Chap. XIV.... Laws should not be separated from the circumstances in which they were established.

I must acknowlege that it is impossible to see the least connexion between the title of this chapter and the first article.

It is very evident that Montesquieu had collected a number of notes on the laws of all people, and that to form his work, he ranged them under different titles. This is the method for which he has been so much celebrated, and which exists only in the heads of those who model his book according to their own fancy.

If a physician not belonging to a corporation, should not succeed in curing a patient who has freely granted him his confidence, it does not follow that we should punish him; nor does he merit any punishment, when having an exclusive privilege of attending me as a physician, he has prevented me by virtue of his privilege, from applying to another who might have cured me.

Is it in France that the surgeon and apothecary are not interdicted, or condemned to pay damages when ignorant of their profession? If the physicians are not punished, it is because it would be very difficult to prove them to be in the wrong: whereas, it may be very easy to do so with the surgeons and apothecaries?

What is meant by a physician of a lower condition than another? Is this lower condition a good reason for condemning the physician to death for the same fault that a physician of a higher condition is only condemned to transportation. All this is shocking to the spirit of good laws.