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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2010
there is work enough for four or five years, to make out what is mentioned in those scraps of paper.
(Sidney, on the Discourses at his trial (Works, pp. 44–5))[I]t is the fundamental right of every nation to be governed by such laws, in such manner, and by such persons, as they think most conducing to their own good.
(Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, p. 462)God has left it to every nation … as their fundamental right, to be governed in such a manner, by such persons, and such laws … as they may judge to be best for them … This became a[n eighteenth century] truism.
(J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832, p. 176)INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS
DATING AND AUTHENTICITY
Sidney probably began his Discourses Concerning Government a few months after completing the Vindication, in the second half of 1681. He was still writing it almost two years and 508 pages later when he was arrested in May 1683. We must thank the strong arm of the law both for saving the manuscript and for applying some limit to its length.
That it was written in the order that we have it is suggested by the topical references discussed by Dr Worden; by its polemical structure as a paragraph-by-paragraph refutation of Filmer's Patriarcha; and by the gradually mounting crescendo of its insurrectionary content.
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