“Have I injured you?”
“Not at all! but your father has stolen my child, and then you would have interceded for its restoration.”
The parable of the parental author was easily explained; the pleasing manners of the elegant cavalier, which were not commonly seen in the new court of the protectorate, doubtless assisted the petitioner with the recent princess of the revolution. “Are you sure,” she earnestly inquired, “that your book contains nothing against my father’s government?”
“It is a political romance! to be dedicated to your father, and the first copy to be opened by yourself.”
Lady Claypole conceived there could not be any treason in a romance. She persuaded Oliver to look it over himself; the Protector, who there found himself as “the Lord Archon of Oceana,” and probably with his sharp judgment deeming the whole a “romance,” returned it, drily observing, that “the power which he had got by the sword he would not quit for a little paper-shot:” but he added, with his accustomed sanctimonious policy, that “he as little approved as the gentleman of the government of a single person, but that he had been compelled to take the office of High-Constable to preserve the peace among all parties who could never agree among themselves.”
“Oceana” was published at a crisis when the people were still to be enchanted by the name of “Commonwealth,” though they began to think that they had been mistaken in their choice, since their grievances had been heavier than under the old monarchy which they had dissolved. Harrington familiarly compared their present unquiet state to that of a company of puppy-dogs cramped up in a bag, when finding themselves ill at ease for want of room, every one of them bites the tail or the foot of his neighbour, supposing that to be the source of his misery. To such a restless people, a continual change of rulers on the rotatory system seemed a great relief; any worse than their present masters they would not suppose. “The Rota” of Harrington became so popular, that a club was established bearing its name; and they held their debates every evening with doors open for auditors or orators.
This political club was the resort of the finest geniuses of the age, many of whom have left their eminent names in our history and our literature. The members sat at a circular table—the table of ancient knighthood and modern equality, which left a passage open within its circuit to have their coffee delivered hot without any interruption to the speaker or “the state of the nation.” A contemporary assures us that these debates were more ingenious and spirited than he had ever heard, and that those in parliament were flat to them. Every decision how affairs should be carried was left to the balloting-box—“a box in which there is no cogging,” observes the master-genius of “the Rota.”
This “balloting” and the principle of “rotation” were hateful to the parliamentarians; for, as we are told, “they were cursed tyrants, in love with their power, and this was death to them.” Henry Neville, the author of “Plato Redivivus,” the constant associate of Harrington, and who, Hobbes (alluding to the “Oceana”) said, “had a finger in the pye,” had the boldness to propose the system of “rotation” to the House, warning them that, if they did not accept that model of government, they would shortly fall into ruins. In their then ticklish condition, the House had the decency to return their thanks, and the intrepidity to keep their places.
This perfectioned model of a government, when opened for the inspection of mankind, exhibited a glorious framework; but it seemed questionable whether this political clockwork or intellectual mechanism could perform its exact librations, depending on a number of “balances” to preserve its nice equilibrium; and whether it could last for perpetuity by that “rotatory” motion by wheels which were never to cease. Some objected, that the author in the science of politics had been fascinated, as some in mechanics, who imagined that they had discovered “the perpetual motion.” But this objection the constructor of this “political architecture” indignantly rejected. He knew that the capacity of matter can only work as long as it lasts, and therefore there can be no perpetual motion; but “the mathematician must not take God to be such as he is. The equal commonwealth is built up by the understandings of the people. Now the people never die—they are not brute matter. This movement of theirs comes from the hands of the Eternal Mover, even God himself.”