CHAP. VI.: Of Bastards in different Governments.

THEY have, therefore, no such thing as bastards, where polygamy is permitted; this disgrace is known

only in countries, in which a man is allowed to marry but one wife. Here they were obliged to stamp a mark of infamy upon concubinage, and consequently they were under a necessity of stigmatizing the issue of such unlawful conjunctions.

In republics, where it is necessary that there should be the purest morals, bastards ought to be more degraded than in monarchies.

The laws made against them at Rome were perhaps too severe, but as the ancient institutions laid all the citizens under a necessity of marrying; and as marriages were also softened by the permission to repudiate, or make a divorce; nothing but an extreme corruption of manners could lead them to concubinage.

It is observable, that as the quality of a citizen was a very considerable thing in a democratic government, where it carried with it the sovereign power, they frequently made laws in respect to the state of bastards, which had less relation to the thing itself, and to the honesty of marriage, than to the particular constitution of the republic. Thus the people have sometimes admitted bastards into the number Aristotle, Politics, lib. vi. cap. 4. ^†240 of citizens, in order to increase their power in opposition to the great. Thus the Athenians excluded bastards from the privilege of being citizens, that they might possess a greater share of the corn sent them by the king of Egypt. In fine, Aristotle informs us, Ibid. lib. iii. cap. 3. ^†241 that in many cities where there was not a sufficient number of citizens, their bastards succeeded to their possessions; and that when there was a proper number, they did not inherit.