Page:Montesquieu.djvu/34

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34
Montesquieu.

and their aims, were all factors of the first importance in the French Revolution. 'Every enlightened Frenchman,' says M. Sorel, 'had in his library at the end of the eighteenth century a Montesquieu, a Voltaire, a Rousseau, and a Buffon[1].' The Spirit of Laws was a storehouse of argument for the publicists of 1789, and French writers of repute have maintained that the influence of Montesquieu counted for as much in the Declaration of Rights as the influence of Rousseau. It must be remembered that, though Montesquieu wrote as a monarchist, his heart was in the little republics of the Graeco-Roman world, and he is responsible for much of the pseudo-classicism which characterized political thought at the end of the eighteenth century. It is true that during the interval between 1789 and 1793 the influence of Montesquieu waned as that of Rousseau waxed. He was identified with the aristocrats and Anglophiles[2]; the Girondists were charged with studying him overmuch, and if Robespierre quoted him for his purpose, he quoted him with a significant difference. 'In times of revolution,' said Robespierre, 'the principle of popular government is both virtue and terror: virtue without which terror is fatal; terror without which virtue is powerless[3].' Napoleon had studied the Spirit of Laws, but a system which aimed at the

  1. Sorel, Montesquieu, p. 149.
  2. Under the Terror Montesquieu's son was thrown into prison as a suspect, and his property was sequestrated. He died in 1795. Montesquieu's grandson, who had served under Washington in the United States, became an émigré, married an Irish lady, and settled down in Kent, where he died without issue in 1825. He left his MSS. and his French property to a cousin, descended from a daughter of the great Montesquieu.
  3. Sorel, p. 155.