Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/199

Rh sagely administered, and the empire had not so great an extent as it afterwards obtained. But we may observe in general that all those Dynasties began very well. Virtue, attention, and vigilance, are necessary in China; these prevailed in the commencement of the Dynasties, and failed in the end. It was natural, that emperors trained up in military toils, who had compassed the dethroning of a family immersed in pleasures, should be steady to virtue, which they had found so advantageous, and afraid of voluptuousness, which they knew had proved so fatal to the family dethroned. But after the three or four first princes, corruption, luxury, indolence, and pleasures, possess their successors; they shut themselves up in a palace; their understanding is impaired; their life is shortened; the family declines; the grandees rise up; the eunuchs gain credit; none but children are set on the throne; the palace is at variance with the empire; a lazy set of fellows that dwell there, ruin the industrious part of the nation; the emperor is killed or destroyed by an usurper, who founds a family, the third or fourth successor of which goes and shuts himself up in the very same palace.

O many are the imperfections that attend the loss of virtue in women, and so greatly are their minds depraved, when this principal guard is removed, that in a popular state public incontinency may be considered as the last of miseries, and as a Rh