Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/248

196 longer the plea of natural defence and self-preservation.

What has led them into this mistake, is that they imagined a conqueror had a right to destroy the society; from whence they inferred, that he had a right to destroy the men that compose it; a wrong consequence from a false principle. For from the destruction of the society it does not at all follow, that the people who compose it ought to be also destroyed. Society is the union of men, and not the men themselves, the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

From the right of killing in case of conquest, politicians have drawn that of reducing to slavery; a consequence as ill grounded as the principle.

There is no such thing as a right of reducing people to slavery, but when it becomes necessary for the preservation of the conquest. Preservation, but never servitude, is the end of conquest; though servitude may happen sometimes to be a necessary means of preservation.

Even in that case it is contrary to the nature of things that the slavery should be perpetual. The people enslaved ought to be rendered capable of becoming subjects. Slavery in conquests is an accidental thing. When after the expiration of a certain space of time all the parts of the conquering state are connected with the conquered nation, by custom, marriages, laws, associations, and by a certain conformity of spirit; there ought to be an end of the slavery. For the rights of the conqueror are founded intirely on the want of those very things, and on the estrangement between the two nations which prevents their confiding in each other. Rh