James Harrington

James Harrington (1611-1677), English political philosopher, whose The Commonwealth of Oceana, published in 1656, is one of the central texts of the English republican tradition.

Very little beyond the broad outlines is known about Harrington’s life. He was probably born on January 3, 1611, in Northamptonshire, into the country gentry. In 1629 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1631 was admitted to the Middle Temple Inn of Court. Around this period he travelled through continental Europe, visiting the Netherlands, Rome, and Venice, the republican government of which was an influence on his political thinking. In 1647, perhaps through the patronage of a cousin, Harrington became a gentleman of the bedchamber to King Charles I, at that time in captivity (see English Civil War). He remained with Charles during his confinement at both Hampton Court and Carisbrooke Castle, on the Isle of Wight. Little is known about Harrington’s activities after the execution of Charles I on January 30, 1649, but the immediate political problem that this act posed—on what basis the victorious anti-royal forces in the civil war could command loyalty—was the basis of a political debate to which Harrington made an original and compelling contribution. He seems to have started writing The Commonwealth of Oceana in 1654, shortly after Oliver Cromwell (to whom the book was dedicated) took the title Lord Protector. The offence this caused to republican feeling in the army may have been the prompt for Harrington to begin work on his book. Although he was initially left in peace at the Restoration, in December 1661 Harrington was arrested and imprisoned at Plymouth. He seems to have suffered some form of nervous breakdown while in captivity, and was released the following year. He died on September 11, 1677, in London.

The Commonwealth of Oceana presents a fictionalized vision of England as a republic, seeking to explain the recent events that had brought down the monarchy, and to provide a model for how a republic should be constituted. Harrington’s starting points for his analysis were Plato and Niccolò Machiavelli, with their descriptions of ideal republics, rather than the familiar terms of common law and natural law. He linked political power to the ownership of property, stating that where all property is owned by a single individual, monarchy is the resulting political system, and where property is owned by independent proprietors, a republic is the only possible form of government. He explained the outcome of the English Civil War as a result of social change, with power, in the form of armies, shifting from the monarchy and the aristocracy to independent proprietors. Harrington gave himself the task of explaining what kind of political structure should now govern England. The guiding principle of the commonwealth that Harrington describes is that of “dividing and choosing”. Oceana is governed by a senate that discusses great issues of state and presents options to a lower chamber, which votes on them in silence, a procedure he likened to two girls dividing a cake: “that each of them therefore may have that which is due, ‘Divide’, says one unto the other, ‘and I will choose; or let me divide, and you choose.’” For Harrington this was a way of ensuring that the commonwealth was governed by reason, and not by selfish passion. The extent to which Harrington was describing an ideal republic, in the manner of Plato, or a system that would simply prevent humans pursuing their owns ends in the interests of the common good, is a point still debated by students of Harrington’s work.

As well as in The Commonwealth of Oceana, Harrington expressed his ideas in The Prerogative of Popular Government, The Art of Lawgiving, and A System of Politics. His works were edited and published by the Irish philosopher John Toland in 1770.