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New Ideas About Government

In "The Spirit of the Laws," published in 1748, Baron de Montesquieu discusses the principles of political liberty and the importance of separating legislative, executive, and judiciary powers in government.

Source 1

The political liberty of the subject is a tranquillity of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another...When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner...Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive...In what a situation must the poor subject be in those republics! The same body of magistrates are possessed, as executors of the laws, of the whole power they have given themselves in quality of legislators. They may plunder the state by their general determinations; and as they have likewise the judiciary power in their hands, every private citizen may be ruined by their particular decisions.

Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 1748

Question 1

Short answer

Describe one way the excerpt reflects the ideas of the Enlightenment.

Question 2

Short answer

Describe one way in which the ideas expressed in the excerpt differ from how the majority of European governments in 1748 operated.

Question 3

Short answer

Explain one way the ideas expressed in the excerpt affected European political reforms after 1748.

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