and teaching, and of the proficiency of the children, after the manner of the great school at Westminster. A parent having more sons than one was to be punished if he did not send them to school, the education being "gratis" if he was not able to pay for it. This rule was to continue until the age of fifteen. After that the child should be made an apprentice to some trade, or be sent to a law-school or a university. The commonwealth still had an interest in him, for he must not stay beyond the age of eighteen unless he was fitting himself for some profession, the object being to prevent one's occupying himself with aimless study. If he travelled, he should on his return prepare a paper containing an account of the public interest, or form of government, of the states he had visited. If well done, this was to be printed and published at public expense with a "line in commendation" of the author.1 This is a remarkable instance of an early plan, both for free and compulsory education. Harrington was a great friend of university education, and could not understand the motives of men who opposed it. He says: "We cut down trees to build houses, but I would have somebody show me by what reason or experience the cutting down of an university should tend to the setting up of a commonwealth.” 2 The statesman that he fancied must have a wide education. He must not only have the knowledge of the schools, but he must be a historian and a traveller. His argument here is somewhat curious. "Except

a man can see what must be or what may be, he is no politician. Now if he has no knowledge in history, he cannot tell what has been; and if he has not been a traveller, he cannot tell what is; but he that neither knows what has been nor what is, can never tell what must be or what may be."3 The great fault of his time was that the people had little education. He was never weary of saying that a commonwealth is the estate of the people, and a man, though he be virtuous, if he does not understand his estate, may run out or be cheated out of it. "In 1 Oceana, p. 173. 2 Ibid., p. 179.

3 So John Rushworth says: "I take it to be the great business of every man's life to learn what the world is, and what hath been done and what is doing in it, and upon the whole to judge what he ought to do."

fact," he said, "the grandees of his age, that laughed out openly at a commonwealth as a most ridiculous thing, would be regarded as mere idiots if the people only had eyes.' "1 Laying so great stress upon intelligence, he considered it to be a great part of the duty of the senators to instruct the people. Some man, selected for his wisdom, was from time to time to deliver an oration or a lecture on the nature of popular institutions, either in the Parliament House, while the members were in town, or in some grove or sweet place in the field, while the Parliament shall, in the heat of the year, reside in the country. He would thus keep the system of government fresh in men's memories. It was of the highest importance that his senators should be possessed of the graces of rhetoric and elocution, particularly when treating with some other nation that was "good at it, lest the advantage might remain with the merit of the art rather than with the merit of the cause." 3 He would even have in the government a department of affability, where the members of an academy should assemble every day towards evening, in a fair room with certain withdrawing rooms, and where all sorts of company, that will repair thither for conversation or discourse on matters of government news or intelligence, shall be freely and affably received and heard in the way of civil conversation, which is to be managed without any other awe or ceremony than is thereto usually appertaining, to the end that every man may be free, etc. Would it not be a relief to have a "bureau of affability" at our railroad and other business offices, and perhaps even in some of our governmental departments? He rhapsodizes upon the element of beauty in the administration of public affairs:

Upon beauty, in which every man has his fancy, we will not otherwise philosophize than to remember, that there is something more than decency in the robe of a judge that could not be well spared from the bench, and that the gravest magistrate to whom you can commit the sword of justice will find a quickness in the spurs of honor, which if they be not laid to virtue, will lay themselves to that which may rout a commonwealth.*

1 Oceana, p. 160.

2 Ibid., p. 157.

3 Ibid., p. 160.

4 Ibid., p. 122.

In order to secure the best officers, he would pay competent salaries. "He that lays his hand to the public plough is not to lose by taking it off from his own." He denounces a commonwealth, that is close in this direction, as penny-wise.1

His utterances concerning religion breathe a lofty spirit of toleration. While he desires that the Christian religion be established by Parliament and public preachers maintained, yet he insists that all that profess this religion, though of different persuasions, should be equally protected in its peaceable profession and public exercise, and be equally capable of all elections, magistracies and preferments in the commonwealth. He . exclaims that without liberty of conscience, civil liberty cannot be perfect; and that without civil liberty, liberty of conscience cannot be perfect.2 Liberty of conscience, he argues, will not suffer any coercive power in the matter of religion to be exercised in the nation. The teachers of the national religion are only to be those who voluntarily undertake their calling, and their hearers no other than those who voluntarily listen to them; and no gathered congregation is to be molested or interrupted in their way of worship, but vigilantly and vigorously protected in the enjoyment, practice and profession of the same. Here is an established religion with a perfect liberty of dissent. It says: The state will provide for you (the people) the ablest religious teachers. Do as you will about attending their services. According to Harrington's plan, the universities were to send probationers to churches for a single year. After that period, the people were to decide by ballot whether the minister was likely to be useful a two-third vote in his favor being necessary.3 There were no advowsons in his church; no patrons who could force a rector upon an unwilling people. His were free congregations, free to elect or reject their pastor. To this liberty of worship were two important qualifications. It did not extend to Jews nor to Roman Catholics. Not to Jews, for they were not then by public men deemed to be within the scope of rules applicable to Christians; not to Romanists, because of a jealousy of interference by a foreign 1 Oceana, p. 167. 2 Valerius and Publicola, p. 489. 8 Oceana, p. 88.

prince with his plan of government for England. It was his belief, as a statesman, that the then existing notions of allegiance to the pope, considered as a temporal monarch, entertained by many Roman Catholics, were inconsistent with due loyalty to the nation of which they were members. This may be called "limited toleration," but it was far beyond that of most men of his age. It was adopted by John Milton in his later years (1673). Professor Masson expresses Milton's view in these words: “Until and without the acceptance of the scriptures, no liberty of conscience; after and with that acceptance, all liberty". except to Roman Catholics.1 It would be interesting to know whether this modification of Milton's earlier views was due to the influence of Harrington. They could easily have been brought together, Cyriack Skinner being an intimate friend of both.

This was a broader platform than had been then proposed by the most liberal sects of the non-conformists. It stands in the most marked contrast with the bitter and intolerant legislation of the early years of Charles II's reign, when deviation from the established religion, by Protestant non-conformists as well as others, was visited by deprivation of important civil rights as well as severe punishment. Harrington's theory was, that the only source of true religious light was in the scriptures open to all men not in translations, but in the original languages.

While Harrington was thus maintaining liberty of conscience, he was conscious of the religious bigotry and one-sidedness of his age, and implored the church to raise up her hands to heaven for further light. He had little confidence in the political wisdom of the clergy as a body. He would not allow them to exercise any political power. We find in the Oceana this remarkable provision:

To the end that there be no interest at all, whereby the divines or teachers of the new religion may be corrupted or corrupt religion, they shall be capable of no other kind of employment or preferment in this commonwealth.

This seems to be the parent of a clause long in the constitution of the state of New York:

1 Masson's Life of Milton, VI, 697.

2 Oceana, p. 89.

8 Ibid., p. 127.

And whereas the ministers of the gospel are by their profession dedicated to the service of God and the cure of souls and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their function, therefore no minister of the gospel or priest of any denomination whatever shall at any time hereafter, under any pretence or description whatever, be eligible to or capable of holding any civil or military office or place within the state.1

This was continued in the constitution of 1821, but disappeared in 1846. Harrington could not, though a "commonwealth man," have his belief hampered by any ecclesiastical system, whether episcopal or presbyterian. He says: "To make a man in matter of religion engage to believe no otherwise than is believed by my Lord Bishop or Goodman Presbyter is a pedantism, that has made the sword to be a rod in the hands of schoolmasters." He was severe on ministers for political writing. "I wonder why ministers of all men should be perpetually tampering with government. Their honest vocation is to teach children at the schools and the universities and the people in the parishes. The state is concerned to see, that they do not play the part of shrews." 8

"2

1 N.Y. Constitution of 1777, art. 39.

2 Oceana, p. 59.

8 Ibid., p. 182. - Some of the ministers of Harrington's time certainly had small respect for Cromwell's authority, and seem to have been quite beyond governmental control. Thurloe (Secretary to Cromwell as Protector) gives an account of a discourse by one of them (Rev. Mr. Feake) who preached, at All-Hallows, London, three hours in his presence in 1657. He had been extremely troublesome to the Protector, and had been kept under guard at Windsor Castle in a chamber, but persisted in preaching out of the window while the governor and people were passing from St. George's Chapel. The governor prohibited him, but still he went on. Then, as Feake said, the governor "caused his drum to be beaten to drown the sound of the gospel. Then as soon as the drum had done, I began to sound out my trumpet, and trumpeted out the gospel aloud; he beat up his drum a second and a third time, and still I went on. Then he strictly required me to have done. I told him, I would not. He said he had order to silence me from the Lord Protector. I told him I had orders from my Lord to go on, and my Lord's Highness is above his Lord's Highness, etc. Then, it being nigh noon, he left me and I suppose went to dinner, while I went on preaching the gospel." "Strange government,” he adds, “that men's mouths must be stopped from preaching." He was then moved to another castle, whereupon he fell to preaching to the soldiers who guarded him on the way. Finding poor accommodations here, with a pillow of hops (perhaps to lull him to sleep), he chose to lie at night on the boards without pulling off his clothes, and afterwards preached from Nehemiah on the following text: "Neither I nor my brethren nor the men of the guard, which followed me, none of us put off our clothes, save, that every one put them off for washing." "This text," he declares, “was a great comfort to us."