no small proportion
of the enemies of ecclesiasticism were actually paid and privileged
members of the Church itself. Thus little opposition, except that of
simple _vis inertiae_, was offered to the new views and the crusade by
which they were supported. This crusade, however, had two very different
stages. The first, of which the greatest representatives are Montesquieu
and in a way Voltaire himself, was critical and reforming, but in no way
revolutionary; the second, of whom the Encyclopaedists are the
representatives, was, consciously or unconsciously, bent on a complete
revolution. We shall give an account first of the chief representatives
of these two great classes of the general movement, and then of those
offshoots or schools of that movement which busied themselves with the
special subjects of economics, ethics, and metaphysics, as distinguished
from general politics.

[Sidenote: Montesquieu.]

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu et de la Brede, was born at
the _chateau_, which gave him the last-named title, in the neighbourhood
of Bordeaux, on the 18th of January, 1689. His family was not of the
oldest, but it had, as he tells us, some two or three centuries of
proved _noblesse_ to boast of, and had been distinguished in the law. He
himself was destined for that profession, and after a youth of laborious
study became councillor of the parliament of Bordeaux in 1714, and in a
year or two president. In 1721 he produced the _Lettres Persanes_, and
four years later the curious little prose poem called the _Temple de
Gnide_. Some objection was made by the minister Fleury, who was rigidly
orthodox, to the satirical tone of the former book in ecclesiastical
matters, but Montesquieu was none the less elected of the Academy in
1728. He had given up his position at the Bordeaux Parlement a few years
before this, and set out on an extensive course of travel, noting
elaborately the manners, customs, and constitution of the countries
through which he passed. Two years of this time were spent in England,
for which country, politically speaking, he conceived a great
admiration. On his return to France he lived partly in Paris, but
chiefly at his estate of La Brede, taking an active interest in its
management, and in the various occupations of a country gentleman, but
also working unceasingly at his masterpiece, the _Esprit des Lois_.
This, however, was not published for many years, and was long preceded
by the book w