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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Book XXVIII Of the Origin and Revolutions of Civil Law among the Franks. - A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws'

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Book XXVIII Of the Origin and Revolutions of Civil Law among the Franks. - Antoine Louis Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy, A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s ’Spirit of Laws’ [1811]

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A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s ’Spirit of Laws’: To which are annexed, Observations on the Thirty First Book by the late M. Condorcet; and Two Letters of Helvetius, on the Merits of the same Work, trans. Thomas Jefferson (Philadelphia: William Duane, 1811).

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Book XXVIII Of the Origin and Revolutions of Civil Law among the Franks.

These two books being purely historical, I shall not examine them.

It not being my object in this commentary to defend Montesquieu's erudition, and yet less to join those who reproach him of not having well understood the spirit of the laws of those remote periods, the obscurity of which he has endeavored to penetrate; it being my view only to establish some principles of the social science; now as these two books are entirely historical, and nothing can be drawn from them for the theory of the formation and distribution of power, nor for the formation and distribution of wealth, I shall say nothing more on these chapters.