Book VI.
Chap.2.should be avoided in a government, where fear ought to be the only prevailing sentiment, and in which the least popular disturbances arc frequently attended with sudden and unforeseen revolutions. Here every man ought to know that the magistrate must not hear his name mentioned, and that his security depends intirely on his being reduced to a kind of annihilation.
But in moderate governments, where the life of the meanest subject is deemed precious, no man is stript of his honor or property but after a long inquiry; and no man is bereft of life, till his very country has attacked him, an attack that is never made without leaving him all possible means of making his defence.
Hence it is that when a person renders himself absolute[1], he immediately thinks of simplifying the laws. In a government thus constituted they are more affected with particular inconveniencies, than with the liberty of the subject, which is very little minded.
In republics it is plain that as many formalities at least are necessary as in monarchies. In both governments they increase in proportion to the value which is set on the honor, fortune, liberty and life of the subject.
In republican governments men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former because they are every thing, in the latter because they are nothing.
- ↑ Caesar, Cromwell, and many others.
