ABSTRACT
On 17 March 1649, the English House of Commons passed an Act abolishing the monarchy, declaring that the office of a King is unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people. The image of England as a monarchical republic had by then become firmly entrenched in the whig canon, and in the works of such radical whigs as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon it was later to exercise a powerful influence in the American colonies. While England remained a monarchy, its new constitutional settlement allowed the people to enjoy the blessings of republican government with none of its disadvantages. Like other republican theorists, James Harrington concedes that the people cannot literally give their consent; they are too unwieldy a body to be assembled, and can hope to act through the medium of elected representatives. Unabashed by the scepticism of more conservatively-minded commentators, the eighteenth-century common wealthmen the spectacle of the monarchical republic finally enthroned.
