¹ I am indebted to a number of people for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper which was first read at the N.Z.H.A. Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand in August 1979. In particular my thanks are due to Professor J. H. M. Salmon, Dr Lotte Mulligan, Dr Andrew Sharp and, above all, to John Pocock himself for his tolerant and sympathetic help.

² Pocock's argument here rests heavily on William, Haller, Foxe's book of martyrs and the elect nation (London, 1963)Google Scholar. For a much more qualified view of the development of the idea of England as the Elect Nation see Firth, Katherine R., The apocalyptic tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar and Paul, Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English apocalyptic visions from the Reformation to the eve of the Civil War (Toronto, 1978).Google Scholar

³ Pocock, J. G. A.(ed.), The political works of James Harrington (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 115–16. [Hereafter cited as Works.] This is not the place to comment on the textual adequacy of this edition but two observations may be made. First, of the two 1656 printings of Oceana, Pocock claims to be following the Pakeman printing rather than the Chapman printing. But, for reasons which are not made clear, he has not always incorporated amendments suggested in the errata prefacing both Pakeman and Chapman printings. Toland, in his 1699/1700 edition of Harrington’s Works and Liljegren, in his edition of the Pakeman printing of Oceana (Lund/Heidelberg, 1924) amended the text in accordance with the printed errata. These are precedents which Pocock has not followed and on occasion the amendments are of some importance to the meaning. For example, compare Pakeman/Chapman amendments at 91/13—16, 146/24, 206/19 with Pocock (ed.), 233/1–2, 261/28, 297/4–5. Secondly, there is one glaring oversight in the proofreading of the text in Pocock’s edition and it concerns the vital wording of the Agrarian law. Pocock (ed.) 231/9 has a criterion of landed income of’five thousand pounds a year’ when it should, of course, read ‘two thousand’. Cf. Pakeman/Chapman, 87/9.Google Scholar

⁴ Works, pp. 180, 181, 613.

⁵ ibid. pp. 320–5.

⁶ ibid. p. 677.

⁷ Not my own view, I hasten to add.

⁸ The ancient constitution and the feudal law (1957); ‘Machiavelli, Harrington and English political ideologies in the eighteenth century’, William and Mary Quarterly, third series, xii (1965), 549–83;’“The onely politician”: Machiavelli, Harrington and Felix Raab’, Historical Studies, xii (1966), 265–96.

⁹ ‘The onely politician’, loc. cit. p. 288. Cf. ‘James Harrington and the Good Old Cause: a study of the ideological context of his writings’, The Journal of British Studies, x (1970), 30–48, where the inadequacy of the ancient constitution and the fear of a new military aristocracy are seen as the main features of Harrington's thought. The desciption ‘a secular Foxe’ may involve a misreading of Foxe; see Firth, Apocalyptic tradition, ch. iii.Google Scholar

¹⁰ ‘Custom and grace, form and matter: an approach to Machiavelli's concept of innovation’, in Fleisher, M. (ed), Machiavelli and the nature of political thought (NewYork, 1972), PP. 153–74.Google Scholar

¹¹ The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine republican thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, 1975), p. 366.Google Scholar

¹² ibid. pp. 396–7. Cf. his comments on Harrington's imputed appeal to theocracy, as a means of undermining an independent priesthood, ibid. p. 398.

¹³ ibid. p. 399.

¹⁴ ibid. p. 385.

¹⁵ Works, p. 17.

¹⁶ ibid. p. 19; see also, pp. 26, 47, 70–3.

¹⁷ In the only piece on Harrington which Pocock has published since his edition of The political works (‘Contexts for the study of James Harrington’, which appeared in a recent issue of Il Pensiero Politico) it is asserted that Harrington's ‘ politics were millennial rather than Utopian’ (p. 30). I am grateful to Professor Pocock for a copy of this article.

¹⁸ Works, p. 332.

¹⁹ ibid. p. 333.

²⁰ E.g. ibid. pp. 174, 652.

²¹ ibid. p. 183.

²² ibid. pp. 176–7, 183, 209, 210, 305, 496, 629.

²³ ibid. pp. 329, 420–2. Cf. Wettergreen, John A., ‘Note on the intention of James Harrington's political art’, Interpretation, ii (1971), 64–5.Google Scholar

²⁴ E.g. Works, p. 184.

²⁵ ‘Custom and grace, form and matter’, loc. cit. p. 173.

²⁶ Imputed to Savonarola in Politics, language and time, p. 99.

²⁷ Works, pp. 16–17, 30.

²⁸ A new paradigmatic reference system depicting Harrington as Paracelsian, Neoplatonic, and Helmontian has been developed by Craig Diamond to suggest strong affinities between Harrington's natural and political philosophies both of which are seen as pervaded by‘ spiritual mechanics’. Wm. Diamond, Craig, ‘Natural philosophy in Harrington's political thought’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, xvi (1978), 387–98. These views seem to be endorsed by Pocock in‘Contexts for the study of James Harrington’, loc. cit. pp. 29–30. But the process of argument involved here illustrates again the role that inference plays in analysis from paradigmatic structures, (a) A fragment, unpublished in Harrington's own lifetime, is taken as a central text in understanding his works as a whole. Though we know that The mechanics of nature was written after the defeat of all of Harrington's political ideals and after a major illness which many contemporaries saw as madness, it is taken as a key to interpreting his earlier political works. Though it was not published in Harrington's lifetime and no manuscript version is known to exist, and though its editor, John Toland, a man of uncertain editorial reputation, described it as an ‘Imperfect Treatise’ these issues of textual authenticity are overlooked, (b) From this incomplete work of twenty-four aphorisms connexions are made with vast but vague schemes of ideas, paradigms of Neoplatonism, Paracelsianism, Helmontianism and most nebulous of all Hermeticism. (c) It is then concluded that these vast but vague schemes inform the earlier political writings, although direct evidence of this is hard to find. The consequence of this procedure is that judge ments can be made which appear to bear little relationship to what Harrington actually wrote. To take just two examples from page 393 of Diamond's article, (i) ‘ Legitimate power necessarily proceeded from a spirit informing the political body.’ But for Harrington power always proceeds from the capacity to feed others and hence command them; legitimacy or authority from reason. The republic — rightly constituted -offers England in the 1650s the opportunity to reconcile the two. (ii) ‘He had repeatedly said that the orders or form of government made the laws.’ Harrington never said any such thing. There is a blurring here of laws as ordini, without which the form of government cannot exist at all, and laws as the acts of a sovereign authority. The latter in Oceana are made by groups of men collaborating and representing ‘King People’. This awkward and incorrect expression has at least the merit of revealing the problem! People make the laws but in a way whereby they are constrained and limited in responsibility, and therefore in opportunities for virtue, by institutional contrivances.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ For other users and uses of the mediate/immediate distinction see, for example, Quentin, Skinner, The foundations of modem political thought, ii, The Reformation (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 41–2Google Scholar; Kenyon, J. P., Revolution principles: the politics of party, 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 22, 23, 86, 113, 119. Cf. Harrington's mediate defence of the universities: ‘The immediate gift of tongues is ceased: how then should skill in tongues be acquired but mediately or by the means of education.’ Works, p. 679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Bacon, ‘Certain considerations touching the better pacification and edification of the Church of England’, in James, Spedding, Robert, Leslie Ellis, Douglas, Denon Heath (eds.), The works of Francis Bacon, 14 vols. (London, 1868–1890), x, 107.Google Scholar

³¹ John Goodwin, Anti-Cavalierisme (1642), p. 8.

³² John Lilburne, Strength out of weaknesse (1649), p. ii.

³³ See, for example, Works, pp. 565–6, 581, 794, 801.

³⁴ ibid. pp. 323, 329–30. 332–3, 572, 574. 704.

³⁵ ibid. p. 338.

³⁶ ibid. p. 341.

³⁷ ibid. p. 390. Cf. pp. 417, 419.

³⁸ ibid. p 459 cf p. 605.

³⁹ ibid. p. 496.

⁴⁰ ibid.

⁴¹ ibid. p. 736. See also pp. 547–52, 652, 765, 773, 775, 778.

⁴² ibid. pp. 176–7, 184, 616–17, 629.

⁴³ ibid. p. 723.

⁴⁴ ibid. p. 564.

⁴⁵ ibid. p. 646. Cf. p. 312. In ‘The mechanics of nature’ it is insisted that nature is limited and that ‘therefore no miracles are to be expected from her’. John, Toland (ed.), The Oceana. and the other works of James Harrington, Esq. (London, 1737), p. xliii.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Pocock (ed.), Works, pp. 731, 203.

⁴⁷ Although see his comparison of the two in ‘Contexts for the study of James Harrington’, loc. cit. pp. 28–9.

⁴⁸ Works, p. 204. This refers specifically to the prophesied second coming.

⁴⁹ ibid. p. 462.

⁵⁰ ibid. pp. 420–2.

⁵¹ ibid. pp. 387, 534.

⁵² ibid. p. 431. Cf. pp. 229, 321.

⁵³ ibid. p. 320. At this point Harrington refers to Venice, without decay albeit her citizens are sinful men and her constitution is flawed. ‘The people never die’ may be suggestive of the organic concept of the community as universitas rather than societas. (Cf. Salmon, J. H. M., The French religious wars in English political thought (Oxford, 1959), pp. 41–2.) But it is in a political or constitutional sense that some communities are seen as achieving perfection and immortality while others do not. My argument is that it is not Grace, or spiritual mechanics, which are the key to perfection and immortality of governmental form in Oceana, but art or political architecture based on human prudence.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Works, p. 788.

⁵⁵ ibid. p. 846.

⁵⁶ ibid. p. 290.

⁵⁷ Don Wolfe, M. (ed.), Leveller manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution (reprint: London, 1967), p. 297.Google Scholar Cf. the negative twist on these restrictions in the Officers’ Agreement of 20 January 1649 in ibid. p. 342.

⁵⁸ The Moderate, no. 14 (10–17 October 1648), p. 2.

⁵⁹ Works, pp. 350–1.

⁶⁰ Machiavellian Moment, p. 394.

⁶¹ Works, p. 792. Cf. p. 763.

⁶² ibid. p. 732.

⁶³ ibid.

⁶⁴ ibid. p. 172.

⁶⁵ ibid. p. 658.

⁶⁶ ibid. pp. 227, 302, 309.

⁶⁷ ibid. p. 753. Cf. pp. 668, 700, 320.

⁶⁸ ibid. p. 838.

⁶⁹ ibid. pp. 737, 738.

⁷⁰ ibid. p. 744.