孟德斯鸠（关于没收财产）

    In warm climates, where despotic power generally prevails, the passions disclose themselves earlier, and are sooner extinguished; the understanding is sooner ripened; they are less in danger of squandering their fortunes; there is less facility of distinguishing themselves in the world; less communication between young people, who are confined at home; they marry much earlier, and consequently may be sooner of age than in our European climates. In Turkey they are of age at fifteen.

在气候炎热的地方，专制主义通常占支配。在那里，情欲催人早熟早衰，智力成熟得早，浪费财产的危险较少，个人成功的机会也少；年轻人都关在家里，彼此较少来往。他们结婚较早，因此，他们比欧洲气候下的人成年得早。

    They have no such thing as a cession of goods; in a government where there is no fixed property, people depend rather on the person than on his estate.

The cession of goods is naturally admitted in moderate governments, but especially in republics, because of the greater confidence usually placed in the probity of the citizens, and the lenity and moderation arising from a form of government which every subject seems to nave preferred to all others.

Had the legislators of the Roman republic established the cession of goods,they never would have been exposed to so many seditions and civil discords; neither would they have experienced the danger of the evils, nor the inconvenience of the remedies.

    Poverty and the precariousness of property in a despotic state render usury natural, each person raising the value of his money in proportion to the danger he sees in lending it. Misery therefore pours from all parts into those unhappy countries; they are bereft of everything, even of the resource of borrowing.

    Hence it is that a merchant under this government is unable to carry on an extensive commerce; he lives from hand to mouth; and were he to encumber himself with a large quantity of merchandise, he would lose more by the exorbitant interest he must give for money than he could possibly get by the goods. Hence they have no laws here relating to commerce; they are all reduced to what is called the bare police.

    A government cannot be unjust without having hands to exercise its injustice. Now, it is impossible but that these hands will be grasping for themselves. The embezzling of the public money is therefore natural in despotic states.

如果没有行不义之事的帮手，一个政府不可能沦为非正义的政府。然而，这些帮手不中饱私囊几乎是不可能的。因此，在专制国家里，贪污几乎是自然而然的了。

    As this is a common crime under such a government, confiscations are very useful. By these the people are eased; the money drawn by this method being a considerable tribute which could hardly be raised on the exhausted subject: neither is there in those countries any one family which the prince would be glad to preserve.

在专制政体下，贪污是一种普通犯罪，所以没收财产是行之有效的方法。采取这种方法可以使人民得到慰藉。没收所得的钱财是一笔极为可观的贡税，更是君主不可能从穷困潦倒的民众之中能够征收到的。

    In moderate governments it is quite a different thing. Confiscations would render property uncertain, would strip innocent children, would destroy a whole family, instead of punishing a single criminal. In republics they would be attended with the mischief of subverting equality, which is the very soul of this government, by depriving a citizen of his necessary subsistence.

在政治宽和的国家里，情形就完全不同了。没收方式会使财产的所有权产生某种不稳定的因素，会掠夺无辜的子女；会在惩处一个罪犯的时候，摧毁整个家庭。在共和国里，剥夺一个公民必要的物质生活财产，是破坏了平等，而平等正是共和政体的灵魂。　

    There is a Roman law against confiscations, except in the case of crimen majestatis, or high treason of the most heinous nature. It would be a prudent thing to follow the spirit of this law, and to limit confiscations to particular crimes. In countries where a local custom has rendered real estates alienable, Bodin very justly observes that confiscations should extend only to such as are purchased or acquired.

罗马的法律规定，除非犯有重大的叛逆罪之外，不得没收其财产。遵循这项法律的精神实质，把没收仅仅限于特定的犯罪行为无疑是极为明智的做法。布丹说得好，在有地方习俗规定夫妻拥有私有财产 的国家中，没收只适用于取得的财产 。