7.15. 15. Of Dowries and Nuptial Advantages in different Constitutions.
Dowries ought to be considerable in monarchies, in order to enable
husbands to support their rank and the established luxury. In republics,
where luxury should never reign,
[37]
they ought to be moderate; but there should be hardly any at all in despotic
governments, where women are in some measure slaves.
The community of goods introduced by the French laws between man and
wife is extremely well adapted to a monarchical government; because the
women are thereby interested in domestic affairs, and compelled, as it
were, to take care of their family. It is less so in a republic, where
women are possessed of more virtue. But it would be quite absurd in
despotic governments, where the women themselves generally constitute a
part of the master's property.
As women are in a state that furnishes sufficient inducements to
marriage, the advantages which the law gives them over the husband's
property are of no service to society. But in a republic they would be
extremely prejudicial, because riches are productive of luxury. In
despotic governments the profits accruing from marriage ought to be mere
subsistence, and no more.
Footnotes
[37]
Marseilles was the wisest of all the republics in its time; here
it was ordained that dowries should not exceed one hundred crowns in
money, and five in clothes, as Strabo observes, iv.
