Montesquieu has been much blamed, both in his own age and since, for his partiality to the monarchy as he found it existing in France. While recognizing that a republic was a more just and equal form of government, he thought that monarchy was that best suited to his time and country. Many people who have watched the history of France since his day will be found to agree with him. While defending some practices which are now considered among the flagrant abuses of old France, he recommended some reforms which would have been very salutary. It is often wiser to find excuses for retaining an old custom than reasons for introducing a new one; and Montesquieu was a conservative, made so by his nature, his social position, his wealth, his education as a lawyer, his age and his experience. When he wrote the "Persian Letters" he might possibly have been willing to overthrow the principal institutions of his country for the sake of remedying abuses; but when he had spent twenty years over the "Spirit of the Laws," when he had realized the complication of life, and the interdependence of things, he was more ready to reform than to destroy. In a despotic government the motive principle is fear. The governor of the town must be absolutely responsible to the governor of the province, or the latter cannot be entirely responsible to the sovereign. Thus absolutism extends throughout the state. As there is no law but the will of the prince, and as that law cannot be known in detail to every one, there must be a great number of petty tyrants dependent on those immediately above them.[Footnote: Montesq., ii. 209 (liv. v. c. 16).] After a not very successful attempt to define liberty, which he decides to be the power to do that which we ought to desire and not to do that which we ought not to desire,[Footnote: Ibid., iv. 2-4 (liv. xi. c. 2, 3).] Montesquieu tells us that political liberty is found only in limited governments, for all men who have power will tend to abuse it, and will go on until they meet with obstacles; as virtue itself needs to be restrained. Various nations, he then says, have various objects: conquest was that of Rome, war of Sparta, commerce of Marseilles; there is a country the direct object of whose constitution is political liberty. That country is England.[Footnote: Montesquieu, here and elsewhere, avoids mentioning England or France by name; a curious affectation. The references, however, are unmistakable.]