Previously the niche was occupied by a statue of Montesquieu now placed in the garden of Four Columns.
Much later Montaigne and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers, Montesquieu in France and Hume in England,
all considered suicide a valid individual right.
He was inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of the sanctity of the individual,
as well as by the writings of Locke and Montesquieu.
Montesquieu wrote,“when the legislative
and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.”.
There Montesquieu writes,“When the legislative
and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.
Important modern political doctrines which stem from the new Machiavellian realism include Mandeville's influential proposal that"Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits”(the last sentence of his Fable of the Bees), and also the doctrine of a constitutional"separation
of powers" in government, first clearly proposed by Montesquieu.