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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN: Principles of Ancient Government: Power and Authority Oceana’s most fundamental orders, power and authority, are integral to Harrington’s intricate analysis of his naturally derived popular commonwealth model. Authority represents the internal “goods of the mind” such as “natural or acquired virtues.” Power, which Harrington equates with empire, represents the external “goods of fortune” such as “riches,” the goods of the “body, as health, beauty, strength,” as well as landed property. 99 Domestic empire, or government, is established upon dominion defined as property in land, money, and goods. The proportioning of lands defines the balance of dominion, and hence the nature or structure of government. The balance of dominion, or its structural role, is the foundation of an empire or government. The form of government or the superstructure is dependent upon this division and distribution of property. This property-balance leads to either an “absolute monarchy” or a “government of servants,” an “aristocratical monarchy,” which is a “government of subjects,” or a “commonwealth,” which represents a “government of citizens,” like “those of Israel, of Rome, of Holland.” 100 Sole proprietorship of land, or its possession consigned to a few, overbalances the people in their ownership and defines the empire as either a monarchy or mixed monarchy. Conversely, if the people retain ownership of the land, the balance of dominion is united with them, resulting in a commonwealth. 101 Government, which is most “natural” to the foundations of any empire, rests entirely upon the division and allocation of property or land distribution; empire follows the “balance of property.” 102 Harrington interpreted England’s balance of dominion as resting with the people, leading him to conclude the need to transition to a commonwealth arrangement. Equality in the Foundation: The Balance of Dominion and the Law of the Agrarian If an empire is to sustain its existence it must establish a law fixing the balance in lands called an “agrarian.” The agrarian’s primary power is to stabilise and secure the frame of government. Not just any sort of agrarian law was desirable. Harrington advocated for Israel’s agrarian which was 99 Ibid., 163. 100 Harrington, Prerogative, 441. 101 Harrington, Oceana, 163-164. 102 Ibid., 164-165. “first introduced by God himself, who divided the land of Canaan unto his people by lots,” and secured popular government. Israel’s agrarian was “of such virtue that, wherever it hath held, that government hath not altered, except by consent; as in that unparalleled example of the people of Israel, when being in liberty they would needs choose a king.” 103 Israel’s agrarian law was also God inspired, administered by Him for His own people, and secured the Hebrew Commonwealth until the people’s remarkable request for a king. Israel’s agrarian, which evidenced equality in her political foundation, was incorporated into Oceana as a fundamental constitutional pillar. 104 Harrington reads 1 Samuel 8:19 as evidence of a negative alteration in Israel’s government, and nothing short of a civil blunder. Balance of Authority in the Commonwealth Structure: Debate and Result Authority, like power, must also be balanced. Unity between power and authority rests in the elevation of the common interests of man over the private interests of individuals and parties. Harrington divided man’s soul into the rivals of passion, whose reign results in “vice and the bondage of sin,” and reason, which “is virtue and the freedom of soul.” 105 Man’s soul (any man, not simply a saint) bears the image of God, 106 which resides as the empire of reason as opposed to passion. Consequently, an empire of laws, or rule of common reason, is to the liberty of a commonwealth as the reign of reason is to the liberty of the individual. Harrington now proceeds with his principles of debate and result in the commonwealth, or how laws are proposed, debated, and resolved. Only common reason can issue forth in virtuous laws. Harrington conceded a political difficulty: those proposing, debating, and resolving are mere men, who must overcome the tendency to prioritise their interests above the common good. 107 Harrington never asserted a doctrine of human depravity, commonly associated with his republican counterparts, to overcome this problem. Mere persuasion will not rid man of this propensity towards private interests or predispose him towards 103 Ibid., 164. 104 Harrington wrote a poem entitled “On the Political Balance,” in his An essay upon two of virgil’s eclogues (London, 1658), where he alludes to Israel’s rejection of God, and hence her original balance. 105 Harrington, Oceana, 169-170. 106 Harrington, A system of politics (London, 1661?), 837. 107 Harrington, Oceana, 171. 24
ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS choosing the public’s good. Passion must be subordinate to reason, which must be exalted “unto the throne of empire.” 108 For this to occur, “orders of government as, like those of God in nature” must be established. 109 These orders are the natural civil capacities of dividing and choosing, which Harrington claims God distributed among men. To demonstrate these orders, Harrington resorts to an unlikely illustration of a private and simple division of a cake between two girls, both of whom have an interest in acquiring as much of the cake as possible. 110 If they can agree from the outset that one will divide the cake and the other choose a piece, then both will receive an equal portion. Why? Regardless of who initiates the division, the parts will surely be equal because it is in the interest of the one dividing to make an equal division. If one girl divided the cake unequally she would most certainly forfeit the greater portion since it would be in the interest of the other to take the larger piece. An equal division insures that both parties will receive what is in their best interest, and hence common right. Harrington believed this simple illustration clarified “the whole mystery of a commonwealth, which lies only in dividing and choosing,” and part of God’s natural ordering. God “distributed” mankind “forever into two orders, whereof the one hath the natural right of dividing, and the other choosing.” 111 If this natural division could be institutionalised, authority would also be balanced. Constitutionally, “dividing and choosing, in the language of the commonwealth, is debating and resolving.” 112 Harrington claims that “the debate of the few” represents “the wisest debate,” and “the result of the many . . . is the wisest result.” God Himself “who doth nothing in vain,” actually “divided mankind unto the few, or the natural aristocracy, and the many, or the natural democracy.” 113 These natural orders translate institutionally into an aristocratic senate that debates and proposes laws and a democratic assembly that resolves and enacts them. 114 He summarises the essence of a commonwealth as consisting “of the senate proposing, the people resolving, and the magistracy executing, whereby partaking of the aristocracy as in the senate, of the democracy as in the people, and of monarchy as in the magistracy, it is complete.” 115 Equality in Commonwealth Structure: Rotation and the Election of Magistrates Rotation relates to the successive elections of magistrates, or alterations in the composition of rulers in the superstructures through popular suffrage and ballot, and guards against a “prolongation of magistracy.” Popular suffrage through “an equal rotation” transfers the equality established through the agrarian into “the branch, or exercise of sovereign power.” 116 Harrington summarises Oceana as an equal commonwealth, or “a government established upon an equal agrarian, arising unto the superstructures or three orders, the senate debating and proposing, the people resolving, and the magistracy executing by an equal rotation through the suffrage of the people given by ballot.” 117 Harrington concludes that his “reasoned” commonwealth, Oceana, represents “the first example of a commonwealth that is perfectly equal”; history does not evidence the existence of such a model. He does not consider Israel’s Commonwealth to have been completely equal since she lacked rotation in her Sanhedrin whose membership was established for life. But Oceana was equal in its entire constitution, or “equal both in the balance or foundation and in the superstructures,” meaning her “agrarian law and in her rotation.” 118 Together, they represent “the fundamental laws of Oceana, or the centre of this commonwealth.” 119 Writing Politics out of Israel: Moses’s Model Commonwealth Harrington confirms his natural orders scripturally from the Hebrew Commonwealth, which he meticulously details in chapter 2, Book 2 of The art of lawgiving, entitled “Showing What Commonwealth Israel Was.” His reading of Israel’s Polity is incorporated paradigmatically as a civil exemplar into the constitutional details of Oceana, though he never intended to assimilate every particular. 108 Harrington, Prerogative, 415. 109 Harrington, Oceana, 172. 110 See Prerogative, 415. 111 Harrington, Oceana, 172; See Prerogative, 416. 112 Ibid., 174; See Prerogative, 416. 113 Harrington, Prerogative, 416; See Oceana, 173. 114 Ibid., 417; See Oceana, 174. 115 Harrington, Oceana, 174. 116 Ibid., 181, 231; See Prerogative, 472. 117 Ibid., 181; See Prerogative, 424 and Art, 613. 118 Ibid., 184, 180. 119 Ibid., 231. 25
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