Laws, under the several forms of government, are next considered in reference to the power of the State for purposes of defence and of attack. The nature of political liberty is investigated, and the requisite separation of the legislative, judicial, and administrative powers is exhibited in the example set forth in the British constitution. But political freedom must include the liberty of the individual; the rights of the citizen must be respected and guaranteed; and, as part of the regulation of individual freedom, the levying and collection of taxes must be studied. From this subject Montesquieu passes to his theory, once celebrated, of the influence of climate and the soil upon the various systems of legislation, and especially the influence of climate upon the slave system, the virtual servitude of woman, and the growth of political despotism. Over against the fatalism of climate and natural conditions he sets the duty of applying the reason to modify the influences of external nature by wise institutions. National character, and the manners and customs which are its direct expression, if they cannot be altered by laws, must be respected, and something even of direction or regulation may be attained. Laws in relation to commerce, to money, to population, to religion, are dealt with in successive books. The duty of religious toleration is urged from the point of view of a statesman, while the discussions of theology are declined. Very noteworthy is the humble remonstrance to the inquisitors of Spain and Portugal ascribed to a Jew of eighteen, who is supposed to have perished in the last _auto-da-fe_. The facts of the civil order are not to be judged by the laws of the religious order, any more than the facts of the religious order are to be judged by civil laws. Here the great treatise might have closed, but Montesquieu adds what may be styled an historical appendix in his study of the origin and development of feudal laws. At a time when antiquity was little regarded, he was an ardent lover of antiquity; at a time when mediaeval history was ignored, he was a student of the forgotten centuries.