Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/329

Rh And yet Augustus and Tiberius subjected satyrical writers to the same punishment as for having violated the law of majesty. Augustus, because of those which he suspected to have been written against himself. Nothing was more fatal to Roman liberty. Cremutius Cordus was accused for having called Cassius in his annals the last of the Romans.

Satyncal writings are hardly known in despotic governments, where dejection of mind on the one hand, and ignorance on the other, afford neither abilities nor will to write. In democracies they are not hindered for the very same reason, which causes them to be prohibited in monarchies: Being generally levelled against men of power and authority, they flatter the malignity of the people who are the governing party. In monarchies they are forbidden, but rather as a subject of civil animadversion, than as a capital crime. They may amuse the general malignity, please the malecontents, diminish the envy against public employments, give the people patience to suffer, and make them laugh at their sufferings.

But no government is so averse to fatyrical writings as the aristocratical. There the magistrates are petty sovereigns, but not great enough to despise affronts. If in a monarchy a fatyrical stroke is designed against the prince, he is placed in such an eminence that it does not reach him; but an aristocratical lord is pierced to the very heart. Hence the decemvirs who formed an aristocracy, punished fatyrical writings with death. Rh