Chapter 1: How the Nature of the Terrain Influences the Laws

The bountifulness of a country's lands naturally establishes subjection there. The country folk who are the main part of the people are not so jealous of their liberty. They are too busy and too occupied with their individual affairs. A countryside which overflows with goods fears plunder; it fears an army. “Who is it who forms a good party?” Cicero asked Atticus (a). “Will it be the trading and the country folk? Not unless we might imagine that they are opposed to the monarchy—they for whom all governments are equal from the moment they are tranquil.”

Thus, government by a single person is often found in fertile countries and government by many in the countries which are not, which is sometimes a compensation.

The sterility of Attica's soil set up popular government there, and the fertility of Lacedemonia's set up aristocratic government. For, in that era, they did not want government by a single person in Greece. Now, aristocratic government has more of a relationship with government by a single person.

Plutarch (b) tells us that, “the Cylonian sedition having been pacified in Athens, the town fell again to its old factions and separated into as many parties as there were kinds of soil in the country of Attica. The mountain folk wanted popular government at all costs. Those of the plains insisted on government by the better sort. And those who were near the sea were for a mixed government of the two.”

Chapter 2: Continuing the Same Subject

These fertile countries are always in the plains, where one is unable to contest anything with the strongest. Therefore, one submits to him. And when one is subject to him, the spirit of liberty could not know how to revive there. The goods of the countryside are a bond of fidelity. But, in mountainous countries, one is able to hold on to what he has, while he has little to hold on to. Liberty, which is to say the government from which one profits, is the only good which deserves to be defended. It reigns, therefore, more in mountainous and difficult countries than in them that nature seemed more to have favored.

Mountain folk preserve a more moderate government, because they are not so exposed to conquest. They easily defend themselves; they are attacked with difficulty.