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Volume II.]

March, 1887. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ [Number 1.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

QUARTERLY.

HARRINGTON

AND HIS INFLUENCE UPON AMERICAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

JAN

AND POLITICAL THOUGHT.

AMES HARRINGTON has not the reputation as a political thinker that he deserves. This is partly due to some fanciful notions on his part respecting forms of government, partly to peculiarities of style, but principally to the fact that the republican theories for which he contended were discarded in his own country. He had no followers. He founded no school. Still, though overlooked and unrecognized in England, he led and inspired the views of early American statesmen. is not too much to say that he has left a marked impression upon our political institutions. It is well to recall to view his merits in this centennial year of the birth of the United States Constitution.1

It

Before sketching the writings of Harrington, some general remarks may fitly be made concerning his age and his place in

1 Reference is made in this paper not only to his principal work, The Oceana, but also to tracts written in support of it and setting forth his views upon other political questions. These are:

The Prerogative of Popular Government.

The Art of Law-giving.

Valerius and Publicola.

Political Aphorisms.

The Ways and Means of introducing a Commonwealth by the Consent of the People.

The Humble Petition of divers well-affected Persons, with the Parliament's Answer thereto.

The edition of his works referred to in this paper is by John Toland, printed at Dublin in 1737.

it. He lived as a time when a most heroic effort was making to put political institutions on their trial, to probe them to their foundations, and, where found defective, to put new ones in their place. English Puritanism is well described as having been not merely an effort to restore purity to religion, but also a protest against all authority as such, a destructive and remorseless criticism, sparing no institution in the state which on trial could not give a good account of itself. It was something more, even, than this. It proposed, after destroying what was antiquated and useless, to set up not merely a new spiritual, but also a political kingdom, in which both the state and the church were to be re-established and brought into official relations, which it was fondly hoped would be harmonious as well as permanent. To accomplish this great result, everything must undergo revision. Nothing could be regarded as settled. The air was thick with the shower of controversial pamphlets falling on every side. Their titles were as quaint as their style was strange and uncouth. There was no question of literary culture or scholarly finish of expression. If a man had a burning word to say, he took his own mode of saying it. His merit, if any, was that he was dead in earnest; and he very probably succeeded, even through the dimness of his utterances, in transferring to his readers a portion of the glow which he felt in his own heart. Most of these controversial works, once so thoroughly alive, are now dead and forgotten. There remain of them only single copies in the British Museum, that great mausoleum of literature. Their preservation is due probably to dry antiquarians, who rescued them from absolute forgetfulness not because they were intrinsically valuable, but simply because they were once new and now old. Out of all this mass, there remain some most noticeable writings. We are speaking of the time when the best thoughts of Thomas Hobbes, James Harrington, Oliver Cromwell, and John Milton were given to the world and were agitating the minds of their contemporaries.

Apart from the general interest, that we might have in the works of these and kindred spirits, they are particularly valuable in connection with the rise and growth of political ideas in this

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