ABSTRACT
In 1656 James Harrington, Parliamentarian officer and allocated companion of Charles I during his captivity, a man regarded by his contemporaries as more brilliant in his views than weighty in his judgements, wrote The Commonwealth of Oceana. He deliberately bases himself on tradition in political science—the traditions of Aristotle and Machiavelli, “the only politician of later ages.” From Aristotle he takes his first principle of government that it must be—as against the opposite thesis which he ascribes to Hobbes—“the empire of laws and not of men,” what has irreverently been called the rule of “Judge & Co.” It is, as we have seen, also the thesis of Locke; but Harrington is rather the would-be political scientist than the political philosopher and propagandist, and in the succession that passes on to Montesquieu rather than to Locke. His reference to the political scientist of Malmesbury is significant as coming from a practising Parliamentarian: “I believe that Mr. Hobbes is, and in future ages will be accounted, the best writer in this day in the world.”
