The Commonwealth of Oceana | Page 6

of the sincerest nature, who never had concealed
his thoughts or actions. "Why," he was asked, at his first examination
by Lord Lauderdale, who was one of his kinsmen, "why did he, as a
private man, meddle with politics? What had a private man to do with
government?" His answer was: "My lord, there is not any public person,
nor any magistrate, that has written on politics, worth a button. All they
that have been excellent in this way have been private men, as private
men, my lord, as myself. There is Plato, there is Aristotle, there is Livy,

there is Machiavel. My lord, I can sum up Aristotle's ' Politics in a very
few words: he says, there is the Barbarous Monarchy-such a one where
the people have 110 votes in making the laws; he says, there is the
Heroic Monarchy-such a one where the people have their votes in
making the laws; and then, he says, there is Democracy, and affirms
that a man cannot be said to have liberty but in a democracy only."
Lord Lauderdale here showing impatience, Harrington added: "I say
Aristotle says so. I have not said so much. And under what prince was
it? Was it not under Alexander, the greatest prince then in the world? I
beseech you, my lord, did Alexander hang up Aristotle? did he molest
him? Livy, for a commonwealth, is one of the fullest authors; did not
he write under Augustus Caesar? Did Caesar hang up Livy? did he
molest him? Machiavel, what a commonwealthsman was he! but he
wrote under the Medici when they were princes in Florence: did they
hang up Machiavel, or did they molest him? I have done no otherwise
than as the greatest politicians: the King will do no otherwise than as
the greatest princes."
That was too much to hope, even in a dream, of the low-minded
Charles II. Harrington could not obtain even the show of justice in a
public trial. He was kept five months an untried prisoner in the Tower,
only sheltered from daily brutalities by bribe to the lieutenant. When
his habeas corpus had been moved for, it was at first flatly refused;. and
when it had been granted, Harrington was smuggled away from the
Tower between one and two o'clock in the morning, and carried on
board a ship that took him to closer imprisonment on St. Nicholas
Island, opposite Plymouth. There his health suffered seriously, and his
family obtained his removal to imprisonment in Plymouth by giving a
bond of œ5,000 as sureties against his escape. In Plymouth, Harrington
suffered from scurvy, and at last he became insane.
When he had been made a complete wreck in body and in -mind, his
gracious Majesty restored Harrington to his family. He never recovered
health, but still occupied himself much with his pen, writing, among
other things, a serious argument to prove that they were themselves
mad who thought him so.

In those last days of his shattered life James Harrington married an old
friend of the family, a witty lady, daughter of Sir Marmaduke Dorrell,
of Buckinghamshire. Gout was added to his troubles ; then lie was
palsied ; and he died at Westminster, at the age of sixty-six, on
September 11, 1677. He was buried in St. Margaret's Church, by the
grave of Sir Walter Raleigh, on the south side of the altar.
H. M.
OCEANA

Part I
THE PRELIMINARIES
Showing the Principles of Government
JANOTTI, the most excellent describer of the Commonwealth of
Venice, divides the whole series of government into two times or
periods: the one ending with the liberty of Rome, which was the course
or empire, as I may call it, of ancient prudence, first discovered to
mankind by God himself in the fabric of the commonwealth of Israel,
and afterward picked out of his footsteps in nature, and unanimously
followed by the Greeks and Romans; the other beginning with the arms
of Caesar, which, extinguishing liberty, were the transition of ancient
into modern prudence, introduced by those inundations of Huns, Goths,
Vandals, Lombards, Saxons, which, breaking the Roman Empire,
deformed the whole face of the world with those ill-features of
government, which at this time are become far worse in these western
parts, except Venice, which, escaping the hands of the barbarians by
virtue of its impregnable situation, has had its eye fixed upon ancient
prudence, and is attained to a perfection even beyond the copy.
Relation being had to these two times, government (to define it de jure,
or according to ancient prudence) is an art whereby a civil society of

men is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common right
or interest; or, to follow Aristotle and Livy, it is the empire of laws, and
not of men.
And government