Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/266

214 Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit; and if a citizen could do what they forbid, he would no longer be possest of liberty, because all his fellow citizens would have the same power.

Emocratic and aristocratic states are not necessarily free. Political liberty is to be met with only in moderate governments: yet even in these it is not always met with. It is there only when there is no abuse of power: but constant experience shews us, that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it; he pushes on till he comes to the utmost limit. Is it not strange, though true, to say, that virtue itself has need of limits?

To prevent the abuse of power, it is necessary that by the very disposition of things power should be a check to power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits.

HOUGH all governments have the same general end, which is that of preservation, yet each has another particular view. Increase of dominion was the view of Rome; war, of Sparta; religion, of the Jewish laws; commerce, that of Marseilles; Rh