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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAP. XV.: Of the different Confidence which the Laws have in the People, according to the Difference of Climates. - Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws

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CHAP. XV.: Of the different Confidence which the Laws have in the People, according to the Difference of Climates. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 1.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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CHAP. XV.

Of the different Confidence which the Laws have in the People, according to the Difference of Climates.

THE people of Japan are of so stubborn and perverse a temper, that neither their legislators nor magistrates can put any confidence in them: they set nothing before their eyes but judgments, menaces, and chastisements; every step they take is subject to the inquisition of the civil magistrate. Those laws, which, out of five heads of families, establish one as a magistrate over the other four; those laws which punish a family or a whole ward for a single crime; those laws, in fine, which find no body innocent where one may happen to be guilty, are made with a design to implant in the people a mutual distrust, and to make every man the inspector, witness, and judge, of his neighbour’s conduct.

On the contrary, the people of India are mild , tender, and compassionate. Hence their legislators repose a great confidence in them. They have established* very few punishments; these are not severe, nor are they rigorously executed. They have subjected nephews to their uncles and orphans to their guardians, as, in other countries, they are subjected to their fathers; they have regulated the succession by the acknowledged merit of the successor. They seem to think that every individual ought to place an intire confidence in the good-nature of his fellow-subjects.

They infranchise their slaves without difficulty; they marry them; they treat them as their children . Happy climate, which gives birth to innocence, and produces a lenity in the laws!

BOOK XV.

IN WHAT MANNER THE LAWS OF CIVIL SLAVERY ARE RELATIVE TO THE NATURE OF THE CLIMATE.

[]See Bernier, tom. 2. p. 140.

[* ]See, in the 14th collection of the edifying letters, p. 403. the principal laws or customs of the inhabitants of the peninsula on this side the Ganges.

[]I had once thought that the lenity of slavery in India had made Diodorus say, that there was neither master nor slave in that country; but Diodorus has attributed to the whole continent of India what, according to Strabo, lib. 15. belonged only to a particular nation.