Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/110

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HAT the laws of education ought to be relative to the principle of each government, has been shewn in the preceding book. Now the same may be said of those which the legislator gives to the whole society. This relation of laws to this principle, strengthens the several springs of government, and this principle receives from thence, in its turn, a new degree of strength. And thus it is in mechanics, that action is always followed by reaction.

Our design is to examine this relation in each government, beginning with the republican state whosc principle is virtue.

IRTUE in a republic is a most simple thing; it is a love for the republic; it is a sensation, and not a consequence of acquired knowledge: a sensation that may be felt by the meanest as well as by the highest person in the state. When Rh