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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAP. XI.: That human Courts of Justice should not be regulated by the Maxims of those Tribunals which relate to the other Life. - Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws

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CHAP. XI.: That human Courts of Justice should not be regulated by the Maxims of those Tribunals which relate to the other Life. - 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. XI.

That human Courts of Justice should not be regulated by the Maxims of those Tribunals which relate to the other Life.

THE tribunal of the inquisition, formed by the Christian monks on the idea of the tribunal of penitence, is contrary to all good policy. It has every where met with a general dislike, and must have sunk under the oppositions it met with, if those who were resolved to establish it had not drawn advantages even from these oppositions.

This tribunal is insupportable in all governments. In monarchies, it only makes informers and traitors; in republics, it only forms dishonest men; in a despotic state, it is as destructive as the government itself.