The government of France, says Montesquieu, has not, like that of England, liberty for its direct object; it tends only to the glory of the citizen, the state, and the prince. But from this glory comes a spirit of liberty, which in France can do great things, and can contribute as much to happiness as liberty itself. The three powers are not there distributed as in England; but they have a distribution of their own, according to which they approach more or less to political liberty; and if they did not approach it, the monarchy would degenerate into despotism.[Footnote: Montesq., iv. 24. (liv. xi. c. 7).] This sounds somewhat like an empty phrase; yet there undoubtedly were in Montesquieu's time some checks on the absolutism of a French monarch. "If subjects owe obedience to kings, kings on their part owe obedience to the laws," said the Parliament of Paris in 1753. And outside of its own boundaries France had long been considered a limited monarchy. [Footnote: Rocquain, 170. Machiavelli, ii. 140, 215, 322 (Discourses on the first ten books of Livy).] Apart from the limitations imposed by the privileges of the church and of the Parliaments, there appear to have been some acknowledged fundamental laws (the succession of the crown in the male line was one of them) which it would have been beyond the power of the sovereign for the time being to destroy. And public opinion, as Montesquieu has already told us, has power even in the most despotic countries. In a European nation, not broken in spirit by long-continued tyranny, and possessing the printing-press, this power must always be very great. As for Montesquieu's admiration of the English form of government, it doubtless concurred with other causes to encourage on the Continent the study of English political methods. Those methods have since been adopted by many continental states, with hardly as many modifications to adapt them to local circumstances as might have been desirable. But it is the modern English constitution, in which power lies almost entirely in the House of Commons, and is exercised by its officers, that has been thus copied. In America the principle of the division of powers has been carried farther than it ever was in England; and is, of all parts of their form of government, that from which many intelligent Americans would be most loath to part.