ABSTRACT
In the last half of the seventeenth century, Britain strongly influenced the political debate. But after the constitutional monarchy was established, the theoretical debate subsided in Britain. Energy was expended on concrete political activity — domestic activity, for political reforms, and foreign activity to build up the empire. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the smouldering political debate was fanned to a flame in France. Political theory in the eighteenth century was, to a great degree, marked by the French philosophers of the Enlightenment.
