Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/403

Rh need of laws. It was even necessary for these laws to be of the most terrible kind, in order to establish the safety of those cruel masters, who lived in the midst of their slaves, as in the midst of enemies. They made the Sillanian Senatus-Consultum, and other laws, which decreed, that when a master was murdered, all the slaves under the same roof, or in any place so near the house, as to be within the hearing of a man's voice, should without distinction be condemned to die. Those who, in this case, sheltered a slave, in order to save him, where punished as murderers; he whom his master ordered to kill him, and who obeyed, was reputed guilty; even he who did not hinder him from killing himself, was liable to be punished. If a master was murdered on a journey, they put to death those who were with him, and those who fled. All these laws took place even against those whose innocence was proved: the intent of them was to give their slaves a prodigious respect for their master. They were not dependent on the civil government, but on a fault or imperfection of the civil government. They were not derived from the equity of civil law, since they were contrary to the principle of civil laws. They were properly founded on the principles of war, with this difference, that the enemies were in the bosom of the state. The Sillanian Senatus Consultum was derived from the law of nations, which requires that a society, however imperfect, should be preserved.

It is a misfortune in government when the Rh