Tracking the decline …

… In Montesquieu, a Historian Blended With a Political Philosopher - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The gradual but sure debilitation of Roman character ended in the reduction and ultimate defeat of Roman power. Difficult to read Montesquieu on Rome without thinking of the U.S. in our time, as when, for one example among many, he writes that “more states have perished by the violation of their moral customs than by the violation of their laws.”