Republicanism takes many forms, and it can be traced all the way back to Rome. But the colonists were particularly influenced by the French theorist Montesquieu, who famously divided governments into three kinds, with associated definitions, over which it is worth lingering: a republican government is that in which the body, or only a part of the people, is possessed of the supreme power; monarchy, that in which a single person governs by fixed and established laws; a despotic government, that in which a single person directs everything by his own will and caprice.
