The Spirit of the Laws

by Montesquieu · 1748

A sweeping comparison of governments arguing that liberty depends on separating legislative, executive, and judicial power.

Books that mention The Spirit of the Laws (5)

• Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts: “including Captain Cook's three-volume Voyages, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther and books by Livy, Thucydides, Plutarch, Tacitus and, of course, Julius Caesar.”
• Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “The necessary relations between character and government have been so clearly pointed out in the book of L'Esprit des Lois, that one cannot do better than have recourse to that work for the study of those relations.”
• The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “The author of _The Spirit of the Laws_ has shown with many examples by what art the legislator directs the constitution towards each of these objects.”
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon: “Esprit des Loix, l. xxx. c. 3. The brilliant imagination of Montesquieu is corrected, however, by the dry, cold reason of the Abbe de Mably.”
• Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle: “"As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws," observes our Professor, "so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; thus, with an Esprit des Lois, properly an Esprit de Coutumes”