Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) composed A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws in 1811. It was promptly translated to English by Thomas Jefferson, who published it along with translations of M. Condorcet's "Observations on the [Twenty-ninth] Book" (the original cover page produced by William Duane's Philadelphia press erroneously reads as the "Thirty-first Book") and "Two Letters of Helvetius, on the Merits of the Same Work". We reproduce all these translated items here.

Although Destutt de Tracy's Commentary is self-contained and does not require the prior reading of Montesquieu's 1752 The Spirit of Laws, that work is readily available in translation at the Online Library of Liberty (OLL).

Destutt de Tracy's work stands today as a classic in Political Science. His strength is his consistent ability to bring logic, creativity, and a modern scientific approach to explaining the motives, and hence the observed consequences, of various kinds of government styles. He systematically works through many substantial flaws in Montesquieu's influential 1752 work, and delves into Montesquieu's logical gaps. (See, for example, Tracy's chapters on Montesquieu's Book XI on "Laws Which Establish Public Liberty, In Relation to the Constitution".) His values of personal liberty, human equality, and intellectual pursuit show through in every chapter. His explanations of economics and how different government organizations do or do not contribute to economic welfare and personal liberty are clever and clear; and he is frank in suggesting that economics as a theoretical subject warrants illumination by others. MORE

To this point, all problems concerning the possible utilization of fiscal instruments to accomplish macro-economic objectives have been deliberately neglected. Any claim that the approach is a general one must include some reference to its ability to handle these problems. Can a normative "theory of fiscal policy" be derived from an individual choice calculus? Will an individual, at the moment when he is confronted with defining a fiscal constitution, authorize his government to employ the budget as a stabilizing, growth-inducing instrument?

Will an individual prefer that the aggregate income of the community in which he lives rise at some steady rate (or remain stable) or that it fluctuate around some long-term growth path? If he can predict his own income prospects with certainty, he need not be directly concerned with fluctuations in aggregate community income, although he may be indirectly concerned through tax-base externality. He will, however, be directly interested in aggregate income growth if his own income prospects are expected to correspond with those of the community in general. Here he will clearly prefer steady growth to unpredictable fluctuations. He may also prefer income stability to wholly predictable fluctuations if resort to the capital market is costly and private spending needs are relatively more stable than income. As the analysis of Chapter 15 indicated, the individual should select tax instruments which will mitigate the impact of his own fluctuating income prospects. Tax institutions that contain significant built-in revenue flexibility will tend to be selected. If, however, fluctuations in personal incomes are general over the whole community and not offsetting among separate persons and groups, the built-in flexibility of the tax structure will cause revenues of the government to decline sharply during periods of cyclical downswing. More appropriately stated, if aggregate community income does not grow at its average rate, governmental revenues will fall short of their projected levels, even if they do not decline absolutely. If the rule of in-period budget-balance is strictly enforced, public services supply will be curtailed during such periods, and, of course, expanded sharply during booms, neglecting possible in-period tax-rate adjustments. MORE