It is usual to observe that there is nothing republican in Algernon Sidney's Discourses concerning government that Milton did not better express; nothing institutional that Harrington did not better imagine; no theoretical or polemic point that Locke did not better conceive and argue. Granted such a dearth of originality in Sidney's case, there yet remains an achievement peculiar to his writings which perhaps Locke alone comes anywhere near approaching. This achievement has to do with ethopoeia or self-representation, an ineradicable dimension of all political activity, yet somehow hidden from our discussions of political philosophy. Sidney and Locke (and Hobbes a bit more slyly) recognize that political ideas most obviously do not operate in a vacuum, but must make their way through a maze of human habit and history, sentiment and experience, which comprise the very stuff of political practice. That is to say, for any idea of government to be understood and embraced, it must be found personable, sociable – congenial to the beliefs and aspirations, apt and timely to the needs, of the community to which it is addressed. Such civility is properly exercised by the author, whose formulations convey something more than an intellectual position, because the way in which a political argument is conducted not only implicates the character of the person making it but the nature of the society to which we are enjoined.