In searching for causation, the balance between social forces and individual agency is contingent on the subject. In ‘Edward Gibbon & the Enlightenment’,
Keith Windschuttle observes:

… In opposition to the French [i.e., Montesquieu’s] search for general laws of historical causation, Gibbon argues that explanations need to be appropriate to their subject. In some historical circumstances, such as newly formed or emerging polities, the role of individuals such as founding fathers may be profound; in other circumstances, a system may be so well entrenched that it might survive the worst kind of abuse from apparently powerful political figures. Similarly, once major internal systemic problems have emerged, neither the fortunes nor adversities of politics may be able to stem the tide.

And further, echoing Himmelfarb’s

Roads to Modernity

:

…The intellectual product and legacy of the English Enlightenment is quite different from that of the French. In Gibbon, the spirit of inquiry and the fruits of research confirm the value of the existing institutions of English society, including its religion. In France, these tools were deployed in opposition to the same institutions. In England, Gibbon emphasized the responsibility of individuals and celebrated the virtue and courage of statesmen and churchmen, where they existed, even though he recorded that the natural passions of humanity were likely to leave such qualities in short supply. In France, the philosophes sought to find general laws of society that would render the actions of individuals irrelevant. The intellectual heritage of the English Enlightenment, as exemplified in Gibbon, clearly goes some of the way to explaining the different political histories of the two countries in the ensuing two centuries. England has enjoyed a stable and peaceful national history marked by a gradual extension of its democracy; France has been periodically racked by revolution, internal collapse, and foreign invasion.

New Criterion, June 1997