Montesquieu

Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689 to 1755), known simply as Montesquieu, was a French jurist, historian and political philosopher. He is the principal source of the theory of the separation of powers and helped bring the term despotism into modern political vocabulary. His literary success began with the Persian Letters of 1721, a satire that shows French society through the eyes of two Persian visitors to Paris and was pirated almost at once. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1728, travelled across Europe and spent time in England. His anonymously published The Spirit of Law of 1748 was translated into English by Thomas Nugent in 1750 and was well received in Britain and the American colonies, where it influenced the drafters of the United States Constitution. He was born at the Château de la Brède near Bordeaux and held a post in the Bordeaux Parlement for twelve years.