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Montesquieu's treatise, already widely disseminated, had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably: Catherine the Great, who produced Nakaz (Instruction); the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution; and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu's methods to a study of American society, in Democracy in America.
Château de la Brède, Montesquieu's birthplace. Montesquieu was born at the Château de la Brède in southwest France, 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bordeaux. [4] His father, Jacques de Secondat (1654–1713), was a soldier with a long noble ancestry, including descent from Richard de la Pole, Yorkist claimant to the English crown.
Madison states Montesquieu used the British government as an example of separation of powers to analyze connections between the two. Madison quotes Montesquieu in The Spirit of Law as saying the British are the "mirror of political liberty." Thus, Montesquieu believed that the British form of separation of powers was of the utmost caliber.
Montesquieu makes use of the concept of the state of nature in his The Spirit of the Laws, first printed in 1748. Montesquieu states the thought process behind early human beings before the formation of society. He says that human beings would have the faculty of knowing and would first think to preserve their life in the state.
For people who think that government should be the agent of establishing righteousness from coast to coast, liberalism—I mean the liberalism of the founders, Smith, Locke, Hume, Montesquieu ...
Separation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws, in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others.
Liberalism, the belief in freedom, equality, democracy and human rights, is historically associated with thinkers such as John Locke and Montesquieu, and with constitutionally limiting the power of the monarch, affirming parliamentary supremacy, passing the Bill of Rights and establishing the principle of "consent of the governed".
An earlier forerunner to Montesquieu's tripartite system was articulated by John Locke in his work Two Treatises of Government (1690). [13] In the Two Treatises, Locke distinguished between legislative, executive, and federative power. Locke defined legislative power as having "... the right to direct how the force of the commonwealth shall be ...