Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- Part II The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination
- 10 The shape of the English revolution
- 11 Radical reformation (1): the power of love
- 12 Radical reformation (2): outward bondage
- 13 Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
- 14 Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
- 15 Radical restoration (1): ‘the subjected Plaine’
- 16 Radical restoration (2): the old cause
- Part III Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding
- Sources cited
- Index
14 - Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- Part II The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination
- 10 The shape of the English revolution
- 11 Radical reformation (1): the power of love
- 12 Radical reformation (2): outward bondage
- 13 Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
- 14 Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
- 15 Radical restoration (1): ‘the subjected Plaine’
- 16 Radical restoration (2): the old cause
- Part III Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding
- Sources cited
- Index
Summary
Children should bee educated and instructed in the Principles of Freedom.
Marchamont Nedham, in Mercurius Politicus (1652)The spirit of the people is no wise to be trusted with their liberty, but by stated laws or orders; so the trust is not in the spirit of the people, but in the frame of those orders.
James Harrington, Oceana (1656)THE REPUBLICAN POLITICS OF VIRTUE
In general English republicanism defined itself in relation not to constitutional structures but moral principles. These were what Sidney called those
universal rules … from which men ought never to depart … and wise legislators, adhering to them only, will be ready to change all others, as occasion may require, in order to the public good. This we may learn from Moses, who laying the foundation of the law … in that justice, charity and truth, which having its root in God is subject to no change, left them the liberty of [ordering all other things] … as best pleased themselves.
These were like those principles of which Nedham spoke when he explained in Mercurius Politicus that ‘Children should bee educated … in the Principles of Freedom’; Milton when he praised ‘fortitude and love of freedom … wisdom … valour, justice [and] constancy’; and Vane when he wrote to Harrington to ‘join … in witness with you … unto those principles of common right and freedom, that must be provided for in whatsoever frame of government it be’. These constituted the moral philosophy of English republicanism; that is to say, the positive moral good republicanism proposed to itself.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- England's TroublesSeventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, pp. 317 - 341Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000