Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/158

10 all sorts of commercial laws quite useless. The marriages which they usually contract with sheflaves, are the cause that there are scarce any civil laws relating to dowries or to the particular advantage of married women. From the prodigious multitude of slaves it follows likewise that there are very few who have any such thing as a will of their own, and of course are answerable for their conduct before a judge. Most moral actions that are only in consequence of a father's, a husband's, or a mailer's will, are regulated by them and not by the magistrates. I forgot to observe, that as what we call honor, is a thing hardly known in those countries, the several points relating to this honor, which are of such importance with us, are with them quite out of the question. Despotic power is of itself sufficient; round it there is an absolute vacuum. Hence it is, that when travellers favour us with the description of countries where arbitrary sway prevails, they seldom make mention of civil laws.

All occasions therefore of wrangling and of lawsuits are here removed. And to this in part is owing that religious people in those countries are so roughly handled: as the injustice of their demand is neither screened, palliated, nor protected by an infinite number of laws, of course it is immediately discovered. Rh