Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/407

Rh masters of the suffrages, made an abominable law, which gave them the right of lying first with the girls married to the free-born.

There are several ways of introducing insensibly new citizens into a republic. The laws may favour the acquiring a peculium, and put slaves into a condition of buying their liberty: they may give a term to servitude like those of Moses, which limited that of the Hebrew slaves to six years. It is easy to give every year freedom to a certain number of those slaves who by their age, health, or industry, are capable of getting a subsistence. The evil may be even cured in its root: as a great number of slaves are connected with the several employments which are given them; to divide amongst the free-born a part of these employments, for example, commerce, or navigation, is diminishing the number of slaves.

When there are many freedmen, it is necessary that the civil laws should determine what they owe to their patron, or else that these duties should be fixed by the contract of infranchisement.

It is certain that their condition should be more favoured in the civil, than in the political state; because, even in popular government, the power ought not to fall into the hands of the vulgar.

At Rome, where they had so many freedmen, the political laws with regard to them, were admirable. They gave them little, and excluded them almost from nothing: they had even a share in the legislature, but the resolutions they were capable of taking were almost of no weight. They might bear a part in the public offices and even in the dignity of the priesthood ; but this privilege was in Rh