Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/485

Rh A veneration for fathers was necessarily connected with a suitable respect for all who represented fathers, such as old men, masters, magistrates, and the emperor. This respect for fathers, supposed a return of love towards children, and consequently the same return from old men to the young, from magistrates to those who were under their jurisdiction, and from the emperor to his subjects. This formed the rites, and these rites the general spirit of the nation.

We shall now shew the relation which things in appearance the most indifferent, may have to the fundamental constitution of China. This empire is formed on the plan of the government of family. If you diminish the paternal authority, or even if you retrench the ceremonies, which express your respect for it, you weaken the reverence due to magistrates, who are considered as fathers; nor would the magistrates have the same care of the people whom they ought to consider as their children; and that tender relation which subsists between the prince and his subjects, would insensibly be lost. Retrench but one of these habits, and you overturn the state. It is a thing in itself very different whether the daughter-in-law rises every morning to pay such and such duties to her mother-in-law: but if we consider that these exterior habits incessantly revive an idea necessary to be imprinted on all minds, an idea that forms the governing spirit of the empire, we shall see that it is necessary that such, or such a particular action be performed. Rh