might be joined to the Popular Assembly a select number of men in the nature of the Lacedaemonian Ephori, who should have a negative in things wherein the essentials of the Government should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a Single Person, touching Liberty of Conscience, alteration of the Constitution, and other things of the last importance to the State.  Some were of opinion that it would be most conducive to the public happiness if there might be two Councils chosen by the People, the one to consist of about 300, and to have the power only of debating and proposing laws, the other to be in number about 1000, and to have the power finally to resolve and determine—­every year a third part to go out and others to be chosen in their places.”  There were differences, Ludlow adds, as to the proper composition of the body that should consider and frame the new Constitution.  Some were for referring the deliberation to twenty Parliament men and ten representatives of the Army, and proposed that, when these had agreed on a model, it should be submitted first to the whole Army in a grand rendezvous.  Parliament, however, had settled the method of procedure so far by appointing the present Committee.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of Sept. 8, 1659; Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets; Ludlow, 674-676.]

Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men.  Some account of them is here necessary.

Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person from the “Sir James Harrington” now of the Council of State.  He was the “Mr. James Harrington” who had been one of the grooms of the bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle of Wight (Vol.  III. p. 700).  Even then he had been a political idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the King’s amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and draw out his views.—­After the King’s death, Harrington, cherishing very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil’s Eclogues, and dreaming dreams.  Especially he had been prosecuting those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated him since his student days at Oxford.  He read Histories; he studied and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato, Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany, and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained to the world.  He had convinced himself “that no government is of so accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine, there being in societies