Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/418

366 the indiscretions, the tastes and disgusts of our women, attended by their passions of a higher, and a lower kind, with all their active fire, and in that full liberty with which they appear amongst us, were conveyed into an eastern government, where would be the father of a family who could enjoy a moment's repose? the men would be every where suspected, every where enemies; the state would be overturned, and the kingdom overflowed with rivers of blood.

N the case of a multiplicity of wives, the more a family ceases to be united, the more ought the laws to reunite its detached parts in a common center; and the greater the diversity of interests, the more necessary it is for the laws to bring them back to a common interest.

This is more particularly done by confinement. The women should not only be separated from the men by the walls of the house; but they ought also to be separated in the same enclosure, in such a manner that each may have a distinct houshold in the same family. From hence each derives all that relates to the practice of morality, modesty, chastity, reserve, silence, peace, dependance, respect, and love, and in short, a general direction of her thoughts to that which in its own nature is a thing of the greatest importance, a single and intire attachment to her family. Rh