The quality of a country’s lands naturally establishes dependency. Rural people, who make up most of the population, are not so jealous of their freedom ; they are too busy with, and too preoccupied by, their private concerns. A countryside abounding in wealth fears pillage, and fears an army. (…)
Those fertile regions are plains where nothing can be contested against him who is strongest, so one submits to him ; and once his subject, the spirit of freedom can never return ; country property is security for loyalty. But in mountainous regions, one can preserve what one has, and one has (…)
Lands are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but in proportion to their liberty ; and if we imagine a division of the land, we will be surprised most of the time to see wilderness in the most fertile parts, and large populations in parts where the land seems to yield nothing.
It (…)
The barrenness of lands makes men industrious, sober, hardened to work, courageous, fit for war : they have no choice but to procure for themselves what the terrain refuses them. The fertility of a region imparts, along with convenience, lethargy and a certain love for the preservation of life. (…)
Island peoples have more affinity for liberty than continental peoples. Islands are ordinarily relatively small [1] ; part of the people cannot be so well employed oppressing the rest ; the sea separates them from the great empires, and one tyranny cannot come to the aid of another ; conquerors (…)
Countries which human industry has made inhabitable, and which require the same industry in order to exist, call for moderated government. There are principally three of this kind : the two fair provinces of Kiang-nan and Chekiang in China, Egypt, and Holland.
The ancient emperors of China (…)
Men have through their application and good laws made the world a more accommodating place to host them. We see rivers flowing where there were lakes and marshes : that is an asset which nature did not make, but which nature maintains. When the Persians were masters of Asia, they allowed anyone (…)
Laws have a very great relationship to the way in which various peoples procure their subsistence. A people attached to trade and to the sea requires a more extensive code of laws than a people which is content to till its soil. The latter requires a larger one than a people that lives off its (…)
The reason why there are so many savage nations in America is that the land there spontaneously produces many edible fruits. If the women till a piece of land near the cabin, corn grows right away. Hunting and fishing added to that allow men to live in abundance. Besides, grazing animals such as (…)
When nations do not cultivate the land, here is the proportion of the number of men there are. As the product of a fallow terrain is to the product of a cultivated terrain, so is the number of savages in one country to the number of farmers in another ; and when the people who cultivate the land (…)
Montesquieu
Unité Mixte de Recherche 5317, CNRS