The Spirit of the Laws (II)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Thomas Nugent
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 723 passages
Cite this work
- APAMontesquieu. (n.d.). The Spirit of the Laws (II). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/the-spirit-of-laws-volume-2
- MLAMontesquieu. "The Spirit of the Laws (II)." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/the-spirit-of-laws-volume-2.
- ChicagoMontesquieu. The Spirit of the Laws (II). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/the-spirit-of-laws-volume-2.
What it is about
The second volume of the 1748 work in which Montesquieu asks not which laws are just, but why each people has the laws it has.
Context and history
The first volume contains the typology of governments — republic, monarchy, despotism, each with its principle: virtue, honour, fear — and Book XI, on the separation of powers, which went straight into the Constitution of the United States. This second volume goes on to climate, commerce, money, population, religion and the history of French law. The climatic part has aged worst and has been reproached the most, with reason. The liveliest is the one on commerce, and the very short chapter against slavery, written entirely in irony, which is among the sharpest pages of the eighteenth century.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
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