Harold J. Laski: “It gives an authority to the nation-state which, in the light of the facts, is incompatible with the well-being of the…”

From no accusation were its statesmen more anxious to be free than from that of a belief in democratic government.

Wilkes was a sign that the populace was slowly awaking to a sense of its own power.

Montesquieu thus became the prophet of a new race of thinkers.

But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.