Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/111

Rh the common people adopt good maxims, they adhere to them steadier than those we call gentlemen. It is very rare that corruption commences with the former; nay, they frequently derive from their imperfect light a stronger attachment to the established laws and customs.

The love of our country is conducive to a purity of morals, and the latter is again conducive to the love of our country. The less we are able to satisfy our particular passions, the more we abandon ourselves to those of a general nature. How comes it that monks are so fond of their order? It is owing to the very cause that renders the order insupportable. Their rule debars them of all those things by which the ordinary passions are fed; there remains therefore only this passion for the very rule that torments them. The more austere it is, that is, the more it curbs their inclinations, the more force it gives to the only passion it leaves them.

Love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy; a love of the democracy is that of equality.

A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. As every individual ought to have here the same happiness and the same advantages, they ought consequently to taste the same pleasures and to form the same hopes; which cannot be expected but from a general frugality. Rh