Early modern Europe · 1689–1755
Montesquieu
French magistrate who compared the laws of many nations
Laws must suit each people’s climate, customs, commerce and religion. Liberty is safest where legislative, executive and judicial powers are separated, so that power checks power.
Life and thought
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, inherited a title and a senior judicial office in the parlement of Bordeaux. His satirical Persian Letters (1721), in which two Persian visitors describe the oddities of France, made him famous. He sold his office, travelled through Europe — spending almost two years in England — and worked for some twenty years on The Spirit of the Laws, published in Geneva in 1748 and soon placed on the Catholic Index.
Montesquieu asked why laws differ from one people to another. His answer was that laws must fit a nation’s “general spirit”, formed by climate, soil, religion, commerce, customs and form of government. He classified governments by their driving principle: republics by virtue, monarchies by honour, despotisms by fear. Admiring the English constitution, he argued that liberty is safe only where legislative, executive and judicial power are in different hands, so that power checks power. The framers of the United States Constitution cited him constantly when they designed its separation of powers.