The Online Library of Liberty

New Liberty Fund Book (March 2008) - Jean Louis De Lolme, The English Constitution (1771)

The Constitution of England is one of the most distinguished eighteenth-century treatises on English political liberty. In the vein of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748) and Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), De Lolme’s account of the English system of government exercised an extensive influence on political debate in Britain, on constitutional design in the United States during the Founding era, and on the growth of liberal political thought throughout the nineteenth century. Originally published in French in Amsterdam in 1771, The Constitution of England was the first book-length analysis of the “separation of powers” proposed in book XI of Spirit of the Laws, which sketched an institutional distinction between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.

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