When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright,
historian and novelist, and the great enemy of all
religious and political tyranny, began to throw his bombs of
criticism at everything connected with the Established Order
of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his
theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man
and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the
happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about
whom he knew as little as he did about the children, upon whose
education he was the recognised authority,) all France read
his ``Social Contract'' and this society in which the king and
the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rousseau's
appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real
sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the
king had been merely the servant of his people.
When Montesquieu published his ``Persian Letters'' in
which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing
society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything
from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred
pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four
editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his
famous discussion of the ``Spirit of the Laws'' in which the
noble Baron compared the excellent English system with the
backward system of France and advocated instead of an absolute
monarchy the establishment of a state in which the Executive,
the Legislative and the Judicial powers should be in
separate hands and should work independently of each other.
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