THE ideas whose development we have been tracing—of natural rights, sovereignty of the people, salus populi, resistance to oppression, and others—manifested themselves in England during the Puritan Revolution. They were no longer the thoughts of a few scholars only, but had become the common property of an entire religious sect—the Independents. It was only after being popularized in this manner that these theories became of great practical importance. With the victory of Cromwell’s army, in which the Independents predominated, it seemed as if the victory of these ideas had been assured, and as if they were to lead to the permanent establishment of a republic. But republicanism was contrary to the temper of the English people. It was, after all, not in England, but in America, that the principles of the Independents were destined to exert their greatest influence. There they gave rise to modern republicanism. From America they spread to France. The French Revolution disseminated them throughout Europe.
It was in English Independency or Congregationalism that the individualism of the Reformation found its most complete expression.
Luther delivered the church into the hands of temporal princes because he believed the people to be incapable of managing their own church affairs. Calvin admitted the people to a share in his ecclesiastical system, though his church polity was still largely aristocratic. The church system of the English Independents was entirely democratic in its nature.
The Independents believed in the autonomy of each congregation. They opposed the union of Church and State and all external control. A number of Independents who were accused of denying the royal supremacy, declared in the House of Lords, January 19, 1640, “that they could acknowledge no other head of the Church but Christ; that they apprehended no prince on earth had power to make laws to bind the conscience; that such laws as were contrary to the laws of God ought not to be obeyed; but that they disowned all foreign power and jurisdiction.”1 The Congregational system was likewise based on the idea that each member of the Church had a right to participate in its administration. Robinson, one of the fathers of Congregationalism, speaking of the “proper subject of the power of Christ,” says: “The papists plant it in the pope; the Protestants in the bishops, the Puritans, as you term the reformed churches and those of their mind, in the presbytery; we, whom you name Brownists, put it in the body of the congregation, the multitude called the Church.”2
Thus each congregation was a miniature republic. The usual form of constituting a church was by covenant. Robert Browne, who first formulated the Congregational polity, defines a church as “a company or number of Christians or believers, which, by a willing covenant made with their God, are under the government of God and Christ, and keep His laws in one holy communion; because Christ hath redeemed them unto holiness and happiness forever, from which they were fallen by the sin of Adam.”1 John Robinson, one of the earliest Congregationalist ministers, wrote: “The elders, in ruling and governing the Church, must represent the People and occupy their place. It should seem, then, that it appertains unto the People—unto the People primarily and originally, under Christ—to rule and govern the Church, that is, themselves.”2
Browne describes the formation of his church at Norwich as follows: “A covenant was made and their mutual consent was given to hold together. There were certain points proved to them by the Scriptures, all of which, being particularly rehearsed unto them with exhortation, they agreed upon them . . . saying: To this we give our consent.”3 Browne believed in the separation of Church and State. Half a century before Roger Williams, he taught that magistrates “have no ecclesiastical authority at all, but only as any other Christians, if so they be Christians.”4 There can be no doubt that the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination not only influenced the formation of the Congregational system, but also intensified the growth of a democratic spirit. The members of each congregation were the elect. Every member alike had a divine call and might speak before the congregation when moved by the Spirit. “If the excellency of this calling were well weighed and rightly prized,” wrote Robinson,1 “no man honored therewith should be thought worthy to be despised for any other meanness; nor without it, to be envied for any other excellency, how glorious soever in the world’s eye.” Under such circumstances there could be no spiritual prerogative, no caste distinction between clergy and laity, no external control.2
A religious democracy of this sort, based on the freedom and equality of all individuals, could not but give rise to democratic political principles. The covenant by which the individual congregation is formed, applied to the State, is the contract theory of government. It was not difficult to conclude that, since any number of individuals could of their own free consent form a congregation, so they could also voluntarily contract to form a State; as the authority rested in the entire congregation, so in the body of the people; as Church members are equal, so are the citizens of the State.
The bitterness with which James I. and Charles I. attacked the Independents was due in no small degree to their realization of the fact that the heretical religious opinions of the Separatists would eventually breed liberal political views. Peter Heylyn, a creature of Laud, attacked the “puritan tenet” “that kings are but the ministers of the commonwealth; and that they have no more authority than what is given them by the people.” He regards the Puritan religion as “rebellion” and their faith as “faction.”3
The Independents not only opposed the episcopal system of church government, to which the Stuarts had committed themselves by their adage “no bishop, no king,” but also denied that kings ruled by divine right and that subjects must render passive obedience.
The doctrine of the divine right of kings found a blasphemous expression in the speech of James I. from the throne delivered in 1609, which contained the words: “God hath power to create or destroy, to make or unmake at His pleasure, to give life or send death; and to God both body and soul are due. And the like power have kings: they make and unmake their subjects; they have the power of raising and casting down, of life and of death—judges over all their subjects, and in all causes, and yet accountable to none but God only. They have power to exalt low things, and abuse high things, and make their subjects like men of chess : a power to take a bishop or a knight, and to cry up or down any of their subjects as they do their money.”1
The Anglican Church preached these doctrines from the pulpit. The clergy bitterly attacked the doctrine that “all civil power, jurisdiction, and authority were first derived from the people and disordered multitude, or either is originally still in them, or else is deduced by their consent naturally from them; and is not God’s ordinance originally descending from Him and depending upon Him.”2
The Canons of June 30, 1640, affirmed that the most high and sacred order of kings is of divine right, being the ordinance of God Himself, founded in the prime laws of nature and revelation, by which the supreme power over all persons, civil and ecclesiastical, is given to them.1
Against such assertions made by autocratic royalty and servile episcopacy, the Independents declared with Junius Brutus that they would obey the king if he obeyed the law; that sovereignty, the majestas realis, lay not in the king, but in the people, and that magistrates had no power over the consciences of men. Their ideas found a classical expression in the works of Milton.
It was during the Civil War that the Independents came into prominence in England. The “Brownists,” as the earliest Congregationalists were called, who made their appearance during the reign of Elizabeth, had almost entirely disappeared by the close of her reign. Most of them had emigrated to Holland. Thus a congregation driven from Scrooby had, together with their pastor, John Robinson, sought refuge first at Amsterdam, then at Leyden. Upon this congregation the fate of Congregationalism may be said to have rested, not only because Robinson changed “Brownism” to Congregationalism, but for the reason that this congregation migrated to America and founded Plymouth in 1620. In America Congregationalism found a home and became the prevalent church polity of New England. In England it was known as the “New England way.” American Independents, Thomas Hooker, Roger Williams, and Sir Henry Vane, were the first democrats among the Congregationalists. Roger Williams’ Bloudy Tenent, in which the sovereignty of the people is expressed, was sent to the English Parliament in 1644. Vane, the boy governor of Massachusetts Bay, returned to England and played a prominent part during the Civil War and Commonwealth.1
After the meeting of the Long Parliament and the execution of Strafford, Nonconformists from all parts of Europe and from the colonies returned to England. Among them were many Independents. For a while they joined with the Presbyterians in opposing episcopacy.2 The two denominations worked together in harmony until Laud was imprisoned and the Episcopal Church vanquished. Then dissensions arose between them. Soon the two parties became mortal enemies.
In Cromwell’s army the Independents played a very important part. After the victory at Naseby their number and power increased rapidly. Nearly the whole of Fairfax’s army of twenty-two thousand men consisted of Independents.3 During the Civil War the prevailing appellation of the Independents was the “Saints.”4 Baxter, the famous preacher, who entered the army to convert the sectaries, tells us that many of the soldiers were vehement advocates of democracy both in Church and State, and that they denounced all government except a popular one, and opposed the interference of magistrates in Church affairs. He classes Sir Henry Vane and Arthur Haselrigg among fanatical democrats and advocates of universal liberty of conscience.5
Among the Independents there were those to whom political questions were of prime interest. Of them Bastwick says: “I myself have heard many of them say that it is unlawful to fight for religion, and they professed that when they went out with the sword in their hands they fought only for the liberty of their consciences and for a toleration of religion, which is a part and branch, as they said, of the subject’s birthright.”1
They were known as Levellers and falsely accused of being communists by many of their contemporaries. The theory of Natural Law was at the foundation of their political ideas. They claimed that no laws were valid that conflicted with the Laws of Nature. They held that the people had rights which were “due to them by God’s Law of Nature.”2 “It is equal, necessary, and of natural right,” the Levellers said, “that the people, by their own deputies, should choose their own laws.”3 They demanded that laws be grounded upon equity and reason, giving universal freedom to all.4 Their religious beliefs were theistic. They looked to the law of righteousness in men, rather than to the Scriptures,5 for guidance and instruction. They demanded a reformation of social and political affairs according to the light of nature and right reason.
The Levellers used the expression “birthright” frequently, meaning thereby the rights to which every free-born Englishman was naturally entitled by abstract right. Before the Norman Conquest the common people were in possession of their rights, they said, but William the Conqueror “turned the English out of their birthrights,”1 and compelled them to be servants to him and his Norman soldiers. To the Norman Conquest some of the Levellers, commonly known as Diggers, held the enslavement of the common people to be due. According to them, Charles was the successor to the English crown from William the Conqueror, and all the laws that had been made in every king’s reign had but confirmed and strengthened the power of the Norman Conquest, and still held the commons of England under slavery to the kingly power, his gentry, and clergy.2 They declared that the lords of manor were the successors of the chief officers of the Conqueror and held their land by the power of the sword. They asked whether lords of manor had not lost their royalty to the common land, since the common people of England had “conquered King Charles and recovered themselves from under the Norman Conquest.”3 The Norman conqueror “took freedom from every one,” some of the Levellers said, “and became the disposer both of inclosures and commons; therefore all persons, upon the recovery of the Conquest, ought to return into freedom again without respecting persons,” and ought “to have the land of their nativity for their livelihood.”4 The Levellers demanded that all laws “not grounded upon equity and reason, not giving an universal freedom to all, but respecting persons . . . be cut off with the king’s head.”5 They held that “every man, of what quality or condition, place or office whatsoever, ought to be equally subject to the laws.”6
The Levellers wished the government of England to be by laws and not by men. The laws should be the preservers and protectors of the people’s persons and estates. “They ought to decide all controversies and repair every man’s injuries.” “The rod of the people’s supreme judicature ought to be over the magistrates to prevent their corruption or turning aside from the laws.” “No man should be subject to the crooked will or corrupt affections of any man.”1 “All the laws, levies of moneys, war, and peace,” they asserted, “ought to be made by the people’s deputies in Parliament, to be chosen by them successively at certain periods of time, and that no council table, orders, ordinances, or court proclamations ought to bind the people’s persons or estates.” “It is the first principle of a people’s liberty,” they said, “that they shall not be bound but by their own consent; and this our ancestors left to England as its undoubted right, that no laws to bind our persons or estates could be imposed upon us against our wills, and they challenged it as their native right not to be controlled in making such laws as concerned their common right and interests.” The laws should be for “the common and equal good of the whole nation.”2 They demanded the abolition of the House of Lords as not representative of the people and universal suffrage based on natural right.3
Edwards sums up the arguments of the Levellers as follows: “Seeing all men are by nature the sons of Adam and from him have legitimately derived a natural property, right, and freedom, therefore England and all other nations, and all particular persons in every nation, notwithstanding the difference of laws and governments, ranks and degrees, ought to be alike free and estated in their natural liberties, and to enjoy the just rights and prerogative of mankind, whereunto they are heirs apparent; and thus the Commoners by right are equal with the Lords. For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like property, liberty, and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural innate freedom and property, even so are we to live, every one equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege.”1
Many of the soldiers in Fairfax’s army adopted the principles of the Levellers. These doctrines were suited to the times. Having taken up arms against the king it was but natural that the members of the army should be favorable to republican ideas. In a time of upheaval when the whole constitution of the country was being changed, the theory of Natural Right was seasonable.
The chief Levellers were Lieut.-Col. John Lilburn, Col. Rainborow, Wildman, Ewer, Scot, Overton, and Walwyn. On the 9th of October, 1647, a paper called “The Case of the Army” had been drawn up and signed by the agents of five regiments, which had been composed as a protest against the conduct of the officers who were accused of betraying the soldiers by entering into combination with the House of Lords, the Presbyterians, and the king’s friends. It protested also against disbanding the army and called on the soldiers not to disperse until their grievances had been redressed and certain conditions fulfilled. The paper demanded that a term be set to the present Parliament; that Parliaments called in future be biennial and chosen by universal suffrage; that a period be set for their meeting and dissolving; that the supreme power rest in the House of Commons; that monopolies and tithes be abolished; and that the laws of England be abridged and codified.1
The mutiny in the army had become serious. October 27, 1647, the “Case of the Army” was taken into consideration by the General Council of the whole army.2
On the 1st of November a paper of proposals from nine regiments of horse and seven of foot, known as the “First Agreement of the People,” was presented to the Council. It gave expression to essentially the same principles as the “Case of the Army.” This paper declared the power of the representatives of the nation to be “inferior only to those who choose them,” and to include all powers not expressly reserved by the people. The reserves were as follows :
“1. That matters of religion and the ways of God’s worship are not at all entrusted by us to any human power, because therein we cannot admit or exceed a tittle of what our consciences dictate to be the mind of God without wilful sin; nevertheless the public way of instructing the nation, so it be not compulsive, is referred to their discretion.
“2. That matters of impressing and constraining any of us to serve in the wars is against our freedom, and therefore we do not allow it in our representatives; the rather because money, the sinews of war, being always at their disposal, they cannot want numbers of men apt enough to engage in any just cause.
“3. That after the dissolution of this present Parliament no persons to be at any time questioned for anything said or done in reference to the late public differences, otherwise than in execution of the judgments of the present representatives or House of Commons.
“4. That in all laws made or to be made every person may be bound alike, and that tenure, estates, charter, degree, birth, or place do not confer any exception from the ordinary course of legal proceedings whereunto others are subjected.
“5. That as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good, and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people.”
These they declare to be their “native rights.”1
We have here the idea of a constitution in the American sense—the idea of laying down certain principles of government and popular rights with which the government might not interfere. The same distrust of the representatives of the people influenced the Levellers as the American colonists of later days.2
In the debates that took place in the council of the army on these two papers, there seemed to be an agreement that government is founded on contract. Pettus said: “Every man is naturally free, and I judge the reason why men, when they were in so great numbers, chose representatives, was that every man could not give his voice, and therefore men agreed to come into some form of government that they who were chosen might preserve property.”3 Even Ireton, who was averse to manhood suffrage and abstract right, considers property to be founded on contract. He opposed the natural rights theory because of the dangerous consequences that might result therefrom. He held that one person would have as much right to appropriate anything necessary for his sustenance and the satisfaction of his desires as another if it were not for the fact that men are under contract, by which each enjoys the undisturbed right to the property he receives from his ancestors, with submission to that general authority which is set up to preserve peace and support the law. This is considered “the foundation of all right any man has to anything but to his own person.”1 He opposed the belief of Wildman that unjust engagements might be broken. He said it made him tremble to think of the boundless and endless consequences that might result if men might observe or break engagements according as they deemed them just or unjust.2
The Levellers believed in manhood suffrage. “The poorest he that is in England,” said Col. Rainborow, “has a life to live as the greatest he. . . . Every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government. . . . The poorest man in England is not all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under.”3
Ireton replied that the argument for universal suffrage must be based on absolute natural right—on what is just and due to all inhabitants and not on what is allowed them by the law. It was his opinion that no one had a right to a share in determining the affairs of a country who had no permanent interest in that country.
Rainborow held it must be either by the law of God or of man that the meanest person is prohibited from exercising his rights as well as the greatest. He said he could find nothing in the law of God, the law of nature, or that of nations, to the effect that a lord should choose twenty burgesses, a gentleman two, and a poor man none. All Englishmen, he maintained, must be subject to English laws, and no man would deny “that the foundation of all law lies in the people.”1 Pettus also holds that all “inhabitants that have not lost their birthright should have an equal voice in elections.”2
Wildman asserted that the people had hitherto been enslaved. Their laws had been made by their conquerors. But the people were now engaged for their freedom. “Every person in England had as clear a right to elect his representative as the greatest person in England.” Wildman conceived it to be “the undeniable maxim of government that all government is in the free consent of the people.” “There is no person that is under a just government or has justly his own unless he, by his own free consent, be put under that government.”3
Sexby said that the soldiers had ventured their lives in war to recover their birthrights. Every man, he held, had a birthright, even though he possessed no property.4
The principles of the Levellers are most completely expressed in Lilburn’s “Third Agreement of the People,” of May, 1649. These principles are: That men are naturally free and equal; that they have natural rights; that all powers emanate from the people; that government is founded in the consent of the governed. The Levellers demanded a reformation of the government of England according to republican principles. Their political programme was: No king, no House of Lords; the House of Commons to be the supreme authority, and to be truly representative of the people; periodical parliaments; universal suffrage; equality of all before the law; separation of Church and State; universal toleration to all except papists and exclusion of these only on political grounds; no test acts; no imprisonment for debt; conviction for life, liberty, etc., by jury alone; men’s lives to be taken only for murder; freedom of trade and labor; self-government: cities, towns, and boroughs to elect their officers for a year; abolition of all privileges and exemptions; every parish to choose its own ministers.1 These ideal laws were to be eternally binding.
Cromwell, Ireton, and other Independents, though themselves inclining to republicanism, would not go as far as this. Of the first agreement as proposed by the Levellers, which was not even as radical as the third agreement, Cromwell said: “This paper does contain in it very great alterations of the very government of the kingdom, alteration from that government that it has been under, I believe I may almost say since it was a nation . . . and what the consequences of such an alteration as this would be, if there were nothing else to be considered, wise men and godly men ought to consider.”2
The “Agreement of the People” (no longer Lilburn’s paper, however) was approved by the Council of Officers January 15, 1649, and presented to Parliament. But neither the officers of the army nor Parliament purposed to carry it out. The House of Lords ceased to meet after February 5; monarchy was abolished February 7. The Commons now took all power into their own hands.1 On the 4th of January, 1649, the Commons resolved: “That the people are, under God, the original of all just powers; that the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation; that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in Parliament assembled hath the force of law, and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of king or House of Peers be not had thereunto.”2 But the Commons did not intend to sign their own death-warrant by accepting the “Agreement of the People” presented by the army, much less the more radical third agreement composed by Lilburn in May, 1649, whose main tenets we have given above. Parliament claimed to be representative of the people, but was far from resting on the idea of the sovereignty of the people.3 The Levellers did not succeed in effecting the reforms they contemplated. Nor did their influence extend beyond their own day. It was the more moderate republicans—Sidney, Harrington, and Milton—whose influence continued beyond their own time. Milton gives the fullest expression to the views of the Independents. His Tenure of Kings and Magistrates appeared February 13, 1648–1649, soon after the establishment of the Commonwealth. It is entirely republican in its principles. He considers all men to have been born free, inasmuch as they are the image of God. They were born to command, not to obey. Sin brought violence and wrong into the world. To escape common destruction men agreed to bind each other from mutual injury. In this way cities, towns, and commonwealths arose. This is the unhistorical contract theory of the origin of society which was held since antiquity. The people then formed another contract, by which they deputed the power that was naturally and originally in them singly and collectively to kings and magistrates, intending them to be deputies and commissioners, not lords and masters. They were entrusted with power in order that they might execute that justice which each by nature and by covenant must have executed for himself. While magistrates are above the people, the law is above them. Milton considers it to be destructive of law and government to hold that kings are answerable to God alone. “Since the king or magistrate holds his authority of the people, both originally and naturally for their good in the first place, and not his own; then may the people, as oft as they shall judge it for the best, either choose or reject him, retain him or depose him though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of free-born men to be governed as seems to them best.”1
Milton considers a tyrant to be a ruler who reigns for himself and not for the common good. Such a man may be proceeded against as a common pest. Here, as in other respects, Milton shares the views of the Calvinistic Monarchomachists. He proves from both Old and New Testament and from history that tyrannicide is lawful. He accuses the Presbyterians of hypocrisy and inconstancy because they began the Revolution and then denied that subjects had a right to punish their king. He employs all the resources of his learning to prove to them their errors. He draws his arguments from history, literature, and logic. A boundless love of freedom pervades this pamphlet. In reading it one feels the feverish agitation of the time. Though Milton defends tyrannicide, it is not from low or selfish motives he does so, but from the lofty consideration of public necessity.
In his Defence of the People of England Milton undertook to efface the impression the fate of Charles I. had made upon Europe. It was an answer to the Defensio regia of Salmasius, a famous French scholar who held a professorship in the University of Leyden, the rendezvous of English royalists. Salmasius was accused of having turned traitor to his former liberal views for love of gain, and of having become the tool of the Pretender. It is necessary to bear this in mind to understand the virulence of Milton’s attack upon him. The contention between the two resembled that between Filmer and Locke at a later date, in regard to the principles contested.
Milton points out the difference between royal and paternal power, which Salmasius asserted to be identical. While fathers beget their children, he asserted, kings do not make their subjects, but are themselves made by them. A tyrant may be deposed and punished according to his deserts. This Milton endeavors to prove by illustrations from history, and by natural and divine law. The king is for the people. Since the people collectively are superior to him, he has no right to enslave or oppress them. Milton puts forth the theory that royal power is but deputed power. By natural right men formed governments and set up kings for the preservation of life, liberty, and safety. By natural right they may depose those very persons whom they advanced to the government. “Nature does not regard the good of one or of a few, but of all in general.” The people did not exhaust themselves by transferring power to their rulers. This power still virtually resides in them. Power was not settled on the king absolutely as if it were his property, but committed to him as a trust, to be exercised for the public safety and liberty.
To the doctrine of divine right, Milton opposes that of the sovereignty of the people. He regards the common welfare as the supreme law and the end of government. Law shall rule in the State, not the pleasure of the prince. Whoever breaks the law must be punished, even though he be king. On every page of this book Milton’s reverence for the law, hatred of tyranny, love of individual liberty, and moral earnestness manifest themselves and serve, in some measure at least, to counteract the unpleasant impression left upon the mind by reading the abusive language which the stern Puritan heaps upon his servile opponent.
In his Defence Milton declines to decide which form of government is the best. He says that though many eminent men have extolled monarchy, it was under the supposition that the prince excelled in noble qualities and was more competent than any other person to reign. If he is not such a person, no form of government is so likely to degenerate into a tyranny. He believes those persons extremely rare, if they can be found at all, who deserve to be clothed with a power on earth that resembles the power God exercises in heaven, for they must infinitely excel all other men, and both for wisdom and goodness in some measure resemble the Deity.
Milton’s Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, written on the eve of the Restoration, echoes his own disappointment and that of the Independents, at the failure of their hopes for a free government. It is incomprehensible to him how a people calling themselves free, can allow any man to be hereditary lord over them, renounce their freedom, and become servants and vassals. How a people who have fought so gloriously for freedom can change their noble words and actions into the base necessity of court flatteries and prostrations, he declares to be lamentable to think upon. Milton cannot comprehend “how any man who hath the true principles of justice and religion in him can presume to take upon him to be king and lord over his brethren, whom he cannot but know, whether as men or Christians, to be for the most part every way equal or superior to himself; how he can display with such vanity and ostentation his royal splendor, so super-eminently above other mortal men; or, being a Christian, can assume such extraordinary honor and worship to himself while the kingdom of Christ, our common king and lord, is hid to this world.”
Milton believes that civil and religious liberty can exist only in a free commonwealth. He prizes toleration as a sacred right, and expresses the views of the Independents on the subject, who, since Roger Williams’ visit in 1644, had made religious toleration part of their political platform.1 “Who can be at rest,” writes Milton, “who can enjoy anything in this world with contentment, who hath not liberty to serve God and to save his own soul according to the best light which God hath planted in him to that purpose, by the reading of His revealed will and the guidance of His Holy Spirit?” “This liberty of conscience,” he continues, “which above all other things ought to be to all men dearest and most precious, no government is more inclinable not to favor only, but to protect, than a free commonwealth, as being most magnanimous, most fearless, and confident of its own fair proceedings. Whereas kingship, though looking big, yet indeed most pusillanimous, full of fears, full of jealousies, starting at every umbrage, as it hath been observed of old to have ever suspected most and mistrusted them who were in most esteem for virtue and generosity of mind, so it is now known to have most in doubt and suspicion them who are most reputed to be religious.”
But not only is religious freedom most certain in a free commonwealth, Milton holds, but also the enjoyment of civil rights and advancement of every person according to his merit.
It was in America that the ideas of Milton were most completely realized. One cannot fail to be struck with the similarity of his views to those of the fathers of the American republic. There is also hardly a single idea in Locke’s political philosophy which is not already found in Milton’s writings.1
James Harrington’s writings exerted but little influence in his own country. This may be due to their fantastical style. Perhaps the republican principles contained in them were distasteful to his countrymen. But the American colonists were very fond of his books. Otis confesses himself greatly indebted to the “great and incomparable” Harrington.1 John Adams and Jefferson were also familiar with his writings, as their works show.
The Oceana appeared in 1656. The first part of the book treats of the principles of government; the second, of the art of making a commonwealth; the third, of the effect of such art; the fourth, of the consequences of such a government. The principles contained in the book resemble those of the Levellers in many instances.
Harrington wishes government to be “the empire of laws, not of men.”2 “The liberty of a commonwealth,” he says, “consists in the empire of her laws.”3 “There is a common right,” he holds with Hooker,4 “Law of Nature, or interest of the whole, which is more excellent . . . than the right or interest of the parts only.”5 As the interest of mankind is the right interest, so the reason of mankind must be right reason. The interest of popular government comes nearest to the interest of mankind. So the reason of popular government comes nearest to right reason, for reason is nothing but interest.6
Harrington believes that there is a natural aristocracy diffused by God throughout the whole body of mankind. The people have not only a natural but also a positive obligation to make use of these natural aristocrats of genius as guides. They are to form the senate in the commonwealth and to be, not the commanders of the people, but their counsellors and advisors.1
The interest of the commonwealth he declares to be in the whole body of the people.2 The commonwealth consists of the senate proposing, the people resolving, and the magistracy executing.3 The magistrate is answerable to the people that his administration be according to the law.4 “This free-born nation,” he says of the commonwealth, “liveth not upon the dole or bounty of one man, but, distributing her annual magistracies and honors with her own hand, is herself King People.”5
The republican principles of Milton, Harrington, and the Independents were also shared by the noble Algernon Sidney. Of the early Britons and Germans Sidney says that liberty and a participation in the government was “their common right and inheritance unalienable,” the common council being the basis and hinge of government however the administration rolled. He says that when Germany gave Britain a people it gave her a free people.6
Of the mediæval schoolmen Sidney holds that though they “were corrupt, they were neither stupid nor unlearned; they could not but see that which all men saw, nor lay more approved foundations than that man is naturally free; that he cannot justly be deprived of that liberty without cause, and that he doth not resign it, or any part of it, unless it be in consideration of a greater good, which he proposes to himself.” Sidney asserts that nations are left to the use of their own judgment in making provision for their own welfare, and that there is no lawful magistrate over any people but such as they have themselves set up. In creating their magistrates, he affirms, the people do not seek the advantage of these, but their own interest.1 He names Hayward, Blackwood, and Barclay as admitting the natural liberty and equality of mankind.2 His view of the origin of government is the following: “Every number of men, agreeing together and framing a society, became a complete body, having all power in themselves over themselves, subject to no other human law than their own. All those that compose the society, being equally free to enter into it or not, no man could have any prerogative over others unless it were granted by the consent of the whole. Nothing obliging them to enter into the society but the consideration of their own good, that good, or the opinion of it, must have been the rule, motive, and end of all that they did ordain. It is lawful, therefore, for any such bodies to set up one or a few men to govern them, or to retain the power in themselves. And he or they who are set up, having no other power but what is so conferred upon them by that multitude, whether great or small, are truly by them made what they are, and, by the law of their own creation, are to exercise those powers according to the proportion and to the ends for which they were given.”3
Sidney holds that men form civil society by their own free will. Their consent to resign that part of their liberty which the good of the whole demands, is the voice of Nature and the act of men, according to natural reason, seeking their own good.1 It is from God and nature, not from kings, that the liberties of men spring.2 No people can be obliged to suffer from their kings what these have no right to do. The contract between people and magistrates is real, solemn, and obligatory. It continues in force only so long as he with whom this compact is made performs its stipulations.3 The mischiefs suffered from wicked kings are such as render it both reasonable and just for all nations that have virtue and power to exert both in repelling them.4 Unjust commands are not to be obeyed.5 The sanction of laws is derived, not from antiquity or from the dignity of the legislator, but from intrinsic equity and justice. Laws should be framed according to that universal reason to which all nations, at all times, owe an equal veneration and obedience. By this Law of Nature princes are obliged to preserve the lands, goods, lives, and liberties of their subjects. By this same law subjects have a right to their liberties, lands, and goods, and need not depend upon the will of any man. Such dependence would be the destruction of their liberties.6
The revolutionary tendency of such doctrines as these is apparent. Natural Law, which at its genesis seemed so harmless, had already shown its destructive tendencies. The doctrines latent in this conception had all shown themselves during the Puritan Revolution—such ideas as the contract theory, government being based upon the consent of the governed, the right of resisting a ruler who has violated faith with his people, the natural liberty and equality of men, and other kindred theories which, during the French Revolution, were to upset the entire existing social and political order. Sidney is one of the most famous exponents of these ideas.
Most of these political doctrines were accepted by the Whigs, who are to be regarded as the descendants of the Independents. The Whigs brought about and justified the bloodless Revolution of 1688, which drove James II. from the English throne. The Convention affirms concerning the matter: “That King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the Kingdom, by breaking the original Contract between King and People, and having, by the advice of Jesuits, and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn himself out of this Kingdom, has abdicated the Government, and that the throne is thereby vacant.”
The theories of the Independents and Whigs, especially as expressed in the works of Sidney, and of John Locke, the leading Whig political philosopher, also found many advocates in France. Bourdaloue, the famous preacher at the court of Louis XIV., preached them from the pulpit, even in the presence of royalty.1 It was especially after the Revolution of 1688 that these doctrines spread on the Continent. Sidney’s Discourse on Civil Government was translated into French in 1702 and was read by Rousseau. In 1750 d’Argenson wrote : “The English ideas on politics and liberty have passed the sea and are being adopted here.”1
Before we consider the influence of these doctrines on Rousseau we must show how they found an expression in the famous work of Locke on Civil Government. John Locke regards the legislative power as supreme in the State. To it all other parts of the government must be subordinate. But the legislative power is only fiduciary. There rests “in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative.” When the trust placed in it is violated the power devolves back to the people who gave it. Whenever the liberties and properties of the subjects are subverted, the community may use its supreme power. “No man, or society of men, having a power to deliver up their preservation, or consequently the means of it, to the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of another, whenever any one shall go about to bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a right to preserve what they have not a power to part with, and to rid themselves of those who invade this fundamental, sacred, and unalterable law of self-preservation, for which they entered into society. And thus the community may be said in this respect to be always the supreme power, but not as considered under any form of government, because this power of the people can never take place till the government be dissolved.”2
If the executive power uses force against the legislative, there is no other remedy but to repel force by force.1 Should either executive or legislative attempt to enslave or destroy the people, the people, having no judge on earth, can appeal only to Heaven. For the rulers have, by such attempts become tyrants, and exercise a power never given to them.2
Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, says Locke; the use of government, not for the good of the citizens, but for private advantage. Any magistrate who exceeds “his lawful power acts without authority and may be opposed as any other man who by force invades the rights of another.” If “illegal acts have extended to the majority of the people, or if the mischief and oppression has lighted only on some few, but in such cases, as the precedent and consequences seem to threaten all, and they are persuaded in their consciences that their laws, and with them their estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too, how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force used against them I cannot tell.”3 From this it will be seen that Locke is the theorist of revolutions. The foundation of his political system is the sovereign power of the community. The end of all government is the good of the people. Institutions can be founded on the consent of the people alone.4
In America the principles of the Whigs fell upon a more fruitful soil than in England. The Whig platform became the platform of the colonists. Its doctrines were embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the American Bills of Rights.5