ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the trace of the influence of Harrington's ideas in eighteenth-century France by means of three case studies. However, before doing so a little more needs to be said about nature of Harrington's republicanism and why his ideas proved so amenable to being adapted to circumstances very different from those for which they had been designed. The declaration of the First French Republic in September 1792, and the bout of constitution-building that followed, rendered Harrington's ideas of even greater relevance, and it perhaps not surprising that Rutledge, Aubert de Vitry and others continued to advocate Harrington's ideas after that point. Rutledge's friend Theodore Le Sueur presented several Harringtonian works, including a draft constitution modelled on Oceana, to National Assembly in response to their call for constitutional proposals. The main reason for Huguenot neglect of Harrington was probably that they interested in English republicanism primarily for its use of resistance theory, and this element was missing from Harrington's works.
