Chapter XXIX: Part 29

Mr. Thomason lived to complete his design; he witnessed the restoration, and died in 1666, leaving his important collection, which was still lodged at Oxford, and which he describes in his will "as not to be paralleled," in trust to be sold for the benefit of his children. His will affords an evidence that he was a person of warm patriotic feelings, with a singular turn of mind, for he left a stipend of forty shillings for two sermons to be annually preached, one of which was to commemorate the destruction of the Armada.

The collection continued at Oxford many years awaiting a purchaser;[2] and at length appears to have been bought by Mearne, "the king's stationer," at the command of the Secretary of State for Charles the Second; but Charles, who would little value old pamphlets, and more particularly these, which only reminded him of such mortifying occurrences, by an order in council in 1684 munificently allowed the widow of Mearne to dispose of them as well as she could. In 1709 we find them offered to Lord Weymouth,[3] and in 1732 they were still undisposed of; but in those times of loyal rebellion, either for the assumption or the restoration of the throne, that of the Commonwealth excited so little interest, and this extraordinary collection was so depreciated, that Oldys then considered it would not reach the twentieth part of the four thousand pounds which it was said that the collector had once refused for it.[4] In 1745 a representative of the Mearne family still held the volumes,[5] and eventually they were purchased at the small price of three or four hundred pounds by George the Third, and by him were presented to the national library, where they now bear the name of the King's Pamphlets.

Thus having escaped from seizure and dispersion, this noble collection remained in the hands of those who priced it as a valueless incumbrance, and yet seem to have respected the object of the enterprise, for they preserved it entire. It may be some consolation to such intrepid collectors that their intelligence and their fervour are not in vain, and however they may fail in the attainment of their motive, a great end may fortunately be achieved.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In vol. 100, small quarto, we find the following memorandum:--

"Mem'dum that Col^l Will Legg and Mr. Arthur Treavor were employed by
his Majes^e K. Ch. to gett for his present use a pamphl^t which his
majestie had then occasion to make use of, & not meeting with it,
they both come to me, having heard that I did employ myself to rake
up all such things from the beginning of that Parliament, and finding
it with me, told me it was for his majestys own use. I told them all
I had were at his maj^y command and service, & withal told them if I
should part with it & loose it--presuming that when his majestie had
done with it, that little account would be made of it, and that if I
should loose it, by that loss a limb of my collection, which I should
be very loath to see, well knowing it would be impossible to supplie
it if it should happen to be lost; with which answer they returned to
his majes^e at Hampton C^t (as I take it) & tould him they had found
the person which had it, & withal how loath he that had it was to
part with it, he much fearing its loss. Whereupon they came to me
again from his maj^e to tell me that upon the word of a king (to use
the king's own expressions) they would safely return it, whereupon
immediately by them I sent it to his majestie. Who having done with
it, & having it with him when he was going towards the Isle of Wight,
let it fall in the _durt_, and then calling for the two persons (who
attended him) delivered it to them with a charge as they would answer
it another day, that they should both speedily & safely return it to
him from whom they had received it, and withal to desire the party to
go on & continue what had begun. Which book, together with his
Maj^ties signification to me, by these worthy and faithful gents, I
received both speedily and safely. My volume hath that mark of honour
which no other volume in my collection hath, & v^y diligently and
carefully I continued the same until that most hapie restoration &
coronation of his most gratious majestie King Charle y^e 2d, whom God
long preserve.

"GEO. THOMASON."

The volume bears the "honours" of its mischance. There are a great
number of stains on the edges of the leaves--some more than an inch
in depth. The accident must have happened on the road in the king's
flight, from the marks of the mud.

[2] In 1676, Dr. Barlow, one of the trustees, writes to the Rev.
George Thomason, who was a Fellow of Queen's College and the eldest
son of the collector, respecting the collection and its value. The
letter is printed in Beloe's "Anecdotes of Literature," vol. ii.

[3] A letter from Dr. Jenkin, who was chaplain to Lord Weymouth, to
Mr. Baker, Dec. 3, 1709:--"There is another rarity then to be sold,
which is proffered to my lord--a Collection of Pamphlets, in number
30,000, bound in 2000 volumes. The collection was begun by Charles
1st in 1640, and continued to 1660. In a printed paper, where I saw
this account, it is said the collectors refused 4000_l._ for
them."--_Masters' Life of Rev. Thomas Baker_, p. 28.

[4] "Phoenix Britannicus,"--"Oldys' Dissertation upon Pamphlets," p.
556. Oldys drew up an account of these pamphlets from "The Memoirs of
the Curious," published in 1701. He says, that the Collection was
made by _Tomlinson, the bookseller_, and the Catalogue by Marmaduke
Foster, the auctioneer; and relates a traditional story, that it is
reported that Charles the First gave ten pounds for reading one of
these pamphlets, at the owner's house in St. Paul's Churchyard. This
collection was not commenced until Nov. 1640, and the king left
London in Jan. 1642; during this time the collection could not be
very numerous, nor would there be that difficulty in seeing a
pamphlet as at the subsequent more distracted period. It is curious
to trace the origin of traditionary tales; they often stand on a
rickety foundation. We find that the king did borrow a pamphlet, but
at a time when he could not hasten to St. Paul's Churchyard to read
it; we may presume that the bookseller did not charge his majesty so
disloyal a price as ten pounds for the perusal of a single pamphlet;
he probably received only the king's approbation of his design, which
doubtless was no slight stimulus to its completion.

[5] A Mr. Sisson, a druggist in Ludgate-street, who died in 1749;
they then became the property of his relative; Miss Sisson, who seems
gladly to have disburdened herself of this domestic grievance in
1761.--_Hollis' Memoirs_, p. 121.

THE OCEANA OF HARRINGTON.

The hardy paradoxes, not wholly without foundation, and the humiliating truths so mortifying to human nature, of the mighty "Leviathan," whose author was little disposed to flatter or to elevate his brothers,[1] were opposed by an ideal government, more generous in its sympathies, and less obtrusive of brute force, or "the public sword," in the OCEANA of JAMES HARRINGTON.

Free from mere party motives of the Monarchist or the Commonwealth-man, for he gratified neither, Harrington was the greatest of political theorists; and his "political architecture," with all his "models of government, notional and practicable," still remains for us, and has not been overlooked by some framers of constitutions.

The psychological history of HARRINGTON combines with his works. His was a thoughtful youth, like that of Sidney, of Milton, and Gray, which never needed correction, but rather kept those around him in awe. Among the usual studies of his age, it was an enterprise to have acquired the modern languages, as entering into an extensive plan of foreign travel, which the boy had already decided on. The death of his father before his legal age enabled him to realise this project. Political studies, however, had not yet occurred to him; and when he left England, he "knew no more of monarchy, anarchy, aristocracy, and democracy or oligarchy, than as hard words for which he was obliged to look into the dictionary."

In Holland, he first contemplated on the image of popular liberty, recent from the yoke of Spain; it was a young people rejoicing in the holiday of freedom. There he found a friend in the fugitive Queen of Bohemia: his uncle, Lord Harrington, had been the governor of that spirited princess. He passed over into Denmark with the crownless elector, soliciting for that aid which no political prudence could afford. He resisted the seductions of those noble friendships in pursuit of his great plan. He entered France, he loitered in Germany, and at length advanced into Italy. At Rome, he refused to bestow on his holiness the prostrate salutation, and when some Englishmen complained of their compatriot's stiffness to Charles the First, who reminded the young philosopher that he might have performed a courteous custom as to a temporal prince, the reply was happy--"having kissed his majesty's hand, he would always hold it beneath him to kiss any prince's toe."

Our future political theorist was deeply struck in his admiration of the aristocratic government of Venice, which he conceived to be the most perfect and durable government hitherto planned by the wit of man. Such was the prevalent notion throughout Europe concerning a government existing in secrecy and mystery! In Italy, he found Politics, Literature and Art, and provided himself with a rich store of Italian books, especially on political topics. Machiavelli with him was "the prince of Politicians;" but he has opened his great work with the name of another Italian, "Janotti (Giannotti), the most excellent describer of the Commonwealth of Venice." Giannotti is a name which, though it has not shared the celebrity of Machiavelli, seems to have been that of a more practical politician, for Giannotti at length obtained that honourable secretaryship of Florence, the loss of which, it is said, so deeply mortified the lofty spirit of his greater rival, that the illustrious ex-secretary died of grief, which his philosophy should have quieted.

Harrington returned home an accomplished cavalier; but the commonwealth of Holland, the aristocracy of Venice, the absolute monarchy of France, imperial Germany, and what else he had contemplated in the northern courts, must have furnished to his thoughtful mind the elements of his theory of politics.

He returned home to the privacy of his studies, refusing any public employment; but that he kept up an intercourse with the court, appears by his personal acquaintance with the king. Many years form a blank in his life; once indeed he had made an ineffectual attempt to enter parliament, but failed, though his sentiments were well known in favour of popular government. It is probable, that in that unhappy period, when persons and events were alike of so mixed and ambiguous a character, our philosopher could not sympathize with the clash of temporary passions.

When the king was to be conveyed from Newcastle in 1646, Harrington was chosen to attend his person as "a gentleman well known to the king before, and who had never engaged with any party whatever." He was then in his thirty-fifth year.

This appointment of Harrington was agreeable to the king. Charles found in Harrington the character he well knew how to appreciate. He conversed on books, and pictures, and foreign affairs, and found a ripe scholar, a travelled mind, and a genius overflowing with strange speculative notions. Their conversations were free; Harrington did not conceal his predilection for commonwealth institutions, at which the king was impatient. Neither could bring the other to his own side, for each was fixed in taking opposite views; the one looking to the advantages of monarchy, and the other to those of a republic. The only subject they could differ on, never interrupted their affections; the theoretical commonwealth-man, and the practical monarch, in their daily intercourse, found that they had a heart for each other.

In Charles the First, Harrington discovered a personage unlike the distorted image which political passions had long held out. In adversity the softened prince seemed only to be "the man of sorrows." On one occasion Harrington vindicated the king's conduct, and urged that the royal concessions were satisfactory. This strong personal attachment to Charles alarmed the party in power. Harrington was ordered away. He subsequently visited the king when at St. James's, and was present at the awful act of the decapitation. Charles presented Harrington with a last memorial. Aubrey, who knew Harrington, may tell the rest of his story. "Mr. Harrington was on the scaffold with the king when he was beheaded; and I have ofttimes heard him speak of King Charles the First with the greatest zeal and passion imaginable; and that his death gave him so great grief, that he contracted a disease by it; that never anything did go so near to him."

The agony of that terrible day afflicted Harrington with a malady from which he was never afterwards freed; a profound melancholy preyed upon his spirits; he withdrew into utter seclusion, not to mourn, but to despond. His friends were alarmed at a hermit's melancholy; some imagined that his affection for the king had deranged his intellect; others ascribed his seclusion to mere discontent with the times.

To rid himself of friendly importunities, and to evince that his mind was not deranged, whatever might be his feelings, he confided to his circle that he had long been occupied in the study of civil government, to invent an art which should prevent the disorders of a state. It was his opinion that "a government is not of so accidental or arbitrary institution as people imagine; for in society there are natural causes producing their necessary effects as well as in the earth or the air." The passionless sage was so discriminately just, that he declared that "our late troubles were not wholly to be ascribed to the misgovernment of the prince, nor to the stubbornness of the people; but to the nature of certain changes which had happened to the nation." He then, for their curious admiration, disclosed the perfect model of a commonwealth in his "OCEANA."

OCEANA, or England, was the model of "a free state;" a political "equality" was its basis; equality to be guarded by a number of devices. Harrington laid the foundation of politics, on the principle that _empire follows the balance of property_, whether lodged in one, in a few, or in many. Toland asserts that this was as noble a discovery as that of the circulation of the blood, of printing, gunpowder, or the compass, or optic glasses; the Newtonian gravity had not then been established, or, doubtless, it had been enumerated.

To preserve the political equality, there were to be "balances" in dominion and in property. An agrarian law, by its distributions suitable to the rank of the individual, and which were never to be enlarged nor diminished, would prevent any man, or any party, overpowering the people by their possessions. All those states in Europe which were the remains of Gothic dominion, were thrown into internal conflicts by their "overbalances." The overbalance of one man was tyranny; of a few, was oligarchy; of the many, was rebellion, or anarchy.[2] The perpetual shifting of their "balances" had produced all their disturbances. He traced this history in extinct governments, as well as in our own. So refined were his political optics, that he discerned when our kings had broken Magna Charta some thirty times; and during the reign of Charles the First, he asserts that these "balances" had been altered nine times.

The "balance of property" being the foundation of the commonwealth, the superstructure was raised of magistracy. Magistracy was to proceed by "rotation," and to be settled by the "ballot." The senate was to be elected by the purity of suffrage, which was to be found in the balloting-box. And in this rotatory government, the third part of the senate would be wheeled out at their fixed terms. The senate by these self-purgations would renovate its youth; and the sovereign authority, by this unceasing movement, would act in its perpetual integrity.

In this equal commonwealth no party can be at variance with, or gain ground upon another; and as there can be no factions, so neither will there be any seditions; because the people are without the power or the interest to raise commotions; they would be as likely to throw themselves into the sea as to disturb the state. It is one of his political axioms, that where the public interest governs, it is a government of laws; but where a private interest, it is a government of men, and not of laws.

HARRINGTON was no admirer of a mixed monarchy; his political logic includes some important truths. "In a mixed monarchy, the nobility sometimes imposing chains on the king or domineering over the people, the king is either oppressing the people without control, or contending with the nobility, as their protectors; and the people are frequently in arms against both king and nobles, till at last one of the three estates becomes master of the other two, or till they so mutually weaken one another, that either they fall a prey to some more potent government, or naturally grow into a commonwealth--therefore mixed monarchy is not a perfect government; but if no such parties can possibly exist in OCEANA, then it is the most equal, perfect, and immortal commonwealth. _Quod erat demonstrandum._"

The "equality" of Harrington, however, was not fashioned to any vulgar notions of a levelling democracy. He maintained the distinctions of orders in society. The great founder of a commonwealth was first a _gentleman_, from Moses downwards; though, he says, "there be great divines, poets, lawyers, great men in all professions, the genius of a great politician is peculiar to _the genius of a gentleman_." And further, "An army may as well consist of soldiers without officers, or of officers without soldiers, as a commonwealth (especially such an one as is capable of greatness) consist of a people without gentry, or of a gentry without a people."

A work of such original invention, replete with the most curious developments of all former political institutions, of which the author proposed to resume the advantages and to supply the deficiencies, from the ancient commonwealth of Moses to the recent republic of the Hollanders, and moreover throwing out some novel general views of our own national history, formed a volume opportune to engage public attention. It was enlivened by the pleasing form of a romance, where, in the council of the legislators, the debaters plead for their favourite form of government with infinite spirit.

The publication of "Oceana" was, however, long retarded; first, by the honesty of our sage, and, secondly, by the influence of two very opposite parties equally alarmed. Harrington was anxious that his proselytes should debate his opinions, and even partially promulgate them in their pamphlets, before he ventured to publish them. What he ably elucidated they faithfully repeated: the consequence of this indiscretion was, that the novelty had lost its gloss; and, when finally his great discovery of empire following the balance of property appeared, the author was reproached for its obviousness. Every great principle appears obvious when once ascertained. The vague rumours that had spread that a new model of government was about to appear, made the Cromwellites and the cavaliers alike alert in their opposition; the bashaws of the great sultan, the new lords and major-generals of the Protector, sate uneasy in their usurped seats; the cavaliers, who knew Harrington's predisposition for republican institutions, loudly remonstrated. The author was compelled to send his papers to the printers by stealth and by snatches, dispersing them among different presses. The first edition of "Oceana" exhibits a strange appearance, in a confusion of all sorts of types and characters--black letter, Italian and Roman, accompanied by an unparalleled "List of Errors of the Press," being several folio pages with double columns! The author has even marked the lacerations of his panting and hunted volume from "a spaniel questing who hath sprung my book out of one press into two other." The myrmidons of Oliver hunted down their game from press to press, and at length pounced on their prey, and, with a Pyrrhic triumph, bore it to Whitehall.

All solicitations of the author to retrieve his endeared volume proved fruitless; in despair he ventured on a singular expedient. Lady Claypole, the daughter of the Protector, studied to be exceedingly gracious, and to play the princess. Unacquainted with her ladyship, Harrington requested an audience; waiting in the antechamber, her little daughter soon attracted his attention; carrying her in his arms, he entered the presence-chamber, and declared that he had a design to steal the young lady--not from love, but for revenge.

"Have I injured you?"

"Not at all! but your father has stolen my child, and then you would have interceded for its restoration."

The parable of the parental author was easily explained; the pleasing manners of the elegant cavalier, which were not commonly seen in the new court of the protectorate, doubtless assisted the petitioner with the recent princess of the revolution. "Are you sure," she earnestly inquired, "that your book contains nothing against my father's government?"

"It is a political romance! to be dedicated to your father, and the first copy to be opened by yourself."

Lady Claypole conceived there could not be any treason in a romance. She persuaded Oliver to look it over himself; the Protector, who there found himself as "the Lord Archon of Oceana," and probably with his sharp judgment deeming the whole a "romance," returned it, drily observing, that "the power which he had got by the sword he would not quit for a little paper-shot:" but he added, with his accustomed sanctimonious policy, that "he as little approved as the gentleman of the government of a _single person_, but that he had been compelled to take the office of High-Constable to preserve the peace among all parties who could never agree among themselves."

"Oceana" was published at a crisis when the people were still to be enchanted by the name of "Commonwealth," though they began to think that they had been mistaken in their choice, since their grievances had been heavier than under the old monarchy which they had dissolved. Harrington familiarly compared their present unquiet state to that of a company of puppy-dogs cramped up in a bag, when finding themselves ill at ease for want of room, every one of them bites the tail or the foot of his neighbour, supposing that to be the source of his misery. To such a restless people, a continual change of rulers on the rotatory system seemed a great relief; any worse than their present masters they would not suppose. "The Rota" of Harrington became so popular, that a club was established bearing its name; and they held their debates every evening with doors open for auditors or orators.

This political club was the resort of the finest geniuses of the age, many of whom have left their eminent names in our history and our literature. The members sat at a circular table--the table of ancient knighthood and modern equality, which left a passage open within its circuit to have their coffee delivered hot without any interruption to the speaker or "the state of the nation." A contemporary assures us that these debates were more ingenious and spirited than he had ever heard, and that those in parliament were flat to them. Every decision how affairs should be carried was left to the balloting-box--"a box in which there is no cogging," observes the master-genius of "the Rota."

This "balloting" and the principle of "rotation" were hateful to the parliamentarians; for, as we are told, "they were cursed tyrants, in love with their power, and this was death to them." HENRY NEVILLE, the author of "Plato Redivivus," the constant associate of Harrington, and who, Hobbes (alluding to the "Oceana") said, "had a finger in the pye," had the boldness to propose the system of "rotation" to the House, warning them that, if they did not accept that model of government, they would shortly fall into ruins. In their then ticklish condition, the House had the decency to return their thanks, and the intrepidity to keep their places.

This perfectioned model of a government, when opened for the inspection of mankind, exhibited a glorious framework; but it seemed questionable whether this political clockwork or intellectual mechanism could perform its exact librations, depending on a number of "balances" to preserve its nice equilibrium; and whether it could last for perpetuity by that "rotatory" motion by wheels which were never to cease. Some objected, that the author in the science of politics had been fascinated, as some in mechanics, who imagined that they had discovered "the perpetual motion." But this objection the constructor of this "political architecture" indignantly rejected. He knew that the capacity of matter can only work as long as it lasts, and therefore there can be no perpetual motion; but "the mathematician must not take God to be such as he is. The equal commonwealth is built up by the understandings of the people. Now the people never die--they are not brute matter. This movement of theirs comes from the hands of the Eternal Mover, even God himself."

This romance of politics has been pronounced by a high authority as "one of the boasts of English literature;" and the philosophic Hume has even ventured to pronounce the work as "the _only valuable model of a commonwealth_ that has yet been offered to the public." Perhaps the historian would pass it off as "the only valuable one," from a conviction that it was perfectly harmless. It is worthy of remark, that when, in 1688, a grand _auto da fe_ was performed by the university of Oxford on certain political works--when they condemned to the flames Baxter's "Holy Commonwealth," written against Harrington's "Heathen Commonwealth," as Baxter calls "Oceana," with Hobbes, and Milton, and others--no one proposed this condign punishment to the manes of Harrington, considering, no doubt, that a romance was too impracticable as a political system. Yet the republican party has always held to "Oceana" as their text-book; and it was with this view that TOLAND edited this great work, and, in his life of Milton, has declared "Oceana" to be an unrivalled model of a commonwealth, for its _practicableness_, _equality_, and completeness; and once HOLLIS, during the fervour of founding a republic in Corsica, recommended by public advertisement "Oceana" as the most perfect model of a free government.

"OCEANA" has perpetuated a thoughtful politician's dreams. But are there no realities in dreams? Even in dreaming, a great artist often combines conceptions too fugitive, too mysterious, too beauteous, for his palpable canvas. And thus the fanciful pictures of our philosophical politician were the results of his deep and varied studies in the ancient and modern writings on the science of politics--from Aristotle to Machiavel, from Machiavel to Hobbes. His pages are studded with axioms of policy, and impress us by many an enduring truth. His style is not always polished, and is sometimes perplexed; but no writer has exceeded him in the felicity and boldness of his phrases; and his pen, though busied on higher matters, sparkles with imagery and illustration.

That a mind so sagacious and even predictive as was that of Harrington's in the uncertainty of human events should be led away by theoretical fallacies, is an useful example for political speculators.[3] Constantly he extols the dark mysterious dominion of aristocratic Venice, "being a commonwealth having no causes of dissolution." He dwells on "the rotation of its senate," and its prompt, remedial, concealed power. "It is immortal in its nature; and to this day she stands with one thousand years of tranquillity on her back: notwithstanding," he thoughtfully adds, "that this government consists of men not without sin."

A single day of treason sufficed to terminate this immortal commonwealth of Venice, with all its "ballotings" and "its rotations," and its hidden and horrible dictature, where sate the council of "Three" in their dark conclave, like the sister-fates, the arbiters of every soul in Venice. Alas for that folly of the wise, who, in the delusion of a theory, to support the edifice of imagination disguise the truths which might shake it! The advocate of a free state, he who pretends to draw sovereignty from the hands of a people, is the perpetual eulogist of the most refined tyranny that ever swayed the destiny of a people. Spirit of Harrington! meditate in thy sepulchral city, motionless and naked as she lies, there to correct so many passages of admiration which spread their illusion in thy "OCEANA!"

Harrington was equally fallible on the strength of his political axiom, "that the balance of power depends on that of property;" applying it to his own critical period, he pronounced that it was impossible ever to re-establish monarchy among English commonwealth-men. Property had changed possessors; it could never revert to its former owners. Four years after "Oceana" was published, and "the Rota Club" was still illumining the nation, the commonwealth returned to monarchy by a beck, and without a word!

Theoretical politicians too often omit in their artificial constructions, and their moral calculations, something more prompt to act in the conduct of men than even their interests--the stirring passions of ambition, of faction, and the vacillations of "the sovereign people," now maddening for a republic, now rushing into a monarchy, "tumbling and tossing upon their bed of sickness."

When the Restoration arrived, however it may have deranged the system, it seems not to have disturbed the systematiser. He observed, that "the king comes in; if he calls a parliament of the cavaliers on our great estates, let them sit seven years, and they will all turn commonwealth-men." He retained in all its force his master-passion of ideal politics. He now decided to reduce "Oceana" into plain axioms, divested of tedious argumentation, and formal demonstration, adapted to the most vulgar capacities. He was easily induced to offer some immediate instructions for the king's service. A paper was first shown to some of the courtiers, who suspected treason in any scheme where their particular interests were not at all consulted. One morning, when Harrington was busily engaged, with all his aphorisms lying loose on a table before him, suddenly entered Sir William Poulteney, and other officers, to seize on the philosopher and the philosophy "for treasonable designs and practices." As they were huddling together the scattered members of the "Oceanic" mind, the innocent philosopher, innocent of treason, begged the favour of "stitching them together" before they were taken to Whitehall. The derangement of his system appeared to him more dreadful than seeing himself hurried to the Tower.

Harrington had kept up his intimacy with old friends, among whom were many commonwealth-men, from Major Wildman, an intriguing Cromwellite, down to the notorious Barebones, on whom he declared, however, that he had only called, "at his shop" thrice in his life. He was now involved in a pretended plot, which the Chancellor himself, though furnished with accounts of the meetings of certain parties, declared that he could make nothing of. A speculative politician was a very suspicious person in the days of restoration. Harrington, assuredly, was no plotter. Our philosopher contrived to send his sisters his examination before his relative Lord Lauderdale and others, curious for its topics of discussion, and the poignancy of the dialogue. I cannot pass by one singular passage.

"You charge me with being eminent in principles contrary to the king's government, and the laws of this nation. Some, my lord, say, that I, being a private man, have been so mad as to meddle with politics; what had a private man to do with government? My lord, there is not any _public_ person, not any _magistrate_ that has written in politics, worth a button. All they that have been excellent in this way have been private men, as private men as myself. There is Plato, there is Aristotle, there is Livy, there is Machiavel. My lord, I can sum up Aristotle's politics in a very few words; he says there is the barbarous monarchy, such a one where the people have no votes in making the laws; he says there is the heroic monarchy, such a one where the people have their votes in making the laws; and then he says there is democracy, and affirms that a man cannot be said to have liberty but in a democracy only."

My Lord Lauderdale, who thus far had been very attentive, at this showed some impatience.

_Har._--"I say Aristotle says so; I have not said so much. And under what prince was it? Was it not under Alexander, the greatest prince in the world? Did Alexander hang up Aristotle, did he molest him?" And he proceeds with Livy, who wrote under Caesar, and the commonwealth-man, Machiavel, under the Medici, unmolested.

"I wrote under an usurper, Oliver. He having started up into the throne, his officers kept a murmuring for a commonwealth. He told them that he knew not what they meant, but let any one show him that there was any such thing as a commonwealth, they should see that he sought not himself; the Lord knew he only sought to make good the cause. Upon this some sober men thought that if any in England could show what a commonwealth was, it was myself. I wrote, and after I had written, Oliver never answered his officers as he had done before; therefore I wrote not against the king's government; and if the law could have punished me, Oliver had done it; therefore my writing was not obnoxious to the law. After Oliver, the parliament said they were a commonwealth; I said they were not; and proved it, insomuch that the parliament accounted me a cavalier, and one that had no other design in my writing than to bring in the king; and now the king, first of any man, makes me a Roundhead!"

Certainly no theoretical politician has ever more lucidly set before us the cruel dilemmas of speculative science.

The story of HARRINGTON now becomes calamitous. In vain his sisters petitioned that the prisoner, for his justification, should be brought to trial,--no one dared to present the petition to parliament. He was suddenly carried off to St. Nicholas Island, near Plymouth, and by favour afterwards was lodged in Plymouth Castle, where the governor treated the state-prisoner with the kindness he had long wanted. His health gradually gave way; his mind fell into disorder; his high spirit and his heated brain could not brook this tormenting durance; his intellect was at times clouded by some singular delusions; and his family imagined that it was intended that he should never more write "Oceanas." The physician of the castle had prescribed constant doses of guaiacum taken in coffee. At length, other physicians were despatched by his family; they found an emaciated patient deprived of sleep, and under their hands testified that the copious use of this deleterious beverage, with such drying drugs, was sufficient to occasion hypochondriasm, and even frenzy, in any one who had not even a predisposition. The surly physician of the state-prison insisted that Harrington counterfeited madness.

His delusions never left him, yet otherwise his faculties remained unaltered. He had strange fancies about the operations of the animal spirits, good and evil, and often alarmed his friends by his vivacious descriptions of these invisible agencies. "Nature," he said, "which works under a veil, is the heart of God." But how are we to account, in a mind otherwise sane, for his notion that his thoughts transpired from him, and took the shapes of flies or bees? Aubrey has given a gossiper's account of this ludicrous hypochondriasm. Harrington had a summer-house revolving on a pivot, which he turned at will to face the sun; there sat the great author of "Oceana," whisking a fox's brush to disperse this annoyance of his transpired thoughts in the flies or bees, which, whenever they issued from crevices, he would appeal to those present, whether it was not evident to them that they had emerged from his brain? An eminent physician had flattered himself that he would be able to out-reason this delusion, by that force of argument and positive demonstration to which his illustrious patient only would attend; but the physician discovered that no argument could avail with the most invincible disputant in Europe. The sanity of the man only strengthened his insanity. Besides, our philosopher believed that he had discovered a new system of physiology, in what he called "The Mechanics of Nature." Harrington declared that his fate was that of Democritus, who, having made a great discovery in anatomy, was deemed mad by his associates, till Hippocrates appeared, and attested the glorious truth, confounding the laughers for ever! He now resolved to prove against his doctors, that his notions were not, as they alleged, hypochondriacal whims, or fanciful delusions. Among his manuscripts was found this promised treatise, thus opening--"Having been for nine months, some say, in a disease, I in a cure, I have been the wonder of physicians, and they mine!" It is much to be regretted that the first part of this singular design has only reached us, wherein he has laid down his axioms, many of which are indisputable, coherent, and philosophical, however chimerical might have been their application to his particular notions. The narrative of his own disorder, which was to form the second part, would have been a great psychological curiosity, for the philosopher was there to have told us, how "he had felt and saw Nature; that is, how she came first into his senses, and by the senses into the understanding," and "to speak to men that have had the same sensations as himself." The logical deliriums of Harrington, it is not impossible, might have thrown a beam of light on "The Human Nature" of Hobbes, and "The Understanding" of Locke.

It is for the medical character to develop the mysteries of this condition of man; but this moral phenomenon of the partial delusions of the noblest intellect remains an enigma they have not yet solved. Harrington never recovered his physical energy, while his "Understanding" betrayed no symptoms of any decay in the exercise of his vigorous faculties.

There is one dark cloud which dusks the lustre of the name of HARRINGTON. Opening the volume of his works, we are startled by an elaborate treatise on "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy." It is not merely one of the most eloquent invectives against monarchical institutions, but it overflows with the most withering defamations, such as were prevalent at that distempered season, when the popular writers accumulated horrors on the memories of their late sovereigns, to metamorphose their monarchs into monsters. In this terrible state-libel, all kings are anathematised: James the First was the murderer of his son; Charles the First was a parricide. Of that "resolute tyrant Charles," we have an allusion to "his actions of the day; his actions of the night;"--from which we must infer that they were equally criminal.

The reader, already acquainted with the intimate intercourse of our author with Charles the First, and with all his permanent emotions, which probably induced his mental disorder, must start at the disparity of the writing with the writer. A thorough-paced partisan has here acted on the base principle of reviling the individual, whom he privately acknowledged to be wholly of an opposite character. It would be a solecism in human nature, had Harrington sent forth an historical calumny, which only to have read must have inflicted a deep pang in his heart. He was a philosopher, who neither flattered nor vilified the prince nor the people; their common calamities he ascribes to inevitable causes, which had been long working those changes independent of either. In the reigns of James and Charles, according to his favourite principle, "The English Balance," in favour of "popularity," was "running like a bowl down hill." He does justice to the sagacity of the indolent James, who, he tells us, "not seldom prophesied sad things to his successors;" and of Charles the First, on succeeding to his father, Harrington has expressed himself with the utmost political wisdom and felicity of illustration. "There remained nothing to the destruction of a monarchy, retaining but the name, more than a prince who, by contending, should make the people to feel those advantages which they could not see. And this happened to the next king (Charles), who, too secure in that undoubted right whereby he was advanced to the throne which had no foundation, dared to put this to an unseasonable trial, on whom, therefore, fell the tower in Silo. Nor may we think they on whom this tower fell were sinners above all men; but that we, unless we repent and look better to the true foundations, must likewise perish."[4] All that our philosopher had to deliver to the world on the many contested points of that unhappy reign, was the illustration of his principle, and not the infamy of vulgar calumny. With the philosophic Harrington, Charles the First was but "a doomed man;" not more a sinner, because the tower of Silo had fallen upon his head, than those who stood without. This was true philosophy, the other was faction.

The treatise on "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy," prominently placed at the opening of the works of Harrington, and inseparably combined with his opinions by the reference in the general index--this treatise which has settled like a gangrene on the fair character of the author of "Oceana," which has called down on his devoted head the execrations of honourable men,[5] and which has misled many generations of readers, is the composition of a salaried party writer, in no way connected with our author. Toland, the first editor of Harrington's works, introduced into the volume this anonymous invective, which has thus come down to us sanctioned by the philosopher's name. There was no plea of any connexion between the two authors, and much less between their writings. The editor of the edition of 1771 has silently introduced the name of the real author in the table of contents, but without prefixing it to the tract, or without any further indication to inform the reader.

Whether zeal for "the cause" led Toland to this editorial delinquency, or whether he fell into this inadvertence from deficient acumen, it remains a literary calamity not easily paralleled, for a great author is condemned for what he never could have written.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I must refer the reader for the development of the system of
Hobbes to the Essay on Hobbes in the "Quarrels of Authors," (last
edition, p. 436.)

[2] The masterpiece of legislation of Abbe Sieyes, who, during the
French Revolution, had always a new constitution in his pocket, was
founded on this principle of "checks and balances in the state,"
evidently adopted from Harrington. In Scott's "Life of Napoleon,"
vol. iv., the Abbe Sieyes' system is described.

[3] I think that Harrington presciently detected the latent causes of
a great revolution in France. The curiosity of the passage may
compensate for its length--

"Where there is tumbling and tossing upon the bed of sickness, it
must end in death or recovery. Though the people of the world, in the
dregs of the Gothic empire, be yet tumbling and tossing upon the bed
of sickness, they cannot die; nor is there any means of recovery for
them but by ancient prudence; whence, of necessity, it must come to
pass that this drug be better known. If _France_, _Italy_, and
_Spain_ were not all sick--all corrupted together, there would be
none of them so; for the sick would not be able to withstand the
sound, nor the sound to preserve their health without curing of the
sick. _The first of these nations, which, if you stay her leisure,
will, in my mind, be France_, that recovers the health of ancient
prudence, shall certainly _govern the world_."--_Oceana_, p. 168;
edition 1771.

[4] The Art of Law-giving, 366, 4to edition.

[5] See the solemn denunciations of the "Biographia Britannica," p.
2536, which are repeated by later biographers; see Chalmers.

THE AUTHOR OF "THE GROUNDS AND REASONS OF MONARCHY."

The author of "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy," whose historical libel is perpetuated in the works of Harrington, is JOHN HALL, of Gray's Inn, sometimes described of Durham; one of those fervid spirits who take the bent of the times in a revolutionary period. He must be classed among those precocious minds which astonish their contemporaries by acquisitions of knowledge, combined with the finest genius, and in their boyhood betray no immaturity. We may receive with some suspicion accounts of such gifted youths, though they come from competent judges; but when we are reminded of the Rowley of Chatterton, and find what HALL did, we must conclude that there are meteorous beings, whose eccentric orbits we know not how to describe. HALL, prevented by the civil wars from entering the university, pursued his studies in the privacy of the library at Durham. When the war ceased, he was admitted at Cambridge; and in 1646 published, in his nineteenth year, _Horae Vacivae_, or "Essays, with some Occasional Considerations." These are essays in prose; and at a time when our literature could boast of none except the masterpieces of Lord Bacon, a boy of nineteen sends forth this extraordinary volume. Even our plain Anthony caught the rapture; for he describes its appearance--"the sudden breaking forth of which amazed not only the university, but the more serious part of men in the three nations, when they (the Essays) were spread." Here is the puerility of a genius of the first order! A boy's essays raised the admiration of "the three nations!" and they remain still remarkable! This youth seems to have modelled his manner on Bacon for the turn of his thoughts, and on Seneca for the point and sparkle of his periods. The dwarf rose strong as a giant.[1]

The boy having astonished the world by a volume of his prose, amazed them in the succeeding year by a volume of his verse, poetry as graceful as the prose was nervous; his verses still adorn the most elegant of our modern anthologies.[2]

Attracted to the metropolis, he entered as a student at Gray's Inn; and there his political character soon assumed the supremacy over his literary. He sided with the independents, the ultra-commonwealth-men, and satirised the presbyterians, the friends of monarchy. He plunged into extreme measures; courting his new masters by the baseness of a busy pen, he justified Barebones' parliament, got up a state-pamphlet against the Hollanders, proposed the reform of the universities, "to have the Frier-like list of the fellowships _reduced_, and _the rest of the revenue_ of the university _sequestered into the hands of the committee_," of which, probably, he might himself have been one. The exchequer was opened; he received "present sums of money;" and the council granted their scribe a considerable pension.

During this life of political activity, Hall, in 1650, was commanded by the council of state to repair to Scotland, to attend on Cromwell, for the purpose of settling affairs in favour of the commonwealth, and to wean the Scots from their lingering affection for the surviving Stuart. It was then that Hall, in his vocation, sent forth the thunder of a party-pamphlet, "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy." This extraordinary tract consists of two parts: the first, more elaborately composed, is an argumentative exposition of anti-monarchical doctrines; in the second, to bring the business home to their bosoms, he offers a demonstration of his principles, in a review of the whole Scottish history, sarcastically reminding them of their kings "crowned with happy reigns, and quiet deaths (two successively scarce dying naturally)." It is a mass of invectives and calumnies in the disguise of grave history; and this historical libel, concocted for a particular time and a particular place, was eagerly received at Edinburgh, and immediately republished in London, where it was sure of as warm a reception.[3]

Hall's passion for literature must have been intense; for amid these discordant days, he found time to glide into hours of refreshing studies. He gave us the first vernacular version of "The Sublime" of Longinus,[4] and left another of the moral Hierocles. This gifted youth with sportive facility turned English into Latin, or Latin into English; it has been recorded of him that he translated the greater part of a singular work of the Alchemical Maier, in one afternoon over his wine at a tavern; and he entranced the ear of that universal patron, Edward Bendlowes, by turning into Latin verse three hundred lines of his mystical poem of "Theophila," at one sitting.

In this impassioned existence, excited by the acrimony of politics, and the enthusiasm of study, he fell into reckless dissipation, and undermined a constitution which, probably, had all the delicacy and sensitiveness of his genius. He sunk in the struggle of celebrity and personal indulgence, and hastened back to his family to die, when he had hardly attained to manhood.

A true prodigy of genius was this JOHN HALL; for not only he could warm into admiration our literary antiquary, but the greater philosopher Hobbes, not prone to flattery, has left a memorial of this impassioned and precocious being. "Had not his debauches and intemperance diverted him from the more severe studies, he had made an extraordinary person; for no man had ever done so great things at his age."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Three or four of these Essays have been reprinted in "The
Restituta," vol. iii. The original book is very rare.

[2] See Ellis' "Specimens."

[3] I found the origin of this eloquent and factious performance in
an account of JOHN HALL, prefixed to his translation of "Hierocles on
the Golden Verses of Pythagoras:" it proceeds from a friend--John
Davies of Kidwelly. The treatise of Hall, in its original edition, is
so rare, that no copy has been found at the British Museum, nor in
the King's Library; it was, however, reprinted at the time in London.

[4] A piece of great learning, entitled 'The Height of Eloquence,'
written in Greek, by Dionysius Longinus, rendered into English from
the original, by John Hall, Esq., London, 1652, 8vo.--_Brueggeman's
English Transactions._

COMMONWEALTH.

When the term COMMONWEALTH deeply occupied the minds of men, they had formed no settled notions about the thing itself; the term became equivocal, of such wide signification that it was misunderstood and misapplied, and always ambiguous; and a confusion of words led many writers into a confusion of notions.

The term _Commonweal_, or _wealth_, indeed appears in our statutes, in the speeches of our monarchs, and in the political works of our writers, long before the idea of a _republic_, in its popular sense, was promulgated by the votaries of democracy. The term _Commonweal_ explains itself; it specifies no particular polity but the public weal; and even the term _republic_ originally meant nothing more than _res publicae_, or "the affairs of the public." Sir THOMAS SMITH, the learned secretary to Elizabeth, who has written on the English constitution, entitles his work "The Commonwealth of England." James the First justly called himself "the great servant of the Commonwealth." The Commonwealth, meaning the kingdom of England, is the style of all the learned in law.

The ambiguity of the term _Commonwealth_ soon caused it to be perverted by the advocates of popular government, who do not distinguish the State from the people; this appears as early as the days of Rawleigh, who tells us, that "the government of all the common and baser sort is by an _usurped nick-name_ called a COMMONWEALTH."[1]

It was in the revolutionary period of Charles the First that the terms _Commonwealth_ and _Commonwealth-man_ were adopted by the governing party, as precisely describing their purity of devotion to the public weal. In the temper of the times the Commonwealth became opposed to the monarchy, and the Commonwealth-man to the royalist. Cromwell ironically asked what was a Commonwealth? affecting an ignorance of the term.

When Baxter wrote his "Holy Commonwealth" against Harrington's "Heathenish Commonwealth," he had said, "I plead the cause of monarchy as better than democracy or aristocracy." Toland, a Commonwealth-man in the new sense, referring to Baxter's work, exclaims that "A monarchy is an odd way of modelling a Commonwealth." Baxter alluded to an English Commonwealth in its primitive sense, and Toland restricted the term to its modern application. Indeed, Toland exults in the British constitution being a Commonwealth in the popular sense, in his preface to his edition of Harrington's works, and has the merit of bringing forward as his authority the royal name of James the First, and which afterwards seems to have struck Locke as so apposite that he condescended to repeat it. The passage in Toland is curious: "It is undeniably manifest that the English government is _already a Commonwealth_ the most free and best constituted in the world. This was _frankly_ acknowledged by King James the First, who styled himself _the great servant of the Commonwealth_." One hardly suspected a republican of gravely citing the authority of the royal sage on any position!