CHAP. XV.: The same Subject continued.

IN warm climates, where despotic power generally prevails, the passions disclose themselves earlier, and are sooner extinguished See the book of laws, as relative to the nature of the climate. ^†119; the understanding is sooner ripened; they are in less danger of squandering away their fortunes; there is less facility of distinguishing themselves in the world; less communication between young people, who are confined at home; they marry much earlier, and consequently may be sooner of age, than in our European climates. In Turkey, they are of age at fifteen Languilletiere, Ancient and Modern Sparta, p. 463. ^†120.

They have no such thing as a cession of goods; in a government where there is no fixed property people depend rather on the person than on his estate.

The cession of goods is naturally admitted in moderate governments The same may be said of compositions in regard to fair bankrupts. ^†121, but especially in republics, because of the greater confidence usually placed in the probity of the citizens, and the lenity and moderation arising from a form of government which every subject seems to have preferred to all others.

Had the legislators of the Roman republic established the cession of goods There was no such establishment made till the Julian law, de cessione bonorum; which preserved them from prison and from an ignominious division of their goods. ^†122, they never would have been exposed to so many seditions and civil discords; neither would they have experienced the danger of the evils nor the inconveniency of the remedies.

Poverty, and the precariousness of property, in a despotic state, render usury natural, each person raising the value of his money in proportion to the danger he sees in lending it. Misery, therefore, pours in

from all parts into those unhappy countries; they are bereft of every thing, even of the resource of borrowing.

Hence it is, that a merchant, under this government, is unable to carry on an extensive commerce: he lives from hand to mouth; and, were he to encumber himself with a large quantity of merchandises, he would lose more by the exorbitant interest he must give for money than he could possibly get by the goods. Hence they have no laws here relating to commerce; they are all reduced to what is called the bare police.

A government cannot be unjust without having hands to exercise its injustice. Now, it is impossible but these hands will be grasping for themselves. The embezzling of the public money is, therefore, natural in despotic states.

As this is a common crime, under such a government, confiscations are very useful. By these the people are eased; the money drawn by this method being a considerable tribute, which could hardly be raised on the exhausted subject: neither is there, in those countries, any one family which the prince would be glad to preserve.

In moderate governments it is quite a different thing. Confiscations would render property uncertain, would strip innocent children, would destroy a whole family, instead of punishing a single criminal. In republics, they would be attended with the mischief of subverting equality, which is the very soul of this government, by depriving a citizen of his necessary subsistence.

There is a Roman law Authentica bona damnatorum. Cod. de bon. damn. ^†123 against confiscations, except in the case of crimen majestatis, or high treason of the most heinous nature. It would be a prudent

thing to follow the spirit of this law, and to limit confiscations to particular crimes They seem to have been too fend of confiscations in the republic of Athens. ^†124. In countries where a local custom has rendered real estates alienable, Bodin very justly observes, that confiscations should extend only to such as are purchased or acquired Book 5. ch. 3. ^†125.