Book VI.
Chap. 9.In despotic governments people are so unhappy, as to have a greater dread of death than regret tor the loss of life; consequently their punishments ought to be more severe. In moderate stats, they are more afraid of losing their lives than apprehensive of the pain of dying; those punishments therefore that deprive them simply of life are sufficient.
Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclinable to severity; witness conquerors and monks. It is mediocrity alone and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
What we observe among particular men, is equally observable in different nations. In countries inhabited by savages who lead a very hard life, and in despotic governments, where there is only one person on whom fortune lavishes her favours, while the miserable subjects lye exposed to her insults, people are equally cruel. Lenity reigns in moderate governments.
When we read in history the horrid severity of the Sultans in the administration of justice, we feel a kind of pain upon considering the miseries of human nature.
In moderate governments, a good legislator may make use of every thing by way of punishment. Is it not a very extraordinary thing that one of the principal punishments at Sparta was to deprive a person of the power of lending out his wife, or of receiving the wife of another man, and to oblige him to have no company at home but virgins? In short whatever the law calls a punishment is such effectively.
