about the sacred things of the Church. He was indignant, and declared that he would seek elsewhere the repose and appreciation which were denied him in his own country; but he also, by means which are differently represented, propitiated both Cardinal and King; and he delivered his inaugural address in the Academy in January 1728. Everything seemed now prepared for his saying, and the world hearing, what he had to utter on political philosophy; but he chose to travel first, and see for himself the real condition of people and their rulers in most of the countries of Europe. He began with Germany, and proceeded to Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and England. He had met Lord Chesterfield at Venice, and again at the Hague; and they were great friends; so that it was no wonder that he came to England, nor that, when here, his relish of our political institutions induced him to stay two years. There are traces of his presence in London society at that time. He was a member of the Royal Society; Queen Caroline distinguished him, undeterred by his absent manners, and appreciating the grace of his wit, and perhaps the force of his satire, whenever he rallied his faculties for conversation. One story is that when an anecdote was pressed upon him which he did not believe, and the bore who urged it said that, if his fact were not true, he would make Montesquieu a present of his head, the philosopher replied, “I accept it: these little presents keep up the warmth of friendship.”
Within this century it has become known that Montesquieu wrote, either before or during his travels, a short treatise which he got printed in Holland, on the impossibility of any universal monarchy in Europe. He suppressed it, however, apprehending that it might be dangerous to show why no power could henceforth subjugate the various populations of Europe. He published instead, in 1734, his “Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness and the Decline of the Romans,” which answered the purpose of showing that their feat of universal empire could never be repeated.
The subject had been often treated; but there was more to the purpose in Montesquieu’s single volume than in all the one-sided views and random eloquence of his predecessors. Yet it was but one branch of the subject he was meditating, the greatness of which weighed upon his heart. Sometimes, as he tells us, he believed he was getting on by strides,—so clear was the truth he had to illustrate; while, at other times, he felt as if he should never move another step, under the burden of so vast a meaning as his book was to bear. He was anxious to be as brief and as emphatic as he could, in order to win readers; and this seems to be the reason why his style is far inferior to his subject. He was as fond of Tacitus as Machiavelli was; and he tried to imitate his style, without parting with his own French epigrammatic mode of expression. The result is a kind and degree of affectation displeasing to English taste; but the point of view attained in the “Spirit of Laws,” the wealth of significance which it bears, and the noble spirit which breathes through it shame all objections about minor matters. It is a remarkable circumstance that his own judgment of his work varied with his mood of mind up to a certain point, and then became fixed. He asked his honest friend Helvetius to read his manuscript, and tell him what he thought of it. Helvetius objected to several things, and especially the main doctrine of the treatise. Indeed, he thought so ill of the work that he dared not, for some time, say what he thought,—that Montesquieu would lose reputation entirely by it; and he secretly consulted Saurin (author of “Spartacus”), who was exactly of his opinion.
It is amusing to read now the letter of Helvetius to Saurin, in which he says that they need not fear offending Montesquieu, who will answer their remonstrances with witticisms, and go his own way; that it is useless to hope to turn him out of the way of destruction; but that it is a duty to themselves to take care that, when the day of ruin overtakes him, he shall have no cause to blame his friends for want of warning. Montesquieu’s reply to his critic was that he now perceived the work was in advance of his generation, and he must issue it according to his own views; and he had now come to the end of his vacillations about it. It was published in 1748; and within a year and a-half it had gone through twenty-two editions at Paris, and was translated into almost every European language. Men of literary curiosity relished it mightily. Horace Walpole, for instance, calls it “the best book that ever was written.” Men of kindly sentiment enjoy its genial and hopeful spirit. But it required a philosopher to see its true significance, in discovering the relations of politics to science. It is easily criticised, for some of its views as well as its style; but its radical thought,—that political phenomena are subject to natural laws,—placed its author at once above all his predecessors in his province of study.
In seven years he was dead. He died of inflammatory fever, in thirteen days,—aware of his danger throughout, and with all his faculties in their natural vigour, as far as could be seen by his fencing with the Jesuits who came about him as he was dying. “You know,” said one of them, in administering the viaticum, “how great God is.” “Oh, yes,” replied he, “and how small men are.”
It is not difficult to account for Montesquieu’s great work having been most valued in England and least in France. In spite of the dozens of editions demanded at Paris, the book failed to modify French thought; and political speakers and writers went on romancing the more, as the revolution drew on, about the first principles which they derived from imagination, or from a poetical view of the events of history. In England, the bent of the national mind was favourable to Montesquieu’s method of studying the wide range of facts of social experience, in order to ascertain from them the laws which governed them, and which must govern the history yet to be enacted.
When the “Spirit of Laws” appeared, Edmund Burke was under twenty years old, but quite wise enough to enjoy and profit by it. We may fairly suppose that he did, not only because every student of politics read it, but also from the
