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cover
The Complete Works of Montesquieu. Electronic Edition.
cover
Volume I.
Body
BOOK XIX.: OF LAWS, IN RELATION TO THE PRINCIPLES WHICH FORM THE GENERAL SPIRIT, THE MORALS, AND CUSTOMS, OF A NATION.
CHAP. XXII.: The same Subject continued.

CHAP. XXII.: The same Subject continued.

WHEN a people have pure and regular manners, their laws become simple and natural. Plato†695 says that Rhadamanthus, who governed a nation extremely religious, finished every process with extraordinary dispatch, administering only the oath on each accusation. But, says the same Plato†696, when a people are not religious, we should never have recourse to an oath, except he who swears is intirely disinterested, as in the case of a judge and a witness.

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