Montesquieu
Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu was born in France in 1689. In 1748, his most famous work, On the Spirit of the Laws, was published. In this work, Montesquieu uses the ideas of the Greek philosopher Aristotle to discuss the power of government and how it can be controlled.
He suggested that a government which included and balanced all three forms of government, (the one, the few, and the many) could best protect liberty. By dividing the powers and then allowing them to balance each other, he felt that government would rule for the common good. He pointed to the division of governing power in Britain between the King (government of the one), the House of Lords (the few), and the House of Commons (the many), as examples of this. Although there is much evidence that the English King was able to exert influence on the members of Parliament, and so the mixed and balanced government that Montesquieu admired was not a reality.
The ideas expressed by Montesquieu were not lost on the framers of the Constitution. As they designed a government, they would attempt to so divide and balance the powers of government so that corruption would be avoided. Do you think they were successful?
