The translator avers an attempt to render as nearly literal a translation as possible. Inevitably, there will arise moments in which comparative syntax and colloquial meaning will render that impossible. For example, where Montesquieu has rendered commerce d’économie the translator has selected “commerce of economy” rather than the preferred “economic commerce” of other texts. This choice has been made to convey that Montesquieu did not mean economics or trade “on the cheap.” He rather meant trade or economics scaled to the limits of a particular regime as opposed to the focused and unlimited pursuit of wealth. He described a measure of prudence, which enabled him to encompass trade in ideas (including religious ideas) as readily as the trade in goods.That example is characteristic of the choices made in this translation. It is usually clarified in annotations to unexpected translations. No translator expects perfection, however much he or she aspires to it. The present translator has oft responded to inquiry about the nature of the work, “dog's work!” In that formulation the translator conveyed both the fidelity of the translator and the essential doggedness requisite to a successful performance.The translator would prefer that all would acquire facility in the original language and thus render unnecessary resort to a translation. Accompanying this translation with original text in bilingual configuration underscores that preference. Nevertheless, the work of Montesquieu has been so fundamental a resource in the development of English-speaking constitutional thought, as well as critical to the development of the discourse of liberty, that it is manifestly worthwhile to assure that a reliable text remains readily available to English readers.Wonderful biographies of Montesquieu are easily accessible. Accordingly, a biography is not reproduced here. Form, however, requires the minimum acknowledgment of his seventeenth-century birth (1687) and his eighteenth-century death (1755), placing him solidly in the development of what came to be called Enlightenment thought. A landed nobleman of blended Catholic and Huguenot ancestry, he developed expertise in jurisprudence and general science, as well devoted attention to historical and philosophical observations. He decisively shaped for his era the concept of comparative cultural analysis, albeit largely with an eye to indirect guidance for his own culture.It may be said of Montesquieu that he distinguished himself in the Enlightenment precisely by standing out—and somewhat apart—from the general march of advanced thought in his time.