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Updated: June 20, 2025
In the discourse delivered before George III on the Sunday preceding his Coronation, he has stretched the text a little that he may take occasion to descant on the blessings of civil liberty, and has quoted Montesquieu's opinion of the British Government. In praising our religious toleration, he is careful to justify our exception of the church of Rome from the general indulgence.
Montesquieu's small writing-case, divided into compartments, the borders of the leather covering embellished with dingy, half-obliterated gold ornament, was perhaps the finest bit of property he had before his eyes as he sat and worked there. He always carried it about with him when he travelled.
While reading him we admire the Romans, but we do not like them; we witness their triumphs without pleasure, and we watch their fall without sorrow. Montesquieu's work, like the works of all French writers, is skilfully composed, spirited, witty, and filled with wise observations.
Voltaire's piercing common sense, Hume's deep-set sagacity, Montesquieu's caution, prevented them from launching very far on to this metaphysical sea of nature and natural laws and states, but none of them asked those critical questions in relation to such matters which occur so promptly in the present day to persons far inferior to them in intellectual strength.
Captain Rickson, who was then in Halifax, to read Montesquieu's not yet famous book The Spirit of Laws, because it would be useful for a government official in a new country.
It could only mean one thing, namely, that Montesquieu's conception of law was the same as that of the ancient sociologists, law far older than his time, "fundamental laws" as he calls them, of the ancient monarchy, which still bind and ought so to bind the monarch, whose rule without them would be despotism or anarchy. Law is essentially aristocratic.
Besides a few works on arts and sciences, he also had with him twelve volumes of "Barclay's Geography," and three volumes of "Cook's Voyages," which show that his thoughts extended to the antipodes; and under the heading of Politics he included the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, a Mythology, and Montesquieu's "Esprit des Lois"! The composition and classification of this library are equally suggestive.
Probably no series of political essays has done so much to mould the opinions of American statesmen as those of "The Federalist," a thesaurus of political wisdom, as much admired in Europe as in America. It was translated into most of the European languages, and in France placed side by side with Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws" in genius and ability.
These two emotions seemed to have made crevices in that solidly constructed face which the pickaxe of poverty was daily enlarging. The mouth was eloquent and grave; in that feature Don Quixote was complicated with Montesquieu's president. His clothing was entirely of black cloth, but cloth that was white at the seams.
There were one or two clever Englishmen present; Vincent and I joined them. "Have you met the Persian prince yet?" said Sir George Lynton to me; "he is a man of much talent, and great desire of knowledge. He intends to publish his observations on Paris, and I suppose we shall have an admirable supplement to Montesquieu's Lettres Persannes!"
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