Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/433

Rh and of the slavery of Asia: a cause that I do not recollect ever to have seen remarked. From hence it proceeds, that liberty in Asia never increases, whilst in Europe it is enlarged or diminished according to particular circumstances.

The Russian nobility have indeed been reduced to slavery by the ambition of one of their princes; but they have always discovered those marks of impatience and discontent which are never to be seen in the southern climates. Have they not been able for a short time to establish an aristocratical government? Another of the northern kingdoms has lost its laws; but we may trust to the climate that they are not lost in such a manner as never to be recovered.

HAT we have just said, is perfectly conformable to history. Asia has been subdued thirteen times; eleven by the northern nations, and twice by those of the south. In the early ages it was conquered three times by the Scythians; afterwards it was conquered once by the Medes, and once by the Persians; again by the Greeks, the Arabs, the Moguls, the Turks, the Tartars, the Persians, and the Afghans. I mention only the upper Asia, and say nothing of the invasions made in the rest of the south of that part of the world, which has most frequently suffered prodigious revolutions.

In Europe, on the contrary, since the establishment of the Greek and Phoenician colonies we Rh