There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
Charles de Montesquieu, The Persian Letters, No. 95
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At our coming into the world, we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
Charles de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book V, Chapter 3
At our coming into the world, we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book V, Chapter 3
Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.
Baron Charles de Montesquieu, Persian Letters #60
There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel where it is of the utmost importance that human nature should not be debased or dispirited, there ought to be no slavery.
In democracies, where they are all upon equality; and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to use their utmost endeavors to procure as great an equality as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution: it only contributes to give a power and luxury to the citizens which they ought not to have.
Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.