Algernon Sidney Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) was a prominent English statesman and political author during his country’s civil war period.

Sidney was born into a prominent family and benefited from a comprehensive liberal education, which was augmented by his father’s contacts with philosophers like Hugo Grotius. However, Sidney did not immediately turn to scholarship. He fought for Parliament in the English Civil War (1642–1651) and was then elected to the Long Parliament in 1646. However, he was a foe of influential English soldier and statesman Oliver Cromwell and spent most of the 1650s in political retirement. After the Restoration, Sidney went into voluntary exile.

Sidney’s many legal and extralegal attempts to restore the republic culminated in what is known as the Rye House Plot of 1683, a conspiracy that sought to assassinate or overthrow England’s King Charles II. The plot failed and Sidney was arrested on charges of treason. He was convicted in a trial infamous for its many violations of legal procedure. Most notably, the prosecution could only produce one of the two required witnesses and used some seized pages of Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (posthumously published in 1698) as the second “witness.” Sidney was executed in 1683.

The Discourses are not primarily a call to sedition; in fact, the work was composed around the same time as British philosopher John Locke’s Treatises and is also an attack against English political theorist Sir Robert Filmer. Sidney found Filmer’s patriarchalism repugnant and felt it flew in the face of “that universal liberty which God hath given to mankind.” Instead he emphasized the human capacity for self-rule and judgment and followed republicans like Florence’s Niccolò Machiavelli in asserting a connection between liberty secured through laws and the prosperity of a nation. Sidney placed ultimate authority in the universal law of the common good and rejected Filmer’s contention that man is naturally suited to monarchy, suggesting instead, following the Aristotelian tradition, that mixed and popular governments were generally superior. Sidney also embraced the Machiavellian idea that the best government had to be prepared for war. These sections of the treatise, as well as Sidney’s more explicit commendation of revolution, give the Discourses a more aggressive tone than Locke’s work and, by most accounts, reflect the pugnacious nature of their author.

A manuscript of Sidney’s other major work, the Court Maxims (1996), was discovered in the 1970s. The Maxims are a series of dialogues that amplify the basic principles of the English republican movement. Some critics argue that the piece was propagandistic, while others see it as an “uncompromising text” and an attempt to rally renewed support for the English Parliament against the royalists.

In terms of contemporary scholarship, Sidney is placed in the republican tradition by some authors, whereas others tend to ally him more with natural rights theorists. According to history scholar Caroline Robbins, Sidney’s writings and the perceived injustice of his trial made him a hero among the “commonwealths men” of the eighteenth century, and he was also an important influence on the American founders.

Bibliography:

Houston, Alan Craig. Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Scott, Jonathan. Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Sidney, Algernon. Court Maxims, edited by Hans W. Blom, Eco Haitsma Muller, and Ronald Janse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Discourses Concerning Government, edited by Thomas G.West. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1996.

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