Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/404

352 thus find themselves under a necessity of making cruel laws; because they have rendered obedience difficult, they are obliged to increase the penalty of disobedience, or the suspicion of fidelity. A prudent legislator foresees the ill consequences of rendering the legislature terrible. The slaves amongst the Romans could have no confidence in the laws; and therefore the laws could have no confidence in them.

HE magistrate ought to take care that the slave has his provisions and cloathing; and this ought to be regulated by law.

The laws ought to provide, that care be taken of them in sickness and old age. Claudius decreed, that the slaves, who, in sickness, had been abandoned by their masters, should, in case they recovered, be free. This law infured their liberty; but should not there have been some care also taken to preserve their lives?

When the law permitted a master to take away the life of his slave, he was invested with a power which he ought to exercise as judge, and not as master; it was necessary that the law should ordain those formalities which take away the suspicion of an act of violence.

When fathers, at Rome, were no longer permitted to put their children to death, the magistrates ordained the punishment which the father would have inflicted. A like custom between the master and his slaves would be highly reasonable in a country where masters have the power of life and death. Rh