Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/321

Rh  of a single witness, sometimes of a child, sometimes of a slave, was sufficient, especially against such as were rich, and against those that were of the green faction."

It is very odd that these three crimes, magic, heresy, and that against nature, of which the first might easily be proved not to exist at all; the second to be susceptible of an infinite number of distinctions, interpretations, and limitations; the third to be often obscure and uncertain; it is very odd, I say, that these three crimes should amongst us be punished with fire.

I may venture to affirm that the crime against nature will never make any great progress in society, unless people find themselves induced to it in other respects by some particular custom; as among the Greeks where the young people performed all their exercises naked; as amongst us where domestic education is disused; as among the Asiatics where particular persons have a great number of women whom they despise, while others can have none at all. Let there be no customs preparatory to this crime, let it, like every other violation of morals, be severely proscribed by the civil magistrate, and nature will soon be seen to defend or resume her rights. Nature, that tender, amiable, and loving parent, has strewed her pleasures with a bounteous hand, and while she fills us with delights, she prepares us for future satisfactions of a more exquisite kind than those delights themselves. Rh