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Thomas Hobbes on the Proper Signification of Liberty The Prothero Lecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Quentin Skinner
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Extract

‘CIVIL philosophy’, Hobbes declares in an oft-quoted boast at the start of De Corpore, is a science ‘no older … than my own book De Cive.’ As Hobbes explains in De Cive itself, and later in Leviathan, the failure of all previous efforts has simply been due to their ‘want of method.’ The method hitherto followed, especially in the universities, has been to rely on the authority of selected writers and books. The universities, indeed, have come to rely so heavily on one particular writer that their teachings no longer deserve to be called philosophy, but merely Aristotelity. This approach, however, is nothing but ‘a signe of folly’, one that is ‘generally scorned with the name of Pedantry.’ The only scientific way of proceeding is to follow the methods of geometry, which requires its practitioners to ‘begin at settling the significations of their words’. Only by this means can we hope to avoid the insignificant speech of the Schoolmen, and thereby lay the foundations for a genuine science of political life. For ‘the foundation of all true Ratiocination is the constant Signification of words.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 40 , December 1990 , pp. 121 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1990

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References

1 Hobbes, Thomas, ‘Elements of Philosophy. The First Section. Concerning Body’ in The English Works, ed. Molesworth, W., (11 vols. 1839–1845), Vol I, ixGoogle Scholar. The Latin version, De Corpore, was first published in 1655; the English translation appeared in 1656. See Macdonald, H. and Hargreaves, M., Thomas Hobbes: A Bibliography (1952), 41–2Google Scholar.

2 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, Penguin Classics edn., ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Harmondsworth, 1985), 114, Cf also 261Google Scholar. All subsequent references to Leviathan are to this edition, except for fn. 112, infra. I have retained the original spelling, but dropped Hobbes's copious italicisation. I have also felt free to modernise his punctuation where this helps to bring out more clearly my interpretation of his text.

3 Leviathan, 106. Cf also 132, 307–8.

4 Leviathan, 688.

5 Leviathan, 117. Cf. also 112–13.

6 Leviathan, 105.

7 Leviathan, 105, 113.

8 Leviathan, 428.

9 Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive: The Latin Version, ed. Warrender, H. (Oxford, 1983), 167Google Scholar. For the corresponding passage in The Elements of Law, which lacks the formal definition, see Hobbes, Thomas, The Elements of Law, ed. Tönnies, F. with an Introduction by Goldsmith, M. M. (1969), 134Google Scholar. As several scholars have recently argued, the English translation of De Cive issued in March 1651 is almost certainly not by Hobbes, despite Warrender's assertions to the contrary. See Warrender, H., ‘Editor's Introduction’ in Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive: The English Version (Oxford, 1983), 4–8Google Scholar. Compare the scepticism voiced in Goldsmith, M. M., ‘Picturing Hobbes's Politics: the Illustrations to Philosophical Rudiments’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xliv (1981), 232–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the references there to earlier expressions of doubt. For further doubts see Malcolm, Noel, ‘Citizen Hobbes’, The London Review of Books, 18–31 10, 1984, 22Google Scholar. The point is also taken up in Tuck, Richard, ‘Warrender's De Cive’, Political Studies, xxxiii (1985), 308–15, esp. at 310–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Since the 1651 translation is of such doubtful standing—and indeed makes use of a political vocabulary partly at odds with the one Hobbes generally employs when writing in English—I have preferred to make my own translations from Warrender's edition of the Latin test.

10 For these ambiguities see the references given infra in fns. 183 and 184.

11 See Leviathan, respectively at 189, 261, 262, 264.

12 Leviathan, 267.

13 Leviathan, 189. Note that, because Hobbes equates human freedom with the freedom of a man, and because I am seeking to explicate his views, I have felt obliged to follow his usage. But I should not like it to be thought that this is an equation I accept.

14 As Hobbes makes clear at the start of Chapter XXI of Leviathan—where he speaks (p. 261) of what ‘LIBERTY, or FREEDOM, signifieth’—he makes no distinction of meaning between the two terms. I have followed him in using them interchangeably.

15 Leviathan, 189.

16 Leviathan, 189.

17 Leviathan, 262.

18 Leviathan, 189. Cf. also the earlier discussion of power in Chapter X, especially Hobbes's definition of ‘The POWER of a man’ as ‘his present means to obtain some future apparent Good’, 150.

19 Leviathan, 262. The point is foreshadowed in the discussion of deliberation in Chapter VI. See especially 127, where Hobbes claims that deliberation is so called ‘because it is a putting an end to the Liberty we had of doing or omitting according to our own Appetite or Aversion.’

20 See Leviathan, 189, where ‘right’ is defined in terms of ‘liberty to do or forbeare’. See also the earlier account of deliberation as the means by which we put an end to our liberty ‘of doing or omitting’. Cf. fn. 19, supra.

21 See Hobbes, Thomas, The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance (1656), 301Google Scholar. Cf. also Hobbes's opening formula, 28–9. For the complete bibliography of Hobbes's debate with Bramhall, see Macdonald, and Hargreaves, , Hobbes, 37–41Google Scholar.

22 See Leviathan, 261–2 and 660. At 261 Hobbes even claims that the concept of liberty can be applied to inanimate bodies (his own example being a body of water) ‘no less’ than to rational creatures. If he means by this that the concept can be applied in exactly the same way, this would seem to be a slip: for his definition of human freedom makes essential reference to the idea of the will. In his Questions Concerning Liberty, Hobbes explicitly distinguishes human freedom from wider notions of free action when he observes that ‘I understand compulsion to be used rightly of living creatures only’, 209. For Hobbes's view of compulsion, cf. fn. 26, infra.

23 Leviathan, 189, 191.

24 Leviathan, 261. Hobbes also speaks in the same passage (262) of the agent being ‘restrained’. Cf. also 359, 401.

25 Leviathan, 262.

26 Note that Hobbes distinguishes, with a fair degree of consistency, between being ‘forced’ and being ‘compelled’. I am compelled if my will is coerced. I am forced if it is rendered physically impossible for me to forbear from acting in a certain way. For Hobbes, compulsion is compatible with liberty, although force is not. See especially the discussion in Questions Concerning Liberty, 199–200, 208–9, 216–17. This point is well brought out in Wernham, A. G., ‘Liberty and Obligation in Hobbes’, Hobbes Studies, ed. Brown, Keith C. (Oxford, 1965), 117–39, at 123Google Scholar.

27 Leviathan, 262.

28 Leviathan, 262.

29 Leviathan, 189.

30 See Questions Concerning Liberty, 216–17. Hobbes, earlier uses the same example in Elements of Law, 63Google Scholar. The reason the category may appear residual, even empty, is that Hobbes sometimes speaks as though an action we cannot forbear from performing cannot be treated as an action: it is a case in which we are acted upon, not a case in which we act. See for example the discussion in Questions Concerning Liberty, 209, 216–17. But the implication—that all actions are free by definition—is one that Hobbes elsewhere rejects. See, for example, Leviathan, 263, where he lays it down that it is only ‘actions which proceed from the will’ that ‘proceed from liberty’.

31 Leviathan, 255.

32 Leviathan, 667.

33 See Leviathan, 667 for the explicit distinction between ‘the service of Bondmen’ and of ‘a voluntary Servant’. Except for discussing enslavement as a result of conquest in war, however, Hobbes does not explain how such bondage can arise. His discussion of slavery is perhaps somewhat in tension with his stress on the implications of human equality. On this point see further fn. 71, infra.

34 See De Cive: The Latin Version, 221, and cf. Leviathan, 397.

35 De Cive: The Latin Version, 223: ‘non potest non obedire’. For a valuable discussion of this difficult passage, see Orr, Robert, ‘Thomas Hobbes on the Regulation of Voluntary Motion’ in Lives, Liberties and the Public Good, ed. Feaver, George and Rosen, Frederick (1987), 45–60, at 58–9Google Scholar. Orr interprets Hobbes as claiming that, although fear of our fellow-men does not take away our liberty, fear of God does. Even in this passage, however, what Hobbes seems to be saying is that it is our fatalistic disbelief in our capacity to resist God's power which forces us to obey and so takes away our liberty. If we turn, moreover, to the corresponding passage in Leviathan (397), we find all reference to fear deleted. Hobbes is now clear that the believer is forced to obey simply by the fact that God appears as an irresistible force. Orr is surely right to point out, however, that there is something strange about this argument. As we have seen, Hobbes holds that liberty can only be taken away by external impediments to motion. It is clear that God's omnipotence will constitute such an impediment if it is a fact. But it is not clear how it can be said to do so if it is merely believed to be a fact. For further discussion of the passage from De Cive, see Goldsmith, M. M., Hobbes's Science of Politics (New York, 1966), 111–13 and Appendix 4Google Scholar.

36 De Cive: The Latin Version, 223: ‘libertas … corporeis tollitur’.

37 Leviathan, 668.

38 See Leviathan, 262 and cf. Questions Concerning Liberty, 211.

39 Questions Concerning Liberty, 209–11.

40 See, for instance, Cassinelli, C. W., Free Activities and Interpersonal Relations (The Hague, 1966), 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a contrasting discussion of an example very similar to the one Hobbes considers in Leviathan, 262. Oppenheim, Felix, Political Concepts: A Reconstruction (Chicago, 1981), 87Google Scholar, gives a good criticism of Cassinelli's analysis.

41 Leviathan, 262.

42 Leviathan, 262. Cf. also Questions Concerning Liberty, 211.

43 Leviathan, 262.

44 See Hobbes's, initial formula in Leviathan, 189Google Scholar, and cf. the summary in Questions Concerning Liberty, 285.

45 See Taylor, Michael, Community, Anarchy and Liberty (Cambridge, 1982), 142CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As a paradigm of the pure negative theory Taylor cites Steiner, Hillel, ‘Individual Liberty’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, lxxv (1974–1975), 33–50Google Scholar.

46 This is to allude to the definition given by Steiner, , Aristotelian Society, 1974–1975, 33Google Scholar. I formerly accepted this interpretation of Hobbes's theory myself. See Skinner, Quentin, ‘II concetto inglese di libertà’, Filosofia Politica, iii (1989), 77–102, at 83–5Google Scholar.

47 As appears to be assumed, for example, in Day, J. P., ‘Individual Liberty’ in Of Liberty, ed. Griffith, A. Phillips (Cambridge, 1983), 17–29Google Scholar, where Hobbes's analysis is treated as though he is concerned only with being free and unfree to act.

48 As appears to be assumed, for example, in Goldsmith, M. M., ‘Hobbes on Liberty’, Hobbes Studies, ii (1989), 23–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who claims (24) that according to Hobbes ‘to be unfree is to be restrained from acting as one wishes to act’. This implies that we remain free so long as no one restrains us from performing an action we may wish to perform. As we have seen, however, Hobbes's view is that, if the action in question is beyond our powers, the question of freedom does not arise. Nevertheless, Goldsmith's article seems to me very valuable, especially for its emphasis on the coherence of Hobbes's views about liberty, and I regret that it only appeared after the text of my own lecture had been completed and delivered.

49 See for example the classic essay by MacCallum, Gerald C., ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, Philosophy, Politics and Society, Fourth Series, ed. Leslett, Peter, Runciman, W. G. and Skinner, Quentin (Oxford, 1972), 174–93, at 176Google Scholar.

50 See the excellent discussion of this point in Oppenheim, , Political Concepts, 83–84Google Scholar.

51 This distinction is well drawn, however, in McNeilly, F. S., The Anatomy of Leviathan (1968), 171Google Scholar. See also Watkins, J. W. N., Hobbes's System of Ideas (1965), 120–22Google Scholar, and the valuable remarks on unfree action in Raphael, D. D., ‘Hobbes’ in Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, ed. Pelczynski, Z. and Gray, John (1984), 27–38, at 30Google Scholar.

52 For the accusation that Hobbes's discussion of liberty is confused, see for example Pennock, J. Roland, ‘Hobbes's Confusing “Clarity”—the Case of “Liberty”’ in Hobbes Studies, ed. Brown, , 101–16, at 102, 116Google Scholar; Wernham, A. G., ‘Liberty and Obligation in Hobbes’ in Hobbes Studies, ed. Brown, , 117–39, at 120–21Google Scholar; Gauthier, David P., The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, 1969), 62, 65–6Google Scholar; Ross, Ralph, ‘Some Puzzles in Hobbes’ in Thomas Hobbes in his Time, ed. Ross, Ralph, Schneider, Herbert W. and Waldman, Theodore (Minneapolis, 1974), 42–60, esp. at 55–6Google Scholar; and Raphael, , ‘Hobbes’ in Conceptions of Liberty ed. Pelczynski, and Gray, , 30–34Google Scholar. But for a valuable defence of Hobbes's consistency see von Leyden, W., Hobbes and Locke: The Politics of Freedom and Obligation (1982), 32–50, esp. 45–50Google Scholar; See also the article by Goldsmith cited in fn. 48, supra.

53 Leviathan, 262.

54 Leviathan, 262.

53 McNeilly, , Anatomy of Leviathan, 171Google Scholar. Similar criticisms are advanced by several of the commentators cited in fn. 52, supra. Note that, although Leviathan contains an extensive discussion of the concept of unfreedom, Hobbes at no point uses that word.

56 Leviathan, 191.

57 Leviathan, 198.

58 Leviathan, 201.

59 For these formulae see Leviathan respectively at 189 and 190.

60 Leviathan, 215.

61 Leviathan, 216–17. Cf. also 314.

62 Leviathan, 216. Cf. also 190, 205, 320.

63 Leviathan, 330.

64 Leviathan, 188. Cf. also 314.

65 Leviathan, 217. By now it is perhaps unnecessary to add that this understanding of what Hobbes means by being ‘bound’ serves to cast considerable doubt on the interpretation offered in Warrender, H., The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar. For my own latest comments on this hardy perennial of Hobbes scholarship, see Skinner, Quentin, ‘Warrender and Skinner on Hobbes: A Reply’, Political Studies, xxxvi (1988), 692–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Leviathan, 192. Yet Hobbes does say, in discussing his example of a free gift (262), that it will be free if the giver ‘was not bound by any law or covenant to give it.’ The addition of the words ‘or covenant’ appears to be a slip. The liberty of the giver can certainly be bound by law, in that the law constrains our liberty as subjects. But it cannot similarly be constrained by his own covenants, which are but words, and in the absence of Laws are ‘of no strength to secure a man at all.’ Cf. Leviathan, 223. But Hobbes's consistency can be rescued if we take him to be referring to just those cases in which a promise or covenant can be legally enforced.

67 Leviathan, 196.

68 Leviathan, 200. Cf. also 231.

69 Leviathan, 200.

70 Leviathan, 200. As Michael Oakeshott in particular has emphasised, however, Hobbes at this point leaves open the possibility that pride can be ‘moralized’, and thus that justice and the pursuit of glory need not be incompatible. See Oakeshott, Michael, Hobbes on Civil Association (Oxford, 1975), esp. 119–25Google Scholar; For the place of ‘generous natures’ in Hobbes's theory, see also Thomas, Keith, ‘The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought’, Hobbes Studies, ed. Brown, , 185–235, esp. 202–7Google Scholar.

71 For the natural equality of men, see Leviathan, 183. For the fact that this will tend (in the absence of compulsive laws) to militate against our keeping of our promises, simply because no sufficient ‘inequality of power’ will appear, see 200. But if ‘Nature hath made men so equall’ as Hobbes here argues, how can one man get another so completely into his power as to enslave him? Hobbes does not directly address this point.

72 This point is constantly reiterated. See Leviathan, 167, 171, 403–4, 430. This does not mean, of course, that Hobbes disbelieves in God, although it does mean that he sharply distinguishes knowledge from mere belief. Cf. fn. 74, infra, and Glover, William B., ‘God and Thomas Hobbes’, Hobbes Studies, ed. Brown, , 141–68Google Scholar.

73 Leviathan, 206. Cf. also 130. This dismissal of the fear of God as a rational ground for obedience was still exceptional. See Wootton, David, ‘The Fear of God in Early Modern Political Theory’, Canadian Historical Association Historical Papers, 1983, 56–80Google Scholar.

74 For this claim see Leviathan, 425, 614. For the fact that we also cannot hope to receive any supernatural revelation of God's will, cf. 331–3. Hobbes thus distances himself—as in the discussion at 395–8—from the claim that we can acquire knowledge of an omnipotent God. Cf. the valuable discussion in Halliday, R.J., Kenyon, Timothy and Reeve, Andrew, ‘Hobbes's Belief in God’, Political Studies, xxxi (1983), 418–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Leviathan, 223. For a sharply contrasting account of the relationship between God's law and political obligation, see Hood, F. C., The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 1964), esp. 85–90, 135–7Google Scholar.

76 Leviathan, 238. On the capacity of laws to bind or restrain us from acting, see also 388, 701.

77 Leviathan, 334. On the capacity of laws to oblige or constrain us to act, see also 591. 700.

78 Leviathan, 263.

79 Leviathan, 183, 188, 190.

80 Leviathan, 266. Cf. also 207, 212, 240, 273, 395.

81 Leviathan, 334–5. Cf. also 240.

82 Leviathan, 183–4.

83 Leviathan, 184–5; cf. also 264.

84 Leviathan, 315 puts it, ‘the Right of Nature, that is, the naturall Liberty of man, may by the Civill Law be abridged and restrained; nay, the end of making Lawes is no other but such Restraint’. But this summary could perhaps be misleading. As Hobbes has already argued (263), to speak of natural liberty is only to speak of the absence of external impediments. But this is not the form of liberty that defines the state of nature. What characterises that state is freedom from the obligation to obey any human laws.

85 For this point see Leviathan, 273, 356, 367.

86 Leviathan, 273. Apart from the exception constituted by ‘the true Liberty of a Subject’ (268), which ‘can by no covenant be relinquished’ (272). On this point see infra, fns. 90 and 91.

87 Leviathan, 271.

88 Hence Hobbes, defines a crime (Leviathan, 336)Google Scholar as ‘the Committing (by Deed or Word) of that which the Law forbiddeth, or the Omission of what it hath commanded.’

89 Leviathan, 192. Cf. also 254, 272.

90 Leviathan, 272.

91 For this claim see Leviathan, 199, and cf. also 337. For the range of things that a subject, ‘though commanded by the Soveraign’ may ‘without Injustice refuse to do’, see 268–71.

92 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter, Student Edition (Cambridge, 1988), II, para. 57, page 305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Hobbes puts the point in this way in the course of discussing the extent to which laws are necessary. See Leviathan, 388. But the argument is a corollary of his earlier contention that we are bound by reason to obey the laws of nature. Cf. esp. 215.

94 Hobbes occasionally seems to allow, however, that there can also be a more direct mechanism: a citizen may be physically forced to act by an authorised agent of the commonwealth. For passages in which this seems to be envisaged, see Leviathan, 196, where the ‘common Power’ of the state is said to be capable of compelling by force, and 269, where the sovereign is described as authorising assault.

95 Leviathan, 223. Cf. also 343, 355.

96 Leviathan, 227.

97 Leviathan, 269.

98 Because Hobbes distinguishes between bodily coercion, which takes away liberty, and coercion of the will, which does not, he has no objection to describing threats of punishment as coercing and compelling us to act, while insisting that the resulting actions will nevertheless be freely performed. For his invocation of this vocabulary, see Leviathan, 196, 202, 362, 594, 670.

99 Leviathan, 262. For Aristotle's discussion see The Nicomachean Ethics, 1110a.

100 According to Aristotle, , Ethics, 1110a, the action is ‘mixed’Google Scholar: voluntary and yet in a sense involuntary.

101 Leviathan, 262. Hobbes makes the same point in his Questions Concerning Liberty, 199, 208.

102 Leviathan, 262. Cf. Questions Concerning Liberty, 209.

103 Leviathan, 263–4.

104 See Lucian, , ‘Heracles’ in Lucian, ed. and trans. Harmon, A. M., 8 vols., Vol. I (1913), 65Google Scholar.

105 Leviathan, 726–7.

106 See for example the reference to those who are ‘subjects à estre menez par les oreilles’ in de Montaigne, Michel, Essaies, ed. Plattard, Jean, 6 vols. (Paris, 1946), II, 55Google Scholar, and Montaigne's further reference to the same topos at II. 230 in the course of his discussion of oratory. Cf. the claim that ‘with his golden chaine/The Orator so farre mens harts doth bind’ in Sonnet LVIII of Sidney, Philip, ‘Astrophel and Stella’ in The Complete Works, ed. Feuillerat, Albert, Vol. II (Cambridge, 1922), 241–301, at 265Google Scholar. Lucian's image of Hercules appears as Emblem CLXXXI in Alciati, Andreae, Emblemata, cum commentariis Claudii Minois [et al.] (Padua, 1621), 751Google Scholar.

107 On the artificial character of the Covenant, see Leviathan, 226, and cf. the Introduction, 81.

108 Leviathan, 264.

109 Leviathan, 339.

110 Leviathan, 189.

111 Leviathan, 81.

112 Here I quote from the first edition of Leviathan (1651), 108, since this sentence is garbled in the Macpherson edition.

113 Leviathan, 262. Cf. Questions Concerning Liberty, 29.

114 Leviathan, 262. Cf. Questions Concerning Liberty, 289.

115 Leviathan, 263.

116 Modern commentators have been inclined to credit Hobbes with the invention of his ‘compatibilist’ doctrine. See for example Raphael, in Conceptions of Liberty, 30Google Scholar. But Cf. Bramhall's, comments on Hobbes's, evident debt to the stoics, quoted by Hobbes, in his Questions Concerning Liberty, 192–4, 195–7Google Scholar.

117 Pepys, Samuel, The Diary, ed. Latham, Robert and Matthews, William (11 vols. 1970–1983), ii, 217Google Scholar.

118 A point excellently brought out in Gauthier, , Logic of Leviathan, 145–6Google Scholar.

119 Elements of Law, 169–70.

120 Elements of Law, 170.

121 De Cive: The Latin Version, 176: ‘Aristoteles… consuetudine temporis libertatem pro imperio nominans. Lib. 6. Politicorum, cap. 2. In statu populari libertas est ex suppositione. Quod vulgo dicunt.’

122 Leviathan, 267.

123 Leviathan, 267, 268. Cf. also 369, 698–99. The charge is reiterated in Behemoth, ed. Tonnies, F. with an Introduction by Goldsmith, M.M. (1969), 3, 23Google Scholar. See also MacGillivray, R., ‘Thomas Hobbes's History of the English Civil War: A Study of Behemoth’, Journal of the History of Ideas xxxi (1970), 179–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Harrington, James sought in Oceana (1656)Google Scholar to revive the classical theory of liberty—especially as enunciated by Machiavelli in his Discorsi—in direct opposition to Hobbes's account. See Harrington, James, ‘Oceana’ in The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Cambridge, 1977), esp. pp. 161–3Google Scholar. For the Machiavellian account itself, and for Hobbes's attack on it, see Skinner, Quentin, ‘The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives’ in Philosophy in History, ed. Rorty, Richard, Schneewind, J. B. and Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge, 1984), 193–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

124 Leviathan, 267. Cf. also 369.

125 Leviathan, 698. Cf. also 266.

126 Leviathan, 369. But for a contrasting explanation of Hobbes's rejection of this belief, see Tuck, Richard, Hobbes (Oxford, 1989), 47Google Scholar.

127 Leviathan, 369.

128 Leviathan, 266. Hobbes, also mocks the absurdity of ‘free states’ in Behemoth, ed. Tönnies, , 164Google Scholar.

129 Leviathan, 266.

130 Leviathan, 266.

131 The formula used in the Oath of Engagement which, by an Act of 2 January 1650, all males over the age of eighteen were required to take. For the oath, and extracts from the Act, see Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England, ed. Wootton, David (Harmondsworth, 1986), 357–8Google Scholar. For the definitive survey of the associated pamphlet literature, see Wallace, John M., ‘The Engagement Controversy 1649–1652: An Annotated List of Pamphlets’, Bulletin of the New Tork Public Library, lxviii (1964), 384–405Google Scholar. See also Sampson, Margaret, ‘“A Question that hath non-plust many”: the right to private property and the “Engagement Controversy”, 1648–1652’ (M.A., University of Sussex, 1979.)Google Scholar

132 For the settlement and creation of the Council see Worden, Blair, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974), 177–85Google Scholar.

133 The Levellers issued their third and final Agreement May 1649. For the document itself, together with commentary, see The Levellers in the English Revolution, ed. Aylmer, G. E. (New York, 1975), 159–68Google Scholar.

134 Anonymous, , The Grand Case of Conscience Stated (n.p., n.d.) (Thomason copy, British Library, gives date of 22 06 1649), 14Google Scholar.

135 John Lilburne, Englands New Chains Discovered and The Second Part of Englands New Chains Discovered in The Leveller Tracts, 1647–53, ed. W. Haller and G. Davies (repd. Gloucester, Mass., 1964), 157–70 and 172–89, at 165, 167. For the authorship and circumstances of composition, see Levellers, ed. Aylmer, , 142Google Scholar.

136 [Prynne, William], Summary Reasons against the New Oath and Engagement (n.p., 1649), 3, 13Google Scholar. For a discussion of the tract, and attribution to Prynne, see Lamont, William, Marginal Prynne (1963), 187–8Google Scholar.

137 [Ward, Nathaniel], Discolliminium (1650), 53Google Scholar. For the attribution to Ward see Wallace, , ‘Engagement Controversy’, 398Google Scholar.

138 Prynne, , Summary Reasons, 6Google Scholar.

139 [Hall, Edmund], Lazarus's Sores Licked (1650), 3Google Scholar. For the attribution to Hall see Wallace, , ‘Engagement Controversy’, 401Google Scholar.

140 [Gee, Edward], An Exercitation Concerning Usurped Powers (n.p., 1650), 5–7Google Scholar, using the pretence that he is describing ‘a nation in America’. For the attribution to Gee, see Wallace, , ‘Engagement Controversy’, 394–5Google Scholar. For a yet more explicit reference to the new government as ‘a conquering party’, see Grand Case, 7.

141 Gee, , Exercitation, 11–12Google Scholar.

142 Gee, , Exercitation, 13Google Scholar. For the same claim see Prynne, , Summary Reasons, 12Google Scholar and Ward, , Discolliminium, 8Google Scholar.

143 Gee, , Exercitation, 9Google Scholar. For the same conclusion see The Grand Case, 7, 9 and Prynne, , Summary Reasons, 3Google Scholar.

144 For the development of this position see Wallace, John M., Destiny his Choice (Cambridge, 1968), 43–7, 51–6Google Scholar and Skinner, Quentin, ‘Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy’ in The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660, ed. Aylmer, G. E. (1972), 79–98Google Scholar.

145 On Ascham see Wallace, , Destiny his Choice, 30–41, 45–8, 53–8Google Scholar and Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge, 1979), 116–17, 123–4, 152–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

146 For this claim see [Wither, George], Respublica Anglicana (1650), 42Google Scholar. (For the attribution see Wallace, , ‘Engagement Controversy’, 401Google Scholar.) See also Nedham, Marchamont, The Case of the Commonwealth of England, Stated, ed. Knachel, Philip A. (Charlottesville, 1969), 15–29Google Scholar. A similarly forthright argument had earlier appeared anonymously in The Constant Man's Character (1650), 64–70.

147 For the development of arguments about conquest see Skinner, Quentin, ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’, Historical Journal, viii (1965), 151–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar and especially Sommerville, Johann P., ‘History and Theory: The Norman Conquest in Early Stuart Political Thought’, Political Studies, xxxiv (1986), 249–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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149 For common law hostility to conquest theory, see Pocock, J. G. A., ‘The Ancient Constitution Revisited’ in The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Reissue with a Retrospect (Cambridge, 1987), esp. 42–55, 293–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

150 Nedham, , Case, 25–9, 48–50Google Scholar.

151 Nedham, , Case, 37Google Scholar.

152 Nedham, , Case, 36. Cf. also 40Google Scholar.

153 Nedham, , Case, 38Google Scholar.

154 Saunders, Richard, Plenary Possession makes a Lawful Power (1651)Google Scholar. (Thomason copy, British Library, gives date of 28 July.)

155 I originally argued for this interpretation myself. See the article cited Supra, fn. 144 and also, more fully, Skinner, Quentin, ‘Thomas Hobbes et la défense du pouvoir “de facto”’ Revue philosophique, xcix (1973), pp. 131–54Google Scholar. Some of the best recent scholarship on Leviathan has continued to uphold this point of view. See for example Johnston, David, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, 1986), 208Google Scholar; see also, more fully, Baumgold, Deborah, Hobbes's Political Theory (Cambridge, 1988), 124–33Google Scholar.

156 Leviathan, 266.

157 Leviathan, 268.

158 Leviathan, 255–6.

159 Leviathan, 256.

160 A point Hobbes, subsequently corroborates in his Chapter on Crimes by saying (p. 339) that, although in all places and all ages ‘Actions have been authorised by the force and victories of those that have committed them’Google Scholar, such actions have in all cases been unjust.

161 See Leviathan, 721, on the mistake of those who seek to ‘justify the War by which their power was at first gotten, and whereon (as they think) their Right Dependeth’.

162 Several leading arguments in Leviathan are presented in a form that Renaissance rhetoricians, following Quintilian, described as dispositionally ironic: familiar premises are adopted, but surprising conclusions are then shown to follow from them. For Quintilian's discussion of this form of irony, see Institutio Oratoria, Book IX, II. 44–6.

163 For these phrases see Leviathan, 264, 267. For evidence about the clamour for liberty, see Lindley, Keith, ‘London and popular freedom in the 1640s’ in Freedom in the English Revolution, ed. Richardson, R. C. and Ridden, G. M. (Manchester, 1986), 111–50Google Scholar.

164 Leviathan, 264.

165 Leviathan, 264.

166 Leviathan, 719.

167 Leviathan, 255.

168 Leviathan, 273.

169 Leviathan, 721.

170 Leviathan, 375. Cf. also 272–3, 345.

171 Leviathan, 719, referring the reader back to the discussion in Chapter XXI.

172 Leviathan, 719.

173 Leviathan, 720.

174 Leviathan, 273. Cf. also 256, 720.

175 Leviathan, 720.

176 Leviathan, 255–6.

177 Leviathan, 719. But if the man submits only on condition that his life and liberty are spared, this would appear to make the victor a party to the covenant. This would be contrary to Hobbes's, basic contention (p. 230) that ‘he which is made Soveraigne maketh no Covenant with his Subjects beforehand’Google Scholar. This contention raises no problems in the case of what Hobbes, calls (p. 228) ‘commonwealth by institution’Google Scholar. For the form taken by the Covenant in such cases is simply that each prospective subject agrees with everyone else who shall be sovereign. Ever since Pufendorf stressed the point, however, critics have complained that Hobbes, contradicts himself when he comes to what he calls (p. 228) ‘commonwealth by acquisition’Google Scholar, and thus to the relationship of victor and vanquished. For in this case he explicitly states (p. 252) that the subjects covenant not with each other but with ‘him they are afraid of’. Hobbes's consistency can be rescued, however, if we interpret him as saying not that the conqueror covenants to allow life and liberty to those he has vanquished, but merely that he accepts their covenant by allowing them life and liberty, while remaining free from any obligation to respect these terms. This point is excellently brought out in Gauthier, , Logic of Leviathan, 114–15Google Scholar.

178 Leviathan, 719.

179 Leviathan, 721.

180 Leviathan, 255–6.

181 Elements of Law, 127.

182 Especially in clearly stating that conquest and consent are at least potentially compatible. See De Give: The Latin Version, 160.

183 De Cive: The Latin Version, 160 contrasting the case of a civitas ‘pactis & fide mutuo data … inita est’ with a civitas ‘quae acquiritur potentia & viribus naturalibus’.

184 De Cive: The Latin Version, 160: only the civitas founded ‘pactis & fide mutuo data’ can be described as founded ‘multorum consensione’ by men acting ‘volentes’.

185 Leviathan, 273.

186 Leviathan, 375.

187 Leviathan, 720.