The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary AmericaThis study locates the philosophical origins of the Anglo-American political and constitutional tradition in the philosophical, theological, and political controversies in seventeenth-century England. By examining the quarrel it identifies the source of modern liberal, republican and conservative ideas about natural rights and government in the seminal works of the Exclusion Whigs Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell and their philosophical forebears Hobbes, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. This study illuminates how these first Whigs and their diverse eighteenth-century intellectual heirs such as Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Otis, Jefferson, Burke, and Paine contributed to the formation of Anglo-American political and constitutional theory in the crucial period from the Glorious Revolution through to the American Revolution and the creation of a distinctly American understanding of rights and government in the first state constitutions. |
Contents
1 | |
THE DIVINE RIGHT CHALLENGE TO NATURAL LIBERTY | 19 |
The Attack on the Catholic Natural Law | 23 |
Calvinism and Parliamentary Resistance Theory | 48 |
The Problem of Grotius and Hobbes | 71 |
THE WHIG POLITICS OF LIBERTY IN ENGLAND | 99 |
James Tyrrell The Voice of Moderate Whiggism | 105 |
The Pufendorfian Moment Moderate Whig Sovereignty Theory | 133 |
The Glorious Revolution and the Catonic Response | 271 |
EighteenthCentury British Constitutionalism | 305 |
THE WHIG LEGACY IN AMERICA | 325 |
British Constitutionalism and the Challenge of Empire | 327 |
Thomas Jefferson and the Radical Theory of Empire | 351 |
Tom Paine and Popular Sovereignty | 375 |
Revolutionary Constitutionalism Laboratories of Radical Whiggism | 396 |
Conclusion | 426 |
Algernon Sidney and the Old Republicanisms | 152 |
A New Republican England | 172 |
Natural Rights in Lockes Two Treatises | 209 |
Lockean Liberal Constitutionalism | 247 |
433 | |
451 | |
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Common terms and phrases
absolute monarchy Adam American Whigs Anglo-American argues argument authority Bellarmine Britain British Constitution Cambridge University Press Cato Cato's Cato's Letters civil claims classical republican colonial colonists common consent constitutionalism context contract defend democracy Dickinson Discourses dissolution divine right doctrine empire England English Constitution Exclusion crisis executive power Filmer fundamental Glorious Revolution Grotian Grotius History Hobbes Hobbesian human Hunton Ibid idea imperial individual institutions James James Tyrrell Jefferson John Locke king law of nature legislative power legislature limited Locke Locke's Lockean Lockean liberal mixed government mixed regime moderate Whig moral natural law natural liberty natural rights natural rights theory notion Otis Paine Paine's Parliament parliamentary sovereignty Patriarcha philosophical political power political society Political Thought popular sovereignty prerogative principle Pufendorf Pufendorfian radical Whig Republic resistance revolutionary rule Scripture separation of powers Sidney Sidney's Spinoza Suarez supremacy theoretical tion Tories tradition Treatise Tyrrell Tyrrell's Whig thought Whiggism