So the
book was restored; and it was published in the time of Cromwell's
Commonwealth, in the year 1656.
This treatise, which had its origin in the most direct pressure of the
problem of government upon the minds of men continues the
course of thought on which Machiavelli's " Prince " had formed
one famous station, and Hobbes's Leviathan," another.
Oceana," when published, was widely read and actively attacked.
One opponent of its doctrines was Dr. Henry Ferne, afterward
Bishop of Chester. Another was Matthew Wren, eldest son to the
Bishop of Ely. He was one of those who met for scientific research
at the house of Dr. Wilkins, and had, said Harrington, " an
excellent faculty of magnifying a louse and diminishing a
commonwealth."
In 1659, Harrington published an abridgment of his Oceana as
"The Art of Lawgiving," in three books. Other pieces followed, in
which he defended or developed his opinions. He again urged
them when Cromwell's Commonwealth was in its death-throes.
Then he fell back upon argument at nightly meetings of a Rota
Club which met in the New Palace Yard, Westminster. Milton's
old pupil, Cyriac Skinner, was one of its members; and its
elections were by ballot, with rotation in the tenure of all offices.
The club was put an end to at the Restoration, when Harrington
retired to his study and amused himself by putting his " System of
Politics" into the form of " Aphorisms.
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