MONTESQUIEU, CHARLES Dr SECONDAT, Baron de la Brede et de, one of the most celebrated authors and political philosophers of France, b. Jan. 18, 1689, at his father's château of Brede near Bordeaux, and descended from one of the most distinguished fam ilies of Guienne. In his youth he was a hard student of jurisprudence; literature, and philosophy. His love of the classical authors was so great that at the age of twenty he composed a work intended to show that they did not deserve eternal damnation for being pagans. In 1714 he was appointed a councilor of the parliament of Bordeaux, and two ,years after, president of the parliament. . His first (published) work was his famous Lettres Persanes (Par. 1721), in which, in the character of a Persian, he ridicules, with exquisite humor, and clear, sharp criticism, the religious, political, social, and literary life of his countrymen. Although he did not spare the academy in these Lettres, he was admitted a member of it in 1728, and would have been admitted sooner if Cardinal Fleury had not objected on the ground of his jests against religion. In 1726 Montes quieu resigned his office in the parliament of Bordeaux, and spent some years in foreign countries. In England he spent two years, during which he was much in the company of Lord Chesterfield, and was treated with the greatest respect by the most distinguished personages. After his return to Brede, he published his Clonsid&ations sur lea Causes de la Grandeur et de la Decadence des Ronreins (Par. 1734), a masterly review of Roman his tory, expressed in a sententious, oracular, and vigorous style. It was followed, after a
long interval, by his Dialogues de Sylla et de Lysimaque (Par. 1748), published under an assumed name, in which the motives and feelings of a despot are skillfully analyzed. In the same year appeared his great work, on which he had been engaged for twenty years, the Esprit des Lois (2 vols., Geneva, 1748), in which it Was attempted to exhibit the rela tion between the laws of different countries and their local and social circumstances. It was immensely popular. No fewer than twenty-two editions were published in eighteen months, and it was translated into various European languages. The Esprit des Lois is a wonderfully good book, considering the age in which it appeared. Without adopting Voltaire's hyper-eulogistic criticism, that "when the human race had lost their charters, Montesquieu rediscovered and restored them," it may be said that it was the first work in which the questions of civil liberty were ever treated in an enlightened and systematic manner, and to Montesquieu, more than to any other man, is it owing that the science of polities has become a favorite subject of study with the educated public. Montesquieu sued at Paris, Feb. 10, 1755. The collective editions of his works are numerous, amongst which maybe mentioned the complete and careful ones by Auger (8 vols., Par. 1819), by Destutt de Tracy and Villemain (8 vols., Par. 1827), by Lefebvre (2 vols., Par. 1839), and by Hachette (2 vols., 1S6).