The Defence of Liberty

Abstract

Even before he visited England, Montesquieu was aware that it was a country with a peculiarly anti-authoritarian spirit. In the person of Uzbek, he describes the English thus:

All the nations of Europe are not equally submissive to their princes: the impatient humour of the English, for instance, leaves their king hardly any time to make his authority felt. Submission and obedience are virtues upon which they flatter themselves but little. On this subject they say most amazing things. According to them there is only one tie which can bind men, and that is gratitude: husband and wife, father and son, are only bound to each other by their mutual affection, or by the services they do each other: and these various motives of obligation are the origin of all kingdoms and communities. But if a prince, instead of making the lives of his subjects happy, attempts to oppress and ruin them, the basis of obedience is destroyed; nothing binds them, nothing attaches them to him; and they return to their natural liberty. They maintain that all unlimited power must be unlawful, because it cannot have had a lawful origin.