History of the English People, Volume VI: Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683Green, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume VI: Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
The impulse which was carrying religious speculation into regions
hitherto strange to it told equally on political and social inquiry. The
researches of Sir Josiah Child, and still more of Sir William Petty, not
only threw light on the actual state of English trade but pointed
forward to the future science of Political Economy. For the moment
however philosophical speculation on the nature of government eclipsed
the interest of statistical research. Though the Restoration brought
Hobbes a pension his two great works were condemned by Parliament, and
Hobbism became ere he died a popular synonym for political as well as
religious immorality. But in spite of the bitter resistance offered to
it his assertion of a rational method of political inquiry superseded
more and more the older doctrines of a religious and traditional polity.
After Clarendon no English statesman really believed in any divine right
of the sovereign he served; and Charles himself probably believed it
still less than his ministers. The fiction of a contract between
governor and governed, on which Hobbes built up his theory of a state,
passed silently into general acceptance. John Locke, the foremost
political thinker of the Restoration, derived political authority like
Hobbes from the consent of the governed, and adopted the common weal as
the end of government. But the practical temper of the time moulded the
new theory into a form which contrasted strangely with that given to it
by its first inventor. The political philosophy of Locke indeed was
little more than a formal statement of the conclusions which the bulk of
Englishmen had drawn from the great struggle of the Civil War. In his
theory the people remain passively in possession of the power which they
have delegated to the Prince, and have the right to withdraw it if it
be used for purposes inconsistent with the end which society was formed
to promote. To the origin of all power in the people, and the end of all
power for the people's good--the two great doctrines of Hobbes--Locke
added the right of resistance, the responsibility of princes to their
subjects for a due execution of their trust, and the supremacy of
legislative assemblies as expressing the voice of the people itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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