Happy birthday, Montesquieu

It is the birthday of French political thinker Montesquieu (1689), whose work The Spirit of the Laws (1748) and other writings greatly influenced James Madison in writing the Constitution of the United States. Montesquieu defined three types of government: monarchies, republics, and despotisms. He also defined two types of governmental power: the sovereign and the administrative. In the administrative, he saw three branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, none of which should hold more power than the other. His Persian Letters (1712) poked fun at French society in a series of imaginary letters to a Persian visitor to Paris. Montesquieu also wrote two novels, The Temple of Gnidos (1725) and Arsace and Isménie (1742).