The fourth estate was how Macaulay and Carlyle described the reporters gallery in the House of Commons, writes Martin Mansergh
Carlyle even asserted that it was far more important than the other three. That claim is the subject to this day of much inconclusive debate.
The phrase "fourth estate", meaning the whole media, is too resonant to be abandoned, even if the context has disappeared. king, lords and commons meant something in the age of Grattan but nothing today. In France, two of the three estates, nobility and clergy, were swept away by the revolution, leaving only the people.
Even if newspaper editorials and headlines sometimes attempt "to lay down the law", the media is separate from the legislature, not an extension of it, except in the sense of reporting and analysing its proceedings. Yet it has the power to influence opinion that politicians want to exploit but often find unsettling.
Former French prime minister and mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppé, in his biography of the 18th century political philosopher Montesquieu, suggests, more correctly, that the media constitutes a "fourth power". This is an extension of the theory of the separation of powers, which Montesquieu enumerated in his De l'Esprit des Lois of 1748.
The three main powers were legislative, executive and judicial, ie parliament, government and courts. The separation of powers is central to democracy. It was invoked this week by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, as the reason why he could not intervene in the contempt ruling by a court, which has left the Rossport Five, protesting against the north-west onshore gas terminal, in prison.
In France, before the revolution, there was no separation of powers. The king was the executive and sole legislator combined, and could evoke from the highest courts, the parlements, cases in which the crown had an interest so that they could be decided in council.
While 18th century public opinion was of growing importance, accountability was entirely discretionary, and could always be refused on grounds of authority.
The separation of powers, a doctrine developed out of imperfect observation and some idealisation of the functioning of early Hanoverian Britain, was immensely influential in drawing up the American constitution. Montesquieu's grandson fought as a French officer with Washington's army.
Modern France separates the executive and the legislature. A minister cannot remain a member of either house. In all democracies, while senior judges are nominated by the executive, they are completely independent.
In Britain and Ireland, the executive is formed from the legislature, but thereafter, except in times of crisis, normally controls it. In Ireland, the people's direct approval by referendum is required in certain instances, the ratification of European treaties, changing an important piece of socio-moral legislation and including all constitutional amendments.
The Irish courts pro-actively interpret the law, and the Supreme Court, not entirely unlike the French parlements pre-1790, can throw out a whole law or part of it as unconstitutional, though judges here do not have to act as a political opposition in the absence of any other.
This is the 250th anniversary of the death of Montesquieu (1689-1755). Few philosophers have had as much impact on later generations. His fortune was based on his wine-producing estates, and his position as a presiding magistrate in the parlement of Bordeaux. He had little interest in judging, remarking of the law, that entire professions had been established in order to obscure and prolong cases.
He made his reputation under the regency with publication of his Lettres Persanes, a fictional correspondence by oriental visitors to France. It was a similar device to that employed in Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
Montesquieu was more suave and less savage in his satire, and was accepted into the Académie Française.
By today's standards, Montesquieu was a liberal conservative. He detested despotism, and disliked Louis XIV. He hated Versailles, not for its grandeurs, but for the pettiness of its inhabitants.
His attitude to law was that a thing is not just because it is law, but law because it is just. If it is not necessary to make a law, it is necessary not to make one.
When he visited a country, he did not inquire if it had good laws, but whether the law was implemented.
The interest of the individual is to be found in the common good. Charity does not fulfil the obligations of the state to provide for the basic needs of its citizens. Trade is a civilising influence that improves relations between peoples. Competition helps establish the true value of things. Extravagant wealth was often at the expense of the hard-working poor.
He believed if women had the same education as men they would be their equal. He regarded slavery as contrary to nature. He was totally opposed to colonies, and disapproved of the brutality and the settlements necessary to maintain them. Spain would have done better to bring back the Moors. He favoured toleration of religious minorities, because of the benefits in hard work they could bring to the state. Indeed, he was married to a Protestant, who very capably managed his estates, while he travelled for both instruction and pleasure.
He believed religion was necessary and in the moral teaching of the gospels, but was more sceptical about other articles of belief. He feared someone might invent what we now call weapons of mass destruction and put in the mouth of one of his Persian correspondents, tongue-in-cheek, the view that any such invention would be banned under international law by unanimous agreement.
The Château de la Brède is medieval, rather than renaissance or classical, the home where he did his writing and dictating. Some years ago, the vineyards were finally grubbed up. Since August, two of the last bottles of Château de la Brède white Bordeaux wine 1998 sit proudly in our rack.
The best wine is Montesquieu's contribution to the development of democratic and republican constitutions across the Western world, including Ireland.