CHAP. IX.
In what manner the Laws are relative to their Principle in Monarchies.
Book V.
Chap. 9.AS honor is the principle of a monarchical government, the laws ought to be relative to this principle.
They should endeavour to support the nobility, in respect to whom honor may be, in some measure, deemed both child and parent.
They should render the nobility hereditary, not as a boundary between the power of the prince and the weakness of the people, but as the bond and conjunction of both.
In this government, substitutions which preserve the estates of families undivided, are extremely useful, though in others not so proper.
Here the power of redemption is of service, as it restores to noble families the lands that had been alienated by the prodigality of a parent.
The lands of the nobility ought to have privileges as well as their persons. The monarch's dignity is inseparable from that of his kingdom; and the dignity of the nobleman from that of his fief.
All these privileges must be particular to the nobility, and incommunicable to the people, unless we intend to act contrary to the principle of government, and to diminish the power of the nobles together with that of the people.
Substitutions are a restraint to commerce; the power of redemption produces an infinite number of processes; every estate in land that is sold throughout the kingdom, is, in some measure, with-
