Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spai… - Montesquieu

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them... 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 fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

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.

I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.

MOST legislators have been men of inferior capacity whom chance exalted over their fellows, and who took counsel almost exclusively of their own prejudices and whims.

It would seem that they had not even a sense of the greatness and dignity of their work: they amused themselves by framing childish institutions, well devised indeed to please small minds, but discrediting their authors with people of sense.

They flung themselves into useless details; and gave their attention to individual interests: the sign of the narrow genius, which grasps things piecemeal and cannot take a general view.

Some of them have been so affected as to employ another language than the vernacular-a ridiculous thing in a framer of laws; for how can they be obeyed if they are not known?

They have often abolished needlessly those which were already established-that is to say, they have plunged nations into the confusion which always accompanies change.

It is true that, by reason of some extravagance springing rather from the nature than from the mind of man, it is sometimes necessary to change certain laws. But the case is rare; and when it happens it requires the most delicate handling; much solemnity ought to be observed, and endless precautions taken, in order to lead the people to the natural conclusion that the laws are most sacred, since so many formalities are necessary to their abrogation.

Often they have made them too subtle, following logical instead of natural equity. As a consequence such laws have been found too severe; and a spirit of justice required that they should be set aside; but the cure was as bad as the disease. Whatever the laws may be, obedience to them is necessary; they are to be regarded as the public conscience, with which all private consciences ought to be in conformity.

(Letter #79)

In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.