h a more perfect theory and
ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained
to the world. He had convinced himself "that no government is of so
accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine,
there being in societies natural causes producing their necessary
effects, as well as in the earth or the air"; and one of these
natural causes he had discovered in the great principle or axiom
"that Empire follows the Balance of Property." The troubles and
confusions In England for the last few ages were to be attributed, he
thought, not so much to faults in the governors or in the governed as
to a change in the balance of property, dating from the reign of
Henry VII., which had gradually shifted the weight of affairs from
the King and Lords to the Commons. But all could be put right by
adopting a true model. It must not be an arbitrary monarchy, or a
mixed monarchy, or a mere democracy as vulgarly understood, or any
other of the make-shift constitutions of the past, but something
worthy of being called a Free and Equal Commonwealth, and yet
conserving what was genuine and natural in rank or aristocracy. The
basis must be a systematic classification of the community in
accordance with facts and needs, and the arrangements such as to give
full liberty to all, while distributing power among all in such ways
and proportions as to keep the balance eternally even and make
factions and contests impossible. These arrangements, as he had
schemed them out, were to be very numerous and complicated, every
kind of social assemblage or activity, from the most local and
parochial to the most general and national, having an exact machinery
provided for it; but two all-pervading principles were to be election
by Ballot and rotation of Eligibility.--Harrington's ideal had been
set forth in a thin folio volume, entitled _The Commonwealth of
Oceana_, published in 1656, and dedicated to Cromwell. The book
was in the form of a political romance, with high-flown dialogues,
and a very fantastic nomenclature for his proposed dignities and
institutions, throwing the whole into the air of poetic or literary
whimsy. There was, however, an elaborate exposition of the system and
process of the Ballot. Though too fantastic for direct effect, the
book had been a good deal talked of, and had procured for the author
not only a considerable reputation, but also some following of
disciples. One of these, and his intimate fr