Montesquieu's work influenced the revolutions in the late 1700s, changing how people set up their republican governments and influencing how we see government today.
Jefferson not only collected books, he read them with an unquenchable appetite - Cicero in Latin, Plato in Greek, Montesquieu in French, Cervantes in Spanish.
The Spirit of the Laws was so controversial that the Catholic Church banned the book only three years after it was published, but even they could not stop Montesquieu's ideas.
Or they may try all these without having read Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws, Rousseau's The Social Contract, and Locke's second treatise Of Civil Government.
The Hungarian mines, it is remarked by Mr. Montesquieu, though not richer, have always been wrought with less expense, and therefore with more profit, than the Turkish mines in their neighbourhood.
The high rate of interest among all Mahometan nations is accounted for by M. Montesquieu, not from their poverty, but partly from this, and partly from the difficulty of recovering the money.