstition. The prejudices of superstition are

superior to all others, and have the strongest influence on the human

mind. Thus, though the savage nations have naturally no knowledge of

despotic tyranny, still they feel the weight of it. They adore the sun;

and if their chief had not imagined that he was the brother of this

glorious luminary, they would have thought him a wretch like themselves.

19. Of the Liberty of the Arabs and the Servitude of the Tartars. The

Arabs and Tartars are nations of herdsmen and shepherds. The Arabs find

themselves in that situation of which we have been speaking, and are

therefore free; whilst the Tartars (the most singular people on earth)

are involved in a political slavery.[8] I have already given reasons for

this[9] and shall now assign some others.

They have no towns, no forests, and but few marshes; their rivers are

generally frozen, and they dwell in a level country of an immense

extent. They have pasture for their herds and flocks, and consequently

property; but they have no kind of retreat, or place of safety. A khan

is no sooner overcome than they cut off his head; his children are

treated in the same manner,[10] and all his subjects belong to the

conqueror. These are not condemned to a civil slavery, for in that case

they would be a burden to a simple people, who have no lands to

cultivate, and no need of any domestic service. They therefore add to

the bulk of the nation; but instead of civil servitude, a political

slavery must naturally be introduced among them.

It is apparent that in a country where the several clans make continual

war, and are perpetually conquering each other; in a country where, by

the death of the chief, the body politic of the vanquished clan is

always destroyed, the nation in general can enjoy but little freedom;

for there is not a single party that must not have been often subdued.



A conquered people may preserve some degree of liberty when, by the

strength of their situation, they are in a state that will admit of

capitulating after their defeat. But the Tartars, always defenceless,

being once overcome, can never be able to obtain conditions.



I have said, in chapter 2, that the inhabitants of cultivated plains are

seldom free. Circumstances have occurred to put the Tartars, who dwell

in uncultivated plains, in the same situation.

20. Of the Law of Nations as practised by the Tartars. The Tartars

appear to be mild and humane among themselves; and yet they are most

cruel conquerors: when they take cities they put the inhabitants to the

sword, and imagine that they act humanely if they only sell the people,

or distribute them among their soldiers.

They have destroyed Asia, from India even to the Mediterranean; and all

the country which forms the east of Persia they have rendered a desert.



The law of nations is owing, I think, to the following cause. These

people having no towns, all their wars are carried on with eagerness and

impetuosity. They fight whenever they hope to conquer; and when they

have no such hope, they join the stronger army. With such customs, it is

contrary to the law of nations that a city incapable of repelling their

attack should stop their progress. They regard not cities as an

association of inhabitants, but as places made to bid defiance to their

power. They besiege them without military skill, and expose themselves

greatly in the attack; and therefore revenge themselves on all those who

have spilled their blood.

21. The Civil Law of the Tartars. Father Du Halde says that amongst the

Tartars the youngest of the males is always the heir, by reason that as

soon as the elder brothers are capable of leading a pastoral life they

leave the house with a certain number of cattle, given them by their

father, and build a new habitation. The last of the males, who continues

at home with the father, is then his natural heir.

I have heard that a like custom was also observed in some small

districts of England; and we find it still in Brittany, in the duchy of

Rohan, where it obtains with regard to ignoble tenures. This is

doubtless a pastoral law conveyed thither by some of the people of

Britain, or established by some German nation. By Cæsar and Tacitus we

are informed that the latter cultivated but little land.

22. Of a Civil Law of the German Nations. I shall here explain how that

particular passage of the Salic law which is commonly distinguished by

the term "the Salic law" relates to the institutions of a people who do

not cultivate the earth, or at least who cultivate it but very little.



The Salic law ordains[11] that, when a man has left children behind him,

the males shall succeed to the Salic land in preference to the females.



To understand the nature of those Salic lands, there needs no more than

to search into the usages or customs of the Franks with regard to lands

before they left Germany.

Mr. Echard has very plainly proved that the word Salic is derived from

Sala, which signifies a house; and therefore that the Salic land was the

land belonging to the house. I shall proceed further, and examine into

the nature of the house, and of the land belonging to the house, among

the Germans.

"They dwell not in towns," says Tacitus, "nor can they bear to have

their habitations contiguous to those of others; every one leaves a

space or small piece of ground about his house, which is enclosed."[12]

Tacitus is very exact in this account, for many laws of the Barbarian

codes have different decrees against those who threw down this

enclosure, as well as against such as broke into the house.[13]

We learn from Tacitus and Cæsar that the lands cultivated by the Germans

were given them only for the space of a year, after which they again

became public. They had no other patrimony but the house and a piece of

land within the enclosure that surrounded it.[14] It was this particular

patrimony which belonged to the males. And, indeed, how could it belong

to the daughters? They were to pass into another habitation.

The Salic land was then within that enclosure which belonged to a German

house; this was the only property they had. The Franks, after their

conquests, acquired new possessions, and continued to call them Salic

lands.

When the Franks lived in Germany their wealth consisted of slaves,

flocks, horses, arms, &c. The habitation and the small portion of land

adjoining it were naturally given to the male children who were to dwell

there. But afterwards, when the Franks had by conquest acquired large

tracts of land, they thought it hard that the daughters and their

children should be incapable of enjoying any part of them. Hence it was

that they introduced a custom of permitting the father to settle the

estate after his death upon his daughter, and her children. They

silenced the law; and it appears that these settlements were frequent,

since they were entered in the formularies.[15]

Among these formularies I find one of a singular nature.[16] A

grandfather ordained by will that his grandchildren should share his

inheritance with his sons and daughters. What then became of the Salic

law? In those times either it would not be observed, or the continual

use of nominating the daughters to an inheritance had made them consider

their ability to succeed as a case authorised by custom.

The Salic law had not in view a preference of one sex to the other, much

less had it a regard to the perpetuity of a family, a name, or the

transmission of land. These things did not enter into the heads of the

Germans; it was purely an economical law, which made the house and the

land dependent thereon to the males who should dwell in it, and to whom

it consequently was of most service.

We need here only transcribe the title of the Allodial Lands of the

Salic law; that famous text of which so many have talked, and which so

few have read.

"1. If a man dies without issue, his father or mother shall succeed him.

2. If he has neither father nor mother, his brother or sister shall

succeed him. 3. If he has neither brother nor sister, the sister of his

mother shall succeed him. 4. If his mother has no sister, the sister of

his father shall succeed him. 5. If his father has no sister, the

nearest relative by the male side shall succeed. 6. Not any part of the

Salic land shall pass to the females; but it shall belong to the males;

that is, the male children shall succeed their father."[17]

It is plain that the first five articles relate to the inheritance of a

man who dies without issue; and the sixth to the succession of him who

has children.

When a man dies without children, the law ordains that neither of the

two sexes shall have the preference to the other, except in certain

cases. In the first two degrees of succession, the advantages of the

males and females were the same; in the third and fourth, the females

had the preference; and the males in the fifth.

Tacitus points out the source of these extravagances. "The sister's

children," says he, "are as dear to their uncle as to their own father.

There are men who regard this degree of kindred as more strict, and even

more holy. They prefer it when they receive hostages."[18] Hence it

proceeds that our earliest historians speak in such strong terms of the

love of the kings of the Franks for their sisters and their sisters'

children.[19] And, indeed, if the children of the sister were considered

in her brother's house as his own children, it was natural for these to

regard their aunt as their mother.

The sister of the mother was preferred to the father's sister; this is

explained by other texts of the Salic law. When a woman became a

widow,[20] she fell under the guardianship of her husband's relatives;

the law preferred to this guardianship the relatives by the females

before those by the males. Indeed, a woman who entered into a family

joining herself with those of her own sex, became more united to her

relatives by the female than by the male. Moreover, when a man killed

another, and had not wherewithal to pay the pecuniary penalty, the law

permitted him to deliver up his substance, and his relatives were to

supply the deficiency.[21] After the father, mother, and brother, the

sister of the mother was to pay, as if this tie had something in it most

tender: now the degree of kindred which imposes the burdens ought also

to confer the advantages.

The Salic law enjoins that after the father's sister, the succession

should be held by the nearest relative male; but if this relative was

beyond the fifth degree, he should not inherit. Thus a female of the

fifth degree might inherit to the prejudice of a male of the sixth; and

this may be seen in the law of the Ripuarian Franks (a faithful

interpreter of the Salic law), under the title of Allodial Lands, where

it closely adheres to the Salic law on the same subject.[22]

If the father left issue, the Salic law would have the daughters

excluded from the inheritance of the Salic land, and determined that it

should belong to the male children.

It would be easy for me to prove that the Salic law did not absolutely

exclude the daughters from the possession of the Salic land, but only in

the case where they were debarred by their brothers. This appears from

the letter of the Salic law; which, after having said that the women

shall possess none of the Salic land, but only the males, interprets and

restrains itself by adding, "that is, the son shall succeed to the

inheritance of the father."

2. The text of the Salic law is cleared up by the law of the Ripuarian

Franks, which has also a title on allodial lands very conformable to

that of the Salic law.[23]

3. The laws of these barbarous nations who all sprang from Germany

interpret each other, more particularly as they all have nearly the same

spirit. The Saxon law enjoined the father and mother to leave their

inheritance to their son, and not to their daughter; but if there were

none but daughters, they were to have the whole inheritance.[24]

4. We have two ancient formularies[25] that state the case in which,

according to the Salic law, the daughters were excluded by the males;

that is, when they stood in competition with their brother.

5. Another formulary[26] proves that the daughter succeeded to the

prejudice of the grandson; she was therefore excluded only by the son.

6. If daughters had been generally debarred by the Salic law from the

inheritance of land, it would be impossible to explain the histories,

formularies, and charters which are continually mentioning the lands and

possessions of the females under the first race.

People have been wrong in asserting that the Salic lands were fiefs.[27]

1. This head is distinguished by the title of allodial lands. 2. Fiefs

at first were not hereditary, 3. If the Salic lands had been fiefs, how

could Marculfus treat that custom as impious which excluded the women

from inheriting, when the males themselves did not succeed to fiefs? 4.

The charters which have been cited to prove that the Salic lands were

fiefs only show that they were freeholds. 5. Fiefs were not established

till after the conquest, and the Salic customs existed long before the

Franks left Germany. 6. It was not the Salic law that formed the

establishment of fiefs, by setting bounds to the succession of females;

but it was the establishment of fiefs that prescribed limits to the

succession of females, and to the regulations of the Salic law.

After what has been said, one would not imagine that the perpetual

succession of males to the crown of France should have taken its rise

from the Salic law. And yet this is a point indubitably certain. I prove

it from the several codes of the barbarous nations. The Salic law,[28]

and the law of the Burgundians,[29] debarred the daughters from the

right of succeeding to the land in conjunction with their brothers;

neither did they succeed to the crown. The law of the Visigoths,[30] on

the contrary, permitted the daughters to inherit the land with the

brothers:[31] and the women were capable of inheriting the crown.[32]

Among these people the regulations of the civil law had an effect on the

political.

This was not the only case in which the political law of the Franks gave

way to the civil. By the Salic law, all the brothers succeeded equally

to the land, and this was also decreed by a law of the Burgundians.

Thus, in the kingdom of the Franks, and in that of the Burgundians, all

the brothers succeeded to the crown, if we except a few murders and

usurpations which took place amongst the Burgundians.

23. Of the regal Ornaments among the Franks. A people who do not

cultivate the land have no idea of luxury. We may see, in Tacitus, the

admirable simplicity of the German nations: they had no artificial

elegances of dress; their ornaments were derived from nature. If the

family of their chief was to be distinguished by any sign, it was no

other than that which nature bestowed. The kings of the Franks, of the

Burgundians, and the Visigoths wore their long hair for a diadem.

24. Of the Marriages of the Kings of the Franks. I have already

mentioned that with people who do not cultivate the earth, marriages are

less fixed than with others, and that they generally take many wives.

"Of all the barbarous nations the Germans were almost the only people

who were satisfied with one wife,[33] if we except," says Tacitus, "some

persons who, not from a dissoluteness of manners, but because of their

nobility, had many."[34]

This explains the reason why the kings of the first race had so great a

number of wives. These marriages were less a proof of incontinence than

a consequence of dignity: and it would have wounded them in a tender

point to have deprived them of such a prerogative.[35] This also

explains the reason why the example of the kings was not followed by the

subjects.

25. Childeric. "The laws of matrimony amongst the Germans," says

Tacitus, "are strictly observed. Vice is not there a subject of

ridicule. To corrupt or be corrupted is not called fashion, or the

custom of the age:[36] there are few examples in this populous nation of

the violation of conjugal faith."[37]

This was the reason of the expulsion of Childeric: he shocked their

rigid virtue, which conquest had not had time to corrupt.

26. Of the Time when the Kings of the Franks became of age. Barbarians

who do not cultivate the earth have, strictly speaking, no jurisdiction,

and are, as we have already remembered, rather governed by the law of

nations than by civil institutions. They are, therefore, always armed.

Thus Tacitus tells us "that the Germans undertook no affairs either of a

public or private nature unarmed."[38] They gave their vote by the sound

of their arms.[39] As soon as they could carry them, they were presented

to the assembly;[40] they put a javelin into their hands;[41] and from

that moment they were out of their minority: they had been a part of the

family, now they became a part of the republic.[42]

"The eagles," said the king of the Ostrogoths,[43] "cease to feed their

young ones as soon as their wings and talons are formed; the latter have

no need of assistance when they are able themselves to seize their prey:

it would be a disgrace if the young people in our armies were thought to

be of an age unfit for managing their estates or regulating the conduct

of their lives. It is virtue that constitutes full age among the Goths."

Childebert II was fifteen years old when Gontram, his uncle, declared

that he was of age, and capable of governing by himself.[44] We find in

the Ripuarian laws that the age of fifteen, the ability of bearing arms,

and majority, went together. It is there said[45] "that if a Ripuarian

dies, or is killed, and leaves a son behind him, that son can neither

prosecute, nor be prosecuted, till he has completely attained the age of

fifteen; and then he may either answer for himself or choose a

champion." It was necessary that his mind should be sufficiently formed

to be able to defend himself in court; and that his body should have all

the strength that was proper for his defence in single combat. Among the

Burgundians,[46] who also made use of this combat in their judiciary

proceedings, they were of age at fifteen.

Agathias tells us that the arms of the Franks were light: they might,

therefore, be of age at fifteen. In succeeding times the arms they made

use of were heavy, and they were already greatly so in the time of

Charlemagne, as appears by our capitularies and romances. Those who had

fiefs,[47] and were consequently obliged to do military service, were

not then of age till they were twenty-one years old.[48]

27. The same Subject continued. We have seen that the Germans did not

appear in their assemblies before they were of age; they were a part of

the family, but not of the republic. This was the reason that the

children of Clodomir, king of Orleans, and conqueror of Burgundy, were

not proclaimed kings, because they were of too tender an age to be

present at the assembly. They were not yet kings, but they had a right

to the regal dignity as soon as they were able to bear arms; and in the

meantime, Clotildis, their grandmother, governed the state.[49] But

their uncles Clotarius and Childebert assassinated them, and divided

their kingdom. This was the cause that in the following ages princes in

their minority were proclaimed kings immediately after the death of

their fathers. Thus Duke Gondovald saved Childebert II from the cruelty

of Chilperic, and caused him to be proclaimed king when he was only five

years old.[50]

But even in this change they followed the original spirit of the nation;

for the public acts did not pass in the name of the young monarch. So

that the Franks had a double administration: the one which concerned the

person of the infant king, and the other which regarded the kingdom; and

in the fiefs there was a difference between the guardianship and the

civil administration.

28. Of Adoption among the Germans. As the Germans became of age by the

wielding of arms, so they were adopted by the same sign. Thus Gontram,

willing to declare his nephew Childebert of age and to adopt him for his

son, made use of these words: "I have put this javelin into thy hands as

a token that I have given thee all my kingdom."[51] Then, turning

towards the assembly, he added, "You see that my son Childebert is grown

a man; obey him." Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, intending to adopt

the king of the Heruli, wrote to him thus:[52] "It is a noble custom of

ours to be adopted by arms; for men of courage alone deserve to be our

children. Such is the efficacy of this act, that whoever is the object

of it had rather die than submit to anything ignominious. Therefore, in

compliance with the national usage, and because you are a man of

courage, we adopt you for our son by these bucklers, these swords, these

horses, which we send you as a present."

29. Of the sanguinary Temper of the Kings of the Franks. Clovis was not

the only prince amongst the Franks who had invaded Gaul. Many of his

relatives had penetrated into this country with particular tribes; but

as he had met with much greater success, and could grant considerable

settlements to such as followed him, the Franks flocked to him from all

parts, so that the other chiefs found themselves too weak to resist him.

He formed a design of exterminating his whole race, and he

succeeded.[53] He feared, says Gregory of Tours,[54] lest the Franks

should choose another chief. His children and successors followed this

practice to the utmost of their power. Thus the brother, the uncle, the

nephew, and, what is still worse, the father or the son, were

perpetually conspiring against their whole family. The law continually

divided the monarchy; while fear, ambition, and cruelty wanted to

reunite it.

30. Of the national Assemblies of the Franks. It has been remarked above

that nations who do not cultivate the land enjoy great liberty.



This was the case of the Germans. Tacitus says that they gave their

kings, or chiefs, a very moderate degree of power;[55] and Cæsar adds

further that in times of peace they had no common magistrates; but their

princes administered justice in each village.[56] Thus, as Gregory of

Tours[57] sufficiently proves, the Franks in Germany had no king.



"The princes," says Tacitus, "deliberate on matters of no great concern;

while affairs of importance are submitted to the whole nation, but in

such a manner that these very affairs which are under the cognizance of

the people are at the same time laid before the princes."[58] This

custom was observed by them after their conquests, as may be seen in all

their records.[59]

Tacitus says that capital crimes might be carried before the

assembly.[60] It was the same after the conquest, when the great vassals

were tried before that body.

31. Of the Authority of the Clergy under the first Race. The priests of

barbarous nations are commonly invested with power, because they have

both that authority which is due to them from their religious character,

and that influence which among such a people is the offspring of

superstition. Thus we see in Tacitus that priests were held in great

veneration by the Germans, and that they presided in the assemblies of

the people.[61] They alone were permitted[62] to chastise, to bind, to

smite; which they did, not by order of the prince, or as his ministers

of justice, but as by an inspiration of that Deity ever supposed to be

present with those who made war.

We ought not, therefore, to be astonished when, from the very beginning

of the first race, we meet with bishops the dispensers of justice,[63]

when we see them appear in the assemblies of the nation; when they have

such a prodigious influence on the minds of sovereigns; and when they

acquire so large a share of property.

______

1. Book vii. 7.

2. Solon.

3. Or he who wrote the book De Mirabilibus.

4. Japan is an exception to this, by its great extent as well as by its

slavery.

5. Polybius, x. 25.

6. It is thus that Diodorus, v. 35, tells us the shepherds found gold in

the Pyrenean mountains.

7. Edifying Letters, coll. xx.

8. When a khan is proclaimed, all the people cry that his word shall be

as a sword.

9. Book xvii. 5.

10. We ought not therefore to be astonished at Mahomet, the son of

Miriveis, who, upon taking Ispahan, put all the princes of the blood to

the sword.

11. Tit. 62.

12. Nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari satis notum est, ne pati

quidem inter se junctas sedes; colunt discreti, ut nemus placuit. Vicos

locant, non in nostrum morem connexis et coharentibus ædifidis: suam

quisque domum spatio circumdat. -- De Moribus Germanorum, 16.

13. The Law of the Alemans, 10, and the Law of the Bavarians, tit. 10,

§§ 1, 2.

14. This inclosure is called curtis in the charters.

15. See Marculfus, ii, form. 10, 12. Appendix to Marculfus, form. 49,

and the ancient formularies of Sirmondus, form. 22.

16. Form. 55, in Lindembroch's collection.

17. De terra vero Salica in mulierem nulla portio hereditatis transit,

sed hoc virilis sexus acquirit, hoc est filii in ipsa hereditate

succedunt. -- Tit. 68, § 6.

18. Sororum filiis idem apud avunculum quam apud patrem honor. Quidam

sanctiorem arcti-oremque hunc nexum sanguinis arbitrantur, et in

accipiendis obsidibus magis exigunt, tanquam ii et animum firmius et

domum latius teneant -- De Moribus Germanorum, 20.

19. See, in Gregory of Tours, viii. 18, 20 and ix, 16, 20, the rage of

Gontram at Leovigild's ill-treatment of Ingunda, his niece, which

Childebert her brother took up arms to revenge.

20. Salic Law, tit. 47.

21. Ibid., tit. 61, § 1.

22. Et deinceps usque ad quintum genuculum qui proximus fuerit in

hereditatem succedat. -- Tit. 56, § 6.

23. Tit. 56.

24. Tit. 7, § 1: Pater aut mater defuncti, filio non filiæ hereditatem

relinquant; § 4, qui defunctus, non filios, sed filias reliquerit, ad

eas omnis hereditas pertineat.

25. In Marculfus, ii, form. 12, and in the Appendix to Marculfus, form.

49.

26. Lindembroch's collection, form. 55.

27. Du Cange, Pithou, &c.

28. Tit. 62.

29. Tit. 1, § 3; tit. 16, § 1; tit. 51.

30. Book iv, tit. 2, § 1.

31. The German nations, says Tacitus, De Moribus Germanorum, 22, had

common customs, as well as those which were peculiar to each.

32. Among the Ostrogoths, the crown twice devolved to the males by means

of females; the first time to Athalaricus, through Amalasuntha, and the

second to Theodat, through Amalafreda. Not but that the females of that

nation might have held the crown in their own right; for Amalasuntha

reigned after the death of Athalaricus; nay, even after the election of

Theodat, and in conjunction with that prince. See Amalasuntha's and

Theodat's letters, in Cassiodorus, x.

33. Prope soli Barbarorum singulis uxoribus contenti stint. -- De

Moribus Germanorum, 18.

34. Exceptis admodum paucis qui non libidine, sed ob nobilitatem,

plurimis nuptiis ambiuntur. -- Ibid.

35. See Fredegarius, Chronicle of the year 628.

36. Severa matrimonia . . . nemo illic vitia ridet, nec corrumpere et

corrumpi sæculum vocatur. -- De Moribus Germanorum, 19.

37. Paucissima in tam numerosa gente adulteria. -- Ibid.

38. Nihil neque publicæ neque privatæ rei nisi armati agunt. -- Ibid.,

13.

39. Si displicuit sententia, fremitu aspernantur; sin placuit, frameas

concutiunt. -- Ibid., 11.

40. Sed arma sumere non ante cuiquam moris, quam civitas suffecturum

probaverit. -- Ibid., 13.

41. Tum in ipso concilia vel principum aliquis, vel pater, vel

propinquus, scuto, frameaque juvenem ornant.

42. Hæc apud illos toga, hic primus juventæ honos; ante hoc domni pars

videntur, mox reipublicæ.

43. Theodoric in Cassiodorus, i. 38.

44. He was scarcely five years old, says Gregory of Tours, v. 1, when he

succeeded to his father, in the year 575. Gontram declared him of age in

the year 585; he was, therefore, at that time no more than fifteen.

45. Tit. 81.

46. Tit. 87.

47. There was no change in the time with regard to the common people.

48. St. Louis was not of age till twenty-one; this was altered by an

edict of Charles V in the year 1374.

49. It appears from Gregory of Tours, iii, that she chose two natives of

Burgundy, which had been conquered by Clodomir, to raise them to the see

of Tours, which also belonged to Clodomir.

50. Ibid., v. 1: Vix lustro ætatis uno jam peracto qui die Dominicæ

Natalis regnare coepit.

51. See Ibid., vii. 23.

52. In Cassiodorus, iv. 2.

53. Gregory of Tours, ii.

54. Ibid.

55. Nec Regibus libera aut infinita potestas. Cæterum neque

animadvertere, neque vincire, neque verberare, &c. -- De Moribus

Germanorum, 7.

56. In pace nullus est communis magistratus, sed principes regionum

atque pagorum inter suos jus dicunt. -- De Bello Gall., vi. 22.

57. Book ii.

58. De minoribus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes; ita tamen ut

ea quorum penes plebem arbitrium est, apud principes pertractentur. --

De Moribus Germanorum, 11.

59. Lex consensu Populi fit et constitutione Regis. -- Capitularies of

Charles the Bald, year 864, art. 6.

60. Licet apud Concilium accusare et discrimen capitis intendere. -- De

Moribus Germanorum, 12.

61. Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus et coercendi jus est, imperatur. --

Ibid., 11.

62. Nec Regibus libera aut infinita potestas. Cæterum neque

animadvertere, neque vincire, neque verberare, nisi sacerdotibus est

permissum, non quasi in poenam, nec Ducis jussu, sed velut Deo

imperante, quem adesse, bellatoribus credunt. -- Ibid., 7.

63. See the Constitutions of Clotarius, year 560, art. 6.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book XIX. Of Laws in Relation to the Principles Which Form the

General Spirit, Morals, and Customs of a Nation

1. Of the Subject of this Book. This subject is very extensive. In that

crowd of ideas which presents itself to my mind, I shall be more

attentive to the order of things than to the things themselves. I shall

be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may

investigate and discover the truth.

2. That it is necessary People's Minds should be prepared for the

Reception of the best Laws. Nothing could appear more insupportable to

the Germans than the tribunal of Varus.[1] That which Justinian[2]

erected amongst the Lazi, to proceed against the murderers of their

king, appeared to them as an affair most horrid and barbarous.

Mithridates,[3] haranguing against the Romans, reproached them more

particularly for their law proceedings.[4] The Parthians could not bear

with one of their kings who, having been educated at Rome, rendered

himself affable and easy of access to all.[5] Liberty itself has

appeared intolerable to those nations who have not been accustomed to

enjoy it. Thus pure air is sometimes disagreeable to such as have lived

in a fenny country.

Baibi, a Venetian, being at Pegu, was introduced to the king.[6] When

the monarch was informed that they had no king at Venice, he burst into

such a fit of laughter that he was seized with a cough, and with

difficulty could speak to his courtiers. What legislator could propose a

popular government to a people like this?

3. Of Tyranny. There are two sorts of tyranny: one real, which arises

from oppression; the other is seated in opinion, and is sure to be felt

whenever those who govern establish things shocking to the existing

ideas of a nation.

Dio[7] tells us that Augustus was desirous of being called Romulus; but

having been informed that the people feared that he would cause himself

to be crowned king, he changed his design. The old Romans were averse to

a king, because they could not suffer any man to enjoy such power; these

would not have a king, because they could not bear his manners. For

though Cæsar, the Triumvirs, and Augustus were really invested with

regal power, they had preserved all the outward appearance of equality,

while their private lives were a kind of contrast to the pomp and luxury

of foreign monarchs; so that when the Romans were resolved to have no

king, this only signified that they would preserve their customs, and

not imitate those of the African and eastern nations.

The same writer informs us that the Romans were exasperated against

Augustus for making certain laws which were too severe; but as soon as

he had recalled Pylades the comedian, whom the jarring of different

factions had driven out of the city, the discontent ceased. A people of

this stamp have a more lively sense of tyranny when a player is banished

than when they are deprived of their laws.

4. Of the general Spirit of Mankind. Mankind are influenced by various

causes: by the climate, by the religion, by the laws, by the maxims of

government, by precedents, morals, and customs; whence is formed a

general spirit of nations.

In proportion as, in every country, any one of these causes acts with

more force, the others in the same degree are weakened. Nature and the

climate rule almost alone over the savages; customs govern the Chinese;

the laws tyrannise in Japan; morals had formerly all their influence at

Sparta; maxims of government, and the ancient simplicity of manners,

once prevailed at Rome.

5. How far we should be attentive lest the general Spirit of a Nation be

changed. Should there happen to be a country whose inhabitants were of a

social temper, open-hearted, cheerful, endowed with taste and a facility

in communicating their thoughts; who were sprightly and agreeable;

sometimes imprudent, often indiscreet; and besides had courage,

generosity, frankness, and a certain notion of honour, no one ought to

endeavour to restrain their manners by laws, unless he would lay a

constraint on their virtues. If in general the character be good, the

little foibles that may be found in it are of small importance.



They might lay a restraint upon women, enact laws to reform their

manners and to reduce their luxury, but who knows but that by these

means they might lose that peculiar taste which would be the source of

the wealth of the nation, and that politeness which would render the

country frequented by strangers?

It is the business of the legislature to follow the spirit of the

nation, when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we

do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of

our natural genius.

If an air of pedantry be given to a nation that is naturally gay, the

state will gain no advantage from it, either at home or abroad. Leave it

to do frivolous things in the most serious manner, and with gaiety the

things most serious.

6. That Everything ought not to be corrected. Let them but leave us as

we are, said a gentleman of a nation which had a very great resemblance

to that we have been describing, and nature will repair whatever is

amiss. She has given us a vivacity capable of offending, and hurrying us

beyond the bounds of respect: this same vivacity is corrected by the

politeness it procures, inspiring us with a taste of the world, and,

above all, for the conversation of the fair sex.

Let them leave us as we are; our indiscretions joined to our good nature

would make the laws which should constrain our sociability not at all

proper for us.

7. Of the Athenians and Lacedæmonians. The Athenians, this gentleman

adds, were a nation that had some relation to ours. They mingled gaiety

with business; a stroke of raillery was as agreeable in the senate as in

the theatre. This vivacity, which discovered itself in their councils,

went along with them in the execution of their resolves. The

characteristic of the Spartans was gravity, seriousness, severity, and

silence. It would have been as difficult to bring over an Athenian by

teasing as it would a Spartan by diverting him.

8. Effects of a sociable Temper. The more communicative a people are,

the more easily they change their habits, because each is in a greater

degree a spectacle to the other and the singularities of individuals are

better observed. The climate which influences one nation to take

pleasure in being communicative, makes it also delight in change, and

that which makes it delight in change forms its taste.

The society of the fair sex spoils the manners and forms the taste; the

desire of giving greater pleasure than others establishes the

embellishments of dress; and the desire of pleasing others more than

ourselves gives rise to fashions. Thus fashion is a subject of

importance; by encouraging a trifling turn of mind, it continually

increases the branches of its commerce.[8]

9. Of the Vanity and Pride of Nations. Vanity is as advantageous to a

government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only

represent, on the one hand, the numberless benefits which result from

vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; on the

other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain

nations, as laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything -- in fine,

the destruction of the nations which have happened to fall under their

government, as well as of their own. Laziness is the effect of pride;[9]

labour, a consequence of vanity. The pride of a Spaniard leads him to

decline labour; the vanity of a Frenchman to work better than others.



All lazy nations are grave; for those who do not labour regard

themselves as the sovereigns of those who do.

If we search among all nations, we shall find that for the most part

gravity, pride, and indolence go hand in hand.

The people of Achim[10] are proud and lazy; those who have no slaves,

hire one, if it be only to carry a quart of rice a hundred paces; they

would be dishonoured if they carried it themselves.



In many places people let their nails grow, that all may see they do not

work.

Women in the Indies[11] believe it shameful for them to learn to read:

this is, they say, the business of their slaves, who sing their

spiritual songs in the temples of their pagods. In one tribe they do not

spin; in another they make nothing but baskets and mats; they are not

even to pound rice; and in others they must not go to fetch water. These

rules are established by pride, and the same passion makes them

followed. There is no necessity for mentioning that the moral qualities,

according as they are blended with others, are productive of different

effects; thus pride, joined to a vast ambition and notions of grandeur,

produced such effects among the Romans as are known to all the world.

10. Of the Character of the Spaniards and Chinese. The characters of the

several nations are formed of virtues and vices, of good and bad

qualities. From the happy mixture of these, great advantages result, and

frequently where it would be least expected; there are others whence

great evils arise -- evils which one would not suspect.

The Spaniards have been in all ages famous for their honesty. Justin[12]

mentions their fidelity in keeping whatever was entrusted to their care;

they have frequently suffered death rather than reveal a secret. They

have still the same fidelity for which they were formerly distinguished.

All the nations who trade at Cadiz trust their fortunes to the

Spaniards, and have never yet repented it. But this admirable quality,

joined to their indolence, forms a mixture whence such effects result as

to them are most pernicious. The rest of the European nations carry on

in their very sight all the commerce of their monarchy.

The character of the Chinese is formed of another mixture, directly

opposite to that of the Spaniards; the precariousness of their

subsistence[13] inspires them with a prodigious activity, and such an

excessive desire of gain, that no trading nation can confide in

them.[14] This acknowledged infidelity has secured them the possession

of the trade to Japan. No European merchant has ever dared to undertake

it in their name, how easy soever it might be for them to do it from

their maritime provinces in the north.

11. A Reflection. I have said nothing here with a view to lessen that

infinite distance which must ever be between virtue and vice. God forbid

that I should be guilty of such an attempt! I would only make my readers

comprehend that all political are not all moral vices; and that all

moral are not political vices; and that those who make laws which shock

the general spirit of a nation ought not to be ignorant of this.

12. Of Customs and Manners in a despotic State. It is a capital maxim

that the manners and customs of a despotic empire ought never to be

changed; for nothing would more speedily produce a revolution. The

reason is that in these states there are no laws, that is, none that can

be properly called so; there are only manners and customs; and if you

overturn these you overturn all.

Laws are established, manners are inspired; these proceed from a general

spirit, those from a particular institution: now it is as dangerous, nay

more so, to subvert the general spirit as to change a particular

institution.

There is less communication in a country where each, either as superior

or inferior, exercises or is oppressed by arbitrary power, than there is

in those where liberty reigns in every station. They do not, therefore,

so often change their manners and behaviour. Fixed and established

customs have a near resemblance to laws. Thus it is here necessary that

a prince or a legislator should less oppose the manners and customs of

the people than in any other country upon earth.

Their women are commonly confined, and have no influence in society. In

other countries, where they have intercourse with men, their desire of

pleasing, and the desire men also have of giving them pleasure, produce

a continual change of customs. The two sexes spoil each other; they both

lose their distinctive and essential quality; what was naturally fixed

becomes quite unsettled, and their customs and behaviour alter every

day.

13. Of the Behaviour of the Chinese. But China is the place where the

customs of the country can never be changed. Besides their women being

absolutely separated from the men, their customs, like their morals, are

taught in the schools. A man of letters may be known by his easy

address.[15] These things being once taught by precept, and inculcated

by grave doctors, become fixed, like the principles of morality, and are

never changed.

14. What are the natural Means of changing the Manners and Customs of a

Nation. We have said that the laws were the particular and precise

institutions of a legislator, and manners and customs the institutions

of a nation in general. Hence it follows that when these manners and

customs are to be changed, it ought not to be done by laws; this would

have too much the air of tyranny: it would be better to change them by

introducing other manners and other customs.

Thus when a prince would make great alterations in his kingdom, he

should reform by law what is established by law, and change by custom

what is settled by custom; for it is very bad policy to change by law

what ought to be changed by custom.

The law which obliged the Muscovites to cut off their beards and to

shorten their clothes, and the rigour with which Peter I made them crop,

even to their knees, the long cloaks of those who entered into the

cities, were instances of tyranny. There are means that may be made use

of to prevent crimes; these are punishments: there are those for

changing our customs; these are examples.

The facility and ease with which that nation has been polished plainly

shows that this prince had a worse opinion of his people than they

deserved; and that they were not brutes, though he was pleased to call

them so. The violent measures which he employed were needless; he would

have attained his end as well by milder methods.

He himself experienced the facility of bringing about these alterations.

The women were shut up, and in some measure slaves; he called them to

court; he sent them silks and fine stuffs, and made them dress like the

German ladies. This sex immediately relished a manner of life which so

greatly flattered their taste, their vanity, and their passions; and by

their means it was relished by the men.

What rendered the change the more easy was that their manners at that

time were foreign to the climate, and had been introduced among them by

conquest and by a mixture of nations. Peter I, in giving the manners and

customs of Europe to a European nation, found a facility which he did

not himself expect. The empire of the climate is the first, the most

powerful, of all empires. He had then no occasion for laws to change the

manners and customs of his country; it would have been sufficient to

have introduced other manners and other customs.

Nations are in general very tenacious of their customs; to take them

away by violence is to render them unhappy: we should not therefore

change them, but engage the people to make the change themselves.



All punishment which is not derived from necessity is tyrannical. The

law is not a mere act of power; things in their own nature indifferent

are not within its province.

15. The Influence of domestic Government on the political. This

alteration in the manners of women will doubtless have a great influence

on the government of Muscovy. One naturally follows the other: the

despotic power of the prince is connected with the servitude of women;

the liberty of women with the spirit of monarchy.

16. How some Legislators have confounded the Principles which govern

Mankind. Manners and customs are those habits which are not established

by legislators, either because they were not able or were not willing to

establish them.

There is this difference between laws and manners, that the laws are

most adapted to regulate the actions of the subject, and manners to

regulate the actions of the man. There is this difference between

manners and customs, that the former principally relate to the interior

conduct, the latter to the exterior.

These things have been sometimes confounded.[16] Lycurgus made the same

code for the laws, manners, and customs, and the legislators of China

have done the same.

We ought not to be surprised that the legislators of China and Sparta

should confound the laws, manners, and customs; the reason is, their

manners represent their laws, and their customs their manners.

The principal object which the legislators of China had in view was to

make their subjects live in peace and tranquillity. They would have

people filled with a veneration for one another, that each should be

every moment sensible of his dependence on society, and of the

obligations he owed to his fellow-citizens. They therefore gave rules of

the most extensive civility.

Thus the inhabitants of the villages of China[17] practise amongst

themselves the same ceremonies as those observed by persons of an

exalted station; a very proper method of inspiring mild and gentle

dispositions, of maintaining peace and good order, and of banishing all

the vices which spring from an asperity of temper. In effect, would not

the freeing them from the rules of civility be to search out a method

for them to indulge their own humours?

Civility is in this respect of more value than politeness. Politeness

flatters the vices of others, and civility prevents ours from being

brought to light. It is a barrier which men have placed within

themselves to prevent the corruption of each other.

Lycurgus, whose institutions were severe, had no regard to civility; in

forming the external behaviour he had a view to that warlike spirit with

which he would fain inspire his people. A people who were in a continual

state of discipline and instruction, and who were endued with equal

simplicity and rigour, atoned by their virtues for their want of

complaisance.

17. Of the peculiar Quality of the Chinese Government. The legislators

of China went further.[18] They confounded their religion, laws,

manners, and customs; all these were morality, all these were virtue.

The precepts relating to these four points were what they called rites;

and it was in the exact observance of these that the Chinese government

triumphed. They spent their whole youth in learning them, their whole

life in the practice. They were taught by their men of letters, they

were inculcated by the magistrates; and as they included all the

ordinary actions of life, when they found the means of making them

strictly observed, China was well governed.

Two things have contributed to the ease with which these rites are

engraved on the hearts and minds of the Chinese; one, the difficulty of

writing, which during the greatest part of their lives wholly employs

their attention,[19] because it is necessary to prepare them to read and

understand the books in which they are comprised; the other, that the

ritual precepts having nothing in them that is spiritual, but being

merely rules of common practice, are more adapted to convince and strike

the mind than things merely intellectual.

Those princes who, instead of ruling by these rites, governed by the

force of punishments, wanted to accomplish that by punishments which it

is not in their power to produce, that is, to give habits of morality.

By punishments, a subject is very justly cut off from society, who,

having lost the purity of his manners, violates the laws; but if all the

world were to lose their moral habits, would these reestablish them?

Punishments may be justly inflicted to put a stop to many of the

consequences of the general evil, but they will not remove the evil

itself. Thus when the principles of the Chinese government were

discarded, and morality was banished, the state fell into anarchy, and

revolutions succeeded.

18. A Consequence drawn from the preceding Chapter. Hence it follows

that the laws of China are not destroyed by conquest. Their customs,

manners, laws, and religion being the same thing, they cannot change all

these at once; and as it will happen that either the conqueror or the

conquered must change, in China it has always been the conqueror. For

the manners of the conquering nation not being their customs, nor their

customs their laws, nor their laws their religion, it has been more easy

for them to conform by degrees to the vanquished people than the latter

to them.

There still follows hence a very unhappy consequence, which is that it

is almost impossible for Christianity ever to be established in

China.[20] The vows of virginity, the assembling of women in churches,

their necessary communication with the ministers of religion, their

participation in the sacraments, auricular confession, extreme unction,

the marriage of only one wife -- all these overturn the manners and

customs of the country, and with the same blow strike at their religion

and laws.

The Christian religion, by the establishment of charity, by a public

worship, by a participation of the same sacraments, seems to demand that

all should be united; while the rites of China seem to ordain that all

should be separated.

And as we have seen that this separation[21] depends, in general, on the

spirit of despotism, this will show us the reason why monarchies, and

indeed all moderate governments, are more consistent with the Christian

religion.[22]

19. How this Union of Religion, Laws, Manners, and Customs among the

Chinese was effected. The principal object of government which the

Chinese legislators had in view was the peace and tranquillity of the

empire; and subordination appeared to them as the most proper means to

maintain it. Filled with this idea, they believed it their duty to

inspire a respect for parents, and therefore exerted all their power to

effect it. They established an infinite number of rites and ceremonies

to do them honour when living, and after their death. It was impossible

for them to pay such honours to deceased parents without being led to

reverence the living. The ceremonies at the death of a father were more

nearly related to religion; those for a living parent had a greater

relation to the laws, manners, and customs: however, these were only

parts of the same code; but this code was very extensive.

A veneration for their parents was necessarily connected with a suitable

respect for all who represented them; such as old men, masters,

magistrates, and the sovereign. This respect for parents supposed a

return of love towards children, and consequently the same return from

old men to the young, from magistrates to those who were under their

jurisdiction, and from the emperor to his subjects. This formed the

rites, and these rites the general spirit of the nation.

We shall now show the relation which things in appearance the most

indifferent may bear to the fundamental constitution of China. This

empire is formed on the plan of a government of a family. If you

diminish the paternal authority, or even if you retrench the ceremonies

which express your respect for it, you weaken the reverence due to

magistrates, who are considered as fathers; nor would the magistrates

have the same care of the people, whom they ought to look upon as their

children; and that tender relation which subsists between the prince and

his subjects would insensibly be lost. Retrench but one of these habits

and you overturn the state. It is a thing in itself very indifferent

whether the daughter-in-law rises every morning to pay such and such

duties to her mother-in-law; but if we consider that these exterior

habits incessantly revive an idea necessary to be imprinted on all minds

-- an idea that forms the ruling spirit of the empire -- we shall see

that it is necessary that such or such a particular action be performed.

20. Explanation of a Paradox relating to the Chinese. It is very

remarkable that the Chinese, whose lives are guided by rites, are

nevertheless the greatest cheats upon earth. This appears chiefly in

their trade, which, in spite of its natural tendency, has never been

able to make them honest. He who buys of them ought to carry with him

his own weights;[23] every merchant having three sorts, the one heavy

for buying, another light for selling, and another of the true standard

for those who are upon their guard. It is possible, I believe, to

explain this contradiction.

The legislators of China had two objects in view: they were desirous

that the people should be submissive and peaceful, and that they should

also be laborious and industrious. By the nature of the soil and

climate, their subsistence is very precarious; nor can it be in any

other way secured than by industry and labour.

When every one obeys, and every one is employed, the state is in a happy

situation. It is necessity, and perhaps the nature of the climate, that

has given to the Chinese an inconceivable greediness for gain, and laws

have never been made to restrain it. Everything has been forbidden when

acquired by acts of violence; everything permitted when obtained by

artifice or labour. Let us not then compare the morals of China with

those of Europe. Every one in China is obliged to be attentive to what

will be for his advantage; if the cheat has been watchful over his own

interest, he who is the dupe ought to be attentive to his. At Sparta

they were permitted to steal; in China they are suffered to deceive.



21. How the Laws ought to have a Relation to Manners and Customs. It is

only singular institutions which thus confound laws, manners, and

customs -- things naturally distinct and separate; but though they are

in themselves different, there is nevertheless a great relation between

them.

Solon being asked if the laws he had given to the Athenians were the

best, he replied, "I have given them the best they were able to

bear"[24] -- a fine expression, that ought to be perfectly understood by

all legislators! When Divine Wisdom said to the Jews, "I have given you

precepts which are not good," this signified that they had only a

relative goodness; which is the sponge that wipes out all the

difficulties in the law of Moses.

22. The same Subject continued. When a people have pure and regular

manners, their laws become simple and natural. Plato[25] says that

Rhadamanthus, who governed a nation extremely religious, finished every

process with extraordinary despatch, administering only the oath on each

accusation. "But," says the same Plato,[26] "when a people are not

religious we should never have recourse to an oath, except he who swears

is entirely disinterested, as in the case of a judge and a witness."

23. How the Laws are founded on the Manners of a People. At the time

when the manners of the Romans were pure, they had no particular law

against the embezzlement of the public money. When this crime began to

appear, it was thought so infamous, that to be condemned to restore[27]

what they had taken was considered as a sufficient disgrace: for a proof

of this, see the sentence of L. Scipio.[28]

24. The same Subject continued. The laws which gave the right of

tutelage to the mother were most attentive to the preservation of the

infant's person; those which granted it to the next heir were most

attentive to the preservation of the state. When the manners of a people

are corrupted, it is much better to give the tutelage to the mother.

Among those whose laws confide in the manners of the subjects, the

guardianship is granted either to the next heir or to the mother, and

sometimes to both.

If we reflect on the Roman laws, we shall find that the spirit of these

was conformable to what I have advanced. At the time when the laws of

the Twelve Tables were made, the manners of the Romans were most

admirable. The guardianship was given to the nearest relative of the

infant, from a consideration that he ought to have the trouble of the

tutelage who might enjoy the advantage of possessing the inheritance.

They did not imagine the life of the heir in danger though it was put

into a person's hands who would reap a benefit by his death. But when

the manners of Rome were changed, her legislators altered their conduct.

If, in the pupillary substitution," say Gaius[29] and Justinian,[30]

"the testator is afraid that the substitute will lay any snares for the

pupil, he may leave the vulgar substitution open,[31] and put the

pupillary into a part of the testament, which cannot be opened till

after a certain time." These fears and precautions were unknown to the

primitive Romans.

25. The same Subject continued. The Roman law gave the liberty of making

presents before marriage; after the marriage they were not allowed. This

was founded on the manners of the Romans, who were led to marriage only

by frugality, simplicity, and modesty; but might suffer themselves to be

seduced by domestic cares, by complacency, and the constant tenor of

conjugal felicity.

A law of the Visigoths[32] forbade the man giving more to the woman he

was to marry than the tenth part of his substance, and his giving her

anything during the first year of their marriage. This also took its

rise from the manners of the country. The legislators were willing to

put a stop to that Spanish ostentation which only led them to display an

excessive liberality in acts of magnificence.

The Romans by their laws put a stop to some of the inconveniences which

arose from the most durable empire in the world -- that of virtue; the

Spaniards, by theirs, would prevent the bad effects of a tyranny the

most frail and transitory -- that of beauty.

26. The same Subject continued. The law of Theodosius and

Valentinian[33] drew the causes of repudiation from the ancient manners

and customs of the Romans.[34] It placed in the number of these causes

the behaviour of the husband who beat his wife[35] in a manner that

disgraced the character of a free-born woman. This cause was omitted in

the following laws:[36] for their manners, in this respect, had

undergone a change, the eastern customs having banished those of Europe.

The first eunuch of the empress, wife to Justinian II, threatened, says

the historian, to chastise her in the same manner as children are

punished at school. Nothing but established manners, or those which they

were seeking to establish, could raise even an idea of this kind.



We have seen how the laws follow the manners of a people; let us now

observe how the manners follow the laws.

27. How the Laws contribute to form the Manners, Customs, and Character

of a Nation. The customs of an enslaved people are a part of their

servitude, those of a free people are a part of their liberty.



I have spoken in the eleventh book[37] of a free people, and have given

the principles of their constitution: let us now see the effects which

follow from this liberty, the character it is capable of forming, and

the customs which naturally result from it.

I do not deny that the climate may have produced a great part of the

laws, manners, and customs of this nation; but I maintain that its

manners and customs have a close connection with its laws.



As there are in this state two visible powers -- the legislative and

executive, and as every citizen has a will of his own, and may at

pleasure assert his independence, most men have a greater fondness for

one of these powers than for the other, and the multitude have commonly

neither equity nor sense enough to show an equal affection to both.



And as the executive power, by disposing of all employments, may give

great hopes, and no fears, every man who obtains any favour from it is

ready to espouse its cause; while it is liable to be attacked by those

who have nothing to hope from it.

All the passions being unrestrained, hatred, envy, jealousy, and an

ambitious desire of riches and honours, appears in their extent; were it

otherwise, the state would be in the condition of a man weakened by

sickness, who is without passions because he is without strength.



The hatred which arises between the two parties will always subsist,

because it will always be impotent.

These parties being composed of freemen, if the one becomes too powerful

for the other, as a consequence of liberty, this other is depressed;

while the citizens take the weaker side with the same readiness as the

hands lend their assistance to remove the infirmities and disorders of

the body.

Every individual is independent, and being commonly led by caprice and

humour, frequently changes parties; he abandons one where he left all

his friends, to unite himself to another in which he finds all his

enemies: so that in this nation it frequently happens that the people

forget the laws of friendship, as well as those of hatred.

The sovereign is here in the same case with a private person; and

against the ordinary maxims of prudence is frequently obliged to give

his confidence to those who have most offended him, and to disgrace the

men who have best served him: he does that by necessity which other

princes do by choice.

As we are afraid of being deprived of the blessing we already enjoy, and

which may be disguised and misrepresented to us; and as fear always

enlarges objects, the people are uneasy under such a situation, and

believe themselves in danger, even in those moments when they are most

secure.

As those who with the greatest warmth oppose the executive power dare

not avow the self-interested motives of their opposition, so much the

more do they increase the terrors of the people, who can never be

certain whether they are in danger or not. But even this contributes to

make them avoid the real dangers, to which they may, in the end, be

exposed.

But the legislative body having the confidence of the people, and being

more enlightened than they, may calm their uneasiness, and make them

recover from the bad impressions they have entertained.

This is the great advantage which this government has over the ancient

democracies, in which the people had an immediate power; for when they

were moved and agitated by the orators, these agitations always produced

their effect.

But when an impression of terror has no certain object, it produces only

clamour and abuse; it has, however, this good effect, that it puts all

the springs of government into motion, and fixes the attention of every

citizen. But if it arises from a violation of the fundamental laws, it

is sullen, cruel, and produces the most dreadful catastrophes.



Soon we should see a frightful calm, during which every one would unite

against that power which had violated the laws.

If, when the uneasiness proceeds from no certain object, some foreign

power should threaten the state, or put its prosperity or its glory in

danger, the little interests of party would then yield to the more

strong and binding, and there would be a perfect coalition in favour of

the executive power.

But if the disputes were occasioned by a violation of the fundamental

laws, and a foreign power should appear, there would be a revolution

that would neither alter the constitution nor the form of government.

For a revolution formed by liberty becomes a confirmation of liberty.



A free nation may have a deliverer: a nation enslaved can have only

another oppressor.

For whoever is able to dethrone an absolute prince has a power

sufficient to become absolute himself.

As the enjoyment of liberty, and even its support and preservation,

consists in every man's being allowed to speak his thoughts, and to lay

open his sentiments, a citizen in this state will say or write whatever

the laws do not expressly forbid to be said or written.

A people like this, being always in a ferment, are more easily conducted

by their passions than by reason, which never produces any great effect

in the mind of man; it is therefore easy for those who govern to make

them undertake enterprises contrary to their true interest.



This nation is passionately fond of liberty, because this liberty is

real; and it is possible for it, in its defence, to sacrifice its

wealth, its ease, its interest, and to support the burden of the

heaviest taxes, even such as a despotic prince durst not lay upon his

subjects.

But as the people have a certain knowledge of the necessity of

submitting to those taxes, they pay them from the well-founded hope of

their discontinuance; their burdens are heavy, but they do not feel

their weight; whilst in other states the uneasiness is infinitely

greater than the evil.

This nation must therefore have a fixed and certain credit, because it

borrows of itself and pays itself. It is possible for it to undertake

things above its natural strength, and employ against its enemies

immense sums of fictitious riches, which the credit and nature of the

government may render real.

To preserve its liberty, it borrows of its subjects: and the subjects,

seeing that its credit would be lost if ever it were conquered, have a

new motive to make fresh efforts in defence of its liberty.

This nation, inhabiting an island, is not fond of conquering, because it

would be weakened by distant conquests -- especially as the soil of the

island is good, for it has then no need of enriching itself by war; and

as no citizen is subject to another, each sets a greater value on his

own liberty than on the glory of one or any number of citizens.

Military men are there regarded as belonging to a profession which may

be useful but is often dangerous, and as men whose very services are

burdensome to the nation: civil qualifications are therefore more

esteemed than the military.

This nation, which liberty and the laws render easy, on being freed from

pernicious prejudices, has become a trading people; and as it has some

of those primitive materials of trade out of which are manufactured such

things as from the artist's hand receive a considerable value, it has

made settlements proper to procure the enjoyment of this gift of heaven

in its fullest extent.

As this nation is situated towards the north, and has many superfluous

commodities, it must want also a great amount of merchandise which its

climate will not produce: it has therefore entered into a great and

necessary intercourse with the southern nations; and making choice of

those states whom it is willing to favour with an advantageous commerce,

it enters into such treaties with the nation it has chosen as are

reciprocally useful to both.

In a state where, on the one hand, the opulence is extreme, and on the

other the taxes are excessive, they are hardly able to live on a small

fortune without industry. Many, therefore, under a pretence of

travelling, or of health, retire from among them, and go in search of

plenty, even to the countries of slavery.

A trading nation has a prodigious number of little particular interests;

it may then injure or be injured in an infinite number of ways. Thus it

becomes immoderately jealous, and is more afflicted at the prosperity of

others than it rejoices at its own.

And its laws, otherwise mild and easy, may be so rigid with respect to

the trade and navigation carried on with it, that it may seem to trade

only with enemies.

If this nation sends colonies abroad, it must rather be to extend its

commerce than its dominion.

As men are fond of introducing into other places what they have

established among themselves, they have given the people of the colonies

their own form of government; and this government carrying prosperity

along with it, they have raised great nations in the forests they were

sent to inhabit.

Having formerly subdued a neighbouring nation, which by its situation,

the goodness of its ports, and the nature of its products, inspires it

with jealousy, though it has given this nation its own laws, yet it

holds it in great dependence: the subjects there are free and the state

itself in slavery.

The conquered state has an excellent civil government, but is oppressed

by the law of nations. Laws are imposed by one country on the other, and

these are such as render its prosperity precarious and dependent on the

will of a master.

The ruling nation inhabiting a large island, and being in possession of

a great trade, has with extraordinary ease grown powerful at sea; and as

the preservation of its liberties requires that it should have neither

strongholds nor fortresses nor land forces, it has occasion for a

formidable navy to defend it against invasions; a navy which must be

superior to that of all other powers, who, employing their treasures in

wars on land, have not sufficient for those at sea.

The empire of the sea has always given those who have enjoyed it a

natural pride; because, thinking themselves capable of extending their

insults wherever they please, they imagine that their power is as

boundless as the ocean.

This nation has a great influence in the affairs of its neighbours; for

as its power is not employed in conquests, its friendship is more

courted, and its resentment more dreaded, than could naturally be

expected from the inconstancy of its government, and its domestic

divisions.

Thus it is the fate of the executive power to be almost always disturbed

at home and respected abroad.

Should this nation on some occasions become the centre of the

negotiations of Europe, probity and good faith would be carried to a

greater height than in other places; because the ministers being

frequently obliged to justify their conduct before a popular council,

their negotiations could not be secret; and they would be forced to be,

in this respect, a little more honest.

Besides, as they would in some sort be answerable for the events which

an irregular conduct might produce, the surest, the safest way for them

would be to take the straightest path.

If the nobles were formerly possessed of an immoderate power, and the

monarch had found the means of abasing them by raising the people, the

point of extreme servitude must have been that between humbling the

nobility and that in which the people began to feel their power.

Thus this nation, having been formerly subject to an arbitrary power, on

many occasions preserves the style of it, in such a manner as to let us

frequently see upon the foundation of a free government the form of an

absolute monarchy.

With regard to religion, as in this state every subject has a free will,

and must consequently be either conducted by the light of his own mind

or by the caprice of fancy, it necessarily follows that every one must

either look upon all religion with indifference, by which means they are

led to embrace the established religion, or they must be zealous for

religion in general, by which means the number of sects is increased.



It is not impossible but that in this nation there may be men of no

religion, who would not, however, bear to be obliged to change that

which they would choose, if they cared to choose any; for they would

immediately perceive that their lives and fortunes are not more

peculiarly theirs than their manner of thinking, and that whoever would

deprive them of the one might even with better reason take away the

other.

If, among the different religions, there is one that has been attempted

to be established by methods of slavery, it must there be odious;

because as we judge of things by the appendages we join with them, it

could never present itself to the mind in conjunction with the idea of

liberty.

The laws against those who profess this religion could not, however, be

of the sanguinary kind; for liberty can never inflict such punishments;

but they may be so rigorous as to do all the mischief that can be done

in cold blood.

It is possible that a thousand circumstances might concur to give the

clergy so little credit, that other citizens may have more. Therefore,

instead of a separation, they have chosen rather to support the same

burdens as the laity, and in this respect to make only one body with

them; but as they always seek to conciliate the respect of the people,

they distinguish themselves by a more retired life, a conduct more

reserved, and a greater purity of manners.

The clergy not being able to protect religion, nor to be protected by

it, only seek to persuade; their pens therefore furnish us with

excellent works in proof of a revelation and of the providence of the

Supreme Being.

Yet the state prevents the sitting of their assemblies, and does not

suffer them to correct their own abuses; it chooses thus, through a

caprice of liberty, rather to leave their reformation imperfect than to

suffer the clergy to be the reformers.

Those dignities which make a fundamental part of the constitution are

more fixed than elsewhere; but, on the other hand, the great in this

country of liberty are nearer upon a level with the people; their ranks

are more separated, and their persons more confounded.

As those who govern have a power which, in some measure, has need of

fresh vigour every day, they have a greater regard for such as are

useful to them than for those who only contribute to their amusement: we

see, therefore, fewer courtiers, flatterers, and parasites; in short,

fewer of all those who make their own advantage of the folly of the

great.

Men are less esteemed for frivolous talents and attainments than for

essential qualities; and of this kind there are but two, riches and

personal merit.

They enjoy a solid luxury, founded, not on the refinements of vanity,

but on that of real wants; they ask nothing of nature but what nature

can bestow.

The rich enjoy a great superfluity of fortune, and yet have no relish

for frivolous amusements; thus, many having more wealth than

opportunities of expense, employ it in a fantastic manner: in this

nation they have more judgment than taste.

As they are always employed about their own interest, they have not that

politeness which is founded on indolence; and they really have not

leisure to attain it.

The era of Roman politeness is the same as that of the establishment of

arbitrary power. An absolute government produces indolence, and this

gives birth to politeness.

The more people there are in a nation who require circumspect behaviour,

and care not to displease, the more there is of politeness. But it is

rather the politeness of morals than that of manners which ought to

distinguish us from barbarous nations.

In a country where every man has, in some sort, a share in the

administration of the government, the women ought scarcely to live with

the men. They are therefore modest, that is, timid; and this timidity

constitutes their virtue: whilst the men without a taste for gallantry

plunge themselves into a debauchery, which leaves them at leisure, and

in the enjoyment of their full liberty.

Their laws not being made for one individual more than another, each

considers himself a monarch; and, indeed, the men of this nation are

rather confederates than fellow-subjects.

As the climate has given many persons a restless spirit and extended

views, in a country where the constitution gives every man a share in

its government and political interests, conversation generally turns

upon politics: and we see men spend their lives in the calculation of

events which, considering the nature of things and the caprices of

fortune, or rather of men, can scarcely be thought subject to the rules

of calculation.

In a free nation it is very often a matter of indifference whether

individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason:

hence springs that liberty which is a security from the effects of these

reasonings.

But in a despotic government, it is equally pernicious whether they

reason well or ill; their reasoning is alone sufficient to shock the

principle of that government.

Many people who have no desire of pleasing abandon themselves to their

own particular humour; and most of those who have wit and ingenuity are

ingenious in tormenting themselves: filled with contempt or disgust for

all things, they are unhappy amidst all the blessings that can possibly

contribute to promote their felicity.

As no subject fears another, the whole nation is proud; for the pride of

kings is founded only on their independence.

Free nations are haughty; others may more properly be called vain.



But as these men who are naturally so proud live much by themselves,

they are commonly bashful when they appear among strangers; and we

frequently see them behave for a considerable time with an odd mixture

of pride and ill-placed shame.

The character of the nation is more particularly discovered in their

literary performances, in which we find the men of thought and deep

meditation.

As society gives us a sense of the ridicule of mankind, retirement

renders us more fit to reflect on the folly of vice. Their satirical

writings are sharp and severe, and we find among them many Juvenals,

without discovering one Horace.

In monarchies extremely absolute, historians betray the truth, because

they are not at liberty to speak it; in states remarkably free, they

betray the truth, because of their liberty itself; which always produces

divisions, every one becoming as great a slave to the prejudices of his

faction as he could be in a despotic state.

Their poets have more frequently an original rudeness of invention than

that particular kind of delicacy which springs from taste; we there find

something which approaches nearer to the bold strength of a Michæl

Angelo than to the softer graces of a Raphæl.

______

1. They cut out the tongues of the advocates, and cried, "Viper, don't

hiss." -- Tacitus.

2. Agathias, iv.

3. Justin, xxxviii.

4. Calumnias litium -- Ibid.

5. Tacitus.

6. He has described this interview, which happened in 1596, in the

Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East

India Company, iii, part I, p. 33.

7. Book liv. 17, p. 532.

8. Fable of the Bees.

9. The people who follow the khan of Malacamber, those of Carnataca and

Coromandel, are proud and indolent; they consume little, because they

are miserably poor; while the subjects of the Mogul and the people of

Hindostan employ themselves, and enjoy the conveniences of life, like

the Europeans. -- Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the

Establishment of the East India Company, i, p. 54.

10. See Dampier, iii.

11. Edifying Letters, coll. xil, p. 80.

12. Book xliii. 2.

13. By the nature of the soil and climate.

14. Father Du Halde, ii.

15. Father Du Halde.

16. Moses made the same code for laws and religion. The old Romans

confounded the ancient customs with the laws.

17. See Father Du Halde.

18. See the classic books from which Father Du Halde gives us some

excellent extracts.

19. It is this which has established emulation, which has banished

laziness, and cultivated a love of learning.

20. See the reasons given by the Chinese magistrates in their decrees

for proscribing the Christian religion. Edifying Letters, coll. xvii.

21. See iv. 3, xix. 13.

22. See xxiv. 3.

23. Lange, Journal in 1721 and 1722; in Voyages to the North, viii, p.
363.

24. Plutarch, Solon.

25. Laws, xii.

26. Ibid., xii.

27. In simplum.

28. Livy, xxxviii.

29. Institutes, ii. tit. 6, § 2. Ozel's compilation, Leyden, 1658.

30. Ibid., ii., De Pupil. substit. § 3.

31. The form of the vulgar substitution ran thus: "If such a one is

unwilling to take the inheritance, I substitute in his stead," &c.; the

pupillary substitution: "If such a one dies before he arrives at the age

of puberty, I substitute," &c.

32. Book iii, tit. 5, § 5.

33. Leg. 8, Cod., De Repud.

34. And the law of the Twelve Tables. See Cicero, Philipp., ii. 69.

35. Si verberibus qua ingenuis aliena sunt, afficientem probaverit.

36. In Nov. 117, cap. xiv.

37. Chapter 6.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book XX. Of Laws in Relation to Commerce, Considered in its Nature

and Distinctions

1. Of Commerce. The following subjects deserve to be treated in a more

extensive manner than the nature of this work will permit. Fain would I

glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost

a general rule that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce

flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with

agreeable manners.

Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now less savage than

formerly. Commerce has everywhere diffused a knowledge of the manners of

all nations: these are compared one with another, and from this

comparison arise the greatest advantages.

Commercial laws, it may be said, improve manners tor the same reason

that they destroy them. They corrupt the purest morals.[1] This was the

subject of Plato's complaints; and we every day see that they polish and

refine the most barbarous.

2. Of the Spirit of Commerce. Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two

nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for

if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling:

and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.

But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same

manner unite individuals. We see that in countries[2] where the people

move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the

humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which

humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money.



The spirit of trade produces in the mind of a man a certain sense of

exact justice, opposite, on the one hand, to robbery, and on the other

to those moral virtues which forbid our always adhering rigidly to the

rules of private interest, and suffer us to neglect this for the

advantage of others.

The total privation of trade, on the contrary, produces robbery, which

Aristotle ranks in the number of means of acquiring; yet it is not at

all inconsistent with certain moral virtues. Hospitality, for instance,

is most rare in trading countries, while it is found in the most

admirable perfection among nations of vagabonds.

It is a sacrilege, says Tacitus, for a German to shut his door against

any man whomsoever, whether known or unknown. He who has behaved with

hospitality to a stranger goes to show him another house where this

hospitality is also practised; and he is there received with the same

humanity.[3] But when the Germans had founded kingdoms, hospitality had

become burdensome. This appears by two laws of the code of the

Burgundians;[4] one of which inflicted a penalty on every barbarian who

presumed to show a stranger the house of a Roman; and the other decreed

that whoever received a stranger should be indemnified by the

inhabitants, every one being obliged to pay his proper proportion.

3. Of the Poverty of the People. There are two sorts of poor; those who

are rendered such by the severity of government: these are, indeed,

incapable of performing almost any great action, because their indigence

is a consequence of their slavery. Others are poor, only because they

either despise or know not the conveniences of life; and these are

capable of accomplishing great things, because their poverty constitutes

a part of their liberty.

4. Of Commerce in different Governments. Trade has some relation to

forms of government. In a monarchy, it is generally founded on luxury;

and though it be also founded on real wants, yet the principal view with

which it is carried on is to procure everything that can contribute to

the pride, the pleasure, and the capricious whims of the nation. In

republics, it is commonly founded on economy. Their merchants, having an

eye to all the nations of the earth, bring from one what is wanted by

another. It is thus that the republics of Tyre, Carthage, Athens,

Marseilles, Florence, Venice, and Holland engaged in commerce.



This kind of traffic has a natural relation to a republican government:

to monarchies it is only occasional. For as it is founded on the

practice of gaining little, and even less than other nations, and of

remedying this by gaining incessantly, it can hardly be carried on by a

people swallowed up in luxury, who spend much, and see nothing but

objects of grandeur.

Cicero was of this opinion, when he so justly said, "I do not like that

the same people should be at once both the lords and factors of the

whole earth."[5] For this would, indeed, be to suppose that every

individual in the state, and the whole state collectively, had their

heads constantly filled with grand views, and at the same time with

small ones; which is a contradiction.

Not but that the most noble enterprises are completed also in those

states which subsist by economical commerce: they have even an

intrepidity not to be found in monarchies. And the reason is this:



One branch of commerce leads to another, the small to the moderate, the

moderate to the great; thus he who has gratified his desire of gaining a

little raises himself to a situation in which he is not less desirous of

gaining a great deal.

Besides, the grand enterprises of merchants are always necessarily

connected with the affairs of the public. But, in monarchies, these

public affairs give as much distrust to the merchants as in free states

they appear to give safety. Great enterprises, therefore, in commerce

are not for monarchical, but for republican, governments.

In short, an opinion of greater certainty, as to the possession of

property in these states, makes them undertake everything. They flatter

themselves with the hopes of receiving great advantages from the smiles

of fortune; and thinking themselves sure of what they have already

acquired, they boldly expose it in order to acquire more; risking

nothing, but as the means of obtaining.

I do not pretend to say that any monarchy is entirely excluded from an

economical commerce; but of its own nature it has less tendency towards

it: neither do I mean that the republics with which we are acquainted

are absolutely deprived of the commerce of luxury; but it is less

connected with their constitution.

With regard to a despotic state, there is no occasion to mention it. A

general rule: A nation in slavery labours more to preserve than to

acquire; a free nation, more to acquire than to preserve.

5. Of Nations that have entered into an economical Commerce. Marseilles,

a necessary retreat in the midst of a tempestuous sea; Marseilles, a

harbour which all the winds, the shelves of the sea, the disposition of

the coasts, point out for a landing-place, became frequented by

mariners; while the sterility of the adjacent country determined the

citizens to an economical commerce.[6] It was necessary that they should

be laborious to supply what nature had refused; that they should be

just, in order to live among barbarous nations, from whom they were to

derive their prosperity; that they should be moderate, to the end that

they might always taste the sweets of a tranquil government; in fine,

that they should be frugal in their manners, to enable them to subsist

by trade -- a trade the more certain as it was less advantageous.

We everywhere see violence and oppression give birth to a commerce

founded on economy, while men are constrained to take refuge in marshes,

in isles, in the shallows of the sea, and even on rocks themselves. Thus

it was that Tyre, Venice, and the cities of Holland were founded.

Fugitives found there a place of safety. It was necessary that they

should subsist; they drew, therefore, their subsistence from all parts

of the world.

6. Some Effects of an extensive Navigation. It sometimes happens that a

nation, when engaged in an economical commerce, having need of the

merchandise of one country, which serves as a capital or stock for

procuring the commodities of another, is satisfied with making very

little profit, and frequently none at all, in trading with the former,

in expectation of gaining greatly by the latter. Thus, when the Dutch

were almost the only nation that carried on the trade from the south to

the north of Europe; the French wines which they imported to the north

were in some measure only a capital or stock for conducting their

commerce in that part of the world.

It is a known fact that there are some kinds of merchandise in Holland

which, though imported from afar, sell for very little more than they

cost upon the spot. They account for it thus: a captain who has occasion

to ballast his ship will load it with marble; if he wants wood for

stowage, he will buy it; and, provided he loses nothing by the bargain,

he will think himself a gainer. Thus it is that Holland has its quarries

and its forests.

Further, it may happen so that not only a commerce which brings in

nothing shall be useful, but even a losing trade shall be beneficial. I

have heard it affirmed in Holland that the whale fishery in general does

not answer the expense; but it must be observed that the persons

employed in building the ships, as also those who furnish the rigging

and provisions, are jointly concerned in the fishery. Should they happen

to lose in the voyage, they have had a profit in fitting out the vessel.

This commerce, in short, is a kind of lottery, and every one is allured

with the hopes of a prize. Mankind are generally fond of gaming; and

even the most prudent have no aversion to it, when the disagreeable

circumstances attending it, such as dissipation, anxiety, passion, loss

of time, and even of life and fortune, are concealed from their view.



7. The Spirit of England with respect to Commerce. The tariff or customs

of England are very unsettled with respect to other nations; they are

changed, in some measure, with every parliament, either by taking off

particular duties, or by imposing new ones. They endeavour by these

means still to preserve their independence. Supremely jealous with

respect to trade, they bind themselves but little by treaties, and

depend only on their own laws.

Other nations have made the interests of commerce yield to those of

politics; the English, on the contrary, have ever made their political

interests give way to those of commerce. They know better than any other

people upon earth how to value, at the same time, these three great

advantages -- religion, commerce, and liberty.

8. In what Manner economical Commerce has been sometimes restrained. In

several kingdoms laws have been made extremely proper to humble the

states that have entered into economical commerce. They have forbidden

their importing any merchandise, except the product of their respective

countries; and have permitted them to traffic only in vessels built in

the kingdom to which they brought their commodities.

It is necessary that the kingdom which imposes these laws should itself

be able easily to engage in commerce; otherwise it will, at least, be an

equal sufferer. It is much more advantageous to trade with a commercial

nation, whose profits are moderate, and who are rendered in some sort

dependent by the affairs of commerce; with a nation whose larger views

and whose extended trade enables them to dispose of their superfluous

merchandise; with a wealthy nation, who can take off many of their

commodities, and make them a quicker return in specie; with a nation

under a kind of necessity to be faithful, pacific from principle, and

that seeks to gain, and not to conquer: it is much better, I say, to

trade with such a notion than with others, their constant rivals, who

will never grant such great advantages.

9. Of the Prohibition of Commerce. It is a true maxim that one nation

should never exclude another from trading with it, except for very great

reasons. The Japanese trade only with two nations, the Chinese and the

Dutch. The Chinese[7] gain a thousand per cent upon sugars, and

sometimes as much by the goods they take in exchange. The Dutch make

nearly the same profits. Every nation that acts upon Japanese principles

must necessarily be deceived; for it is competition which sets a just

value on merchandise, and establishes the relation between them.



Much less ought a state to lay itself under an obligation of selling its

manufactures only to a single nation, under a pretence of their taking

all at a certain price. The Poles, in this manner, dispose of their corn

to the city of Danzig; and several Indian princes have made a like

contract for their spices with the Dutch.[8] These agreements are proper

only for a poor nation, whose inhabitants are satisfied to forego the

hopes of enriching themselves, provided they can be secure of a certain

subsistence; or for nations whose slavery consists either in renouncing

the use of those things which nature has given them, or in being obliged

to submit to a disadvantageous commerce.

10. An Institution adapted to economical Commerce. In states that carry

on an economical commerce, they have luckily established banks, which by

their credit have formed a new species of wealth: but it would be quite

wrong to introduce them into governments whose commerce is founded only

on luxury. The erecting of banks in countries governed by an absolute

monarch supposes money on the one side, and on the other power: that is,

on the one hand, the means of procuring everything, without any power;

and on the other, the power, without any means of procuring at all. In a

government of this kind, none but the prince ever had, or can have, a

treasure; and wherever there is one, it no sooner becomes great than it

becomes the treasure of the prince.

For the same reason, all associations of merchants, in order to carry on

a particular commerce, are seldom proper in absolute governments. The

design of these companies is to give to the wealth of private persons

the weight of public riches. But in those governments this weight can be

found only in the prince. Nay, they are not even always proper in states

engaged in economical commerce; for, if the trade be not so great as to

surpass the management of particular persons, it is much better to leave

it open than, by exclusive privileges, to restrain the liberty of

commerce.

11. The same Subject continued. A free port may be established in the

dominions of states whose commerce is economical. That economy in the

government which always attends the frugality of individuals is, if I

may so express myself, the soul of its economical commerce. The loss it

sustains with respect to customs it can repair by drawing from the

wealth and industry of the republic. But in a monarchy a step of this

kind must be opposite to reason; for it could have no other effect than

to ease luxury of the weight of taxes. This would be depriving itself of

the only advantage that luxury can procure, and of the only curb which,

in a constitution like this, it is capable of receiving.

12. Of the Freedom of Commerce. The freedom of commerce is not a power

granted to the merchants to do what they please: this would be more

properly its slavery. The constraint of the merchant is not the

constraint of commerce. It is in the freest countries that the merchant

finds innumerable obstacles; and he is never less crossed by laws than

in a country of slaves.

England prohibits the exportation of her wool; coals must be brought by

sea to the capital; no horses, except geldings, are allowed to be

exported; and the vessels of her colonies trading to Europe must take in

water in England.[9] The English constrain the merchant, but it is in

favour of commerce.

13. What it is that destroys this Liberty. Wherever commerce subsists,

customs are established. Commerce is the exportation and importation of

merchandise, with a view to the advantage of the state: customs are a

certain right over this same exportation and importation, founded also

on the advantage of the state. Hence it becomes necessary that the state

should be neutral between its customs and its commerce, that neither of

these two interfere with each other, and then the inhabitants enjoy a

free commerce.

The farming of the customs destroys commerce by its injustice and

vexations, as well as by the excess of the imposts: but independent of

this, it destroys it even more by the difficulties that arise from it,

and by the formalities it exacts. In England, where the customs are

managed by the king's officers, business is negotiated with a singular

dexterity: one word of writing accomplishes the greatest affairs. The

merchant needs not lose an infinite deal of time; he has no occasion for

a particular commissioner, either to obviate all the difficulties of the

farmers, or to submit to them.

14. The Laws of Commerce concerning the Confiscation of Merchandise. The

Magna Charta of England forbids the seizing and confiscating, in case of

war, the effects of foreign merchants, except by way of reprisals. It is

an honour to the English nation that they have made this one of the

articles of their liberty.

In the late war between Spain and England, the former made a law which

punished with death those who brought English merchandise into the

dominions of Spain; and the same penalty on those who carried Spanish

merchandise into England.[10] An ordinance like this cannot, I believe,

find a precedent in any laws but those of Japan. It equally shocks

humanity, the spirit of commerce, and the harmony which ought to subsist

in the proportion of penalties; it confounds all our ideas, making that

a crime against the state which is only a violation of civil polity.

15. Of seizing the Persons of Merchants. Solon made a law that the

Athenians should no longer seize the body for civil debts.[11] This law

he received from Egypt. It had been made by Boccoris, and renewed by

Sesostris.[12]

This law is extremely good with respect to the generality of civil

affairs; but there is sufficient reason for its not being observed in

those of commerce.[13] For as merchants are obliged to entrust large

sums, frequently for a very short time, and to pay money as well as to

receive it, there is a necessity that the debtor should constantly

fulfil his engagements at the time prefixed; and hence it becomes

necessary to lay a constraint on his person.

In affairs relating to common civil contracts, the law ought not to

permit the seizure of the person; because the liberty of one citizen is

of greater importance to the public than the ease or prosperity of

another. But in conventions derived from commerce, the law ought to

consider the public prosperity as of greater importance than the liberty

of a citizen; which, however, does not hinder the restrictions and

limitations that humanity and good policy demand.

16. An excellent Law. Admirable is that law of Geneva which excludes

from the magistracy, and even from the admittance into the great

council, the children of those who have lived or died insolvent, except

they have discharged their father's debts. It has this effect: it

creates a confidence in the merchants, in the magistrates, and in the

city itself. There the credit of the individual has still all the weight

of public credit.

17. A Law of Rhodes.[14] The inhabitants of Rhodes went further. Sextus

Empiricus observes that among those people a son could not be excused

from paying his father's debts by renouncing the succession. This law of

Rhodes was calculated for a republic founded on commerce. Now I am

inclined to think that reasons drawn from commerce itself should make

this limitation, that the debts contracted by the father since the son's

entering into commerce should not affect the estate or property acquired

by the latter. A merchant ought always to know his obligations, and to

square his conduct by his circumstances and present fortune.

18. Of the Judges of Commerce. Xenophon, in his book of Revenues, would

have rewards given to those overseers of commerce who despatched the

causes brought before them with the greatest expedition. He was sensible

of the need of our modern jurisdiction of a consul.

The affairs of commerce are but little susceptible of formalities. They

are the actions of a day, and are every day followed by others of the

same nature. Hence it becomes necessary that every day they should be

decided. It is otherwise with those actions of life which have a

principal influence on futurity, but rarely happen. We seldom marry more

than once; deeds and wills are not the work of every day; we are but

once of age.

Plato[15] says that in a city where there is no maritime commerce there

ought not to be above half the number of civil laws: this is very true.

Commerce brings into the same country different kinds of people; it

introduces also a great number of contracts and species of wealth, with

various ways of acquiring it.

Thus in a trading city there are fewer judges, and more laws.

19. That a Prince ought not to engage himself in Commerce.

Theophilus,[16] seeing a vessel laden with merchandise for his wife

Theodora, ordered it to be burned. "I am emperor," said he, "and you

make me the master of a galley. By what means shall these poor men gain

a livelihood if we take their trade out of their hands?" He might have

added. Who shall set bounds to us if we monopolise all ourselves? Who

shall oblige us to fulfil our engagements? Our courtiers will follow our

example; they will be more greedy and more unjust than we: the people

have some confidence in our justice, they will have none in our

opulence: all these numerous duties, the cause of their wants, are

certain proofs of ours.

20. The same Subject continued. When the Portuguese and Castilians bore

sway in the East Indies, commerce had such opulent branches that their

princes did not fail to seize them. This ruined their settlements in

those parts of the world.

The viceroy of Goa granted exclusive privileges to particular persons.

The people had no confidence in these men; and the commerce declined, by

the perpetual change of those to whom it was entrusted; nobody took care

to improve it, or to leave it entire to his successor. In short, the

profit centred in a few hands, and was not sufficiently extended.

21. Of the Commerce of the Nobility in a Monarchy. In a monarchical

government, it is contrary to the spirit of commerce that any of the

nobility should be merchants. "This," said the Emperors Honorius and

Theodosius,[17] "would be pernicious to cities; and would remove the

facility of buying and selling between the merchants and the plebeians."



It is contrary to the spirit of monarchy to admit the nobility into

commerce. The custom of suffering the nobility of England to trade is

one of those things which has there mostly contributed to weaken the

monarchical government.

22. A singular Reflection. Persons struck with the practice of some

states imagine that in France they ought to make laws to engage the

nobility to enter into commerce. But these laws would be the means of

destroying the nobility, without being of any advantage to trade. The

practice of this country is extremely wise; merchants are not nobles,

though they may become so. They have the hopes of obtaining a degree of

nobility, unattended with its actual inconveniences. There is no surer

way of being advanced above their profession than to manage it well, or

with success; the consequence of which is generally an affluent fortune.



Laws which oblige every one to continue in his profession, and to

devolve it upon his children, neither are nor can be of use in any but

despotic kingdoms; where nobody either can or ought to have

emulation.[18]

Let none say that every one will succeed better in his profession when

he cannot change it for another: I say that a person will succeed best

when those who have excelled hope to rise to another.

The possibility of purchasing honour with gold encourages many merchants

to put themselves in circumstances by which they may attain it. I do not

take it upon me to examine the justice of thus bartering for money the

price of virtue. There are governments where this may be very useful.



In France the dignity of the long robe, which places those who wear it

between the great nobility and the people, and without having such

shining honours as the former, has all their privileges; a dignity

which, while this body, the depositary of the laws, is encircled with

glory, leaves the private members in a mediocrity of fortune; a dignity

in which there are no other means of distinction but by a superior

capacity and virtue, yet which still leaves in view one much more

illustrious: the warlike nobility, likewise, who conceive that, whatever

degree of wealth they are possessed of, they may still increase their

fortunes; who are ashamed of augmenting, if they begin not with

dissipating, their estates; who always serve their prince with their

whole capital stock, and when that is sunk make room for others, who

follow their example; who take the field that they may never be

reproached with not having been there; who, when they can no longer hope

for riches, live in expectation of honours; and when they have not

obtained the latter, enjoy the consolation of having acquired glory: all

these things together have necessarily contributed to augment the

grandeur of this kingdom; and if for two or three centuries it has been

incessantly increasing in power, this must be attributed not to Fortune,

who was never famed for constancy, but to the goodness of its laws.

23. To what Nations Commerce is prejudicial. Riches consist either in

lands or in movable effects. The soil of every country is commonly

possessed by the natives. The laws of most states render foreigners

unwilling to purchase their lands; and nothing but the presence of the

owner improves them: this kind of riches, therefore, belongs to every

state in particular; but movable effects, as money, notes, bills of

exchange, stocks in companies, vessels, and, in fine, all merchandise,

belong to the whole world in general; in this respect, it is composed of

but one single state, of which all the societies upon earth are members.

The people who possess more of these movable effects than any other on

the globe are the most opulent. Some states have an immense quantity

acquired by their commodities, by the labour of their mechanics, by

their industry, by their discoveries, and even by chance. The avarice of

nations makes them quarrel for the movables of the whole universe. If we

could find a state so unhappy as to be deprived of the effects of other

countries, and at the same time of almost all its own, the proprietors

of the lands would be only planters to foreigners. This state, wanting

all, could acquire nothing; therefore, it would be much better for the

inhabitants not to have the least commerce with any nation upon earth,

for commerce in these circumstances must necessarily lead them to

poverty.

A country that constantly exports fewer manufactures or commodities than

it receives will soon find the balance sinking; it will receive less and

less, until, falling into extreme poverty, it will receive nothing at

all.

In trading countries the specie, which suddenly vanishes, quickly

returns; because those nations that have received it are its debtors.

But it never returns into those states of which we have just been

speaking, because those who have received it owe them nothing.



Poland will serve us for an example. It has scarcely any of those things

which we call the movable effects of the universe, except corn, the

produce of its lands. Some of the lords possess entire provinces; they

oppress the husbandmen, in order to have greater quantities of corn,

which they send to strangers, to procure the superfluous demands of

luxury. If Poland had no foreign trade, its inhabitants would be

happier. The grandees, who would have only their corn, would give it to

their peasants for subsistence; as their too extensive estates would

become burdensome, they would divide them among their peasants; every

one would find skins or wool in their herds or flocks, so that they

would no longer be at an immense expense in providing clothes; the

great, who are ever fond of luxury, not being able to find it but in

their own country, would encourage the labour of the poor. This nation,

I affirm, would then become more flourishing, at least if it did not

become barbarous; and this the laws might easily prevent.

Let us next consider Japan. The vast quantity of what they receive is

the cause of the vast quantity of merchandise they send abroad. Things

are thus in as nice an equilibrium as if the importation and exportation

were but small. Besides, this kind of exuberance in the state is

productive of a thousand advantages; there is a greater consumption, a

greater quantity of those things on which the arts are exercised; more

men employed, and more numerous means of acquiring power; exigencies may

also happen that require a speedy assistance, which so opulent a state

can better afford than any other. It is difficult for a country to avoid

having superfluities; but it is the nature of commerce to render the

superfluous useful, and the useful necessary. The state will be,

therefore, able to afford necessaries to a much greater number of

subjects.

Let us say, then, that it is not those nations who have need of nothing

that must lose by trade; it is those who have need of everything. It is

not such people as have a sufficiency within themselves, but those who

are most in want, that will find an advantage in putting a stop to all

commercial intercourse.

______

1. Cæsar said of the Gauls that they were spoiled by the neighbourhood

and commerce of Marseilles; insomuch that they who formerly always

conquered the Germans had now become inferior to them. -- De Bello

Gall., vi. 23.

2. Holland.

3. Et qui modo hospes fuerat, monstrator hospitii. -- De Moribus

Germanorum, 21. See Cæsar, De Bello Gall. vi. 21.

4. Tit. 38.

5. Cicero, De Rep., iv.

6. Justin, xliii. 3.

7. Father Du Halde, ii, p. 170.

8. This was first established by the Portuguese. -- Pirard, Voyages, part

II, 15.

9. Acts of Navigation, 1660. It is only in time of war that the

merchants of Boston and Philadelphia send their vessels directly to the

Mediterranean.

10. Published in Cadiz in March, 1740.

11. Plutarch, Against Lending Upon Usury, 4.

12. Diodorus, i, part II, 79.

13. The Greek legislators were to blame in preventing the arms and

plough of any man from being taken in pledge, and yet permitting the

taking of the man himself. -- Ibid.

14. Hypotiposes, i. 14.

15. Laws, viii.

16. Zonaras.

17. Leg., Nobiliores, Cod. de Comm.; Leg. ult. de rescind, vendit.

18. This is actually very often the case in such governments.