Report Template - Jubilee Centre

ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS
Harrington also claimed from 1 Chronicles 25:1 that
the representative capacity of the congregation extended
to the election of “priests, officers and magistrates.”
Even King Solomon and Zadok the priest were
established in their offices through the congregation of
Israel. 146
The Rotation of Israel’s Prerogative
Paralleled in Oceana
Like the agrarian, rotation represents a fundamental law
of Oceana intended to insure that the common interest
of the people is maintained through a smooth
succession of rulers by including the entire body of
people in the process as Israel’s rotation did. 147
Harrington extracted the legislative authority of result
and confirmation out of Israel’s congregation. The
24,000 member representative corresponds to Oceana’s
constituency of representatives chosen at the local level
of parish elections. Just as Israel, through her popular
body of armed men, elected magistrates at every level, so
too does Oceana through a series of coordinate electoral
steps beginning with the parishes, who chose “wise and
discerning” leaders. Oceana’s parish system, which
Harrington suggested could consist of fifty shires, or
parishes, was the smallest electoral unit, and hence akin
to Israel’s tribe, her smallest electoral unit. The shires
elected officials not only to their representative
assembly, but also to the senate and the judiciary, just as
he claimed Israel’s tribal representative elected all her
magistrates as it cycled through its monthly rotation.
Just as every military man in Israel who participated as a
ruler left the prerogative experienced, and ready to
stand again at another point in the cycle, so too would
those in Oceana. 148
Disintegration of Israel’s Orders: Period
of the Judges and Monarchy
Dissolution of the Sanhedrin and Jethronian
Judges
Harrington’s disregard for monarchy is evidenced in his
analysis of Israel’s careless neglect “of the excellent
orders of their commonwealth, given by God.” In his
rebuttals to Henry Ferne’s insistence of the advantages
of monarchy in Pian piano (1656), Harrington explained
that Israel initially abandoned these orders of the Senate
Sanhedrin and lower courts after the death of Joshua
and the original court elders. The Hebrew
Commonwealth deteriorated into dictatorial judgeships
and civil anarchy, and her state of affairs, coupled with
the corrupt judgeship of Samuel’s sons, “was the true
cause why the people chose to have a king and so fell
into monarchy, under which they fared worse.” 149
Israel’s failure to completely rid Canaan of their
enemies weakened their commonwealth foundations,
“came now to fail also in her superstructures.” Without
an elected senate, Israel’s tribes lacked “any common
ligament” which resulted in tribal leagues and intertribal
war, and provided fertile ground for a ruling
figure such as the “judge of Israel.” 150 The frequent
phrases in Judges that “there was no king in Israel: every
man did that which was right in his own eyes,” simply meant
that “there was neither Sanhedrim nor judge in Israel;
so every man, or at least every tribe, governed herself as
she pleased.” 151
God: Israel’s Original but Rejected King
Harrington’s position on Israel’s improvident
institution of monarchy intersects with his republican
interpretation of 1 Samuel 8:6-7 and
Deuteronomy 17:14-20.
Harrington insisted that Exodus 19:5 established God
as Israel’s original King, not Moses, “his sole legislator.”
God instructed Moses to propose unto the people,
saying, “Thus shalt thou say unto the house of Jacob, and tell
the children of Israel, . . . Now therefore if you will obey my
voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then you shall be unto me
a kingdom of priests.” All of Israel “answered together (gave
their suffrage, . . .) and said, All that the Lord hath spoken
we will do; and Moses returned the words (that is, the
suffrage, or result) of the people unto the Lord.” From this
Harrington concluded that “God was the king in Israel
by covenant, which he proposed by himself or his
servant Moses, and resolved by the people.” 152
1 Samuel 8:6-7 evidenced Israel’s subsequent rejection
of God, their original King, and proved their
prerogative of power to repudiate proposed law, even
which they had “resolved” upon. Rejecting God in this
manner meant “the people must have had power to
have rejected anything that was proposed, and not
confirmed by them.” 153 If such a privilege extended to
all laws which God proposed, then God’s response to
Israel’s rejection of His authority modelled Israel’s
power of result to depose of earthly magistrates as well;
“to reject him, that he should not reign over them, was
as civil magistrate to depose him.” Israel’s rejection of
146
Harrington, Prerogative, 475.
147
Harrington, Oceana, 181.
148
Harrington, See Art, 635; The rota or a model of a free state or
equal commonwealth (London, 1660), 809; The ways and means
whereby an equal or lasting commonwealth may be suddenly introduced
(London, 1660), 824.
149
Harrington, Pian piano (London, 1656), 378.
150
Harrington, Art, 638.
151
Ibid., 639.
152
Harrington, Pian piano, 374; See Oceana, 175.
153
Ibid., 374.
29