ABSTRACT
Methodologically the suggestion is that liberal interpretations effectively separate the issue of the meaning and value of the text as a piece of political theory from its historical value. Politically the suggestion is that the liberal interpretations of Montesquieu misunderstand the principle he was advocating and that their constitutions which claim to derive from his principles are in fact built on sand. Carcassonne’s reading of The Spirit of the Laws in particular has become very influential. He suggested that the principle of the separation of powers could be best described as a formalising of the traditional check on the monarch’s power by those whose long-held familial control over much of the French land, including its use for production and the livelihoods of those who work it, gives them a vested interest in the well-being of the common people and the protection and good use of the country’s terrain. In short, he claimed that Montesquieu is advocating a balance of governmental power by an elite motivated by noblesse oblige. In support of this argument, we have already seen evidence that Montesquieu was inclined to present the aristocracy as a special force within the polity. In addition, it is hard not to read the final sections of The Spirit of the Laws as a defence of aristocratic power. Carcassonne points out that the final parts of the work refer to a hot theoretical debate of his time in which ideologues of the monarchy and of the opposing Parlements attempted to establish the origins of the French monarchy’s power and the rights of the aristocracy in relation to it. Sticking to his method, Montesquieu gathered together all available documentation to show decisively that the origins of both lay in the warlike conquest of the Romanic civilisation by the Franks, and that from this time the King and his warrior nobles had governed together through an edgy, sometimes combative, but always mutually checking balance of power.
