Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/476

424 them to do it from their maritime provinces in the north.

HAVE said nothing here with a view to lessen that infinite distance, which there must ever be between virtue and vice. God forbid, that I should be guilty of such an attempt! I would only make my readers comprehend that all political, are not moral vices, and that all moral, are not political vices ; and that those who make laws which shock the general spirit of a nation, ought not to be ignorant of this.

T is a capital maxim, that the manners and customs of a despotic empire ought never to be changed; for nothing would more speedily produce a revolution. The reason is, that in these states there are no laws, that is, none that can be properly called so, there are only manners and customs; and if you overturn these, you overturn all.

Laws are established, manners are inspired; these proceed from a general spirit, those, from a particular institution: now it is as dangerous, nay, more to overturn the general spirit, as to change a particular institution.

There is less communication in a country where each, either as superior or inferior, exercises or suffers an arbitrary power, than there is in those where Rh