Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/385

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UR ancestors the ancient Germans lived under a climate, where the passions were extremely calm. Their laws decided only in such cases where the injury was visible to the eye, and went no further. And as they judged of the outrages done to men from the greatness of the wounds, they acted with no other delicacy in respect to the injuries done to women. The law of the Alemans on this subject is very extraordinary. If a person uncovers a woman's head, he pays a fine of fifty sous; if he uncovers her leg up to the knee, he pays the same; and double from the knee upwards. One would think that the law measured the insults offered to women as we measure a figure in geometry; it did not punish the crime of the imagination, but that of the eye. But upon the migration of a German nation into Spain, the climate soon found a necessity for different laws. The law of the Visigoths inhibited the surgeons to bleed a free woman, except either her father, mother, brother, son, or uncle was present. As the imagination of the people grew warm, so did that of the legislators; the law suspected every thing, when the people grew suspicious.

These laws had therefore a particular regard for the two sexes. But in their punishments they seem rather to humour the revengeful temper of private persons, than to exercise public justice. Thus in most cases they reduced both the criminals to be slaves to the offended relations or to the injured husband; Rh