1. See, for example, Jonathan Israel. 2002. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 11–13.
2. See Rebecca Kingston 2001. “Montesquieu on Religion and on the Question of Toleration.” In Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws, eds. Carrithers et al., Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Montesquieu’s theory of toleration could not support separation of church and state. Montesquieu was bound to the reality of the Catholic church, its dominance in society, and its political ties to the monarchy.
3. One exception is Mark H. Waddicor. 1970. Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law. The Hague: Nijhoff, 162–167. “Property … for Montesquieu was a natural right; it was one aspect of the right to liberty.” I note my disagreements with Waddicor below.
4. In this I follow Michael Zuckert. 2004. “Natural Rights and Modern Constitutionalism.” Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights 2 (Spring): 1–25. Zuckert contests Lowenthal’s view that Montesquieu was not a natural rights thinker, pointing to book X as the place in which Montesquieu’s commitment to natural rights “becomes decisive.” While this article owes much to Zuckert’s basic insight, I am focused less on Montesquieu’s theoretical discussion of property. I also diverge from Zuckert’s analysis in a second respect. While I agree that Montesquieu’s modification of Locke’s teaching does not require a fundamental change of Lockean principles, I believe Montesquieu’s modification to be a major, not a minor, rhetorical modification.
5. Michael Sonenscher. 2007. Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.