Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/239

Rh cannot follow this proportion; they must be directed by that of their power.

In Lycia the judges and town magistrates were elected by the common council, and according to the proportion already mentioned. In the republic of Holland they are not chosen by the common council, but each town names its magistrates. Were I to give a model of an excellent confederate republic, I should pitch upon that of Lycia.

S republics provide for their security by uniting, despotic governments do it by separating, and by keeping themselves, as it were, single. They sacrifice a part of the country, and by ravaging and desolating the frontiers, they render the heart of the empire inaccessilble.

It is a received axiom in geometry, that the greater the extent of bodies, the more their circumference is relatively small. This practice therefore of laying the frontiers waste, is more tolerable in large than in middling states.

A despotic government does all the mischief to itself that could be done by a cruel enemy, whose progress it could not refill.

It preserves itself likewise by another kind of separation, which is by putting the most distant provinces into the hands of a feudatary prince. The Mogul, the king of Persia, and the emperors of China have their feudataries; and the Turks have found their account in putting the Tartars, the Rh