chapter five, Book XXIV., the climatic
theory is again applied, this time to the matter of religion, in a style
that makes one think of Buckle's "History of Civilization:"--

When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became unhappily
divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the north
embraced the Protestant, and those south adhered still to the
Catholic.

The reason is plain: the people of the north have, and will forever
have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the
south have not; and therefore, a religion which has no visible
head, is more agreeable to the independency of the climate, than
that which has one.

Climate is a "great matter" with Montesquieu. In treating of the subject
of a state changing its religion, he says:--

The ancient religion is connected with the constitution of the
kingdom, and the new one is not; the former _agrees with the
climate_, and very often the new one is opposite to it.

For the Christian religion, Montesquieu professes profound
respect,--rather as a pagan political philosopher might do, than as one
intimately acquainted with it by a personal experience of his own. His
spirit, however, is humane and liberal. It is the spirit of Montaigne,
it is the spirit of Voltaire, speaking in the idiom of this different
man, and of this different man as influenced by his different
circumstances. Montesquieu had had practical proof of the importance to
himself of not offending the dominant hierarchy.

The latter part of "The Spirit of Laws" contains discussions exhibiting
no little research on the part of the author. There is, for one example,
a discussion of the course of commerce in different ages of the world,
and of the influences that have wrought from time to time to bring about
the changes occurring. For another example, there is a discussion of the
feudal system.

Montesquieu was an admirer of the English constitution. His work,
perhaps, contains no extended chapters more likely to instruct the
general reader and to furnish a good idea of the writer's genius and
method, than the two chapters--chapter six, Book XI., and chapter
twenty-seven, Book XIX.--in which the English nation and the English
form of government are sympathetically described. We simply indicate,
for we have no room to exhibit, these chapters. Voltaire, too, expressed
Montesquieu's admiration of English liberty and E