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CHAP. XXII.: Of the Exposing of Children. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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CHAP. XXII.

Of the Exposing of Children.

THE Roman policy was very good, in respect to the exposing of children. Romulus, says Dionysius Halicarnasseus* , laid the citizens under an obligation to educate all their male children, and the eldest of their daughters. If the infants were deformed and monstrous, he permitted the exposing them, after having shewn them to five of their nearest neighbours.

Romulus did not suffer them to kill any infants under three years old: by which means he reconciled the law that gave to fathers the right over their children of life and death, with that which prohibited their being exposed.

We find also in Dionysius Halicarnasseus , that the law which obliged the citizens to marry, and to educate all their children, was in force in the 277th year of Rome: we see that custom had restrained the law of Romulus, which permitted them to expose their younger daughters.

We have no knowledge of what the law of the twelve tables (made in the year of Rome 301), appointed with respect to the exposing of children, except from a passage of Cicero , who, speaking of the office of tribune of the people, says, that soon after its birth, like the monstrous infant of the law of the twelve tables, it was stifled: the infant that was not monstrous, was therefore preserved, and the law of the twelve tables made no alteration in the preceding institutions.

“The Germans, says Tacitus* , never expose their children; amongst them, the best manners have more force, than in other places the best laws.” The Romans had therefore laws against this custom, and yet they did not follow them. We find not any Roman law, that permitted the exposing of children: this was, without doubt, an abuse introduced towards the decline of the republic, when luxury robbed them of their freedom, when wealth divided was called poverty, when the father believed that all was lost which he gave to his family, and when this family was distinct from his property.

[* ]Antiquities of Rome, lib. 2.

[]Ibid.

[]Lib. 9.

[]Lib. 3. de legib.

[* ]De Morib. German.

[]There is not any title on this subject in the Digest; the title of the Code says nothing of it, no more than the Novels.