Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/447

Rh where they have not made this division, there are very few civil laws.

The institutions of these people may be called manners rather than laws.

Amongst such nations as these, the old men, who remember things past, have great authority; they cannot there be distinguished by wealth, but by wisdom and valour.

These people wander and disperse themselves in pasture grounds or in forests. Marriage cannot there have the security which it has amongst us, where it is fixed by the habitation, and where the wife continues in one house; they may then more easily change their wives, possess many, and sometimes mix indifferently like brutes.

Nations of herdsmen and shepherds cannot leave their cattle, which are their subsistence; neither can they separate themselves from their wives, who look after them. All this ought then to go together, especially as living generally in great plains, where there are few places of considerable strength, their wives, their children, their stocks may become the prey of their enemies.

Their laws regulate the division of plunder, and have, like our Salic laws, a particular attention to thefts.

HESE people enjoy great liberty. For as they do not cultivate the earth, they are not fixed, they are wanderers and vagabonds; and if a chief would deprive them of their liberty, they Rh