British

He conceived the idea of separating government authority into the three major branches: executive, legislative and judicial. This perspective significantly influenced the authors of the Constitution in establishing laws and division of duties, and also in the inclusion of provisions to preserve individual liberties.

Montesquieu lived before the French Revolution. was instrumental in creating a desire for freedom and helped to spark the French Revolution. Montesquieu’s writings attacked the feudalistic basis of French society. He argued as Locke and Thomas Jefferson that all people were created equal.

Montesquieu concluded that the best form of government was one in which the legislative, executive, and judicial powers were separate and kept each other in check to prevent any branch from becoming too powerful. He believed that uniting these powers, as in the monarchy of Louis XIV, would lead to despotism.

Montesquieu, like many other Enlightenment thinkers, considers society to be no longer situated between a sphere of order guaranteed by absolute political power, and a sphere of anarchy, of contested or even destroyed political order through civil war.

In his enormously renowned political theory, Locke presented the idea of governmental checks and balances, which became a foundation for the U.S. Constitution. He also argued that revolution in some circumstances is not only a right but an obligation, which also clearly influenced the Founding Fathers.

John Locke’s most famous works are An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), in which he developed his theory of ideas and his account of the origins of human knowledge in experience, and Two Treatises of Government (first edition published in 1690 but substantially composed before 1683), in which he defended a …