Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/389

Rh to be no slavery. In democracies, where they are all upon an equality; and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to use their utmost endeavours to procure as great an equality as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution; it only contributes to give a power and luxury to the citizens which ought not to have.

NE would never have imagined that slavery should owe its birth to pity, and that this should have been excited three different ways.

The law of nations, to prevent prisoners from being put to death, has allowed them to be made slaves. The civil law of the Romans empowered debtors, who were subject to be ill used by their creditors, to fell themselves. And the law of nature requires, that children, whom a father reduced to slavery is no longer able to maintain, should be reduced to the same state as the father.

These reasons of the civilians are all false. It is false that killing in war is lawful, unless in a case of absolute necessity: but when a man has made another his slave, he cannot be said to have been under a necessity of taking away his life, since he actually did not take it away. War gives no other right over prisoners than to disable them from doing any further harm, by securing their persons. All nations concur in detesting the murdering of prisoners in cold blood. Rh