Montesquieu: Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate

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* NOW - Buy this resource online! Click here * Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate1. General Idea.2. Of the Difference of Men in different Climates.3. Contradiction in the Tempers of some Southern Nations.4. Cause of the Immutability of Religion, Manners, Customs, and Laws in the Eastern Countries.5. That those are bad Legislators who favour the Vices of the Climate, and good Legislators who oppose those Vices.6. Of Agriculture in warm Climates.7. Of Monkery.8. An excellent Custom of China.9. Means of encouraging Industry.10. Of the Laws in relation to the Sobriety of the People.11. Of the Laws in relation to the Distempers of the Climate.12. Of the Laws against Suicides.13. Effects arising from the Climate of England.14. Other Effects of the Climate.15. Of the different Confidence which the Laws have in the People, according to the Difference of Climates. FOOTNOTES
   1. This appears even in the countenance: in cold weather people look thinner.
   2. We know that it shortens iron.
   3. Those for the succession to the Spanish monarchy.
   4. For instance, in Spain.
   5. "One hundred European soldiers," says Tavernier, "would without any great difficulty beat a thousand Indian soldiers."
   6. Even the Persians who settle in the Indies contract in the third generation the indolence and cowardice of the Indians. See Bernier on the Mogul, i, p. 182.
   7. We find by a fragment of Nicolaus Damascenus, collected by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, that it was an ancient custom in the East to send to strangle a governor who had given any displeasure; it was in the time of the Medes.
   8. Panamanack: See Kircher.
   9. La Loubere, Account of the Kingdom of Siam, p. 446.
   10. Foe endeavoured to reduce the heart to a mere vacuum: "We have eyes and ears, but perfection consists in neither seeing nor hearing; a mouth, hands, &c., but perfection requires that these members should be inactive." This is taken from the dialogue of a Chinese philosopher, quoted by Father Du Halde, iii.
   11. Father Du Halde, History of China, i, p. 72.
   12. Several of the kings of India do the same. La Loubere, Account of the Kingdom of Siam, p. 69.
   13. Venty, the third emperor of the third dynasty, tilled the lands himself, and made the empress and his wives employ their time in the silkworks in his palace. History of China.
   14. Hyde, Religion of the Persians.
   15. Monsieur Bernier, travelling from Lahore to Cashmere, wrote thus: "My body is a sieve; scarcely have I swallowed a pint of water, but I see it transude like dew out of all my limbs, even to my fingers' ends. I drink ten pints a day, and it does me no manner of harm." -- Bernier, Travels, ii, p. 261.
   16. In the blood there are red globules, fibrous parts, white globules, and water, in which the whole swims.
   17. Plato, Laws, ii; Aristotle, Of the Care of Domestic Affairs; Eusebius, Evangelical Preparation, xii. 17.
   18. This is seen in the Hottentots, and the inhabitants of the most southern part of Chili.
   19. As Pittacus did, according to Aristotle, Politics, ii. 12. He lived in a climate where drunkenness is not a national vice.
   20. Book ii.
   21. Book ii. tit. 1, � 3; tit. 18, � 1.
   22. Ricaut, State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 284.
   23. It may be complicated with the scurvy, which, in some countries especially, renders a man whimsical and unsupportable to himself. See Pirard, Voyages, part II, 21.
   24. Here I take this word for the design of subverting the established power, and especially that of democracy; this is the signification in which it was understood by the Greeks and Romans.
   25. Chapter 58, �� 1, 2.
   26. Law of the Visigoths, iii, tit. 4, � 9.
   27. Ibid., � 6.
   28. Ibid., � 13.
   29. See Bernier, ii, p. 140.
   30. See in the Edifying Letters, coll. xiv, p. 403, the principal laws or customs of the inhabitants of the peninsula on this side the Ganges.
   31. See Edifying Letters, coll, ix, p. 378.
   32. 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, xv, belonged only to a particular nation.