CHAPTER V.: laws.

1. We ought to attach little value to living in a city where the laws are less powerful than men. That country only is desirable where you can enjoy your substance and your friends in security, and not that where your property can be easily taken away from you, and where your friends, for fear of their own property, abandon you in your greatest need.

2. A state cannot exist securely unless it has bound itself by many laws, in which the security of all its population is comprised.

3. Whoever is not restrained by the laws commits the same error as an unrestrained mob.

4. The power of the law is capable of overcoming every obstacle, even that of the nature of the territory.

5. As the preservation of good morals needs good laws, so the laws, to maintain themselves, require good morals.

6. To prevent good morals from being corrupted and changed into bad morals, the legislator must restrain the human passions and deprive men of all hope of being able to trespass with impunity.

7. It is the laws that make men good.

8. Good laws give rise to good education.

9. Good education produces good examples.

10. In a well-constituted government the laws are made for the public good, and not to satisfy the ambition of a few.

11. To despoil any one of his goods by new laws, at a time when he claims them with justice before the tribunals, is a wrong that will bring with it the greatest dangers to the legislator.

12. Where a thing works well by itself without the support of the law, there law is not necessary.

13. No law should ever stain the pledged faith of public engagements.

14. No more injurious laws can be made than such as are retroactive to a great extent of time.

15. Laws should not go back upon things of the past, but should thoroughly provide for the future.

16. Nothing does so much honor to a man newly risen to eminence, as to make new laws and new regulations devised by himself. If these, when once established, show that they have grandeur in them, then will they render the man an object of reverence and admiration.

17. It does not suffice for the welfare of a state to have a prince who governs wisely during his life; but it is necessary to have one who regulates matters in such a manner that even after his death the state shall maintain itself.

18. A general rule that never fails is this: make no change where there is no defect, as that produces nothing but disorder. But where there is nothing but disorder, the less you leave of the old, the less will there remain of what is bad.

19. The governments that are best regulated and have most vitality are those which, by means of their institutions, can renew themselves. And the way to renew themselves is, to bring the government back to its original principles; as, for instance, to make the people resume their observances of religion and of justice when these begin to become corrupt.

20. That state may call itself happy which has produced a man so wise that he gives to the state laws so regulated that the people can live under them securely without the necessity of reforming them.

21. The reformer of laws must act with prudence, justice, and integrity, and must manage in such manner that from his reforms shall result the good, the welfare of his people, justice, and the well-regulated life of the citizens.

22. That law can never be praised which conceals many defects under small advantage.