There are countries where the excess of heat enervates the body, and renders men so slothful and dispirited that nothing but the fear of chastisement can oblige them to perform any laborious duty: slavery is there more reconcilable to reason; and the master being as lazy with respect to his sovereign as his slave is with regard to him, this adds a political to a civil slavery. Aristotle endeavors to prove that there are natural slaves; but what he says is far from proving it. If there be any such, I believe they are those of whom I have been speaking. [Those who accept it as a contractual arrangement, in a general system of despotism.] But as all men are born equal, slavery must be accounted unnatural, though in some countries it be founded on natural reason; and a wide difference ought to be made between such countries, and those in which even natural reason rejects it, as in Europe, where it has been so happily abolished.
More from Charles de Montesquieu
Les esprits faibles amplifie trop le mal faits aux Africains.
Permalink to quote #22 [Britain is] a nation that may be justly called a republic, disguised under the form of a monarchy.
Permalink to quote #24 I would as soon say that religion gives its professors a right to enslave those who dissent from it, in order to render its propagation more easy. This was the…
Permalink to quote #21