Montesquieu

Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689 to 1755), was a French jurist, historian and political philosopher whose comparative study of laws, customs and governments helped prepare the ground for later social science. Born at the Château de la Brède near Bordeaux, he became a counselor and then président à mortier in the Bordeaux Parlement, sold that office in 1726 and entered the Académie Française in 1728. His satirical Persian Letters (1721) viewed French society through the eyes of two Persian visitors, and his anonymously published The Spirit of Law (1748) set out the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers and argued that climate and geography shape both individual character and the laws and institutions of a people, though laws and customs can counterbalance those influences. The book shaped political thought in Britain and the American colonies and influenced the drafters of the United States Constitution.