Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/71

Rh being administered by the people, gives them a certain influence in the government, from whence their whole prosperity arises.

The senators ought by no means to have a right of naming their own members; for this would be the only way to perpetuate abuses. At Rome, which in its early years was a kind of aristocracy, the senate did not fill up the vacant places in their own body, the new senators were nominated by the censors.

An exorbitant authority suddenly conferred upon a citizen in a republic, produces a monarch or something more than a monarchy. In the latter the laws have provided for, or in some measure adapted themselves to, the constitution; and the principle of government checks the monarch: but in a republic where a private citizen has obtained an exorbitant power, the abuse of this power is much greater, because the laws foresaw it not, and consequently made no provision against it.

There is an exception to this rule when the constitution is such as to have immediate need of a magistrate inverted with an exorbitant power. Such was Rome with her dictators, such is Venice with her state inquisitors, these are formidable magistrates, who restore, as it were by violence, the state to its liberty. But how comes it that these magistracies are so very different in these two republics? It is because Rome supported the remains of her aristocracy against the people; whereas Venice employs her state inquisitors to maintain her Rh