A series of preliminary or derivative essays, loosely unified by JGA Pocock’s thesis that public discourse has been the decisive model of political change in popular (Western) government since the Renaissance, which indicate ‘languages of political thought” are to be evaluated not in terms of timeless ideas but contemporary, limited linguistic and rhetorical frameworks.

Francis: sovereignty is the mainstay of English political thought. Other topics, for example the common law (e.g., trial by jury), natural rights, or the good life, are historical byproducts. the theory of sovereignty unique marks out 19th-century British thought. The constitutional debates of the dominions (especially Canada) chiefly regarded abstracted sovereignty and government as legitimate only when based on the birthrights of Englishmen (as transplanted); both were independent of consent. Dominion constitutions thus originated in their understanding of sovereignty, not the rights of citizenry.

Pocock: the Civil War was caused by the dissolution of government, not dissolution the war, per Harrington’s view. The political temperature of the Reformation was not merely monarchical but also ecclesiastical and Hobbesian. Restored Anglicans directed their energies against the presence of Christ in sacraments, as against Roman priests, and also the spiritual in the congregation, the ‘enthusiasm’ of Dissenters. Hume and Burke saw fanatics of religion as replaced by fanatics of political principle.

Burgess: customs which are presumed rational and localized become a particular application of natural law, even though they may become defective and thus bad law. Irish lawyers were less willing than the English or Scots to see law as rational custom. As regards constitutional debate and juristic political thought, there are two frames of reference: the boundaries of the professional class and the realm of political thought itself. They are easily entwined.

Henry de Bracton, putative author of De Legibus, was utilized by Filmer, Hobbes, Milton, and Sidney for rhetorical authority. Filmer thought the king has legislative primacy and thus sovereignty.

George Lawson countered Hobbes by concluding when subjects cease to be subjects they remain citizens, entitled to equality and liberty, a middle ground between Leviathan and Lockean constitutionalism. Toleration was the consistent theme of otherwise changing Lockean though thought over 1660-89.

Bentham saw society in terms of groups to be rationally managed. Once he admitted classes contribute to individual behavior, he acknowledged rivals to be determinative of utilitarianism’s ‘greatest happiness’. Regardless, there was no universal moral claim.

Coleridge unusually combined Tory anxiety over church-and-state reform with Parliamentary sympathies, thereby advancing historiographical debate of the Glorious Revolution. He was sympathetic to Charles I for his era’s aspiration of moral grandeur, though the Stuart caused turmoil by his insistence of sovereignty in monarchy alone. The Glorious Revolution could have been settled during the Interregnum with a ceremonial head of state; the national church too is ceremonial, allowing for separation of law and religion. (NB: ‘a republican is he who, under any constitution, hopes highly of his fellow citizen, attributes their views to their circumstances, and takes the proper means to ameliorate them’. p143)