(half-title) see 1 ^st. Hollis’s Memoirs. 130. [These references are to the notes on Hollis’s editions and copies of these works.] MS. notes in an early hand occur.

Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527, Italian statesman, writer and political theorist.

Hubert Languet, 1518-1581. The Vindiciæ contra tyrannos has been attributed also to Beza, Hotman, Casaubon and Duplessis-Mornay; there is a discussion of the authorship in Haag.

Johann Baptist Fickler, 1533-1610, German scholar, theologian and writer.

Rebound in buckram by the Library of Congress. Initialled by Jefferson at sig. I and T in each volume.

In a letter to Thomas Mann Randolph recommending books for his studies, dated from New York, May 30, 1790, Jefferson wrote of Montesquieu: “ . . . in the science of government Montesquieu’s spirit of laws is generally recommended. it contains indeed a great number of political truths; but almost an equal number of political heresies: so that the reader must be constantly on his guard. there has been lately published a letter of Helvetius who was the intimate friend of Montesquieu & whom he consulted before the publication of his book. Helvetius advised him not to publish it: & in this letter to a friend he gives us a solution for the mixture of truth & error found in this book. he sais Montesquieu was a man of immense reading, that he had commonplaced all his reading, & that his object was to throw the whole contents of his commonplace book into systematical order, & to shew his ingenuity by reconciling the contradictory facts it presented . . . ”

On August 12, 1810, in a letter to William Duane concerning the printing of Destutt de Tracy’s Commentary on Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois (q.v.), Jefferson wrote: “ . . . the history of that work [the Spirit of Laws] is well known. he [Montesquieu] had been a great reader, and had commonplaced everything he read. at length he wished to undertake some work into which he could bring his whole Commonplace book in a digested form. he fixed on the subject of his Spirit of laws, & wrote the book. he consulted his friend Helvetius about publishing it, who strongly dissuaded it. he published it however, and the world did not conform to Helvetius’s opinion. still every man, who reflect as he reads, has considered it as a book of paradoxes, having indeed much of truth & sound principle, but abounding also with inconsistences, [ sic -- Ed. ] apocryphal facts, & false inferences . . .”

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, 1689-1755, French philosophical historian. The first edition of the Esprit des Lois was published in 1748 in 2 volumes, quarto.

The theories of Montesquieu had a most important and far reaching influence on the thinking of the framers of the United States Constitution.

Jefferson’s Common-place book, “ made while I was a student,” contains passages copied from the Esprit des Lois, which show therefore the impressions made by its author on the younger Jefferson. These passages should be read in connection with his later opinions as expressed in the correspondence quoted above, and in the description of Destutt de Tracy’s Commentary and Review of the Spirit of the Laws, [ sic -- Ed. ] no. 2327 below, q.v.

For a discussion of Montesquieu’s influence on Jefferson, see Gilbert Chinard, The Common-place Book of Thomas Jefferson.