ABSTRACT
All four of these English writers set forth philosophies of universal natural rights as opposed to the limited notion of the rights of Englishmen. Theirs was a republicanism without borders: they supported the American Revolution and then the French. To protect themselves from the charge that they were dangerous radicals, they adopted Montesquieu’s notion that England was a “republic hidden under the form of a monarchy.” Their self-defined mission was to enhance the republican element. Of their number only Tom Paine was willing to step forward as a republican totally opposed to monarchy. As contrasted with Paine’s claim that the past was best forgotten, Macaulay thought it necessary to write a history of England that offered a sharp contrast with David Hume’s conservative interpretation as set forth in his History of England. Where he was intent on portraying the republican period of the seventeenth century in the worst possible light, she wrote in praise of what she regarded as an abbreviated but admirable example of the possibilities of a natural rights republic.
