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Updated: June 20, 2025
'The English at that time, Macaulay says of the middle of the eighteenth century, 'considered a Frenchman who talked about constitutional checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less astonishing than the learned pig or musical infant. And he then goes on to describe the author of one of the most important books that ever were written, as 'specious but shallow, studious of effect, indifferent to truth the lively President, and so forth, stirring in any reader who happens to know Montesquieu's influence, a singular amazement.
A portion of Dr. Bluntschli's work has been translated into English and published under the title The Theory of the State. There is also a French translation of this work. Other authorities under this head are: Bluntschli's Staatswörterbuch; Woolsey's Political Science, or the State Theoretically and Practically Considered; and Montesquieu's De l'Esprit des Lois.
In a European nation, not broken in spirit by long-continued tyranny, and possessing the printing-press, this power must always be very great. As for Montesquieu's admiration of the English form of government, it doubtless concurred with other causes to encourage on the Continent the study of English political methods.
It is not too much to say that at that epoch the strength of political speculation in this country, from Adam Smith downwards, was drawn from France; and Burke had been led to some of what was most characteristic in his philosophy of society by Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws , the first great manual of the historic school.
On the whole it may not be the wiser plan to write about the Origins of Religion in the style which might suit a study of the life of ballet dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and the popular, would make a blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet Gibbon never denies himself a jest, and Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois was called L'Esprit sur les Lois.
It pointed to the theory that all the products of social life are closely interrelated. In Montesquieu's time people were under the illusion that legislation has an almost unlimited power to modify social conditions. We have seen this in the case of Saint-Pierre. Montesquieu's conception of general laws should have been an antidote to this belief.
It was her influence that gave its first impulse to the success of Montesquieu's esprit DES LOIS, of which she personally bought and distributed many copies. If she talked well, she knew also how to listen, to attract by her sympathy, to aid by her generosity, to inspire by her intelligence, to charm by her versatility.
Few questions are debated here, which Montesquieu had not raised, and none are debated without reference to Montesquieu's line of argument. The change of which we are conscious in turning from the Esprit des Lois to the Encyclopædia is that political ideas have been grasped as instruments. Philosophy has become patriotism.
A famous lady of that family was Muckle Mou'd Meg, whom young Harden, when caught while driving Elibank's kye, preferred to the gallows as a bride. In 1751 the owner of the tower on Tweed was Lord Elibank; to all appearance a douce, learned Scots laird, the friend of David Hume, and a customer for the wines of Montesquieu's vineyards at La Brede.
Whitley Stokes, one of the very ablest scholars formed in Zeuss's school, a born philologist, he now occupies, alas! a post under the Government of India, instead of a chair of philology at home, and makes one think mournfully of Montesquieu's saying, that had he been an Englishman he should never have produced his great work, but have caught the contagion of practical life, and devoted himself to what is called 'rising in the world, when Mr.
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