Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/320

268 Such was the excess of their stupidity, that to the most dubious crime in the world, they joined the most dubious proofs of innocence.

Under the reign of Philip the Long, the Jews were expelled from France, being accused of having poisoned the springs with their lepers. So absurd an accusation ought very well to make us doubt of all those that are founded on public hatred.

I have not here asserted that heresy ought not to be punished; I said only that we ought to be extremely circumspect in punishing it.

OD forbid that I should have the least inclination to diminish the horror people have for a crime which religion, morality, and civil government equally condemn. It ought to be proscribed were it only for its communicating to one sex the weaknesses of the other, and for leading people by a scandalous prostitution of their youth, to an ignominious old age. What I shall say concerning it will no ways diminish its infamy, being levelled only against the tyranny that may abuse the very horror we ought to have for the vice.

As the nature of this crime is secrecy, there are frequent instances of its having been punished by legislators upon the deposition of a child. This was opening a very wide door to calumny. "Justinian, says Procopius, published a law against this crime; be ordained an enquiry to be made not only against those who were guilty of it, after the enacting of that law, but even before. The  Rh