ABSTRACT
The concept of the mixed constitution found its way to Britain along several paths. The tradition, emanating from Plato and passed on to Polybius and Cicero by way of Aristotle and Dicaearchus, was not unknown in seventeenth-century England. Lord Bolingbroke's articles in the Craftsman undoubtedly influenced Montesquieu deeply. Isaac Kramnick argues quite rightly that it is not acceptable to search for the source of Montesquieu's idea of the separation of powers in Bolingbroke. Kramnick also takes exception to the terminology in pointing out that "independence is not the same thing as separation". Montesquieu frequently refers to the second half of the Annals where, in book thirteen, there is mention of a true separation of powers. In his commentary on the Annals, Henry Furneaux pointed this out one hundred years ago by writing of a division of functions, a characterization that Sir Ernest Barker used in modified form more recently when referring to the separation of powers.
