iend, was the Republican
free-thinker Henry Neville. There had also been some criticisms by
opponents, Royalist and Republican; in answer to which Harrington, in
1658, had published a second treatise, called _The Prerogative of
Popular Government_, re-interpreting and vindicating the doctrines
of the _Oceana_, but more in a style of direct
dissertation.--The Harringtonians were by this time pretty numerous.
Besides Neville there were perhaps six or eight of them among the
Rumpers themselves. Why, then, should there not be an effort to
impregnate the "Good Old Cause," sadly in need of new impregnation of
some kind, with a few of the essential Harringtonian principles? By
Neville's means the effort had been actually made in the Parliament.
On the 6th of July there had been presented a petition from "divers
well-affected persons," to which the petitioners "might have had many
thousand hands" besides their own, had they not preferred relying on
the inherent strength of their case. The answer of the House, through
the Speaker, had been most gracious. They perceived that this was a
petition "without any private ends and only for public interest"; and
they assured the petitioners that the business to which the petition
referred, viz. the settlement of a Constitution for the Commonwealth,
was one in which the House intended "to go forward." There is nothing
in the Journals to indicate the nature of the petition; but it had
been drawn up by Harrington and may be read in his Works. It abjured,
in the strongest terms, Kingship or Single-Person Sovereignty in any
form, and particularly "the interest of the late King's son"; but it
represented the existing state of things as chaotic, and urged the
adoption of a definite Constitution for England, the legislative
part of which should consist of two Parliamentary Houses, both to be
elected by the whole body of the People. One was to contain about 300
members, and was to have the power of debating and propounding laws;
the other was to be much larger, and was to pass or reject the laws
so propounded. Great stress was laid on Rotation in the elections to
both. "There cannot," said the petitioners, "be a union of the
interests of a whole nation in the Government where those that shall
sometimes govern be not also sometimes in the condition of the
governed"; and hence they proposed that annually a third part of each
of the two Houses should wheel out of the House, not to be
re-eligible for