Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/395

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HERE is another origin of the right of slavery, and even of the most cruel slavery, which is to be seen among men.

There are countries where the excess of heat enervates the body, and renders men so slothful and dispirited, that nothing but the fear of chastisement can oblige them to perform any laborius duty: slavery is there more reconcileable to reason; and the master being as lazy with respect to his sovereign, as his slave is to him, this adds a political to a civil slavery.

Aristotle endeavours to prove, that there are natural slaves, but what he says is far from proving it. If there be any such, I believe they are those of whom I have been speaking.

But as all men are born equal, slavery must be accounted unnatural, though in some countries it be founded on natural reason; and a wide difference ought to be made betwixt such countries, and those where even natural reason rejects it, as in Europe, where it has been so happily abolished.

Plutarch, in his life of Numa, says, that in Saturn's time, there was neither slave nor master. Christianity has restored that age in our climates.

ATURAL slavery, then, is to be limited to some particular parts of the world. In Rh