Five-minute digest
The Commonwealth of Oceana
Summary
The Commonwealth of Oceana, published in London in 1656 during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, is a model constitution for a republic set in an island called Oceana, which is England under a thin disguise. Scotland is Marpesia, Ireland Panopea, London Emporium, and Cromwell himself appears as Olphaus Megaletor, the Lord Archon or sole legislator who founds the commonwealth and then gives up his power. Harrington dedicated the book to the Protector; the printing was seized at one point and, according to the story told in the library edition's introduction, released after Harrington appealed to Cromwell's daughter Lady Claypole. The library text is Henry Morley's Universal Library edition of 1887, with Morley's biographical introduction. The Preliminaries lay down the principles. Following the Venetian writer Giannotti, Harrington contrasts ancient prudence, government by laws for the common interest, which God first showed in the commonwealth of Israel and which Greece, Rome and Venice followed, with modern prudence, the rule of one or a few for private interest that began with the barbarian conquest of Rome. His central claim is that political power follows the balance of property, chiefly land: where one man owns most land there is absolute monarchy, where a few do there is a mixed monarchy of king and nobles, and where the people do there is a commonwealth. Against Hobbes, whom he calls Leviathan, he defends the ancient maxim that a commonwealth should be an empire of laws and not of men, and he finds its secret in two girls sharing a cake: one divides and the other chooses. In a commonwealth the senate, the natural aristocracy of wisdom, debates and proposes; the people resolve; the magistrates execute. The second part of the Preliminaries explains the English civil war as the result of a long shift in landholding. The statutes of Henry VII (Panurgus) and the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII (Coraunus) moved land from the nobility to the commons, so that the old monarchy lost its foundation and fell. The Council of Legislators and the Model then build the new commonwealth in thirty numbered orders, with speeches by the Archon and his councillors. An agrarian law prevents any family from holding land worth more than £2,000 a year, chiefly by dividing estates among sons. Citizens are grouped by parishes, hundreds and fifty tribes, and elect a senate of three hundred and a popular assembly, the prerogative tribe, by an elaborate Venetian ballot of gold and silver balls; a third of each body retires every year in rotation. Councils manage state, war, religion and trade, liberty of conscience is allowed beside a national church, and the youth are educated and trained for a citizen militia. The Corollary shows the commonwealth at work and ends with the Archon's peaceful old age, death and the people's mourning.
Top Lessons
Power follows property
Harrington's distinctive claim is that a government's form depends on who owns the land. Laws and constitutions that do not match the distribution of property will not last. To keep a commonwealth stable, the founder must set the balance of property and keep it fixed by law.
Divide and choose
Two girls sharing a cake show the secret of a just commonwealth: if one divides and the other chooses, the divider has every reason to be fair. Harrington builds his constitution on this idea, giving a senate of the wise the power to propose and the people the power to decide.
Rotation keeps office from becoming property
Harrington requires that a third of every elected body leave office each year and that officers wait before being chosen again. Rotation, with the secret ballot, keeps a constant flow of new citizens into government and prevents any group from making office its possession.
A founder who lays down power
The Lord Archon gathers sole legislative power, uses it to establish a free commonwealth, and then resigns it. Harrington presents this as the greatest act of a founder, modelled on Lycurgus and Timoleon, and offered as counsel to Cromwell, who held power at the time.
Verified Quotes
“government (to define it de jure, or according to ancient prudence) is an art whereby a civil society of men is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common right or interest; or, to follow Aristotle and Livy, it is the empire of laws, and not of men.”
“as is the proportion or balance of dominion or property in land, such is the nature of the empire.”
“But without an agrarian law, government, whether monarchical, aristocratical, or popular, has no long lease.”
“the whole mystery of a commonwealth, which lies only in dividing and choosing.”
“Dividing and choosing, in the language of a commonwealth, is debating and resolving”
“The wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind; but the interest of the few is not the profit of mankind nor of a commonwealth.”
“An equal commonwealth (by that which has been said) is a government established upon an equal agrarian, arising into 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 the ballot.”
“Which is as if a man should tell famous Harvey that he transcribed his circulation of the blood, not out of the principles of nature, but out of the anatomy of this or that body.”
Medical Lens
Harrington thought of politics as an anatomy of the body politic, and William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood (1628) is his model of a science drawn from nature rather than from particular cases. In the Preliminaries he compares the principles of ancient prudence to Harvey's circulation, and in the Model he describes the Parliament of Oceana as a heart of two ventricles that draws in and sends out the vital blood of the nation in perpetual circulation. The agrarian law is defended as a dangerous but necessary cure for a desperate disease, and the comic Epimonus mocks the ballot as pills sold by quacksalvers. Morley's introduction records that in prison on St Nicholas Island and at Plymouth Harrington suffered from scurvy and then from mental breakdown, and that he later wrote to prove that those who thought him mad were mad themselves; other biographers add delusions about his body. Any retrospective diagnosis would be interpretive.
- Part I, The Preliminaries (reply to Leviathan)
Political principles compared with Harvey's circulation of the blood, discovered from nature and not from the anatomy of a single body.
- Part III, The Model (discourse on the Parliament)
The Parliament likened to a heart with two ventricles circulating the vital blood of Oceana.
- Part III, The Model (debate on the ballot and agrarian)
Epimonus's speech on urns, balls and the pills of quacksalvers; the agrarian as the cure of a desperate disease.
- Morley's Introduction
Harrington's imprisonment, scurvy, mental breakdown, later gout and palsy.