^BaeI^ STUDEHTS iiBRm ^1 ^l^ONTO- .\DA «^ ^^mws snoEm imm JSPNTOj 1^ THE WORLDS GREAT CLASSICS Timothy Dwight, D.D. LLD. Richard Henry5toddard Arthvr Richmond Maksh. AB. Pavlvan Dyke.D.D. Albert Ellery Bergh rr I Clarence Cook • Art Editor.
• NEW YORK ^ MDCCCXCIX H^JT^ft llaat mm 0mtm tami).
tult^ dut nEttuit idiatesttsatdltt ttimndr* |^tf ares aut Qomtt t^xwxc tTrotn arngmmtatatn. ^lamam nflnrff antinflteb t anttnatiRb aut tff * nutt naalo^jRaalon aut 0muit Imio^ nujtdaiotno aut 0mmt torn Deraab. ^imiautQmmtoiitttitinittiaM^ amgetniDtttQt. |tO£ aute Qonittiu^ uili i:^: immit am!ie|9nmitIjaIo^ tnoni t| ta ^ fiutt odt. l^almno am pmtt coboanctobioam aut (rmrnt ab)^nt. flbraa aut puitt ala:ala am Qcmm iolaiil^at. lofatrifm am senutt mram:nicam aut pmtt 09« antCgiaa ami Qcmttt toattian: toa^ ttian am gmutt aibac. ^tbar auif Qcnuit tstd^tamrt^ect^as aut pnmt ntanafim: utanadtQ am Qctnut am^ mon. ^mmon am ^mmt tofram: CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.
Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books.
PART OF A COLUMN OF GUTENBERG S BIBLE.
A comparison with the Wurzburg Missal, which is now in the British Museum, shows that Gutenberg must have had his types executed from just such a manu- script. It was not till after the issue of many smaller essays that the first printed Bible was at last completed. This event probably took place in the year 1455, if. the first copies were i-ssued by Gutenberg himself; and certainly not later than 1456, or beginning of 1457, if published by Fust, as there is a copy in the Biblio- theque Nationale in which a manuscript note indicates that the two volumes were illuminated and bound by Henry Albech, alias Cremer, vicar of the Collegiate Church of St. Stephen, at Mayence, in 1457. The work which thus at last appeared to crown all Gutenberg's labors with eventual success is a most wonderful monument of art, especially as being the first attempt at printing on a large scale. Guten- berg's Bible is printed in two columns with spaces left for the headings, to be filled by the rubricator, and also for large initials. Each column contains forty-two lines, which distinguishes this edition from the editions printed soon afterward, which were, respectively, of thirty-six and forty-five lines per column. Both of these later editions were erroneously attributed to Gutenberg, while they are now considered to be subsequent issues by Fust and Schoeffer.
VOLUiUi: ': THE SPIRIT OF LAWS BARON DE MONTESQUIEU (CHARLES DE SECONDAT) INCLUDING D'ALEMBERT'S ANALYSIS OF THE WORK TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY THOMAS NUGENT, LL.D.
WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY HON. FREDERIC R. COUDERT, J.U.D., LL.D.
REVISED EDITION VOLUME II DAbmrnJiXi-yjom .riFT^^COLONIAL Copyright, 1899, By the colonial PRESS.
ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Specimen Column of Gutenberg's Bible. Frontispiece Fac-simile example of Printing in the Fifteenth Century The Laocoon 80 Photo-engraving from the original marble group Early Venetian Printing 170 Fac-simile example of a page of Music printed in 1523 THE SPIRIT OF LAWS BOOK XXIII OF LAWS IN THE RELATION THEY BEAR TO THE NUMBER OF INHABITANTS I. — Of Men and Animals with respect to the Multiplication of their Species " Delight of human kind,a and gods above; Parent of Rome, propitious Queen of Love; For when the rising spring adorns the mead, And a new scene of nature stands display'd; When teeming buds, and cheerful greens appear, And western gales unlock the lazy year; The joyous birds thy welcome first express. Whose native songs thy genial fire confess: Then savage beasts bound o'er their slighted food, Struck with thy darts, and tempt the raging flood: All nature is thy gift, earth, air, and sea; Of all that breathes the various progeny. Stung with delight, is goaded on by thee. O'er barren mountains, o'er the flow'ry plain, The leafy forest, and the liquid main. Extends thy uncontroU'd and boundless reign. Thro' all the living regions thou dost move. And scatter'st where thou go'st the kindly seeds of love."
THE females of brutes have an almost constant fecundity. But in the human species, the manner of thinking, the character, the passions, the humor, the caprice, the idea of preserving beauty, the pain of child-bearing, and the fatigue of a too numerous family, obstruct propagation in a thousand different ways.
2 MONTESQUIEU 2. — Of Marriage The natural obligation of the father to provide for his children has established marriage, which makes known the person who ought to fulfil this obligation. The people b mentioned by Pom- ponius Mela c had no other way of discovering him but by re- semblance.
Among civilized nations, the father is that person on whom the laws, by the ceremony of marriage, have fixed this duty, because they find in him the man they want.d Among brutes this is an obligation which the mother can generally perform; but it is much more extensive among men. Their children indeed haVe reason; but this comes only by slow degrees. It is not sufficient to nourish them; we must also di- rect them: they can already live; but they cannot govern them- selves.
Illicit conjunctions contribute but little to the propagation of the species. The father, who is under a natural obligation to nourish and educate his children, is not then fixed; and the mother, with whom the obligation remains, finds a thousand obstacles from shame, remorse, and constraint of her sex and the rigor of laws; and besides, she generally wants the means.
Women who have submitted to public prostitution cannot have the convenience of educating their children: the trouble of education is incompatible with their station; and they are so corrupt that they can have no protection from the law.
It follows from all this that public continence is naturally con- nected with the propagation of the species.
3. — Of the Condition of Children It is a dictate of reason that when there is a marriage, chil- dren should follow the station or condition of the father; and that when there is not, they can belong to the mother only.^ 4. — Of Families It is almost ev^erywhere a custom for the wife to pass into the family of the husband. The contrary is without any inconvenh The Garamantes. e For this reason, among nations that c Lib. I. cap. viii. have slaves, the child almost always fold " Pater est quem nuptiae demon- lows the station or condition of the strant." mother.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 3 ience established at Formosa/ where the husband enters into the family of the wife.
This law, which fixes the family in a succession of persons of the same sex, greatly contributes, independently of the first motives, to the propagation of the human species. The family is a kind of property: a man who has children of a sex which does not perpetuate it is never satisfied if he has not those who can render it perpetual.
Names, whereby men acquire an idea of a thing which one would imagine ought not to perish, are extremely proper to in- spire every family with a desire of extending its duration. There are people among whom names distinguish famiUes: there are others where they only distinguish persons: the latter have not the same adviantage as the former.
5. — Of the several Orders of lawful Wives Laws and religion sometimes establish many kinds of civil conjunctions; and this is the case among the Mahommedans, where there are several orders of wives, the children of whom are distinguished by being born in the house, by civil contracts, or even by the slavery of the mother, and the subsequent ac- knowledgment of the father.
It would be contrary to reason that the law should stigmatize the children for what it approved in the father. All these chil- dren ought, therefore, to succeed, at least if some particular reason does not oppose it, as in Japan, where none inherit but the children of the wife given by the Emperor. Their policy de- mands that the gifts of the Emperor should not be too much di- vided, because they subject them to a kind of service, like that of our ancient fiefs.
There are countries where a wife of the second rank enjoys nearly the same honors in a family as in our part of the world are granted to an only consort: there the children of concubines are deemed to belong to the first or principal wife. Thus it is also established in China. Filial respect,g and the ceremony of deep mourning, are not due to the natural mother, but to her appointed by the law.
By means of this fiction they have no bastard children; and where such a fiction does not take place, it is obvious that a law 4 MONTESQUIEU to legitimatize the children of concubines must be considered as an act of violence, as the bulk of the nation would be stigma- tized by such a decree. Neither is there any regulation in those countries with regard to children born in adultery. The recluse lives of women, the locks, the inclosures, and the eunuchs ren- der all infidelity to their husbands so difficult, that the law judges it impossible. Besides, the same sword would exterminate the mother and the child.
6. — Of Bastards in different Governments They have therefore no such thing as bastards where polyg- amy is permitted; this disgrace is known only in countries in which a man is allowed to marry but one wife. Here they were obliged to stamp a mark of infamy upon concubinage, and con- sequently they were under a necessity of stigmatizing the issue of such unlawful conjunctions.
In republics, where it is necessary that there should be the purest morals, bastards ought to be more degraded than in mon- archies.
The laws made against them at Rome were perhaps too severe; but as the ancient institutions laid all the citizens under a neces- sity of marrying, and as marriages were also softened by the permission to repudiate or make a divorce, nothing but an ex- treme corruption of manners could lead them to concubinage.
It is observable that as the quality of a citizen was a very con- siderable thing in a democratic government, where it carried with it the sovereign power, they frequently made laws in re- spect to the state of bastards, which had less relation to the thing itself and to the honesty of marriage than to the particular con- stitution of the republic. Thus the people have sometimes ad- mitted bastards into the number of citizens, in order to Increase their power in opposition to the great.h Thus the Athenians exclude bastards from the privilege of being citizens, that they might possess a greater share of the corn sent them by the King of Egypt. In fine, Aristotle informs us that in many cities where there was not a sufficient number of citizens, their bastards suc- ceeded to their possessions; and that when there was a proper number, they did not inherit.* h Aristotle, " Polit." lib. VI. cap. iv. » Ibid. lib. III. cap. iii.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 5 7. — Of the Father's Consent to Marriage The consent of fathers is founded on their authority; that is, on the right of property. It is also founded on their love, on their reason, and on the uncertainty of that of their children, whom youth confines in a state of ignorance and passion in a state of ebriety.
In the small republics, or singular institutions already men- tioned, they might have laws which gave to magistrates that right of inspection over the marriages of the children of citizens which nature had already given to fathers. The love of the public might there equal or surpass all other love. Thus Plato would have marriages regulated by the magistrates: this the Lacedaemonian magistrates performed.
But in common institutions, fathers have the disposal of their children in marriage: their prudence in this respect is always supposed to be superior to that of a stranger. Nature gives to fathers a desire of procuring successors to their children, when they have almost lost the desire of enjoyment themselves. In the several degrees of progeniture, they see themselves insensi- bly advancing to a kind of immortality. But what must be done, if oppression and avarice arise to such a height as to usurp all the authority of fathers? Let us hear what Thomas Gage says in regard to the conduct of the Spaniards in the West Indies.^ " According to the number of the sons and daughters that are marriageable, the father's tribute is raised and increased, until they provide husbands and wives for their sons and daughters, who, as soon as they are married, are charged with tribute; which, that it may increase, they will sufTer none above fifteen years of age to live unmarried. Nay, the set time of marriage appointed for the Indians is at fourteen years for the man, and thirteen for the woman; alleging that they are sooner ripe for the fruit of wedlock, and sooner ripe in knowledge and malice, and strength for work and service, than any other people. Nay, sometimes they force those to marry who are scarcely twelve and thirteen years of age, if they find them well-limbed and strong in body, explaining a point of one of the canons, which alloweth fourteen and fifteen years. Nisi malitia suppleat cetatem."
He saw a list of these taken. It was, says he, a most shameful / "A New Survey of the West Indies," by Thomas Gage, p. 345, 3d edit.
6 MONTESQUIEU affair. Thus in an action which ought to be the most free, the Indians are the greatest slaves.
8. — The same Subject continued In England the law is frequently abused by the daughters marrying according to their own fancy without consulting their parents. This custom is, I am apt to imagine, more tolerated there than anywhere else from a consideration that as the laws have not established a monastic celibacy, the daughters have no other state to choose but that of marriage, and this they cannot refuse. In France, on the contrary, young women have always the resource of celibacy; and therefore the law which ordains that they shall wait for the consent of their fathers may be more agreeable. In this light the custom of Italy and Spain must be less rational; convents are there established, and yet they may marry without the consent of their fathers.
9. — Of young Women 9. — Of young Women Young women who are conducted by marriage alone to lib- erty and pleasure, who have a mind which dares not think, a heart which dares not feel, eyes which dare not see, ears which dare not hear, who appear only to show themselves silly, con- demned without intermission to trifles and precepts, have suf- ficient inducements to lead them on to marriage: it is the young men that want to be encouraged.
10. — What it is that determines Marriage Wherever a place if found in which two persons can live cbm- modiously, there they enter into marriage. Nature has a suf- ficient propensity to it, when unrestrained by the difficulty of subsistence.
A rising people increase and multiply extremely. This is be- cause with them it would be a great inconvenience to live in celibacy; and none to have many children. The contrary of which is the case when a nation is formed.
II. — Of the Severity of Government Men who have absolutely nothing, such as beggars, have many children. This proceeds from their being in the case of a rising people: it costs the father nothing to give his heart to his THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 7 offspring, who even in their infancy are the instruments of this art. These people multiply in a rich or superstitious country, because they do not support the burden of society, but are them- selves the burden. But men who are poor, only because they live under a severe government; who regard their fields less as the source of their subsistence than as a cause of vexation; these men, I say, have few children: they hav'e not even subsistence for themselves. How then can they think of dividing it? They are unable to take care of their own persons when they are sick. How then can they attend to the wants of creatures whose in- fancy is a continual sickness?
It is pretended by some who are apt to talk of things which they have never examined that the greater the poverty of the subjects, the more numerous their families: that the more they are loaded with taxes, the more industriously they endeavor to put themselves in a station in which they will be able to pay them: two sophisms, which have always destroyed and will forever be the destruction of monarchies.
The severity of government may be carried to such an extreme as to make the natural sentiments destructive of the natural senti- ments themselves. Would the women of America have refused to bear children had their masters been less cruel? k 12. — Of the Number of Males and Females in different Countries I have already observed that there are born in Europe rather more boys than girls.o It has been remarked that in Japan there are born rather more girls than boys: b all things compared, there must be more fruitful women in Japan than in Europe, and consequently it must be more populous.
We are informed that at Bantam there are ten girls to one hoy.c A disproportion like this must cause the number of fami- lies there to be to the number of those of other climates as i to 53^, which is a prodigious difference. Their families may be much larger indeed; but there must be few men in circumstances sufficient to provide for so large a family.
k "A New Survey of the West Indies," c " Collection of Voyages that conby Thomas Gage, p. 97, 3d edit. tributed to the establishment of the a Book XVI. chap. iv. East India Company," vol. i. p. 347.
b See Kempfer, who gives a computa- tion of the people of Meaco.
8 MONTESQUIEU 13. — Of Seaport Towns In seaport towns, where men expose themselves to a thousand dangers, and go abroad to liVe or die in distant climates, there are fewer men than women: and yet we see more children there than in other places. This proceeds from the greater ease with which they procure the means of subsistence. Perhaps even the oily parts of fish are more proper to furnish that matter which contributes to generation. This may be one of the ca'uses of the infinite number of people in Japan d and China,^ where they Hve almost wholly on fish./" If this be the case, cer- tain monastic rules, which oblige the monks to live on fish, must be contrary to the spirit of the legislator himself.
14. — Of the Productions of the Earth which require a greater or less Number of Men Pasture-lands are but little peopled, because they find employ- ment only for a few. Corn-lands employ a great many men, and vineyards infinitely more.
It has been a frequent complaint in England,? that the increase of pasture-land diminished the inhabitants; and it has been ob- served in France that the prodigious number of vineyards is one of the great causes of the multitude of people.
Those countries where coal-pits furnish a proper substance for fuel have this advantage over others, that not having the same occasion for forests, the lands may be cultivated.
In countries productive of rice, they are at vast pains in water- ing the land: a great number of men must therefore be em- ployed. Besides, there is less land required to furnish subsist- ence for a family than in those which produce other kinds of grain. In fine, the land which is elsewhere employed in raising cattle serves immediately for the subsistence of man; and the labor which in other places is performed by cattle is there per- formed by men; so that the culture of the soil becomes to man an immense manufacture.
d Japan is composed of a number of their corn, enclosed their estates; the isles, where there are many banks, and commons, ready to perish with hunger, the sea is there extremely full of fish. rose up in arms; they insisted on a ^ China abounds in rivers. division of the lands:_ the young king / See Du Halde, torn. ii. pp. 139-142. even wrote on this subject. And proclag The greatest number of the proprie- mations were made against those who tors of land, says Bishop Burnet, finding enclosed their lands. — " Abridgment of more profit in selling their wool than the History of the Reformation."
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 9 15. — Of the Number of Inhabitants with relation to the Arts When there is an agrarian law, and the lands are equally di- vided, the country may be extremely well peopled, though there are but few arts; because every citizen receives from the cultiva- tion of his land whatever is necessary for his subsistence, and all the citizens together consume all the fruits of the earth. Thus it was in some republics.
In our present situation, in which lands are unequally dis- tributed, they produce much more than those who cultivate them are able to consume; if the arts, therefore, should be neglected, and nothing minded but agriculture, the country could not be peopled. Those who cultivate, or employ others to cultivate, having corn to spare, nothing would engage them to work the following year; the fruits of the earth would not be consumed by the indolent; for these would have nothing with which they could purchase them. It is necessary, then, that the arts should be established, in order that the produce of the land may be consumed by the laborer and the artificer. In a word, it is now proper that many should cultivate much more than is necessary for their own use. For this purpose they must have a desire of enjoying superfluities; and these they can receive only from the artificer.
The machines designed to abridge art are not always useful. If a piece of workmanship is of a moderate price, such as is equally agreeable to the maker and the buyer, those machines which would render the manufacture more simple, or, in other words, diminish the number of workmen, would be pernicious. And if water-mills were not everywhere established, I should not have believed them so useful as is pretended, because they have deprived an infinite multitude of their employment, a vast num- ber of persons of the use of water, and great part of the land of its fertility.
16. — The Concern of the Legislator in the Propagation of the Species Regulations on the number of citizens depend greatly on cir- cumstances. There are countries in which nature does all; the legislator then has nothing to do. What need is there of induc- ing men by laws to propagation when a fruitful climate yields a lO MONTESQUIEU lO MONTESQUIEU sufficient number of inhabitants? Sometimes the climate is more favorable than the soil; the people multiply, and are destroyed by famine: this is the case of China. Hence a father sells his daughters and exposes his children. In Tonquin,^ the same causes produce the same effects; so we need not, like the Ara- bian travellers mentioned by Renaudot, search for the origin of this in their sentiments on the metempsychosis.* For the same reason, the religion of the isle of Formosa does not suffer the women to bring their children into the world till they are thirty-five years of age:; the priestess, before this age, by bruising the belly procures abortion.
17. — Of Greece and the Number of its Inhabitants That eflfect which in certain countries of the East springs from physical causes was produced in Greece by the nature of the government. The Greeks were a great nation, composed of cit- ies, each of which had a distinct government and separate laws. They had no more the spirit of conquest and ambition than those of Switzerland, Holland, and Germany have at this day. In every republic the legislator had in view the happiness of the citi- zens at home, and their power abroad, lest it should prove inferior to that of the neighboring cities.^ Thus, with the enjoyment of a small territory and great happiness, it was easy for the number of the citizens to increase to such a degree as to become burden- some. This obliged them incessantly to send out colonies,^ and, as the Swiss do now, to let their men out to war. Nothing was neglected that could hinder the too great multiplication of chil- dren.
They had among them republics, whose constitution was very remarkable. The nations they had subdued were obliged to pro- vide subsistence for the citizens. The Lacedaemonians were fed by the Helotes, the Cretans by the Periecians, and the Thessa- lians by the Penestes. They were obliged to have only a certain number of freemen, that their slaves might be able to furnish them with subsistence. It is a received maxim nowadays that it is necessary to limit the number of regular troops: now h Dampier's " Voyages," vol. ii. p. 41. k In valor, discipline, and military ex- ; See the " Collection of Voyages that / The Gauls, who were in the same contributed to the establishment of the circumstances, acted in the same man- East India Company," vol. i. part I. ner.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS ii the Lacedaemonians were an army maintained by the peas- ants: it was proper, therefore, that this army should be limited; without this the freemen, who had all the advantages of society, would increase beyond number, and the laborers be overloaded.
The politics of the Greeks were particularly employed in regu- lating the number of citizens. Plato fixes them at five thousand and forty,w and he would have them stop or encourage propaga- tion, as was most convenient, by honors, shame, and the advice of the old men; he would even regulate the number of marriages in such a manner that the republic might be recruited without being overcharged.** If the laws of a country, says Aristotle, forbid the exposing of children, the number of those brought forth ought to be limited.^ If they have more than the number prescribed by law, he advises to make the women miscarry before the fetus be formed./' The same author mentions the infamous means made use of by the Cretans to prevent their having too great a number of children — a proceeding too indecent to repeat.
There are places, says Aristotle again,? where the laws give the privilege of being citizens to strangers, or to bastards, or to those whose mothers only are citizens; but as soon as they have a sufficient number of people this privilege ceases. The savages of Canada burn their prisoners; but when they have empty cot- tages to give them, they receive them into their nation.
Sir William Petty, in his calculations, supposes that a man in England is worth what he would sell for at Algiers,** This can be true only with respect to England. There are countries where a man is worth nothing; there are others where he is worth less than nothing.
i8. — Of the State and Number of People before the Romans Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, Gaul, and Germany were nearly in the same state as Greece; full of small nations that abounded with inhabitants, they had no need of laws to increase their num- ber.
19. — Of the Depopulation of the Globe All these little republics were swallowed up in a large one, and the globe insensibly became depopulated: in order to be » Ibid. q Ibid. lib. III. cap. iii.