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Montesquieu and the Old Regime. By Hulliung Mark. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Pp. 258. $11.50.)The Political Theory of Montesquieu. By Richter Melvin. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Pp. 355. $17.95, cloth; $6.95, paper.)

Each of these works deserves some praise. But I prefer to begin with summary criticisms. Montesquieu begins to trouble the modern scholar much as Aristotle troubled medieval schoolmen. Because he provided sources rich in practical advice and paradigms or "ideal types," the temptation to adapt his ideas to subsequent circumstances, however distant, is well-nigh irresistible. The consequence is a profusion of seedlings withering in the shadows of mature trees in a great forest. Each of these efforts defends its failure to present a comprehensive account of Montesquieu's teaching by denying that Montesquieu achieved a comprehensive understanding. (Richter: pp. 4, 6, 17, 64-65, and passim. Hulliung: pp. 27, 108-117, 171, 185.) Richter treats Montesquieu as eclectic (pp. 21—22). The introduction to his translations comprises roughly a third of the book. It is a critical analysis, but "critical" is not used critically in this review. Richter sidesteps the problems requiring explication in Montesquieu's texts. Those problems are glossed, ignored, or handled by the repeating of "commonplaces" of the scholarly tradition. An early example of this sidestepping occurs when he questions the sincerity of Montesquieu's claim that "nothing he wrote could be interpreted 'to censure arrangements established anywhere in the world' " (p. 17). This is rather Richter's than Montesquieu's question. The statement from The Spirit of the Laws in no way limits prospects for interpretation nor even the incidental effects of Montesquieu's teaching. It addresses only his purpose in writing: "Je n'ecris point pour censurer ce qui est etabli dans quelque pays que ce soit." The incidental effect of censure is perfectly compatible with this stated intention. Or, again, Montesquieu's claim of a design for the work has trapped subsequent scholars in the search for unity. That implies analysis of the text as such. But Richter suggests a genealogy of ideas to resolve that claim, abandoning the assumption that Montesquieu's claim ought to be honored solely because he made it (p. 64). But, again, Montesquieu's conception of nature and laws of nature, philosophical or "metaphysical" in form, is really only a "political" or "secular" conception. He "himself said any number of times that The Spirit of the Laws is not a theological work" (pp. 64-69). Here, it is Montesquieu's own claim which has force. Finally, the same process, interpreting through narrowing the sense of the text, is seen in the account of the separation of powers (pp. 90—91). Initially, the account resembles expansion rather than constriction. Richter holds that Montesquieu employs three definitions of separation of powers rather than one. But this interpretation requires a radical separation of very closely related passages. Besides taking the "second definition" out of context, Richter does not reveal that it in fact arises from the very next paragraph after the first definition in the first paragraph of only one sentence; the second paragraph is only four sentences which develops the first paragraph and, in particular, places the domestic and foreign power of enforcing law on a single footing and oppose the power of judging. The whole, then, is only the continuing definition of a new conception. When the "second" definition occurs, it is a reference to-a gloss on-the previous definition. Completing and defending the expansion, Montesquieu then states it in summary form. Thus, this is the only definition employed throughout Book XI, although the original version is used again in the discussion of England in Book XIX, chapter 27. The whole seems to reveal Montesquieu's consciousness of how far he could attribute his principles to England (or Locke) in fact and how far only ideally.