Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/310

258 It was a privilege of the utmost consequence to a Roman citizen, to have none but the people for his judges. Were it not for this, he would have been subject in the provinces to the arbitrary power of a proconsul or of a proprietor. The city never felt the tyranny, which was exercised only on conquered nations.

Thus in the Roman world, as at Sparta, those who were free were extremely so, while those who were slaves laboured under the extremity of slavery.

While the citizens paid taxes, they were raised with great justice and equality. The regulation of Servius Tullius was observed, who had distributed the people into six classes according to their difference of property, and fixed the several shares of the public taxes in proportion to that which each person had in the government. Hence they bore with the greatness of the tax because of their proportionable greatness of credit, and consoled themselves for the smallness of their credit, because of the smallness of the tax.

There was also another thing worthy of admiration, which is, that as Servius Tullius's division into classes was in some measure the fundamental principle of the constitution, it thence followed that an equal levying of the taxes was so connected with this fundamental principle, that the one could not be abolished without the other.

But while the city paid the taxes as she pleased, or paid none at all, the provinces were plundered by the knights who were the farmers of the public revenues. We have already made mention of Rh