For the land is Mine
Download 145.71 Kb.
|
Mishneh Torah appellat. Nunquam ita magnifice quidquam de illo autore dicemus, quin id virtus superet ejus.” Cunaeus gives the title of Maimonides’s code in Hebrew characters: משנה תורה.
77 Ibid., p. 55. “Multa ille de Iubilaei beneficio tradidit, aitque id positum in eo fuisse, quod omnes agri ad veteres dominos redibant, etiam si centies emptorem mutaverant. Nec eos excipit eruditissimus scriptor, quos ex donatione acceperit aliquis.” 78 Ibid., p. 61. “Sane...interfuit reipublicae, ne in possessiones optime positas divisasque paucorum avaritia irrumperet. Ferme enim egentiorem quemque ditior aliquis pretio expellit. atque is, dum rura in immensum spatiis supervacuis extendit, alios necessariis excludit.” 79 “Ex qua causa incessere interdum rerum conversio solet. Ita enim est profecto. plena hostibus ea respublica est, in qua cives plurimi, possessionibus avitis nudati, priscas fortunas votis expetunt. Hi odio rerum suarum mutari omnia student, neque in ea conditione, cuius eos poenitet, diutius, quam necesse sit, manent.” 80 Ibid., p. 63. “Ac Romae quidem, cum primores patrum omnia ad se trahebant, prope ut singuli possiderent trecentorum civium agros, lege Stolonis cautum fuit, ne quis plus quingenta iugera haberet. Sed statim evagata rectum ordinem fraus est. Primum enim ipse Stolo sanctiones suas violavit, damnatusque est quod mille jugerum cum filio tenebat, quem ob hoc emancipaverat. Et postea quam plurimi cives diversa arte callidi sententiam legis circumvenerunt. Aliis enim ad emendum agrum submissis, ipsi possederunt. Vidit istaec, & stabilire legem conatus est C. Laelius, insigni sapientia vir, & Africani Scipionis maximus amicus. sed impar adversantium factioni, cum in contentiones discordiasque iretur, ab incepto destitit. Ita in aevum erupit licentia, neque occupandi agros modus fuit. Ac tandem sane eo deventum est, ut pauci quidam totam Italiam vicinasque provincias velut proprium patrimonium tenerent.” 81 “huius rei testimonia recitare, quae plurima ubique extant, nihil nunc necesse est.” 82 Plutarch, Ti. Gracc. 8:1-4. See Plutarch, Lives, vol. 10, ed. B. Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1914), pp. 158-161. It is true that, in the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae (818c), Plutarch argues that statesmen should allow “no confiscation of others’ property” (οὐδὲ δήμευσιν ἀλλοτρίων), but this isolated comment does not seem to refer to the issue of agrarian laws. Plutarch’s praise for these measures, and for the Gracchi in particular, are a consistent theme in his writings. See Plutarch, Moralia, ed. and trans. Harold North Fowler, vol. 10 (Cambridge, MA, 1936), p. 260. 83 The only text published before Harrington’s Oceana which offers a similar reassessment is A copy of a letter from on officer of the Army in Ireland, to his Highness the Lord Protector, concerning his changing of the government (1656), attributed to the enigmatic “R.G.” (most often thought to be the Digger Richard Goodgroom). This pamphlet reasons as follows: “our unhappiness is that great alterations seldom come without intestine wars, it being hard (especially in populous and flourishing Cities, to bring the multitude to give so great a power to one man as is necessary to redress a disordered State, and for that men are generally short sighted, and cannot foresee great inconveniences till they are too late to remedy, but by force, this makes the cure oftentimes miscarry, as in the case of the Gracchi at Rome, and of Agis and Cleomenes at Sparta, in both which examples, there was an endeavour to reduce those two excellent States, to their first principles, but it was too late attempted, when the corruption was growne to too great a height, which if they had found, and would have been contented to erect a new form more suitable to the inequalitie of mens estates at that time, they might possiblie have succeeded, if not to have introduced so good and excellent a model as they fell from, yet one able to have prevented the ruine and slaverie which soon after befell both these people” (p. 7). This discussion is so overtly Harringtonian (it was published only months before Oceana, and also contains Harrington’s analysis of the process by which Henry VII altered the English balance), that accusations of plagiarism were raised even in the late 1650s. Pocock offers much the most reasonable conjecture, viz. that this pamphlet was influenced by the as yet unpublished Oceana. On this, see Harrington, Political Works, pp. 10-13. The reassessment is perhaps already underway in John Lilburne’s The upright mans vindication: or, An epistle writ by John Lilburn Gent. prisoner in Newgate (London, 1653), which likens one of its proposals to “the Law Agraria amongst the Romans” (p. 21), but Lilburne does not develop the thought. Consider also the case of the Digger Gerrard Winstanley, who endorsed the Israelite land laws, but did not refer to them as agrarian laws (see Winstanley, True Magistracy Restored (London, 1652), pp. 22-3. 84 Ibid., p. 276. 85 Ibid., p. 231. 86 Ibid., p. 174. The classic discussion of Harrington’s use of the Israelite example remains S.B. Liljegren, “Harrington and the Jews” in Bulletin de la societé royale des lettres de Lund 4 (1931-1932), pp. 656-92. See also Gary Remer, “Machiavelli and Hobbes: James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Israel” in Hebraic Political Studies 4 (2006), pp. 440-61; and Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 51-7. 87 Ibid., p. 373. 88 Ibid., p. 464. 89 Ibid., p. 164. 90 Ibid., pp. 462-3. Writing a decade later, Spinoza likewise emphasized this aspect of the Hebrew republic: “there was one feature peculiar to this state and of great importance in retaining the affections of the citizens, and checking all thoughts of desertion, or abandonment of the country: namely self-interest, the strength and life of all human action. This was particularly engaged in the Hebrew state, for nowhere else did citizens possess their goods so securely as did the subjects of this community, for the latter possessed as large a share in the land and the fields as did their chiefs, and were owners of their plots of ground in perpetuity; for if any man was compelled by poverty to sell his farm or his pasture, he received it back again intact as the year of jubilee: there were other similar enactments against the possibility of alienating real property. Again, poverty was nowhere more endurable than in a country where duty towards one’s neighbour, that is, one’s fellow citizen, was practised with the utmost piety, as a means of gaining the favour of God the King.” See Spinoza, A theologico-political treatise and A political treatise, R.H.M. Elwes, ed. and trans. (New York, 1951), p. 230. 91 Ibid., p. 573. 92 Ibid., p. 373. 93 Ibid., p. 379. 94 Cunaeus, De republica hebraeorum, pp. 10-11. 95 Harrington, Political Works, p. 379. 96 Ibid., p. 201. 97 Ibid., pp. 604-5. 98 Ibid., p. 634. 100 Ibid., p. 188. 101 Ibid., p. 189. 102 Ibid., p. 235. 103 Sigonio, Caroli Sigonii De antiquo iure civium Romanorum (Paris, 1576), see esp. pp. 61-75. For Sigonio’s use of Appian, and his broader pro-Gracchan sympathies, see William McQuaig, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton, 1989), pp. 153-73. 104 Harrington, Political Works, p. 689. 105 Ibid., p. 607. 106 Ibid., p. 276. 107 Ibid., p. 202. 108 Ibid., p. 182. 109 Ibid., p. 178. 110 This was a comparison that later seventeenth-century authors took very seriously indeed. Claude Fleury, for example, writes in his Moeurs des Israelites (1681; trans. 1683) that “Plato studied several years in Egypt, and he makes Socrates speak so many excellent things, founded upon the Principles, which Moses taught, that we may conjecture, he had a knowledge of them. The Jews really did practice, what he proposes best in his Common-wealth [i.e. the Republic] and in his Laws; every one to live by his own Labour, without being liable to be ruined, and growing too Rich, Counting Justice for the greatest good, avoiding all change and novelty. In the Persons of Moses, David, and Solomon we find examples of that Wise-man, whom he wished for the Government of a State, and the rendering it happy.” See Claude Fleury, The Manners of the Israelites in Three Parts (London, 1683), p. 212. Fleury’s work, in turn, inspired Fénelon’s portrayal of the Utopia “Bétique” in Book VII of his massively influential Les aventures de Télemaque, fils d’Ulysse (1699). 111 Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus in Two English Republican Tracts, ed. Caroline Robbins (Cambridge, 1969), p. 94. 112 American Political Writing during the Founding Era: 1760-1805, ed. Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, vol. 2 (Indianapolis, 1983), p. 1000. Directory: Research Research -> Charter School Enrollment Data Annual Report Research -> Lyra Viol Composers Research -> Geographies of Race and Food Research -> Author (s) title Research -> The Media and Intercollegiate Sports Research -> Project Title: Research and Development for goes-r risk Reduction Principal Investigator Research -> Why Everyday Life Matters: Class, Community and Making Life Livable Les Back Research -> Ecocritique and the Materialities of Animation Download 145.71 Kb. Share with your friends:
|