Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/457

Rh their uncle as to their own father. There are men who regard this degree of kindred as more strict, and even more holy. They prefer it when they receive hostages." From hence it proceeds that our earliest historians speak in such strong terms of the love of the kings of the Franks for their sisters, and their sisters children. And indeed if the children of the sister were considered in her brother's house, as his own children, it was natural for these to regard their aunt as their mother.

The sister of the mother was preferred to the father's sister; this is explained by other texts of the Salic law. When a woman was a widow, the sell under the guardianship of her husband's relations; the law preferred to this guardianship the relations by the females before those by the males. Indeed a woman who entered into a family, joining herself with those of her own sex, became more united to her relations by the female than by the male. Moreover, when a man had killed another, and had not wherewithal to pay the pecuniary penalty he had incurred, the law permitted him to deliver up his substance, and his relations were to supply what was wanting. After the father, mother and brother, the sister of the mother was to pay, as if this tie had something in it most tender: now the degrees of kindred which gives the burthens, ought to give also the advantages.

The Salic law enjoins that after the father's sister, the succession should be held by the nearest relation male; but if this relation was beyond the fifth Rh