Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/195

Rh When a proposal was made under the same emperor to the senate, to prohibit the governors from carrying their wives with them into the provinces, because of the dissoluteness and irregularities which followed those ladies, the proposal was rejected. It was said, that the examples of ancient austerity had been changed into a more agreeable method of living. They found there was a necessity for different manners.

Luxury is therefore absolutely necessary in monarchies; and necessary also in despotic states. In the former it is the use people make of what share of liberty they possess; in the other it is the abuse they make of the advantages of their slavery. A shave singled out by his master to tyrannize over the other slaves, uncertain of enjoying to morrow the blessings of to day, has no other felicity than that of glutting the pride, the passions, and voluptuousness of the present moment.

Hence arises a very natural reflection. Republics end with luxury; monarchies with poverty.

HETHER it was from a republican spirit or from some other particular circumstances, in the middle of the thirteenth century, sumptuary laws were made in Arragon. James the first ordained that neither the king nor any of his subjects should have above two sorts of dishes at a meal, and that each dish should be dressed Rh