ABSTRACT
it has been the misfortune of many prophetic thinkers that the times which followed them were allergic to their work. In this way, original ideas can be temporarily submerged; and though future ages will certainly revive them, if they are valid, the personal credit for their earlier discovery is usually forgotten. Such a one was John Millar, Professor of Law in Glasgow University from 1761 to 1801. In his earlier work—The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771, 150 pp.)—basing on his legal knowledge, he produced a first draft of nineteenth century sociology, in which he developed such ideas as mother and father right, class formation, power as based on property, defining and annotating them scientifically. In his much more massive work—An Historical View of English Government (1787, republished 1803 in four volumes)—he stakes a strong claim to have given us the first specifically constitutional history of England, interweaving with this theme the philosophical social overtones characteristic of the eighteenth century. Thus the growing definition of social institutions shines through the careers of princes and Westminster statues, and it is the former that remains in our memory as the deposit reflecting social opinion.
