Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/362

310 appellation of a great minister to a wise dispenser of the public revenues; but to a person of dexterity and cunning, who is clever at finding out what we call the ways and means.

T was this excess of taxes that occasioned the prodigious facility with which the Mahometans carried on their conquests. Instead of a continual series of extortions devised by the subtle avarice of the emperors, the people were subjected to a simple tribute, which was paid and collected with ease. Thus they were far happier in obeying a barbarous nation, than a corrupt government, in which they suffered every inconveniency of a lost liberty, with all the horrors of a present slavery.

NEW distemper has spread itself over Europe; it has infected our princes, and induces them to keep up an exorbitant number of troops. It has its redoublings, and of necessity becomes contagious. For as soon as one prince augments what he calls his troops, the rest of course do the same; so that nothing is gained thereby but the public ruin. Each monarch keeps as many armies on foot as if his people were in Rh