Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/198

146 arts, and to shun those of luxury and pleasure.

This is the spirit of the excellent decrees of the Chinese emperors. "Our ancestors, says an emperor of the family of the Tangs held it as a maxim, that if there was a man who did not work, or a woman that was idle, somebody must suffer cold or hunger in the empire." And on this principle he ordered an infinite number of monasteries of Bonzes to be destroyed.

The third emperor of the one and twentieth Dynasty, to whom some precious stones were brought that had been found in a mine, ordered it to be shut up, not chusing to fatigue his people with working for a thing that could neither feed nor cloath them.

So great is our luxury, says Kiayvent, that people adorn with embroidery the shoes of boys and girls, whom they are obliged to sell. Is employing so many people in making cloaths for one person, the way to prevent a great many from wanting cloaths? There are ten men who eat the fruits of the earth to one employed in agriculture; and is this the means to preserve numbers from wanting nourishment?

N the history of China we find it has had twenty-two successive Dynasties, that is, it has experienced twenty-two general, without mentioning an infinite number of particular, revolutions. The three first Dynasties lasted a long time, because they were 3