Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Reexamining the Roots of Anglo-American Political Thought
- PART ONE THE DIVINE RIGHT CHALLENGE TO NATURAL LIBERTY
- PART TWO THE WHIG POLITICS OF LIBERTY IN ENGLAND
- 4 James Tyrrell: The Voice of Moderate Whiggism
- 5 The Pufendorfian Moment: Moderate Whig Sovereignty Theory
- 6 Algernon Sidney and the Old Republicanisms
- 7 A New Republican England
- 8 Natural Rights in Locke's Two Treatises
- 9 Lockean Liberal Constitutionalism
- 10 The Glorious Revolution and the Catonic Response
- 11 Eighteenth-Century British Constitutionalism
- PART THREE THE WHIG LEGACY IN AMERICA
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Pufendorfian Moment: Moderate Whig Sovereignty Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Reexamining the Roots of Anglo-American Political Thought
- PART ONE THE DIVINE RIGHT CHALLENGE TO NATURAL LIBERTY
- PART TWO THE WHIG POLITICS OF LIBERTY IN ENGLAND
- 4 James Tyrrell: The Voice of Moderate Whiggism
- 5 The Pufendorfian Moment: Moderate Whig Sovereignty Theory
- 6 Algernon Sidney and the Old Republicanisms
- 7 A New Republican England
- 8 Natural Rights in Locke's Two Treatises
- 9 Lockean Liberal Constitutionalism
- 10 The Glorious Revolution and the Catonic Response
- 11 Eighteenth-Century British Constitutionalism
- PART THREE THE WHIG LEGACY IN AMERICA
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Although he was a committed Whig and an ardent opponent of Stuart pretensions to arbitrary rule, Tyrrell's philosophical and constitutional position displays an abiding moderation. Moderate Whigs like Tyrrell did not advocate dramatic constitutional reform in England. He is careful to emphasize that a rejection of divine right absolutism does not amount to an endorsement of popular sovereignty or democracy. He openly professes his admiration for monarchy, calling it “that Government which tempered by known Laws, I take to be the best in the world.” Tyrrell distances himself from the radical parliamentary position in “the late unhappy times” of the English civil war, and even concedes that Filmer's arguments may have been defensible in the cause of preserving the “then Majesties lawful and just Rights” against the “domineering faction” that seized rule and the “divers levelling notions then too much in fashion.” Tyrrell suggests that Filmer's extreme arguments were a typical feature of a turbulent time. He presents his own moderate Whig argument as a mean between the two extremes of lawlessness reflected in the Scylla and Charibdes represented by divine right absolutism and unchecked parliamentary democracy. As a defender of “Government establisht by law,” Tyrrell pits himself against the common desire of both divine rightists and extreme parliamentarians “to alter that Government, and give up those Privileges which their Ancestors were so careful to preserve and deliver down to Posterity.
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- Information
- The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America , pp. 133 - 151Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004