Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/460

408 law. And yet ibis is a point indubitably certain. I prove it from the several codes of the barbarous nations. The Salic law and the law of the Burgundians refused the daughters the right of succeeding to the land in conjunction with their brothers; neither did they succeed to the crown. The law of the Visigoths on the contrary, permitted the daughters to inherit the land with the brothers; and the women were capable of inheriting the crown. Amongst these people the regulations of the civil law had an effect on the political.

This was not the only case in which the political law of the Franks gave way to the civil law. By the Salic law all the brothers succeeded equally to the land, and this was also decreed by a law of the Burgundians. Thus in the kingdom of the Franks, and in that of the Burgundians, all the brothers succeeded to the crown; if we except a few murders and usurpations which took place amongst the Burgundians.

PEOPLE who do not cultivate the land, have not so much as an idea of luxury. We may see in Tacitus the admirable simplicity of the German nations; the arts were not employed in their ornaments; these were founded in nature. It the family of their chief was to be distinguished by any sign, it was no other than that which nature bestowed. The kings of the Franks Rh