Book X.
Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to Offensive Force.
10.1. 1. Of offensive Force.
Offensive force is regulated by the law of nations, which is the political
law of each country considered in its relation to every other.
10.2. 2. Of War.
The life of governments is like that of man. The latter has a right to kill in
case of natural defence: the former have a right to wage war for their own preservation.
In the case of natural defence I have a right to kill, because my
life is in respect to me what the life of my antagonist is to him: in
the same manner a state wages war because its preservation is like that
of any other being.
With individuals the right of natural defence does not imply a
necessity of attacking. Instead of attacking they need only have
recourse to proper tribunals. They cannot therefore exercise this right
of defence but in sudden cases, when immediate death would be the
consequence of waiting for the assistance of the law. But with states
the right of natural defence carries along with it sometimes the
necessity of attacking; as for instance, when one nation sees that a
continuance of peace will enable another to destroy her, and that to
attack that nation instantly is the only way to prevent her own
destruction.
Thence it follows that petty states have oftener a right to declare
war than great ones, because they are oftener in the case of being
afraid of destruction.
The right of war, therefore, is derived from necessity and strict
justice. If those who direct the conscience or councils of princes do
not abide by this maxim, the consequence is dreadful: when they proceed
on arbitrary principles of glory, convenience, and utility, torrents of
blood must overspread the earth.
But, above all, let them not plead such an idle pretext as the glory
of the prince: his glory is nothing but pride; it is a passion, and not
a legitimate right.
It is true the fame of his power might increase the strength of his
government; but it might be equally increased by the reputation of his
justice.
10.3. 3. Of the Right of Conquest.
From the right of war comes that of conquest; which is the consequence of that
right, and ought therefore to follow its spirit.
The right the conqueror has over a conquered people is directed by
four sorts of laws: the law of nature, which makes everything tend to
the preservation of the species; the law of natural reason, which
teaches us to do to others what we would have done to ourselves; the law
that forms political societies, whose duration nature has not limited;
and, in fine, the law derived from the nature of the thing itself.
Conquest is an acquisition, and carries with it the spirit of
preservation and use, not of destruction.
The inhabitants of a conquered country are treated by the conqueror
in one of the four following ways: Either he continues to rule them
according to their own laws, and assumes to himself only the exercise of
the political and civil government; or he gives them new political and
civil government; or he destroys and disperses the society; or, in fine,
he exterminates the people.
The first way is conformable to the law of nations now followed; the
fourth is more agreeable to the law of nations followed by the Romans:
in respect to which I leave the reader to judge how far we have improved
upon the ancients. We must give due commendations to our modern
refinements in reason, religion, philosophy, and manners.
The authors of our public law, guided by ancient histories, without
confining themselves to cases of strict necessity, have fallen into very
great errors. They have adopted tyrannical and arbitrary principles, by
supposing the conquerors to be invested with I know not what right to
kill: thence they have drawn consequences as terrible as the very
principle, and established maxims which the conquerors themselves, when
possessed of the least grain of sense, never presumed to follow. It is a
plain case that when the conquest is completed, the conqueror has no
longer a right to kill, because he has no longer the plea of natural
defence and self-preservation.
What has led them into this mistake is, that they imagined a
conqueror had a right to destroy the state; whence they inferred that he
had a right to destroy the men that compose it: a wrong consequence from
a false principle. For from the destruction of the state it does not at
all follow that the people who compose it ought to be also destroyed.
The state is the association of men, and not the men themselves; the
citizen may perish, and the man remain.
From the right of killing in the case of conquest, politicians have
drawn that of reducing to slavery — a consequence as ill-grounded as
the principle.
There is no such thing as a right of reducing people to slavery,
save when it becomes necessary for the preservation of the conquest.
Preservation, and not servitude, is the end of conquest; though
servitude may happen sometimes to be a necessary means of preservation.
Even in that case it is contrary to the nature of things that the
slavery should be perpetual. The people enslaved ought to be rendered
capable of becoming subjects. Slavery in conquests is an accidental
thing. When after the expiration of a certain space of time all the
parts of the conquering state are connected with the conquered nation,
by custom, marriages, laws, associations, and by a certain conformity of
disposition, there ought to be an end of the slavery. For the rights of
the conqueror are founded entirely on the opposition between the two
nations in those very articles, whence prejudices arise, and the want of
mutual confidence.
A conqueror, therefore, who reduces the conquered people to slavery,
ought always to reserve to himself the means (for means there are
without number) of restoring them to their liberty.
These are far from being vague and uncertain notions. Thus our
ancestors acted, those ancestors who conquered the Roman empire. The
laws they made in the heat and transport of passion and in the insolence
of victory were gradually softened; those laws were at first severe, but
were afterwards rendered impartial. The Burgundians, Goths, and Lombards
would have the Romans continue a conquered people; but the laws of
Euric, Gundebald, and Rotharis made the Romans and barbarians
fellow-citizens.
[1]
Charlemagne, to tame the Saxons, deprived them of their liberty and
property. Louis the Debonnaire made them a free people,
[2]
and this was
one of the most prudent regulations during his whole reign. Time and
servitude had softened their manners, and they ever after adhered to him
with the greatest fidelity.
Footnotes
[1]
See the "Code of Barbarian Laws," and Book xxviii below.
[2]
See the anonymous author of the "Life of Louis le Debonnaire," in
Duchesne's collection, tome ii, p. 296.
10.4. 4. Some Advantages of a conquered People.
Instead of inferring such
destructive consequences from the right of conquest, much better would
it have been for politicians to mention the advantages which this very
right may sometimes give to a conquered people — advantages which would
be more sensibly and more universally experienced were our law of
nations exactly followed, and established in every part of the globe.
Conquered countries are, generally speaking, degenerated from their
original institution. Corruption has crept in, the execution of the laws
has been neglected, and the government has grown oppressive. Who can
question but such a state would be a gainer, and derive some advantages
from the very conquest itself, if it did not prove destructive? When a
government has arrived at that degree of corruption as to be incapable
of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being newly moulded. A
conqueror who enters triumphant into a country where the moneyed men
have, by a variety of artifices, insensibly arrived at innumerable ways
of encroaching on the public, where the miserable people, who see abuses
grown into laws, are ready to sink under the weight of impression, yet
think they have no right to apply for redress — a conqueror, I say, may
make a total change, and then the tyranny of those wretches will be the
first thing exposed to his resentment.
We have beheld, for instance, countries oppressed by the farmers of
the revenues, and eased afterwards by the conqueror, who had neither the
engagements nor wants of the legitimate prince. Even the abuses have
been often redressed without any interposition of the conqueror.
Sometimes the frugality of a conquering nation has enabled them to
allow the conquered those necessaries of which they had been deprived
under a lawful prince.
A conquest may destroy pernicious prejudices, and lay, if I may
presume to use the expression, the nation under a better genius.
What good might not the Spaniards have done to the Mexicans? They
had a mild religion to impart to them; but they filled their heads with
a frantic superstition. They might have set slaves at liberty; they made
freemen slaves. They might have undeceived them with regard to the abuse
of human sacrifices; instead of that they destroyed them. Never should I
have finished, were I to recount all the good they might have done, and
all the mischief they committed.
It is a conqueror's business to repair a part of the mischief he has
occasioned. The right, therefore, of conquest I define thus: a
necessary, lawful, but unhappy power, which leaves the conqueror under a
heavy obligation of repairing the injuries done to humanity.
10.5. 5. Gelon, King of Syracuse.
The noblest treaty of peace ever
mentioned in history is, in my opinion, that which Gelon made with the
Carthaginians. He insisted upon their abolishing the custom of
sacrificing their children.
[3]
Glorious indeed! After having defeated
three hundred thousand Carthaginians, he required a condition that was
advantageous only to themselves, or rather he stipulated in favour of
human nature.
The Bactrians exposed their aged fathers to be devoured by large
mastiffs — a custom suppressed by Alexander, whereby he obtained a
signal triumph over superstition.
Footnotes
[3]
See M. Barbeyrac's collection, art. 112.
10.6. 6. Of Conquest made by a Republic.
It is contrary to the nature of
things that in a confederate government one state should make any
conquest over another, as in our days we have seen in Switzerland.
[4]
In mixed confederate republics, where the association is between petty
republics and monarchies, of a small extent, this is not so absurd.
Contrary is it also to the nature of things that a democratic
republic should conquer towns which cannot enter into the sphere of its
democracy. It is necessary that the conquered people should be capable
of enjoying the privileges of sovereignty, as was settled in the very
beginning among the Romans. The conquest ought to be limited to the
number of citizens fixed for the democracy.
If a democratic republic subdues a nation in order to govern them as
subjects, it exposes its own liberty; because it entrusts too great a
power to those who are appointed to the command of the conquered
provinces.
How dangerous would have been the situation of the republic of
Carthage had Hannibal made himself master of Rome? What would he not
have done in his own country, had he been victorious, he who caused so
many revolutions in it after his defeat?
[5]
Hanno could never have dissuaded the senate from sending succour to
Hannibal, had he used no other argument than his own jealousy. The
Carthaginian senate, whose wisdom is so highly extolled by Aristotle
(and which has been evidently proved by the prosperity of that
republic), could never have been determined by other than solid reasons.
They must have been stupid not to see that an army at the distance of
three hundred leagues would necessarily be exposed to losses which
required reparation.
Hanno's party insisted that Hannibal should be delivered up to the
Romans.
[6]
They could not at that time be afraid of the Romans; they
were therefore apprehensive of Hannibal.
It was impossible, some will say, for them to imagine that Hannibal
had been so successful. But how was it possible for them to doubt it?
Could the Carthaginians, a people spread over all the earth, be ignorant
of what was transacting in Italy? No: they were sufficiently acquainted
with it, and for that reason they did not care to send supplies to
Hannibal.
Hanno became more resolute after the battle of Trebia, after the
battle of Thrasimenus, after that of Cann; it was not his incredulity
that increased, but his fear.
Footnotes
[4]
With regard to Tockenburg.
[5]
He was at the head of a faction.
[6]
Hanno wanted to deliver Hannibal up to the Romans, as Cato would
fain have delivered up Cæsar to the Gauls.
10.7. 7. The same Subject continued.
There is still another inconvenience
in conquests made by democracies: their government is ever odious to the
conquered states. It is apparently monarchical: but in reality it is
much more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and
countries evinces.
The conquered people are in a melancholy situation; they neither
enjoy the advantages of a republic, nor those of a monarchy.
What has been here said of a popular state is applicable to
aristocracy.
10.8. 8. The same Subject continued.
When a republic, therefore, keeps
another nation in subjection, it should endeavour to repair the
inconveniences arising from the nature of its situation by giving it
good laws both for the political and civil government of the people.
We have an instance of an island in the Mediterranean, subject to an
Italian republic, whose political and civil laws with regard to the
inhabitants of that island were extremely defective. The act of
indemnity,
[7]
by which it ordained that no one should be condemned to
bodily punishment in consequence of the private knowledge of the
governor, ex informata conscientia, is still recent in everybody's
memory. There have been frequent instances of the people's petitioning
for privileges; here the sovereign grants only the common right of all
nations.
Footnotes
[7]
Of the 18th of October, 1738, printed at Genoa by Franchelli. See
also the Amsterdam Gazette, Dec. 23, 1738.
10.9. 9. Of Conquests made by a Monarchy.
If a monarchy can long subsist
before it is weakened by its increase, it will become formidable; and
its strength will remain entire, while pent up by the neighbouring
monarchies.
It ought not, therefore, to aim at conquests beyond the natural
limits of its government. So soon as it has passed these limits, it is
prudence to stop.
In this kind of conquest things must be left as they were found --
the same courts of judicature, the same laws, the same customs, the same
privileges: there ought to be no other alteration than that of the army
and of the name of the sovereign.
When a monarchy has extended its limits by the conquest of
neighbouring provinces, it should treat those provinces with great
lenity.
If a monarchy has been long endeavouring at conquest, the provinces
of its ancient demesne are generally ill-used. They are obliged to
submit both to the new and to the ancient abuses; and to be depopulated
by a vast metropolis, that swallows up the whole. Now if, after having
made conquests round this demesne, the conquered people were treated
like the ancient subjects, the state would be undone; the taxes sent by
the conquered provinces to the capital would never return; the
inhabitants of the frontiers would be ruined, and consequently the
frontiers would be weaker; the people would be disaffected; and the
subsistence of the armies designed to act and remain there would become
more precarious.
Such is the necessary state of a conquering monarchy: a shocking
luxury in the capital; misery in the provinces somewhat distant; and
plenty in the most remote. It is the same with such a monarchy as with
our planet; fire at the centre, verdure on the surface, and between both
a dry, cold, and barren earth.
10.10. 10. Of one Monarchy that subdues another.
Sometimes one monarchy
subdues another. The smaller the latter, the better it is overawed by
fortresses; and the larger it is, the better will it be preserved by
colonies.
10.11. 11. Of the Manners of a conquered People.
It is not sufficient in
those conquests to let the conquered nation enjoy their own laws; it is,
perhaps, more necessary to leave them also their manners, because people
in general have a stronger attachment to these than to their laws.
The French have been driven nine times out of Italy, because, as
historians say,
[8]
of their insolent familiarities with the fair sex. It
is too much for a nation to be obliged to bear not only with the pride
of conquerors, but with their incontinence and indiscretion; these are,
without doubt, most grievous and intolerable, as they are the source of
infinite outrages.
Footnotes
[8]
See Pufendorff's "Universal History."
10.12. 12. Of a Law of Cyrus.
Far am I from thinking that a good law which
Cyrus made to oblige the Lydians to practise none but mean or infamous
professions. It is true he directed his attention to an object of the
greatest importance: he thought of guarding against revolts, and not
invasions; but invasions will soon come, when the Persians and Lydians
unite and corrupt each other. I would therefore much rather support by
laws the simplicity and rudeness of the conquering nation than the
effeminacy of the conquered.
Aristodemus, tyrant of Cum,
[9]
used all his endeavours to banish
courage, and to enervate the minds of youth. He ordered that boys should
let their hair grow in the same manner as girls, that they should deck
it with flowers, and wear long robes of different colours down to their
heels; that when they went to their masters of music and dancing, they
should have women with them to carry their umbrellas, perfumes, and
fans, and to present them with combs and looking-glasses whenever they
bathed. This education lasted till the age of twenty — an education
that could be agreeable to none but to a petty tyrant, who exposes his
sovereignty to defend his life.
Footnotes
[9]
Dionysius Halicarnassus, lib. vii.
10.13. 13. Charles XII.
This prince, who depended entirely on his own
strength, hastened his ruin by forming designs that could never be
executed but by a long war — a thing which his kingdom was unable to
support.
It was not a declining state he undertook to subvert, but a rising
empire. The Russians made use of the war he waged against them as of a
military school. Every defeat brought them nearer to victory; and,
losing abroad, they learned to defend themselves at home.
Charles, in the deserts of Poland, imagined himself sovereign of the
whole world: here he wandered, and with him in some measure wandered
Sweden; while his capital enemy acquired new strength against him,
locked him up, made settlements along the Baltic, destroyed or subdued
Livonia.
Sweden was like a river whose waters are cut off at the fountain
head in order to change its course.
It was not the affair of Pultowa that ruined Charles. Had he not
been destroyed at that place, he would have been in another. The
casualties of fortune are easily repaired; but who can be guarded
against events that incessantly arise from the nature of things?
But neither nature nor fortune were ever so much against him as he
himself.
He was not directed by the present situation of things, but by a
kind of plan of his forming; and even this he followed very ill. He was
not an Alexander; but he would have made an excellent soldier under that
monarch.
Alexander's project succeeded because it was prudently concerted.
The bad success of the Persians in their several invasions of Greece,
the conquests of Agesilaus, and the retreat of the ten thousand had
shown to demonstration the superiority of the Greeks in their manner of
fighting and in their arms; and it was well known that the Persians were
too proud to be corrected.
It was no longer possible for them to weaken Greece by divisions:
Greece was then united under one head, which could not pitch upon a
better method of rendering her insensible to her servitude than by
flattering her vanity with the destruction of her hereditary enemy, and
with the hopes of the conquest of Asia.
An empire cultivated by the most industrious nation in the world,
that followed agriculture from a principle of religion — an empire
abounding with every convenience of life, furnished the enemy with all
necessary means of subsisting.
It was easy to judge by the pride of those kings, who in vain were
mortified by their numerous defeats, that they would precipitate their
ruin by their forwardness in venturing battles; and that the flattery of
their courtiers would never permit them to doubt of their grandeur.
The project was not only wise, but wisely executed. Alexander, in
the rapidity of his conquests, even in the impetuosity of his passion,
had, if I may so express myself, a flash of reason by which he was
directed, and which those who would fain have made a romance of his
history, and whose minds were more corrupt than his, could not conceal
from our view. Let us descend more minutely into his history.
10.14. 14. Alexander.
He did not set out upon his expedition till he had
secured Macedonia against the neighbouring barbarians, and completed the
reduction of Greece; he availed himself of this conquest for no other
end than for the execution of his grand enterprise; he rendered the
jealousy of the Lacedmonians of no effect; he attacked the maritime
provinces; he caused his land forces to keep close to the sea-coast,
that they might not be separated from his fleet; he made an admirable
use of discipline against numbers; he never wanted provisions; and if it
be true that victory gave him everything, he, in his turn, did
everything to obtain it.
In the beginning of his enterprise — a time when the least check
might have proved his destruction — he trusted very little to fortune;
but when his reputation was established by a series of prosperous
events, he sometimes had recourse to temerity. When before his departure
for Asia he marched against the Triballians and Illyrians, you find he
waged war
[10]
against those people in the very same manner as Csar
afterwards conducted that against the Gauls. Upon his return to
Greece,
[11]
it was in some measure against his will that he took and
destroyed Thebes. When he invested that city, he wanted the inhabitants
to come into terms of peace; but they hastened their own ruin. When it
was debated whether he should attack the Persian fleet,
[12]
it is Parmenio who shows his presumption, Alexander his wisdom. His aim was to
draw the Persians from the sea-coast, and to lay them under a necessity
of abandoning their marine, in which they had a manifest superiority.
Tyre being from principle attached to the Persians, who could not
subsist without the commerce and navigation of that city, Alexander
destroyed it. He subdued Egypt, which Darius had left bare of troops
while he was assembling immense armies in another world.
To the passage of the Granicus, Alexander owed the conquest of the
Greek colonies; to the battle of Issus, the reduction of Tyre and Egypt;
to the battle of Arbela, the empire of the world.
After the battle of Issus, he suffered Darius to escape, and
employed his time in securing and regulating his conquests: after the
battle of Arbela, he pursued him so close
[13]
as to leave him no place
of refuge in his empire. Darius enters his towns, his provinces, to quit
them the next moment; and Alexander marches with such rapidity that the
empire of the world seems to be rather the prize of an Olympian race
than the fruit of a great victory. In this manner he carried on his
conquests: let us now see how he preserved them.
He opposed those who would have had him treat the Greeks as
masters
[14]
and the Persians as slaves. He thought only of uniting the
two nations, and of abolishing the distinctions of a conquering and a
conquered people. After he had completed his victories, he relinquished
all those prejudices that had helped him to obtain them. He assumed the
manners of the Persians, that he might not chagrin them too much by
obliging them to conform to those of the Greeks. It was this humanity
which made him show so great a respect for the wife and mother of
Darius; and this that made him so continent. What a conqueror! He is
lamented by all the nations he has subdued! What a usurper! At his death
the very family he has cast from the throne is all in tears. These were
the most glorious passages in his life, and such as history cannot
produce an instance of in any other conqueror.
Nothing consolidates a conquest more than the union formed between
the two nations by marriages.
[15]
Alexander chose his wives from the
nation he had subdued; he insisted on his courtiers doing the same; and
the rest of the Macedonians followed the example. The Franks and
Burgundians permitted those marriages;
[16]
the Visigoths forbade them in
Spain, and afterwards allowed them.
[17]
By the Lombards they were not
only allowed but encouraged.
[18]
When the Romans wanted to weaken
Macedonia, they ordered that there should be no intermarriages between
the people of different provinces.
Alexander, whose aim was to unite the two nations, thought fit to
establish in Persia a great number of Greek colonies. He built,
therefore, a multitude of towns; and so strongly were all the parts of
this new empire cemented, that after his decease, amidst the
disturbances and confusion of the most frightful civil wars, when the
Greeks had reduced themselves, as it were, to a state of annihilation,
not a single province of Persia revolted.
To prevent Greece and Macedon from being too much exhausted, he sent
a colony of Jews
[19]
to Alexandria; the manners of those people
signified nothing to him, provided he could be sure of their fidelity.
He not only suffered the conquered nations to retain their own
customs and manners, but likewise their civil laws; and frequently the
very kings and governors to whom they had been subject: the
Macedonians
[20]
he placed at the head of the troops, and the natives of
the country at the head of the government, rather choosing to run the
hazard of a particular disloyalty (which sometimes happened) than of a
general revolt.
He paid great respect to the ancient traditions, and to all the
public monuments of the glory or vanity of nations. The Persian monarchs
having destroyed the temples of the Greeks, Babylonians, and Egyptians,
Alexander rebuilt them:
[21]
few nations submitted to his yoke to whose
religion he did not conform; and his conquests seem to have been
intended only to make him the particular monarch of each nation, and the
first inhabitant of each city. The aim of the Romans in conquest was to
destroy, his to preserve; and wherever he directed his victorious arms,
his chief view was to achieve something whence that country might derive
an increase of prosperity and power. To attain this end, he was enabled
first of all by the greatness of his genius; secondly, by his frugality
and private economy;
[22]
thirdly, by his profusion in matters of
importance. He was close and reserved in his private expenses, but
generous to the highest degree in those of a public nature. In
regulating his household, he was the private Macedonian; but in paying
the troops, in sharing his conquests with the Greeks, and in his
largesses to every soldier in his army, he was Alexander.
He committed two very bad actions in setting Persepolis on fire and
slaying Clitus; but he rendered them famous by his repentance. Hence it
is that his crimes are forgotten, while his regard for virtue was
recorded: they were considered rather as unlucky accidents than as his
own deliberate acts. Posterity, struck with the beauty of his mind, even
in the midst of his irregular passion, can view him only with pity, but
never with an eye of hatred.
Let us draw a comparison between him and Csar. The Roman general, by
attempting to imitate the Asiatic monarch, flung his fellow-citizens
into a state of despair for a matter of mere ostentation; the Macedonian
prince, by the same imitation, did a thing which was quite agreeable to
his original scheme of conquest.
Footnotes
[10]
See Arrian, "De Expedit. Alex.," i.
[14]
This was Aristotle's advice. Plutarch's "Morals," of the fortune and virtue
of Alexander.
[15]
Arrian, De Expedit. Alex., vii.
[16]
See the "Law of the Burgundians," tit. 12, art. 5.
[17]
See the "Law of the Visigoths," iii, tit. 1, 1, which
abrogates the ancient law that had more regard, it says, to the
difference of nations than to that of people's conditions.
[18]
See the "Law of the Lombards," ii, tit. 7, 1, 2.
[19]
The kings of Syria, abandoning the plan laid down by the founder
of the empire, resolved to oblige the Jews to conform to the manners of
the Greeks — a resolution that gave the most terrible shock to their
government.
[20]
See Arrian, "De Expedit. Alex.," iii, and others.
10.15. 15. New Methods of preserving a Conquest.
When a monarch has subdued
a large country, he may make use of an admirable method, equally proper
for moderating despotic power, and for preserving the conquest; it is a
method practised by the conquerors of China.
In order to prevent the vanquished nation from falling into despair,
the victors from growing insolent and proud, the government from
becoming military, and to contain the two nations within their duty, the
Tartar family now on the throne of China has ordained that every
military corps in the provinces should be composed half of Chinese and
half Tartars, to the end that the jealousy between the two nations may
keep them within bounds. The courts of judicature are likewise half
Chinese and half Tartars. This is productive of several good effects, 1.
The two nations are a check to one another. 2. They both preserve the
civil and military power, and one is not destroyed by the other, 3. The
conquering nation may spread itself without being weakened and lost. It
is likewise enabled to withstand civil and foreign wars. The want of so
wise an institution as this has been the ruin of almost all the
conquerors that ever existed.
10.16. 16. Of Conquests made by a despotic Prince.
When a conquest happens
to be vastly large, it supposes a despotic power; and then the army
dispersed in the provinces is not sufficient. There should be always a
body of faithful troops near the prince, ready to fall instantly upon
any part of the empire that may chance to waver. This military corps
ought to awe the rest, and to strike terror into those who through
necessity have been entrusted with any authority in the empire. The
emperor of China has always a large body of Tartars near his person,
ready upon all occasions. In India, in Turkey, in Japan, the prince has
always a body-guard independent of the other regular forces. This
particular corps keeps the dispersed troops in awe.
10.17. 17. The same Subject continued.
We have observed that the countries
subdued by a despotic monarch ought to be held by a vassal. Historians
are very lavish of their praises of the generosity of those conquerors
who restored the princes to the throne whom they had vanquished.
Extremely generous then were the Romans, who made such a number of
kings, in order to have instruments of slavery.
[23]
A proceeding of that
kind is absolutely necessary. If the conqueror intends to preserve the
country which he has subdued, neither the governors he sends will be
able to contain the subjects within duty, nor he himself the governors.
He will be obliged to strip his ancient patrimony of troops, in order to
secure his new dominions. The miseries of each nation will be common to
both; civil broils will spread themselves from one to the other. On the
contrary, if the conqueror restores the legitimate prince to the throne,
he will of course have an ally; by the junction of whose forces his own
power will be augmented. We have a recent instance of this in Shah
Nadir, who conquered the Mogul, seized his treasures, and left him in
possession of Hindostan.
Footnotes
[23]
Tacitus, "Life of Agricola," 14.