"Montesquieu was but one of many Enlightenment influences on the Constitution, many of whom were also influences on Montesquieu himself. John Locke, the English philosopher, wrote Two Treatises on Government in 1689, a work which not only influenced the American founding fathers, but also Montesquieu himself, as many of Locke's ideas of natural rights to life, liberty, property and happiness found their way into the Constitution and into The Spirit of the Laws."
