Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/323

Rh not deserve it. It was decreed by an imperial law, that those who called in question the prince's judgment, or doubted of the merit of such as he had chosen tor a public office, should be prosecuted as guilty of sacrilege , Surely it was the cabinet council and the favourites of the court who invented that crime. By another law it was determined, that whosoever made any attempt against the ministers and officers of the prince should be deemed guilty of high treason, as if he had attempted against the prince himself. This law is owing to two princes, celebrated in history for their weakness; princes who were led by their ministers as flocks by shepherds; princes who were slaves in the palace, children in the council, strangers to the army; princes in fine, who preserved their authority only by giving it away every day. Some of those favourites conspired against their emperors. Nay, they did more, they conspired against the empire; they called in barbarous nations; and when the emperors wanted to stop their progress, the state was so enfeebled, as to be under a necessity of infringing their law, and of exposing itself to the crime of high treason in order to punish those favourites.

And yet this is the very law which the judge of Monsieur de Cinq-Mars built upon, when endeavouring to prove that the latter was guilty of the crime of high treason for attempting to remove Cardinal Richelieu from the ministry, he says, "Crimes that aim at the persons of ministers, are Rh