Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/337

Rh with wounds, made his escape from his creditor's house, and appeared in the forum. The people were moved with this spectacle, and other citizens whom their creditors durst no longer confine, emerged from their dungeons. They had promises made them, which were all broke. The people upon this having withdrawn to the Sacred Mount, obtained, not an abrogation of those laws, but a magistrate to defend them. Thus they quitted a slate of anarchy, but were soon in danger of falling into tyranny. Manlius to render himself popular, was going to set those citizens at liberty, who had been reduced to slavery by their inhuman creditors. Manlius's designs were prevented, but without remedying the evil. Particular laws facilitated to debtors the means of paying, and in the year of Rome 428 the consuls proposed a law which deprived creditors of the power of confining their debtors in their own houses. An usurer, by name Papirius attempted to corrupt the chastity of a young man named Publius, whom he kept in irons. Sextus's crime gave to Rome its political liberty; that of Papirius gave it also the civil.

Such was the fate of this city, that new crimes confirmed the liberty, which those of a more ancient date had procured it. Appius's attempt upon Virginia, flung the people again into that horror against tyrants with which the misfortune of Lucretia had first inspired them. Thirty seven years after the crime of the infamous Papirius, an action of the Rh