Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/126

74 While Rome inclined towards aristocracy, she avoided all these inconveniences. The magistrates never received any emoluments from their office. The chief men of the republic were taxed like the rest, nay heavier, and sometimes the taxes fell upon them alone. In fine, far from sharing among themselves the revenues of the state, all they could draw from the public treasure, and all the wealth that fortune flung in their way, they bestowed freely on the people, to be excused from accepting the honors which the latter wanted to confer.

It is a fundamental maxim, that as pernicious as the effects of largesses are to the people in a democracy, so salutary are they in an aristocratical government. The former make them forget they are citizens, the latter bring them to a sense of it.

If the revenues of the state are not distributed among the people, they must be convinced at least of their being well administered: to feast their eyes with the public treasure is with them the same thing almost as enjoying it. The golden chain displayed at Venice, the riches exhibited at Rome in public triumphs, the treasures preserved in the temple of Saturn, were in reality the riches of the people.

It is a very essential point in an aristocracy, that the nobles themselves should not levy the taxes. The first order of the state in Rome never concerned themselves with it; the levying of taxes was committed to the second, and even this in process of time was attended with great inconveniences. In an aristocracy of this kind, where the nobles Rh