Montesquieu

Montesquieu was a French political philosopher, jurist, and man of letters of the Enlightenment. Born into the noble Secondat family near Bordeaux, he trained in law and served as a magistrate and président à mortier in the Parlement of Bordeaux. He won early fame with the satirical epistolary novel "Lettres persanes" (1721), then turned to historical and political analysis. His major treatise, "De l'esprit des lois" (1748), examined the relation between laws, climate, custom, and forms of government, and articulated an influential account of the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Elected to the Académie française in 1728, he traveled through Europe and England before settling to write. He died in Paris.