observation beyond the specific properties of Britain, and towards an examination of Montesquieu’s
understanding of the problematic nature of the traditional practice of regime classification.
Montesquieu’s admission that his account in 11.6 may not be a wholly accurate portrayal of British
constitutional practice (he claims “It is not for me to examine whether at present the English enjoy this
liberty or not” [11.6.166]) is an additional ambiguity in this account. However, perhaps the most
puzzling aspect of Montesquieu’s treatment of the British Constitution, and the one that has generally
received least attention from scholars, is the ambiguous status of history in his treatment of Britain. Even
those who do provide detailed analysis of Montesquieu’s treatment of French or Roman history (Krause
2003: 255-60; Carrese 2003; Carrithers 1986)—arguably the two other most prominent peoples in the
Spirit of the Laws--typically pay little attention to Montesquieu’s treatment of English or British history.
This is not surprising given the curious fact that although Montesquieu emphasizes as a general principle
the importance of history in the formation of a people’s political and social reality, as in the case of
France or Rome, he offers strikingly little account of English history in the Spirit of the Laws. One is
almost forgiven for assuming, as many often have, that Montesquieu’s British Constitution simply
appeared in toto at a discrete moment in time in relative abstraction from underlying general historical
causes.
This paper will address these difficulties and ambiguities in Montesquieu’s account of the British
Constitution by extending our analysis beyond the scope of the prominent and well-trodden treatments of
11.6 and 19.27 by focusing our attention on the many less noticed, but I will argue, highly significant
discussions of English history scattered throughout the Spirit of the Laws and other works. We will argue
that once we make the effort to reconsider Montesquieu’s account of the British Constitution not only in
light of his assessment of English history, but also in relation to French constitutional history, a number of
important arguments become manifest. First, analyzing British history reveals that in contrast to the
tendency to view Montesquieu’s theory in terms of competing historico-relativist and natural rights
paradigms, Montesquieuian political science rested on the notion of nature and history conjoined in a
complex relation that required an approach to the investigation of political things that combined an
2
Two notable exceptions are MacDonald 2003 and Rahe 2001.
3
Convention