Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/420

368 and modesty a weakness, that exceeds all comprehension. At Patan the wanton desires of the women are so outragious, that the men are obliged to make use of a certain apparel to shelter them from their designs. In these countries, the two sexes lose even those laws which properly belong to each.

T is not only a plurality of wives, which in certain places of the east requires their confinement; but also the climate itself. Those who consider the horrible crimes, the treachery, the black villanies, the poisonings, the assassinations, which the liberty of women has occasioned at Goa, and in the Portuguese settlements in the Indies, where religion permits only one wife; and who compare them with the innocence and purity of manners of the women of Turky, Persia, Mogulstan, China, and Japan, will clearly see that it is frequently as necessary to separate them from the men, when they have but one, as when they have many.

These are things which ought to be decided by the climate. What purpose would it answer to shut up women in our northern countries, where their manners are naturally good; where all their passions are calm; and where love rules over Rh