* I should like to acknowledge my debt to Charles Blitzer's unpublished Harvard Ph.D. thesis, “The Political Philosophy of James Harrington,” which is to be published in the near future.

¹ For this source of Harrington's troubles see Polin, R., “Economique et Politique au XVIIe Siècle: L'Oceana de James Harrington,” Revue Français de Science Polilique, Vol. 2 (1952), pp. 24–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Maitland, F. W., Collected Papers (Cambridge, 1911), p. 21Google Scholar.

³ The most Americanized view of Harrington is that presented in the only book-length study as yet published on him, Smith, H. F. Russell, James Harrington and his Oceana (Cambridge, 1914)Google Scholar. On the strength of this portrait he has been dismissed as inconsequential by both Gough, J. W., “Harrington and Contemporary Thought,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 45 (1930), pp. 395–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and by Levett, A. E., “James Harrington,” Social and Political Ideas of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Hearnshaw, F. J. C. (New York, 1949), pp. 174–203Google Scholar.

⁴ Smith, op. cit., pp. 113–121.

⁵ The Spirit of the Laws, Vol. II, Bk. XXIX, s. 19 and Vol. I, Bk. XI, s. 6.

⁶ “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” and “Of the First Principles of Government,” Hume: Theory of Politics, ed. Watkins, F. W. (Edinburgh, 1951), pp. 227–230Google Scholar and 149–152.

⁷ Gooch, G. P. in English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 250–251Google Scholar, lists the rare notices given Harrington. None shows any real interest in him. Thus Coleridge named him among others as a great political writer, but no substitute for the Scriptures. Stateman's Manual, Works, Vol. I (New York, 1884), p. 129Google Scholar.

⁸ Works, Vol. II (Boston, 1884), p. 154Google Scholar.

⁹ Ibid., Vol. V, pp. 216–217.

¹⁰ Oceana, ed. Liljegren, S. B. (Lund, 1924), pp. 135 and 185–186Google Scholar. There is some controversy about the actual importance of Harrington's influence on revolutionary France. That Commonwealth ideas in general were known has been shown, but beyond specific similarities In constitutional devices, which often were not original with Harrington, there is little evidence of a deep or direct intellectual influence. This is well brought out by Koebner, R., “Oceana,” Englische Studien, 68, 1933–1934, pp. 377–396Google Scholar. See, however, Gooch, op. cit., pp. 312–313; Liljegren, S. B. ed. and introd., A French Draft, Constitution of 1792 Modelled on James Harrington's ‘Oceana’ (Lund, 1932), pp. 3–79Google Scholar; Trevor, D., “Some Sources of the Constitutional Theory of the Abbé Sieyès,” Politica, Vol. 1 (1934–1935), pp. 325–342 and 443–469Google Scholar.

¹¹ Works, ed. Toland, John (London, 1771), pp. 362, 465, 482, 483, 488Google Scholar. All future references are to this edition, except for Oceana.

¹² Works, Vol. V, pp. 376–377 and 381Google Scholar.

¹³ Usher, R. G., The Historical Method of S. R. Gardiner (St. Louis, 1915), pp. 41–54, 76–94 and 123–143Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Amenities of Literature (New York, 1864), Vol. I, pp. 370–389Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Lectures on Modern History (London, 1912), pp. 204–205Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Historical Essays and Studies (London, 1907), p. 492Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 380.

¹⁸ Lecky, W. E. H., History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe (New York, 1866), Vol. II, p. 80Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid., vol. II, pp. 145–146.

²⁰ Maitland, op. cit., p. 22.

²¹ See especially Trevelyan, G. M., England under the Stuarts (London, 1922), pp. 195–196Google Scholar, for the clearest statement about the unique character of the English Revolution.

²² Hill, C., “The English Civil War Interpreted by Marx and Engels,” Science and Society, Vol. 12 (1948), pp. 130–156Google Scholar; Krieger, L., “Marx and Engels as Historians,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 14 (1953), pp. 381–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Bonar, J., Philosophy and Political Economy (London, 1922), p. 895Google Scholar; Smith, op. cit., pp. 23–24 and 28.

²⁴ Bernstein, E., Sozialismus und Demokratie in der grossen englischen Revolution (Stuttgart, 1919), pp. 259–267Google Scholar.

²⁵ James, M., Social Problems and Policy During the Puritan Revolution (London, 1930), p. 304Google Scholar, and “Contemporary Materialist Interpretations of Society in the English Revolution,” in The English Revolution, ed. Hill, C. (London, 1949), pp. 83 and 86Google Scholar.

²⁶ Petegorsky, D. W., Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War (London, 1940), p. 234Google Scholar; Zagorin, P., A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London, 1954), pp. 133 and 144–145Google Scholar.

²⁷ “The Rise of the Gentry,” Economic History Review, Vol. 11 (1941), pp. 6 and 18Google Scholar.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 36–37; “Harrington's Interpretation of His Age,” Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 27 (1941), pp. 221, 200, 204Google Scholar.

²⁹ E.g., Blitzer, C., “Introduction” to Selections from the Writings of James Harrington (New York, 1955), pp. xi–xxxixGoogle Scholar; Friedrich, C. J., The Age of the Baroque (New York, 1952), pp. 33–34Google Scholar; Hill, C., “Recent Interpretations of the Civil War,” History (N.S.) Vol. 41 (1946), pp. 70–71Google Scholar; Sabine, G. H., A History of Political Theory (New York, 1951), pp. 498 and 507Google Scholar.

³⁰ Oceana, pp. 124–125, 48–50 and 53; Works, pp. 365–367.

³¹ Oceana, pp. 38–39; Works, pp. 367, 408 and 465.

³² Oceana, pp. 36, 39, 85–99; Works, p. 368.

³³ I am very much indebted to the analysis of Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 128–130Google Scholar, and to his letter to Encounter, July, 1958.

³⁴ Oceana, p. 14.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 16.

³⁶ Works, p. 466.

³⁷ Works, p. 363. The fundamental law in a state is the law that settles what is a man's “own.” Oceana, p. 185.

³⁸ Koebner, “Oceana,” loc. cit., p. 367.

³⁹ suspect that Harrington's description of the Gothic-balance of pre-Norman England was directed at the Levellers' myth of an Anglo-Saxon paradise. Oceana, pp. 43–45. I shall not here discuss either the adequacy of Harrington's historical scholarship by the standards of his own time, nor even his basic historical concepts, since these subjects have already been treated exceptionally well in Pocock's, Ancient Constitution, pp. 124–147Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Mcllwain, C. H., The Development of Political Thought in the West (New York, 1932), p. 394Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Oceana, 15, 30–32, 47–48 and 187; Works, 226–228, 248–262, 270, 363–364, 653.

⁴² Pocock, , Ancient Constitution, pp. 128–130 and 143Google Scholar; Oceana, 51–52; Works, pp. 364–365.

⁴³ Polin, loc. cit., pp. 27 and 30–31; Wormuth, F. D., The Origins of Modern Constitutionalism (New York, 1949), p. 135Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Koebner, , “Die Geschichtslehre James Harringtons,” Geist und Gesellschaft (Breslau, 1927), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ In fact, Harrington defended Hobbes against the attacks of the divines, Works, p. 354.

⁴⁶ Oceana, pp. 12–13, 50; Works, 553, 558–561. Other writers have been only too ready to take his word for it, e.g., Maitland, op. cit., p. 21; Sabine, op. cit., p. 499.

⁴⁷ Leviathan, ed. Oakeshott, (Oxford, 1947), pp. 435–436Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 50–64.

⁴⁹ Oceana, p. 30.

⁵⁰ Ibid., pp. 14, 20–21 and 24.

⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 16–17; Works, pp. 362, 457 and 477.

⁵² Oceana, pp. 30–34 and 207.

⁵³ Behemoth, English Works (London, 1840), Vol. VI, pp. 167–218, 362Google Scholar; Leviathan, pp. 140–141 and 214.

⁵⁴ Behemoth, pp. 166–169.

⁵⁵ Oceana, p. 60. It was not, thus, that his friend Charles I had been bad, just helpless. Works, p. 367.

⁵⁶ Oceana, pp. 49–50; Works, pp. 364–367, 408 and 467.

⁵⁷ Oceana, pp. 53–54, 185–186; Works, p. 456.

⁵⁸ Oceana, p. 56; Machiavelli's Discourses, Bk. I, chs. 1, 2, 18, 37 and 39; Bk. II, “Introduction”; Bk. III, ch. 1; Pocock, , Ancient Constitution, pp. 145–147Google Scholar; Koebner, “Geschichtslehre,” loc. cit., pp. 13–14 and 19.

⁵⁹ Hexter, J. H., “Storm over the Gentry,” Encounter, May, 1958, pp. 22–34Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Trevor-Roper, H. R., “The Gentry, 1540–1640,” Economic History Review Supplement (1954)Google Scholar; “The Country-House Radicals, 1590–1660” and “The Outbreak of the Great Rebellion,” Men and Events (New York, 1957), pp. 179–188 and 195–205Google Scholar.

⁶¹ See Aron, R., The Opium of the Intellectuals, tr. by Kilmartin, T. (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, passim, for a discussion both of the obsolescence of these ideas, and the passions which they can stir among café-politicians.

⁶² I am happy to see that I am not alone in this suspicion, see Beloff, M., “Another Fallen Idol?”, Encounter, January, 1959, p. 74Google Scholar.

⁶³ Oceana, p. 10.

⁶⁴ Smith, op. cit., pp. 75–112. For the friendship between Neville and Harrington see Aubrey's Lives, ed. Dick, O. L. (Ann Arbor, 1957), pp. 124–127Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Oceana, pp. 410–411. I am particularly indebted to Blitzer's thesis for drawing my attention to this.

⁶⁶ Ibid., pp. 10 and 169; Works, pp. 279–280.

⁶⁷ E.g., Oceana, pp. 38–39, 118 and 173–174.

⁶⁸ Froude, J. A., Oceana (London, 1886), pp. 1–4Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Oceana, pp. 11, 33, 133, 185–187 and 194–198; Fink, Z., The Classical Republicans (Evanston, 1945), pp. 83–85Google Scholar; Firth, C., Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England (Oxford, 1953), pp. 382 and 386Google Scholar; Koebner, “Oceana,” loc. cit., pp. 372 and 374.

⁷⁰ Oceana, pp. 148–149; Works, pp. 456, 562–563, 577. Tawney, “Harrington,” p. 212.

⁷¹ Oceana, pp. 34–35.

⁷² Ibid., pp. 17–18, 118–125 and 142; Machiavelli, Discourses, Bk. I, ch. 55.

⁷³ Oceana, pp. 176–177; Works, pp. 409 and 465.

⁷⁴ Weishofen, C., James Harrington und sein Wunschbild vom Germanischen Staate (Bonn, 1935), pp. 37, 45 and 70–71Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Oceana, pp. 18, 34, 118 and 122.

⁷⁶ Hexter, loc. cit.

⁷⁷ In the words of an older commentator, he was “to the right of the left and to the left of the right,” Dwight, T. W., “James Harrington,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 2 (1887), p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Gerth, H. and Mills, C. W., Character and Social Structure (New York, 1953), pp. 14 and 26Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ This might as well be called post-Marxism, in contrast to Mr. Pocock's neo-Marxism which limits itself to strictly social experiences and situations. Letter to Encounter, October, 1958.

⁸⁰ Unlike Karl Popper I do not regard the personification of historical categories as analogous to medieval realism. His own medieval nominalism would make the writing of any sort of history impossible. How little he has understood the real problems of historical explanation and especially those created by generalizations on different levels of abstractness can be seen in his claim that the First World War is an “individual thing” just like Alexander the Great. The Poverty of Historicism (Boston, 1957), pp. 17–34, 76–83, 143–152Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Krieger, “Marx and Engels,” loc. cit.; Mannheim, K., Ideology and Utopia (Harvest Books, New York, n.d.), passim and pp. 56 and 93–97Google Scholar.

⁸² Hill, “Recent Interpretations,” loc. cit., p. 74.

⁸³ Bernstein, op. cit., pp. 1–7; Hill, “Marx and Engels,” loc. cit., pp. 132 and 154; The English Revolution, pp. 13 and 17; Petegorsky, op. cit., pp. 22 and 25.

⁸⁴ Hexter, loc. cit.; see also Firth, op. cit., p. 71, or G. M. Trevelyan, op. cit., pp. 195–196 and 228–231, where it is said, “in motive it was a war not like the French or American of classes or of districts, but of ideas,” p. 229.

⁸⁵ I am aware that there are plenty of philosophical problems in describing individual behavior in this way too, but I do not think this is relevant to the everyday discourse of historical writing. I am much indebted to Gardiner's, P.The Nature of Historical Explanation (Oxford, 1952), especially pp. 60–61, 99–112 and 114–127Google Scholar, for these considerations. However, I think that while Gardiner rightly emphasizes the abstractness of words like “revolution” or “class”, he treats these as “events” capable of being explained causally. I think that as pure “cover-words” they cannot be treated in this way, especially when one is analyzing social factors. This, however, does not apply to more purely narrative history where the antecedent event simply serves as the cause of subsequent ones, and more limited entities are involved. Of such writing Wedgwood's, C. V.The King's Peace (London, 1955)Google Scholar is clearly a fine example, even if it tends to be the history only of conspicuous persons and highly articulate speakers.

⁸⁶ Letter to Encounter, October, 1958.

⁸⁷ He makes no complaint against these writers, “Gentry,” loc. cit., p. 44.

⁸⁸ Aubrey, op. cit., p. 125.

⁸⁹ Burnet, G., History of My Own Time, ed. Airy, O. (Oxford, 1897), Vol. I, p. 120Google Scholar; Cromwell treated Oceana as too unimportant and fanciful to matter, then took care to condemn its paganism, Smith, op. cit., pp. 75–76, 113–117; Toland, pp. xvi–xvii. See also Friedrich, C. J., Constitutional Reason of State (Providence, 1957), pp. 35 and 110Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ If it was Hobbes's mistake to forget that “no society can survive without its myth,” it was also Harrington's. Presumably that is why John Bowie does not even mention him among Hobbes's critics. Hobbes and his Critics (London, 1951), p. 45Google Scholar.

⁹¹ M. James, “Contemporary Materialist Interpretations,” loc. cit., p. 86; Tawney, , “Harrington,” p. 203Google Scholar; “The Rise of the Gentry: A Postscript,” Economic History Review, Vol. 7 (1954–1955), p. 96Google Scholar; Blitzer, “Introduction,” loc. cit., p. xv; Trevor-Roper, , “The Gentry,” p. 22Google Scholar.

⁹² Smith, op. cit., pp. 2–3.

⁹³ Aubrey, op. cit., p. 125; Blitzer, “Introduction,” loc. cit., pp. xxiii–xxiv; Smith, op. cit., pp. 101–108; Tawney, , “Harrington,” p. 205Google Scholar; Toland, loc. cit., pp. xxv–xxvi.

⁹⁴ Ibid., p. xiii; Smith, op. cit., pp. 1–11; Koebner, “Oceana,” loc. cit., pp. 370–371; “Geschichtslehre,” loc. cit., p. 19.

⁹⁵ Toland, pp. xi–xiii and xxx; Works, pp. 219 and 367.

⁹⁶ Ibid., p. xxx.

⁹⁷ Oceana, p. 177.

⁹⁸ Works, pp. 470 and 578.

⁹⁹ For Machiavelli's own historical unrealism, see Chabod, F., Machiavelli and the Renaissance (London, 1958), tr. Moore, D. (London, 1958), pp. 20–21, 85–104, 119–120, 137 and 143–147Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Fink, op. cit., pp. 53–55 and 62–67.

¹⁰¹ Hill, “Recent Interpretations,” loc. cit., p. 73.

¹⁰² Firth, op. cit., p. 72.

¹⁰³ Oceana, pp. 55–56; Works, pp. 156, 457–458, 469 and 574.

¹⁰⁴ Oceana, pp. 158 and 220–221.

¹⁰⁵ Patriarcha and Other Political Writings, ed. Laslett, P. (Oxford, 1949), pp. 207–208 and 221–222Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ Oceana, p. 173. Gough, I think, is quite mistaken in treating Harrington as no more “irreligious” than the radical Puritans. The use of religious arguments signifies a no greater degree of religion in him than in Hobbes. The radical Puritan arguments based on rights were secularized religious conceptions, whereas Harrington returned to the pagan notions of social order and civic liberty. I should therefore agree that Harrington was not a secular thinker in that sense, but insist on his utter indifference to religious faith. Gough, loc. cit., pp. 395–404. In contrast, see Woodhouse, A. S. P., Puritanism and Liberty (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar, “Introduction,” pp. 38 and 82, where this distinction is very clearly drawn.

¹⁰⁷ Discourses, Bk. I, chs. 11–12, and Bk. II, ch. 2.

¹⁰⁸ Oceana, pp. 38, 55, 69–70, 109–110 and 169–173; Works, pp. 420–423, 474–476, 484–485 and 594–596.

¹⁰⁹ Spirit of the Laws, Vol. II, Bk. xxvi, s. 2.

¹¹⁰ Oceana, pp. 10–11.

¹¹¹ E.g., Oceana, pp. 32, 135–137 and 185–186; Works, 218 and 370.

¹¹² Blitzer in his thesis gives a very convincing point-by-point comparison of the institutions of the Laws and Oceana.

¹¹³ Fink, op. cit., pp. 3–27 and 54–57.

¹¹⁴ Oceana, p. 17.

¹¹⁵ I borrow this term from Friedrich, C. J., Constitutional Reason of State, pp. 34–54Google Scholar, though I give it a broader meaning than he intended.

¹¹⁶ On the strength of his remark that it was impossible to keep colonies—that is, to feed soldiers—when the native population owned the balance, everyone from Otis on treated him as a prophet of American liberty, forgetting that Oceana was to be a second Roman Empire. See Smith, op. cit., pp. 185–200. See Levett, loc. cit., pp. 189–191, for a criticism of this Americanized Harrington.

¹¹⁷ The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, ed. Koch, A. and Peden, W. (New York, 1946), pp. 44–45Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ Ibid., p. 52; Works, ed. C. F. Adams (Boston, 1850–1856), Vol. IV, pp. 395–360, 521, 551; Parrington, V. L., Main Currents in American Thought (New York, 1954), Vol. I, p. 274Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Parrington, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 5; Smith, op. cit., pp. 160–185.

¹²⁰ For a contemporary restatement, see Wormuth, op. cit., pp. 3–9, 211–215.

¹²¹ Adams, , Selected Writings, pp. 23, 36 and 208Google Scholar.

¹²² Adams, , Works, Vol. IV, pp. 413–414Google Scholar; Dwight, loc. cit., p. 19; Haraszti, Z., John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1052), p. 35Google Scholar; Parrington, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 324–325; Smith, op. cit., pp. 191–199.

¹²³ Oceana, pp. 59, 61 and 142–149; Works, pp. 214, 472 and 490.

¹²⁴ I am much indebted to Hartz, L., The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955), pp. 46–47Google Scholar, for this and most of the ideas presented here.

¹²⁵ For a good criticism of current practices in this field, see Minogue, K. R., “The Language of Comparative Politics,” Political Studies, Vol. VI (1958), pp. 267–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²⁶ The quarrel here was not between those who wanted to treat constitutions as if they were “pudding to be made by a receipt” and those who did not want to make them at all, but between different kinds of cooks, receipts and diners. See McIlwain, C. H., Constitutionalism Ancient and Modern (Ithaca, 1958), pp. 1–22Google Scholar and passim.

¹²⁷ Haraszti, op. cit., pp. 34, 45–46 and 258; Parrington, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 273, 284, 323, 328.

¹²⁸ Works, Vol. VI, p. 218.

¹²⁹ Parrington, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 25–26; Vol. II, pp. 296–297; Beard, O., The Economic Basis of Politics, ed. Beard, W. (New York, 1957), pp. 37–40 and 53Google Scholar, for quotations from Webster in praise of Harrington.

¹³⁰ Oakeshott, M., “Rationalism in Politics,” Cambridge Journal, Vol. I (1947), pp. 83–84, 88–91 and 145–157Google Scholar. See Harrington's, Oceana, pp. 62 and 207Google Scholar; Works, pp. 214–215, 367, 463, 470, 472, 477, 480–482 and 488, for his addiction to the politics of technical invention and “reason of state.”

¹³¹ Blitzer, “Introduction,” loc. cit., pp. xxvi–xxvii.

¹³² E.g., Oceana, p. 107.

¹³³ Blitzer, p. xxvii.

¹³⁴ Ibid., pp. xxvi–xxviii and xxix.

¹³⁵ Oceana, pp. 13 and 62; Works, pp. 214, 232, 402–403, 463, 470 and 560.

¹³⁶ This failure to distinguish between the logic of discovery and technology lies behind most of the current concern for “measurement,” “certainty,” and “methodology” in the social sciences. Moreover, I agree with those who see in this development the ideological expression of a pervasive concern for security—political, social and intellectual. See e.g., Moore, B. Jr., Political Power and Social Theory (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 92–94Google Scholar. I have in mind exactly what C. W. Mills calls “abstracted empiricism.” The Sociological Imagination (New York, 1959), pp. 50–75Google Scholar.

¹³⁷ Beard, op. cit., pp. 16, 36 and 40.

¹³⁸ Ibid., pp. 93 and 103–104.

¹³⁹ Ibid., pp. 83, 93, 98–99, 103–104, 122–123

¹⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 99–100.

¹⁴¹ E.g., R. Aron, “Social Structure and the Ruling Class,” and Bendix, R., “Social Stratification and Political Power” in Bendix, R. and Lipset, S. M., eds., Class, Status and Power (Glencoe, 1953), pp. 567–577 and 596–609Google Scholar; Meisel, J. E., The Myth of the Ruling Class (Ann Arbor, 1957), pp. 345–381Google Scholar; Mills, C. W., The Power Elite (New York, 1956), pp. 269–324Google Scholar; Neumann, F., The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (Glencoe, 1957), pp. 3–21 and 233–269Google Scholar. Note particularly the latter's appreciative analysis of Montesquieu, pp. 96–148.

¹⁴² See, e.g., Crosland, C. A. R., The Future of Socialism (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, both for the recognition of power, status and ideology as social factors, and for the values of an “Americanized” social atmosphere and constitutional government, by a not untypical socialist, pp. 29, 38–41, 71, 97–116 and 169–217, 220–221, 232–237, 245–248.