Montesquieu’s Influence on the American Declaration of Independence

• In Event: Reading Montesquieu

Abstract

Discussion of European philosophical and intellectual influences on the American Declaration of Independence – either Jefferson’s draft, or the final version with revisions by the drafting committee and the Continental Congress – typically focus on a small set of philosophers and writers. At stake is not only the question of the sources, and influences upon, the drafting and revision of the Declaration but also, perhaps more importantly, the larger and ultimate meaning or meanings of the document and thus of the American founding. Three main schools of thought typically are contenders for the greatest influence or leading influences. John Locke arguably is considered the greatest influence; and to a lesser extent two other philosophers of the Social Contract tradition, Hobbes and Rousseau. Several writers of the Scottish Enlightenment also are identified as significant influences, arguably either rivalling Locke or, for some scholars, surpassing him. These include Thomas Reid, David Hume, Adam Smith, Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, and Francis Hutcheson. A third school noted as shaping Jefferson and the Second Congress, in preparing and approving the Declaration, is the Whig revolutionary tradition; to include James Harrington and Algernon Sidney; and later the radical Whig school, especially the writings of Trenchard and Gordon (authors of Cato’s Letters). Almost never cited as an influence on American revolutionary thinking, and the Declaration, is Montesquieu and his The Spirit of Laws (1748). This paper argues this is a significant omission in debates about the origins and larger meanings of the Declaration. Omitting Montesquieu leaves a gap in explaining the basic fact of how comparatively moderate, and constitutionalist, the Declaration is along with being revolutionary. Several scholars refer to Washington, for example, as a moderate revolutionary; and Gertrude Himmelfarb among others noted the contrast between the French revolutionary tradition and American revolutionary tradition. As we approach commemorations of the American semiquincentennial – America 250, dating from 1776 – we should consider Himmelfarb’s distinction between these two revolutions, along with Jonathan Israel’s distinction between the radical Enlightenment and moderate Enlightenment. Several prominent and moderate elements of the Declaration find no place in Locke’s philosophy; including the final three of the four references to a divinity; the striking invocation of “our constitution” in the middle of the text; the closing invocation to mutual pledging of lives, fortunes, and sacred honor; and the very framing of the bulk of the document as a common-law bill of indictment. The Whig revolutionary and radical writers are not great sources, either, of these four important elements and characteristics of the Declaration. The Scottish Enlightenment authors are better sources of these moderate elements; but several of these writers were deeply influenced by Montesquieu. The Spirit of Laws, in fact, is directly the perfect source for these four significant, even defining, elements of the Declaration. Further, this makes sense given Montesquieu’s deep influence on American thinking throughout the founding period, not only during the Articles era and the framing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights (the 1780s and 1790s). Paul Spurlin’s book (1940) and Donald Lutz’s APSR article (1984) provide much of the needed documentation of widespread and deep influence. If their evidence is combined with awareness of a moderate strain of Enlightenment, the path is open to seeing the Montesquieuan influence upon on the moderate character of the Declaration both directly and indirectly, via the Scottish Enlightenment. A final indirect influence comes via Blackstone; himself an enormous influence on leading American political writers and actors by 1776; for arguably the single most important philosophical influence on Blackstone’s enlightened version of the English common law is the moderate Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu, not the radical Locke. This blended moderate and revolutionary character of the Declaration makes sense of America’s subsequent political history; that neither the colonies turned states nor the Articles, nor the 1787 Constitution, repudiated the English common law and the British constitutional tradition; and the great hero and consensus figure of the entire period was a moderate revolutionary, Washington (who was not a Signer only because the Continental Congress had sent him out to command the American war effort). Inclusion of Montesquieu, author of the widely read chapter in Spirit of Laws on England as the first polity in the world to produce a constitution devoted to liberty; and of Blackstone, famous in America for framing the common law as the law of liberty; as primary influences on the Declaration helps us to better explain the moderate character of the Declaration and of the American founding period as a whole.

Author

• Paul O. Carrese, Arizona State University