Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/143

Rh at home; they marry much earlier, and consequently they may be sooner of age than in our European climates. In Turky they are of age at fifteen.

Here there is no such thing as a cession of goods; in a government where there is no fixed property, people depend rather on the person than on his estate.

The cession of goods is naturally admitted in moderate governments, but especially in republics, because of the greater confidence which arises from the probity of the citizens, and because of the lenity and moderation that a form of government, which every one seems to have framed for himself, ought to inspire.

Had the legislators of the Roman republic established the cession of goods, they never would have been exposed to so many seditions and civil discords, nor would they have experienced the danger of the evils, or the inconveniency of the remedies.

Poverty, and the precariousness of property in a despotic state, render usury natural, each person raising the value of his money in proportion to the danger he sees in lending it. Misery therefore pours in from all parts into those unhappy countries; they are bereft of every thing, even of the resource of borrowing.

Hence it is that a merchant under this government is unable to carry on a great trade; he lives Rh