Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/334

282 The Greeks set no bounds to the vengeance they took of tyrants or of those they suspected of tyranny; they put their children to death, nay sometimes five of their nearest relations ; and they proscribed an infinite number of families. By this mans their republics suffered the most violent shooks; exiles or the return of the exiled were always epochas that indicated a change of the constitution.

The Romans had more sense. When Cassius was put to death for having aimed at tyranny, the question was proposed whether his children should undergo the same tare: but they were preserved. "They, says Dionysius Halicarnasseus : who wanted to change this law at the end of the Marsian and civil wars, and to exclude from public offices the children of those who had been proscribed by Sylla, are very much to blame."

N countries where liberty is most esteemed, there are laws by which a single person is deprived of it, in order to preserve it for the whole community. Such are in England what they call Bills of Attainder. These are relative to those Athenian Rh