Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/72

20 against the nobles. The consequence was, that at Rome the dictatorship could be only of a short duration, because the people act through passion and violence, and not with design. It was necessary that a magistracy of this kind should be exercised with lustre and pomp, because the business was to intimidate and not to punish the people. It was also necessary that the dictator should be created only for some particular affair, and for this only should have an unlimited authority, because he was always created upon some sudden emergency. On the contrary, at Venice they have occasion for a permanent magistracy; for here it is that designs may be commenced, continued, suspended, resumed; that the ambition of a single person becomes that of a family, and the ambition of one family that of many. They have occasion for a secret magistracy, because the crimes they punish, are hatched in secrecy and silence. This magistracy must have a general inquisition, by reason their business is not to put a slop to known evils, but to prevent the unknown. In sine the latter magistracy is appointed in order to punish suspected crimes; and the former used rather menaces than punishment even for crimes that were openly avowed by their authors.

In all magistracies, the greatness of the power must be compensated by the brevity of the duration, This most legislators have fixed to a year; a longer space would be dangerous, and a shorter would be contrary to the nature of the thing. For who is it that in the management even of his domestic affairs would be thus confined? At Ragufa the chief magistrate of the republic is changed every month, the Rh