Harrington's Empire of Law
| Published date | 01 March 2012 |
| Author | Frank Lovett |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00896.x |
| Date | 01 March 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 2 VO L 6 0 , 5 9 – 7 5
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00896.x
Harrington’s Empire of Lawpost_89659..75
Frank Lovett
Washington University in St Louis
Nearly every reader of James Harrington has taken his theory that property is the foundation of government to be
his central and most enduring contribution to political thought. Operating within this standard reading, most of the
extensive literature on Harrington has focused on derivative issues, such as the accuracy and depth of his economic
reading of English history, or the extent to which his mechanistic account of political institutions displaced more
traditional republican accounts of civic virtue. But the standard reading is incomplete. For example, it is puzzling on
this reading why Harrington should single out Thomas Hobbes as his chief opponent. To demonstrate the incom-
pleteness of the standard reading, this article will examine a relatively neglected aspect of Oceana: namely, the sharp
contrast drawn throughout the work between those communities organized as an ‘empire of laws’ and those organized
as an ‘empire of men’. As it turns out, Harrington strikes upon a deep problem, not noticed by previous authors in
the classical republican tradition, but nevertheless lying at the very conceptual core of republican theory. Examining
this problem in detail is both interesting in its own right, in so far as it sheds light on some central issues in republican
theory, and in the renewed historical appreciation it brings to our reading of Harrington as well.
Keywords: James Harrington; civic republicanism; rule of law; political liberty; Thomas
Hobbes
David Hume (1987 [1777], p. 33) observed that James Harrington ‘made property the
foundation of all government’, and nearly every reader since has taken this to be his central
and most enduring contribution to political thought. Property – and especially, property in
land – Harrington writes, is ‘held by the proprietor or proprietors, lord or lords of it, in
some proportion’, and ‘as is the proportion or balance of dominion or property in land, such
is the nature of the empire’. Thus, if ‘one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance
the people, for example, three parts in four’, then the natural form of government for that
territory is a pure or ‘absolute monarchy’; if instead ‘the few or a nobility, or a nobility with
the clergy, be landlords, or overbalance the people unto the like proportion’, it is a limited
or ‘mixed monarchy’; finally,‘if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided
among them, that no one man, or number of men’ can ‘overbalance them’, then the
territory is naturally suited to a ‘commonwealth’ government (Harrington, 1977 [1656], pp.
163–4). It is almost exclusively on the strength of this idea that Harrington is regarded as
the ‘most penetrating and influential’ of the seventeenth-century English republicans
( Worden, 1991, p. 444).1
On the standard reading, Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana advances two main
arguments, both built on his famous economic theory of politics.2 The first is that social and
economic conditions had developed by his time such that a commonwealth was the only
feasible government for England: in breaking the power of the feudal nobility, the Tudor
and Stuart rulers had inadvertently shifted the balance of property towards the people,
thus ultimately incapacitating the country for monarchy. The second is that, once
firmly established, a commonwealth could be made durable – indeed, immortal – through
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
60
F R A N K L OV E T T
appropriate institutional design. Specifically, the devices of indirect election, rotation in
office and ‘agrarian’ laws designed to maintain dispersed property holdings could indefi-
nitely prevent new concentrations of power from undermining the social and economic
basis of the commonwealth. Operating within the parameters of this standard reading, the
extensive literature on Harrington has focused on what are really derivative issues. Initially,
the focus of this literature was on the accuracy and depth of his economic reading of
English history; later, after the seminal contributions of J. G. A. Pocock, it was on
Harrington’s place in the classical republican tradition (as for example, the extent to which
his mechanistic institutionalism displaced more traditional republican accounts of civic
virtue).3
Although widely accepted, the standard reading is seriously incomplete. For example, it
is puzzling on this reading why Harrington should single out Thomas Hobbes – whom he
explicitly attacks nearly a dozen times in the first part of the ‘Preliminaries’ of Oceana alone
– as his chief opponent. To begin with, Hobbes never claimed that a commonwealth was
impossible in England; in fact, especially in the context of the so-called Engagement
Controversy, he could easily be understood (and sometimes was understood, as we shall see)
as supporting obedience to the de facto commonwealth government. Nor, for that matter,
does anything in Hobbes’ views fundamentally contradict the underlying economic theory
of politics advanced by Harrington: the two could, without much difficulty, be presented as
mutually supporting one another. Indeed, one astute contemporary reader noted that
‘though Mr Harrington professes a great Enmity to Mr Hobs’, he nevertheless ‘holds a
correspondence with him, and does silently swallow down such Notions as Mr Hobs hath
chewed for him’ ( Wren, 1657, p. 41).4 Thus it should not surprise us, perhaps, when some
recent commentators suggest that the blistering anti-Hobbes rhetoric in Oceana is ‘dishon-
est’, and that in advancing what are essentially Hobbesian ideas under the ‘loose sheepskin
cover’ of republicanism, Harrington effects ‘a deliberate subversion of classical republican-
ism’ (Scott, 1993, p. 158, p. 141, p. 146, respectively; compare Parkin, 2007, pp. 177–85; Rahe,
2008, ch. 11).
This last claim, in my view, cannot be correct. To demonstrate that it cannot, I will here
examine a relatively neglected aspect of Oceana with the aim of substantially reorienting the
standard reading, and thus resolving such puzzles to which, in its present form, it has given
rise. Curiously, this neglected aspect of the text is no minor or trivial detail, but rather a
theoretical distinction that Harrington himself regards as central to his aims: namely, the
sharp contrast drawn between those communities organized as an ‘empire of laws’ and those
organized as an ‘empire of men’ (Harrington, 1977 [1656], p. 161 and passim). Once the role
of this distinction in Harrington’s thinking is adequately understood, some otherwise
curious and apparently jumbled aspects of his political ideas fall rather more neatly into
place. As it turns out, Harrington strikes upon a deep problem, not noticed by previous
republican authors, but nevertheless lying at the very core of republican theory – namely,
the problem of understanding how a free republic is even conceptually possible. With
respect to addressing this important problem, Hobbes is precisely Harrington’s most
relevant antagonist, for Hobbes challenged the republican ideal not merely on the pragmatic
grounds of political instability, but also more seriously on the theoretical grounds of
conceptual incoherence.
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2012, 60(1)
H A R R I N G TO N ’ S E M P I R E O F L AW
61
Remarkably, Harrington more or less successfully answers Hobbes’ challenge, though
without fully articulating the solution in Oceana. Only later, in response to his critics, did
Harrington finally begin to work out the solution in more explicit detail: his answer, as we
shall see, involves a new understanding of the nature of political community as resting on
convention rather than personal rule. That his many readers have not fully appreciated this
aspect of Oceana is, no doubt, partly the fault of Harrington himself: his baroque prose lacks
either the articulate style of Milton or the analytical rigor of Hobbes.5 Examining it in detail
here is interesting both in its own right, in so far as it sheds light on some central issues in
republican theory, and in the renewed historical appreciation it brings to our reading of
Harrington as well.
Hobbes’ Challenge
When Hobbes published his Leviathan in the spring of 1651, the broad outlines of his
political doctrines were already familiar to many readers from his De corpore politico, which
had appeared the previous year.6 The latter was awarded an even broader audience when
substantial extracts appeared in October of 1650, appended to the second edition of
Marchamont Nedham’s Case of the Commonwealth of England, Stated. Although certainly
known to have royalist sympathies, Hobbes – together with Nedham,Anthony Ascham and
some other parliamentary apologists – was generally understood to believe that whatever
government actually holds power in a community has the de facto right to demand
submission and obedience of the people, regardless of whether it happens to have a strictly
legal title to rule or not. The commonwealth government, having defeated and executed
Charles I, clearly held the balance of power in January 1650 when it demanded that all
English men over the age of eighteen subscribe to an Engagement Oath of allegiance to the
new regime. The de facto theorists, in this context, were read as encouraging the demanded
submission.7
Hobbes did...
To continue reading
Request your trial