Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/79

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FTER having examined the laws relative to the nature of each government, we must investigate those that relate to its principle.

There is this difference between the nature and principle of government; its nature is that by which it is constituted, and its principle that by which it is made to act. One is its particular structure, and the other the human passions which set it in motion.

Now laws ought to be no less relative to the principle than to the nature of each government. We must therefore inquire into this principle, which shall be the subject of this third book,

HAVE already observed that it is the nature of a republican government, that either the collective body of the people, or particular families Rh