MONTESQUIEU

From the Eulogy published in the ‘Encyclopedie’

The interest which good citizens are pleased to take in the ‘Encyclopedie,’ and the great number of men of letters who consecrate their labors to it, authorize us to regard this work as the most proper monument to preserve the grateful sentiments of our country, and that respect which is due to the memory of those celebrated men who have done it honor.  Persuaded, however, that M. de Montesquieu had a title to expect other panegyrics, and that the public grief deserved to be described by more eloquent pens, we should have paid his great memory the homage of silence, had not gratitude compelled us to speak.  A benefactor to mankind by his writings, he was not less a benefactor to this work, and at least we may place a few lines at the base of his statue, as it were.

Charles de Secondat, baron of La Brede and of Montesquieu, late life-President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, member of the French Academy of Sciences, of the Royal Academy and Belles-Lettres of Prussia, and of the Royal Society of London, was born at the castle of La Brede, near Bordeaux, the 18th of January, 1689, of a noble family of Guyenne.  His great-great-grandfather, John de Secondat, steward of the household to Henry the Second, King of Navarre, and afterward to Jane, daughter of that king, who married Antony of Bourbon, purchased the estate of Montesquieu for the sum of ten thousand livres, which this princess gave him by an authentic deed, as a reward for his probity and services.

Henry the Third, King of Navarre, afterward Henry the Fourth, King of France, erected the lands of Montesquieu into a barony, in favor of Jacob de Secondat, son of John, first a gentleman in ordinary of the bedchamber to this prince, and afterward colonel of the regiment of Chatillon.  John Gaston de Secondat, his second son, having married a daughter of the first president of the Parliament of Bordeaux, purchased the office of perpetual president in this society.  He had several children, one of whom entered the service, distinguished himself, and quitted it very early in life.  This was the father of Charles de Secondat, author of the ‘Spirit of Laws.’  These particulars may seem superfluous in the eulogy of a philosopher who stands so little in need of ancestors; but at least we may adorn their memory with that lustre which his name reflects upon it.

The early promise of his genius was fulfilled in Charles de Secondat.  He discovered very soon what he desired to be, and his father cultivated this rising genius, the object of his hope and of his tenderness.  At the age of twenty, young Montesquieu had already prepared materials for the ‘Spirit of Laws,’ by a well-digested extract from the immense body of the civil law; as Newton had laid in early youth the foundation of his immortal works.  The study of jurisprudence, however, though less dry to M. de Montesquieu than to most who attempt it, because he studied it as a philosopher, did not content him.  He inquired deeply into the subjects which pertain to religion, and considered them with that wisdom, decency, and equity, which characterize his work.