He’s known as Montesquieu, although his full name was Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et du Montesquieu. A passage from Will & Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization notes that his book The Spirit of Laws, published in 1748, was “rated the greatest intellectual production of the age”, adding…“It appeared when its author was fifty-nine; it was the fruit of fifty years of experience, forty years of study, twenty of composition.”

     He belonged to the French nobility, living from 1689 to 1755, and along with Voltaire and others, helped usher in the Age of Reason that undermined and loosened the bounds of ecclesiastic authority and orthodoxy and the absolute authority of the king.

     There were claims in his book that, in retrospect, seem farfetched and off-the-wall. For example he attributed climate as a cause of human and cultural differences between north and south. “People are more vigorous in cold climates,” he stated, “… If we travel toward the north we meet with people who have few vices, many virtues (greater boldness, more courage, greater sense of superiority, less suspicion, etc.)… If we draw near the south we fancy ourselves entirely removed from the verge of morality; here the strongest passions are productive of all manner of crimes, each man endeavoring, let the means be what they will, to indulge his inordinate desires.”

    Part of the cause for the vice that Montesquieu felt predominated in southern, warmer climates was “the aqueous part of the blood (that) loses itself greatly by perspiration.”

     Where Montesquieu would have a profound impact on subsequent history was his proposal of a “mixed government” of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy that, he felt, would temper and offset the despotism inherent in an absolute monarchy or even in a republic. In the preceding century Cardinal Richelieu (that famous character from The Three Musketeers who ruled under King Louis XVIII) and then King Louis XIV, who reigned for 59 years, had together stripped the French nobility of much of its power, prerogatives, and source of wealth.

     That proposal of mixed government, as described in the Durant book, called for “the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers in government.”… “The legislature should make the laws but should not administer them; the executive should administer them but not make them; the judiciary should limit itself to interpreting them. The executive should not appoint or control the judges. Ideally, the legislature would consist of two independent chambers, one representing the upper classes, the other the commonalty.”

     While the proposal, on the whole, was a radical one for the French, Montesquieu was a conservative in his view on the rule of the nobility versus “the people” (demos). He wrote: “In such a state there are always persons distinguished by their birth, riches, or honors. Were they to be confounded with the common people, and to have only the weight of a single vote like the rest, the common liberty would be their slavery, and they would have no interest in supporting it, as most of the popular resolutions would be against them. The share they have, therefore, ought to be proportioned to their other advantages in the state; which happens only where they for a body that has a right to check the licentiousness of the people, as the people have a right to oppose any encroachment upon their liberty. The legislative power is therefore committed to the body of the nobles, and to that which represents the people, each having its assemblies and deliberations apart, each its separate interest and views.”

     “Each of these three powers in the government,” wrote the Durants of Montesquieu’s proposal, “and each of the two chambers in the legislature, would serve as a check and balance against the others. By this complex way the liberties of the citizens will be reconciled with the wisdom, justice, and vigor of the government.”

     CHECKS AND BALANCES, SOUND FAMILIAR? Forty-nine years later, in the summer of 1787, during a convention held in Philadelphia, a group of prominent men would embrace this blueprint of government as they deliberated and debated on a new Constitution that would bind their 13 recently independent states. It was the Virginia lawyer, James Madison, who championed this concept of three separate branches and the value of “checks and balances” that, as Montesquieu claimed, “preserve and protect liberty.”

     The Frenchman’s proposal was not produced from thin air. The notion of “mixed government” had been brought forth from earlier thinkers, dating back to Aristotle, and Montesquieu and his fellow countrymen had only to look across the English Channel to see a working model, albeit slightly different. England in the 1600s had exhausted itself with religious struggles, including a Civil War (1642-51) that included the beheading of King Charles I, the governance of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and then the Restoration.

     From that struggle they fashioned a government that featured a more powerful and independent House of Commons, the counterpoint of the House of Lords, a King held in check with a more limited and increasingly ceremonial power, and a somewhat independent judiciary. There were also enhanced legal rights like Habeas Corpus. Much of this had already been in place prior to theses internal conflicts, but became more exemplary going into the 1700s. England had also formed a union with Scotland (after conquest) and, along with Wales, formed the entity Great Britain. The French thinkers, in particular Voltaire, thought the English model, with its liberties and diminished church power, gave that country and its society more vigor and initiative.

     Even so, wealth and power still ruled in England. The lower and working classes still lived a precarious existence. While they might enjoy more liberty and trickle-down wealth than their French counterparts, they were still apt to find themselves poor and destitute due to natural or man-made calamities, to be a victim of the press gang, or to be set off to an overseas penal colony for a crime.

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     “We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosperity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

     Madison correctly saw the danger of “factions”—geographical and economic—that would or could threaten these newly United States. The major one that would emerge, resulting in a bloody civil war, would be between the North and South, the growing industrial economy of the former based on free labor pitted against the Plantation and cotton-based agriculture of the latter subsidized with slave labor, and the political power at stake in determining whether slavery would be allowed in the new, Western lands acquired through the purchase of the Louisiana Territory and through conquest with the war launched against Mexico.

     The three independent branches were not the only “checks and balances” created in the U.S. Constitution. Federalism, dividing the responsibility of governance between states and the central authority, and the addition of the added-on Bill of Rights, designed to protect individuals from an over powerful, abusive governmental authority, were also included in the arsenal.

     What was not taken into account was the rise and influence of political parties and passionate partisan belief that has spanned all of these “checks and balances”, has been pervasive throughout our national history, and still to this day sabotages some of the power and eloquence of this concept.

      The ‘mixed government’ suggested by Montesquieu, the system of federalism, and the protection of the Bill of Rights have created and still continue to create obstacles to the tendency of authoritative power. But more often the “checks and balances” are sabotaged by the loyalty to a political party or an ideological philosophy.

     When parties share power, two alternatives usually emerge. One is the need to compromise, to find a common ground, to negotiate a mutually-acceptable solution or remedy. In ‘mixed government’, in a nation as large and diverse as our United States, such an approach is vital. The necessity of this is inherent in the “check and balances” approach.

     The other alternative, one seen all-too-often, is stalemate, inflexibility, heated rhetoric, and continuous partisan posturing. The sides put up their barricades, the compromisers are demonized and marginalized, and the political battle ensues.

      When one party gains control of all three branches of government, either nationally or at a state level, there occurs all too often an urge by those handling the levers of power to dominate and control.  The loyalty to their political party and to their partisan agenda overwhelms the strength of ‘mixed government’ and neutralizes the “checks and balances” that the founding fathers felt was essential to liberty. Compared to this tyranny of the majority, this riding roughshod over political opponents and those with differing views, when this begins to happen then stalemate seems a wonderful blessing.

     “Power corrupts” is a famous saying… famous, alas, because it reoccurs so often. A legislator, a president or governor, a judge as well as all of those appointed or hired to serve one of the three branches of government “Do solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the Constitution of their respective state… in our case Michigan.

They serve “We, the People”, each and all, and should take that into account when governing. But the ties and loyalty to political party and partisan belief quite often supersede, negating that oath.