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De l’esprit des loix, ou du rapport que les loix doivent avoir avec la constitution de chaque gouvernement, les moeurs, le climat, la religion, le commerce, &c. à quoi l’auteur a ajouté des recherches nouvelles sur les loix romaines touchant les successions, sur les loix françoises, & sur les loix féodales.

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First edition, first issue of Montesquieu’s masterpiece of political theory asserting the principle of the separation of a government’s powers as a means to prevent tyranny: a principle which formed the ideological basis of the French and American revolutions and became the cornerstone of the United States Constitution.

Montesquieu argues that culture cannot be abstracted from the climate and geography of individual states, meaning there is no single best institution or set of laws; the best institutions are those adapted to the people that they serve, and the best laws to the people that they govern. He advocates the division of governmental powers into legislative, executive, and judicial, and for the need for systems of checks and balances so as to ensure the rights of the individual.

De l’esprit des loix helped to consolidate the use of the word ‘despotism’ as a term for absolute and oppressive rule, often wielded by a single person or entity. Alexis de Tocqueville would later apply Montesquieu’s principles in his analysis of American society in Democracy in America.

Cabeen 97; Dagneau, p. 15; PMM 197; Tchemerzine IV 929.

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