Abstract

The two last volumes of De l'esprit des lois are consistent with the rest of Montesquieu's major work and show more clearly his need to propose the power of the "seigneurs" (and the one of other "corps") as a primary power - not derived from the royal one - but also as a genetically legitimate power, not result of abuses and usurpations as considered by Charles Lyseau at the beginning of the 17th century. According to such a proposal, the relationship between the royal power (from which other powers derive "in officio") and the primary and hereditary power of feudal lords (or of other corps) expresses a political unity that can be defined, still in Montesquieu's France, a "mixed constitution" as mindful of the different nature of powers within unity.