18.1. 1. How the Nature of the Soil has an Influence on the Laws.
The goodness of the land, in any country, naturally establishes subjection
and dependence. The husbandmen, who compose the principal part of the
people, are not very jealous of their liberty; they are too busy and too
intent on their own private affairs. A country which overflows with
wealth is afraid of pillage, afraid of an army. "Who is there that forms
this goodly party?" said Cicero to Atticus;
[1]
"are they the men of
commerce and husbandry? Let us not imagine that these are averse to
monarchy — these to whom all governments are equal, as soon as they
bestow tranquillity."
Thus monarchy is more frequently found in fruitful countries, and a
republican government in those which are not so; and this is sometimes a
sufficient compensation for the inconveniences they suffer by the
sterility of the land.
The barrenness of the Attic soil established there a democracy; and
the fertility of that of Lacedmonia an aristocratic constitution. For in
those times Greece was averse to the government of a single person, and
aristocracy bore the nearest resemblance to that government.
Plutarch says
[2]
that the Cilonian sedition having been appeased at
Athens, the city fell into its ancient dissensions, and was divided into
as many parties as there were kinds of land in Attica. The men who
inhabited the eminences would, by all means, have a popular government;
those of the flat, open country demanded a government composed of the
chiefs; and they who were near the sea desired a mixture of both.
Footnotes
