Another fleeting thought

[fpb]

France, and to a lesser extent Germany, lay claim to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as to a kind of national treasure and heritage; and the rest of the West tends to agree. Yet those elements of the Enlightenment that had a permanent, positive and enduring impact on the West came neither from Paris nor from the university towns of Germany, but from Edinburgh (Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations), Milan (Cesare Beccaria's Crimes and Penalties) and from the fledgling, English-speaking United States of America. No work of any French or German author, not even Voltaire or Kant, compares.

Comments

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I've seen "checks and balances" credited to Montesquieu himself, though I can't find a primary citation (and of course it'd be filtered through translation), but he certain had a concept of the different branches balancing each other, not just being separated in their own spheres. If the Continent looks to the US -- well, that's nice, and practical, but the US looked to Montesquieu; not our fault if y'all have forgotten that. And "separation of powers" is used as much as "checks and balances".

"forty years" is specious; it's easier to change penal or economic laws than the very structure of government.

I freely acknowledge my ignorance of Beccaria. You seem determined to downplay the French contribution.