19.14. 14. What are the natural Means of changing the Manners and Customs
of a Nation.
We have said that the laws were the particular and precise
institutions of a legislator, and manners and customs the institutions
of a nation in general. Hence it follows that when these manners and
customs are to be changed, it ought not to be done by laws; this would
have too much the air of tyranny: it would be better to change them by
introducing other manners and other customs.
Thus when a prince would make great alterations in his kingdom, he
should reform by law what is established by law, and change by custom
what is settled by custom; for it is very bad policy to change by law
what ought to be changed by custom.
The law which obliged the Muscovites to cut off their beards and to
shorten their clothes, and the rigour with which Peter I made them crop,
even to their knees, the long cloaks of those who entered into the
cities, were instances of tyranny. There are means that may be made use
of to prevent crimes; these are punishments: there are those for
changing our customs; these are examples.
The facility and ease with which that nation has been polished
plainly shows that this prince had a worse opinion of his people than
they deserved; and that they were not brutes, though he was pleased to
call them so. The violent measures which he employed were needless; he
would have attained his end as well by milder methods.
He himself experienced the facility of bringing about these
alterations. The women were shut up, and in some measure slaves; he
called them to court; he sent them silks and fine stuffs, and made them
dress like the German ladies. This sex immediately relished a manner of
life which so greatly flattered their taste, their vanity, and their
passions; and by their means it was relished by the men.
What rendered the change the more easy was that their manners at
that time were foreign to the climate, and had been introduced among
them by conquest and by a mixture of nations. Peter I, in giving the
manners and customs of Europe to a European nation, found a facility
which he did not himself expect. The empire of the climate is the first,
the most powerful, of all empires. He had then no occasion for laws to
change the manners and customs of his country; it would have been
sufficient to have introduced other manners and other customs.
Nations are in general very tenacious of their customs; to take them
away by violence is to render them unhappy: we should not therefore
change them, but engage the people to make the change themselves.
All punishment which is not derived from necessity is tyrannical.
The law is not a mere act of power; things in their own nature
indifferent are not within its province.
