James
Harrington
born
Jan. 7, 1611, Upton, Northamptonshire, Eng.
died Sept. 11, 1677, London
English
political philosopher whose major work, The
Common-wealth of Oceana (1656), was a
restatement of Aristotle’s theory of
constitutional stability and revolution.
Although Harrington was sympathetic to
republicanism, he was a devoted friend of King
Charles I and was briefly imprisoned shortly
before the King was executed in 1649 in the
course of the English Civil War. His views did
not favourably impress Oliver Cromwell, lord
protector (1653–58) during the Commonwealth;
Oceana was seized from its printer, and the
intervention of Cromwell’s daughter Elizabeth
(Mrs. John Claypoole) was required to release
the book for publication. Imprisoned in the
early 1660s on a dubious charge of plotting
against the restored monarchy under Charles II,
Harrington was freed after his physical and
mental health had been permanently impaired.
Oceana
presents Harrington’s vision of the ideal
state—an aristocracy of limited, balanced
powers. Harrington believed that democracy is
most stable where a strong middle class exists
and that revolution is a consequence of the
separation of economic and political power.
These beliefs particularly influenced U.S. Pres.
Thomas Jefferson’s democratic agrarianism and
the antitrust policies of Theodore Roosevelt and
Woodrow Wilson. Harrington also advocated the
division of the country into landholdings of a
specified maximum value, a referendum on each
law proposed by the legislature, and a
complicated scheme of rotation for public
officials. His ideas are said to have been
partly responsible for such U.S. political
developments as written constitutions, bicameral
legislatures, and the indirect election of the
president.
An
edition of Oceana prepared by Sten Bodvar
Liljegren appeared in 1924.
