Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/379

Rh is very little evacuated by perspiration. They may therefore make use of spirituous liquors, without which the blood would congeal. They are full of humours; consequently strong liquors, which give a motion to the blood, are proper for those countries.

The law of Mahomet, which prohibits the drinking of wine, is therefore a law fitted to the climate of Arabia: and indeed before Mahomet's time, water was the common drink of the Arabs. The law which forbad the Carthaginians to drink wine, was also a law of the climate; in fact, the climate of those two countries is pretty near the same.

Such a law would be improper for cold countries, where the climate seems to force them to a kind of national drunkenness, very different from personal intemperance. Drunkenness predominates over all the world, in proportion to the coldness and humidity of the climate. Go from the equator to our pole, and you will find drunkenness increasing together with the degree of latitude. Go from the same equator to the opposite pole, and you will find drunkenness travelling south, as on this side it travels towards the north.

It is very natural that where wine is contrary to the climate, and consequently to health, the excess of it should be more severely punished, than in countries where drunkenness produces very few bad effects to the person, few to the society, and where it does not make people mad, but only stupid and heavy. Hence laws which punished Rh