Aristocratic Reform and the Extirpation of Parliament in Early Georgian Britain: Andrew Michael Ramsay and French Ideas of Monarchy
2012; Routledge; Volume: 40; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01916599.2012.747256
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)Political Theory and Influence
ResumoSummaryIn An Essay upon Civil Government (1722), Andrew Michael Ramsay mounted a sustained attack upon the development throughout English history of popular government. According to Ramsay, popular involvement in sovereignty had led to the decline of society and the revolutions of the seventeenth century. In his own time, Parliament had become a despotic instrument of government, riven with faction and driven by a multiplicity of laws that manifested a widespread corruption in the state. Ramsay's solution to this degeneracy was the extirpation of Parliament, and its substitution with a monarchy moderated by an aristocratic senate. Ramsay's adoption of certain “Country” elements, including a return to the first principles of the constitution, claimed to reflect the principles of contemporary French aristocratic theory which called for the reform of government through the nobility. In his desire to exclude popular government, and reverse the decline of the state, however, Ramsay utilised the theory with which Bossuet had defended Louis XIV's absolute France. Intriguingly, traces of the natural law system which fortified Ramsay's theory can be found in Viscount Bolingbroke's subsequent attack on Walpole's Whig ministry and the corruption of the state.Keywords: Andrew Michael RamsayFénelonBossuetParliamentaristocracyabsolutism AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Richard Whatmore, Professor Julian Hoppit, Cesare Cuttica, Doohwan Ahn, and the two reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.Notes1 For background on Ramsay, see Albert Cherel, Un aventurier religieux au XVIIIe siècle: André-Michel Ramsay (Paris, 1926); G. D. Henderson, Chevalier Ramsay (Edinburgh, 1952); Scott Mandelbrote, ‘Scott Mandelbrote, ‘Ramsay, Andrew Michael [Jacobite Sir Andrew Ramsay, baronet] (1686–1743)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23077]. Marialuisa Baldi, Philosophie et politique chez Andrew Michael Ramsay (Paris, 2008). Ramsay is a rather elusive figure, but he did leave a short autobiography which mainly concentrated on his religious and philosophical ideas; see Andrew Michael Ramsay, Anecdotes de la vie de Messire André Michel de Ramsay [..] dictés par lui meme peu de jours avant sa mort pressé par les instances réiterées de son Epouze, in Méjanes Bibliotheque, Aix-en-Provence, MS. No. 1188.2 On the Garden Circle's religious views and activities, see Mystics of the North-East, edited by G. D. Henderson (Aberdeen, 1934).3 See Mystics of the North-East, edited by Henderson, 136–37; Henderson, Chevalier Ramsay, 73.4 Gabriel Glickman, The English Catholic Community 1688–1745: Politics, Culture and Ideology (Woodbridge, 2009), 227–30. In this excellent work, Glickman overemphasises the extent of Ramsay's Catholicism and the impact it had on his political writings (see note 7 below).5 François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon to Duc de Bourgogne, 15 November 1709, in François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Selected Letters of Fénelon, edited and translated by John McEwen (London, 1964), 163–64; Henderson, Chevalier Ramsay, 74; Sanford B. Kanter, ‘Archbishop Fénelon's Political Activity: The Focal Point of Power in Dynasticism’, French Historical Studies, 4 (1966), 320–44; Glickman, English Catholic Community, 117, 230–34.6 Andrew Michael Ramsay, An Essay upon Civil Government [hereafter Essay] (London, 1722), viii.7 Ramsay disseminated the notion that the Archbishop was tolerant of all religions, although this is not born out in Fénelon's works. See Fénelon's attacks on Jansenism and the Huguenots: Fénelon to Duc de Chevreuse, 27 February 1712, in Fénelon, Selected Letters, 179; François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Tables de Chaulnes, in Œuvres, edited by Jacques Le Brun [hereafter Œuvres (Le Brun)], 2 vols (Paris, 1983–1997), II, 1099. In L'histoire de la vie de Fénelon, Ramsay actually included Fénelon's final letter to Louis XIV, calling on the king to appoint a successor who was ‘bon & [sic] ferme contre le Jansenisme, lequel est prodigiusement accrédité sur cette frontiére’; see Fénelon to Louis XIV, in Andrew Michael Ramsay, L'histoire de la vie de Fénelon (Le Haye, 1723), 199. Ramsay, on the other hand, displayed an openly tolerant view of different religions and promulgated a pan-theistic approach to theology, as can be seen in works such as Andrew Michael Ramsay, The Travels of Cyrus, in Two Volumes. To which is annex'd, A Discourse upon the Theology and Mythology of the Ancients (London, 1727), book VIII; Andrew Michael Ramsay, The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion. Unfolded in a Geometrical Order (Glasgow, 1748); Ramsay, Anecdotes, in Méjanes Bibliotheque, Aix-en-Provence, MS. No. 1188, 6. For a discussion of Ramsay's use of Fénelon for Jacobitism, see Andrew Mansfield, ‘Fénelon's Cuckoo: Andrew Michael Ramsay and Archbishop Fénelon’, in Fénelon in the Enlightenment: Traditions, Adaptations, and Variations, edited by Christoph Schmitt-Maaß and Doohwan Ahn (forthcoming).8 Earlier editions of Fénelon's Œuvres contained the Essay, believing it to be either his work or an expression of his thought; for example, see François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Œuvres de Fénelon. Archevêque de Cambrai: publiées d'après les manuscrits originaux et les éditions les plus correctes: avec un grand nombre de pièces inédites, edited by Jacques Lebel (Paris, 1824), XXII. Confusion remains extant regarding the authorship and the true political principles of Fénelon; see Françoise Gallouédec-Genuys, Le Prince selon Fénelon (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1963), 290; James Herbert Davis, Jr., Fénelon (Boston, MA, 1978); Bruce Lenman, The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689–1746 (London, 1980), 286.9 Albert Cherel, Fénelon au XVIIIe siècle en France (1715–1820): son prestige – son influence (Paris, 1917), 23.10 See Nick Childs, A Political Academy in Paris 1724–1731: The Entresol and Its Members (Oxford, 2000).11 See Paul S. Fritz, English Ministers and Jacobitism between the Rebellions of 1715 and 1745 (Toronto, ON, 1975); Lenman, Jacobite Risings, 196–204; Paul Kléber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge, 1989); Daniel Szechi, The Jacobites, Britain and Europe 1688–1788 (Manchester, 1994).12 See G. V. Bennett, ‘English Jacobitism, 1710–1715; Myth and Reality’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 32 (Fifth Series, 1982), 137–51 (140); Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1986), 1–2; J. F. Bosher, ‘The Franco-Catholic Danger, 1660–1715’, History, 79 (1994), 5–30.13 See Joseph Cannell, The Case of the Pretender Stated (London, 1708); Benjamin Hoadly, Original of Civil Government (London, 1710); Daniel Defoe, And What If the Pretender Should Come? (London, 1713); John Shute, Viscount Barrington, A Dissuasive from Jacobitism (London, 1713).14 P. M. Chapman, ‘Jacobite Political Argument in England, 1714–66’, (Cambridge University, Ph.D. thesis, 1983), section III.15 See Luke Milbourne, Measures of Resistance (London, 1710); [Anonymous], Obedience to Civil Government Clearly Stated (London, 1711); Jeremy Collier, Christian Principles of Obedience (London, 1713); George Harbin, The Hereditary Right of the Crown of England Asserted (London, 1713). A more extreme move towards absolutism and patriarchy was provided by Charles Leslie, The Finishing Stroke (London, 1711). While it would be fair to argue that Jacobite propaganda declined after the failure of the '15, it saw a revival prior to the Atterbury Plot (see below).16 Daniel Szechi, 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion (New Haven, CT, 2006), 255–56.17 See J. H. Plumb, The First Four Georges (London, 1956), 52–59; J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 239; Geoffrey Holmes, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain 1660–1722 (London, 1993); Jeremy Black, The Hanoverians: The History of a Dynasty (London, 2004), 46–47.18 See Daniel Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710–14 (Edinburgh, 1984); J. C. D. Clark, Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1986), 152; Tim Harris, Politics under the Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Society 1660–1715 (London, 1993), 157–60.19 See Clyve Jones, ‘Whigs, Jacobites and Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland’, The English Historical Review, 19 (1994), 52–73; Eveline Cruickshanks's response: Eveline Cruickshanks, ‘Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland, and Jacobitism’, The English Historical Review, 113 (1998), 65–76; Andrew Hanham, ‘“So Few Facts”: Jacobites, Tories and the Pretender’, Parliamentary History, 19 (2000), 233–57.20 For details of the Plot, see G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975); Eveline Cruickshanks, ‘Lord North, Christopher Layer and the Atterbury Plot: 1720–23’, in The Jacobite Challenge, edited by Eveline Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black (Edinburgh, 1988), 92–106; Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot (Basingstoke, 2004).21 See J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London, 1967), 168–72; Paul S. Fritz, ‘The Anti-Jacobite Intelligence System of the English Ministers, 1715–45’, The Historical Journal, 2 (1973), 265–89; G. V. Bennett, ‘Jacobitism and the Rise of Walpole’, in Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society, in Honour of J. H. Plumb, edited by Neil McKendrick (London, 1974), 91; Nicholas Rogers, ‘Riot and Popular Jacobitism in Early Hanoverian England’, in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism 1689–1759, edited by Eveline Cruickshanks (Edinburgh, 1982), 72.22 John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato's Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects: Four Volumes in Two, edited by Roland Hamowy, 2 vols (Indianapolis, IN, 1995), I, 40–41.23 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, II, 644–50. For contrasting approaches to Cato's Letters and their influences, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1975), 468; Roland Hamowy, ‘Cato's Letters, John Locke, and the Republican Paradigm’, in John Locke's Two Treatises of Government: New Interpretations, edited by Edward J. Harpham (Lawrence, KS, 1992), 148–172. See also Annie Mitchell, ‘Character of an Independent Whig – “Cato” and Bernard Mandeville’, History of European Ideas, 29 (2003), 291–311.24 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, I, No. 16, 118–119.25 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, II, No. 73, 539, No. 94, 675.26 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, I, 16, 118–119. On the ‘Country’ platform, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. A Reissue with a Retrospect (Cambridge, 1987), 369–70; E. J. Hundert, The Enlightenment's Fable: Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society (Cambridge, 1994), 12; Mark Goldie, ‘The English System of Liberty’, in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, edited by Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, 64–70.27 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, II, No. 69, 498.28 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, I, No. 61, 422–23.29 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, II, No. 99, 706–7. Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, Cato the Younger (95–46 BCE) was a Roman statesman and politician famed for his incorruptible behaviour and dedication to liberty and politics.30 On liberty, see Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, I, No. 15, 110–11, No. 35, 250–51, Nos 59–68, 406–83.31 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, II, No. 70, 503–5.32 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters: Four Volumes in Two, I, No. 24, 174.33 The English translation did remove the dedication to James Stuart at the behest of the British government, but was otherwise uncensored. Despite selling a number of copies, its success as Jacobite propaganda was dismissed, and James Stuart wrote after the publication of the work that ‘Ramsay is not to be in any ways concerned in writing or politics. I know him well enough and shall be able to employ him according to his talents’; see James Stuart to James Murray, 03 April 1724, in Alexander Forbes, Lord Pitsligo, The Jacobite Court at Rome in 1719: From Original Documents at Fettercairn House and at Windsor Castle, edited by Henrietta Tayler (Edinburgh, 1938), 229.34 Ramsay, Essay, iii.35 Ramsay, Essay, vi. See section V for discussion on the origins of this conflict.36 Ramsay, Essay, vii. Ramsay later cites Cicero, De natura deorum, I (see Ramsay, Essay, 19), and Plato and Lycurgus (see Ramsay, Essay, 21).37 Ramsay, Essay, 16–17.38 Ramsay, Essay, 29–30.39 Ramsay, Essay, 24–26, 211–12. For the notion of a ‘world city’ Ramsay cites Cicero, De Legibus, iv. This notion of brotherly love is present in Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Politique tirée des paroles de l'Ecriture sainte, edited by Jacques Le Brun (Geneva, 1967), book I, article I, third proposition [hereafter given in the format Bossuet, Politique, I, I, iii]. François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Télémaque, in Œuvres (Le Brun), vol II, book XIII.40 Ramsay, Essay, 27–28.41 Ramsay, Essay, 34.42 Ramsay, Essay, 51–52. Ramsay linked this to Noah's sons, and in the final chapter of the Essay he expanded the link to the Patriarchs of the Old Testament; see Ramsay, Essay, 215.43 Ramsay, Essay, 31.44 Ramsay, Essay, 42.45 Ramsay, Essay, 45.46 Ramsay, Essay, 37, 62–63.47 Ramsay, Essay, 91.48 Ramsay, Essay, 28.49 Ramsay, Essay, 41.50 Ramsay, Essay, 38, 103. At this stage Ramsay's application of the noun ‘sovereign’ has not been ascribed to any particular form of government. While he does not assert his preference for kingship until chapter XII, Ramsay interchanges the noun ‘sovereign’ with that of ‘king’.51 Ramsay, Essay, 39.52 Ramsay, Essay, 57.53 Ramsay, Essay, 71–73.54 Ramsay, Essay, 104. Ramsay paraphrases Fénelon's Télémaque here (book XIII), claiming that a king cannot ‘intermeddle with Religion’. This is contextually inaccurate, as Fénelon discussed the need for the state not to impinge upon the liberty of the Church rather than the freedom of conscience for the individual; see Mansfield, ‘Fénelon's Cuckoo’, in Fénelon in the Enlightenment, edited by Schmitt-Maaß and Ahn.55 Ramsay, Essay, 106.56 Ramsay, Essay, 57–58.57 Ramsay, Essay, 83.58 Ramsay, Essay, 85. Ramsay's citation of Télémaque is contextually misleading here regarding obedience to a king, which Fénelon concurred with. However, Fénelon made it clear in a number of works that if a king acted in a tyrannical way toward his people, he ran the justifiable gauntlet between rebellion and assassination; see Fénelon, Télémaque, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 290–91.59 Ramsay, Essay, 76. Ramsay cites Télémaque (book XII), in which Fénelon argues that royalty is slavery; see Fénelon, Télémaque, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 317.60 Ramsay, Essay, 75–80.61 Ramsay, Essay, 93–95. Ramsay cites both the Codex Theodosianus and the Historire of Thuanus (book 25) here.62 Ramsay, Essay, 99–100.63 On luxury, see François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Fables et opuscules pédagogiques, in Œuvres (Le Brun), I, 208; Fénelon, Télémaque, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 1, 32, 157, 291; François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de Royauté, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, xii, 980; Fénelon, Tables de Chaulnes, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 1104–05. On absolutism, see François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Dialogues des morts composes pour l’éducation d'un Prince, in Œuvres (Le Brun), I, 305–06, 401, 405; Fénelon, Télémaque, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 165–66, 291–92; Fénelon, Tables de Chaulnes, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 1098–1101. For a recent discussion on Fénelon and luxury, see Paul Schuurman, ‘Fénelon on Luxury, War and Trade in Telemachus’, History of European Ideas, 38 (2012), 179–99.64 See Kanter, ‘Archbishop Fénelon's Political Activity’, 320–34; Harold A. Ellis, Boulainvilliers and the French Monarchy: Aristocratic Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY, 1988), 5.65 Fénelon, Examen de conscience, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 989–90; Fénelon, Tables de Chaulnes, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 1098–99; François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Mémoires sur les mesures à prendre après la mort du Duc de Bourgogne, in Œuvres (Le Brun), II, 1119–23.66 See Roland Mousnier, Les institutions de la France sous la monarchie absolue 1598–1798, 2 vols (Paris, 1974–1980); Louis XIV and Absolutism, edited by Ragnhild Hatton (London, 1976); David Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (London, 1983).67 Bossuet, Politique, I, I, iii.68 Bossuet, Politique, I, II, vi–viii. All English translations are taken from Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture, edited by Patrick Riley (Cambridge, 1999).69 Bossuet, Politique, I, II, viii.70 Bossuet, Politique, I, II, iii. As with Ramsay, Bossuet viewed Cicero's utilisation of a divine ordinance as common to all nations, and he appropriated Cicero's discussion of the ‘love of one's country’ (caritas patria soli) from De Officiis, III, xxvii, 100 and De legibus, I, xv, 43.71 Bossuet, Politique, I, III, v. In his introduction, Riley uses the term ‘limited Hobbesianism’ to show the potential inspiration of Hobbes on Bossuet's view of the state of nature; see Patrick Riley, ‘Introduction’, in Bossuet, Politics, lxii–lxiii. For a discussion on this influence, see Stephan Skalweit, ‘Political Thought’, in New Cambridge Modern History, edited by Potter and others, V, 100; Johann P. Sommerville, ‘Absolutism and Royalism’, in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, edited by J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge, 1991), 12, 363; Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford, 2004), 506–07; Patrick Riley, ‘Social Contract Theory and its Critics’, in Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, edited by Goldie and Wokler, 12, 354.72 Bossuet, Politique, I, III, v.73 Bossuet, Politique, II, I, iii. This alternative genesis of civil government reveals a difference between Bossuet and Hobbes which is important for discussing his influence on Ramsay. While Hobbes relied on original contract to end the state of nature, Ramsay denied both the possibility of such a state's existence and the use of contract as the foundation of government. Moreover, it should be noted that Ramsay's government did not follow Sir Robert Filmer's Adamite view of kingship as a personal inheritance from God (Patriarcha). For Ramsay, kingship emerged as natural leaders emerging within the family unit and seizing the political authority granted to mankind.74 Bossuet, Politique, I, IV, ii.75 Bossuet, Politique, III, II, iii. Bossuet cites Tertullian's belief (Apology, chapter 32) that the king was God's chosen governor, which Ramsay applies in the same context; see Ramsay, Essay, 226–27.76 Bossuet, Politique, III, III, xiii–xiv.77 Bossuet, Politique, IV, I, ix.78 Bossuet, Politique, IV, I, viii.79 Bossuet, Politique, VIII, II, i–iv. On the distinction between French absolute and arbitrary sovereign power, see Paul W. Fox, ‘Louis XIV and the Theories of Absolutism and Divine Right’, The Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science, 26 (1960), 134–35; Roland Mousnier, ‘The Exponents and Critics of Absolutism’, in The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War 1609–48/59. Ed. J. P. Cooper. (Cambridge University Press, 1970), III, 119–21.80 Bossuet, Politique, V, IV, i.81 Bossuet, Politique, V, IV, i.82 Bossuet, Politique, V, I, i.83 The first six books of the work were completed in the 1670s and the last four between 1700 and 1704; see Johann P. Sommerville, ‘Early Modern Absolutism in Practice and Theory’, in Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe, edited by Cesare Cuttica and Glenn Burgess (London, 2012), 127. [Please give the full page range for the Mousnier reference, placing the specific page number(s) in parentheses after the page range (see AQ41 for details)]. On the background to French absolutism in the seventeenth century, see New Cambridge Modern History, edited by Potter and others, V; Victor-Lucien Tapié, La France de Louis XIII et de Richelieu (Paris, 1967); Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1980), parts 1–3; Parker, Making of French Absolutism; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, L'ancien régime (Paris, 1991).84 Bossuet, Politique, VI, II, i.85 Bossuet, Politique, VI, II, v.86 Discussions of such internecine state conflicts between groups can be found in Xenophon, Cyropaedia, I; Plato, Statesman, 292–93; Plato, Republic, VIII; Aristotle, Politics, V, viii; Polybius, Histories, VI; Livy, Histories, vi. These sources are all cited by Ramsay; however, the specific conflict in Rome between the people and the senate is found in Livy, and also in Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 40; Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Discours sur l'histoire universelle, in Œuvres, edited by abbé Bernard Velat and Yvonne Champallier (Paris, 1961). These classical ideas were particularly influential with respect to his political system, as expressed in Le voyages de Cyrus, in which Ramsay's mystical views are much more overtly entwined with his political scheme.87 H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1977), 14–22, 42–51.88 Ramsay, Essay, 118–26.89 The most direct example of plagiarism was in Bossuet's delineation of the creation of military tribunes. Bossuet wrote: ‘La loi pour les y admettre est proposée. Plutôt que de rabaisser le consultant, les Pères consentent à la création de trois nouveaux magistrats qui auraient l'autorité des consuls sous le nom de tribunes militaires, et le peuple est admis à cet honneur’; see Bossuet, Discours sur l'histoire universelle, in Œuvres, 1016. This became in Ramsay: ‘La Loi pour les y admettre est proposée. Plutôt que de rabaisser la Dignité Consulaire, les Pères consentent à la création de trois nouveaux Magistrats, qui auroient l'autorité de Consuls, sous le nom de Tribuns Militaires, & le Peuple est admis à cet Honneur’; see Andrew Michael Ramsay, Essay philosophique sur le gouvernement civil (London, 1721), 133. This plagiarism of Bossuet by Ramsay has not been previously noted in regards to the Essay; however, in relation to Le voyages de Cyrus, his use of Bossuet was immediately noted; see [Anonymous], A Supplement to the New Cyropaedia: or, The Reflections of Cyrus Upon his Travels. In Six Evening Conversations betwixt that Prince and his Prime Minister. Being a Criticism on Mr. Ramsay's Cyropaedia. To Which is Added, Another Criticism upon the Same Performance. In Four Conversations, betwixt the Marchioness de **** and Two Gentlemen of Distinction in France (London, 1729); Voltaire, ‘Plagiarism’, in A Philosophical Dictionary, in The Works of Voltaire, VI, ii, 204. For a recent discussion of Cyrus and Bossuet, see Doohwan Ahn, ‘From Greece to Babylon: The Political Thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743)’, History of European Ideas, 37 (2011), 421–37. Ahn concurs that Baldi fails to mark Ramsay's use of Bossuet in his political thought.90 The Agrarian Laws under Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (c. 163–133 BCE) and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (154–121 BCE) were an attempt to obviate the inequality in Roman society by redistributing common land to the people, which led to constitutional war. See J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Volume Three: The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge, 2003), 32–60; Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge, 2004), 52–78.91 Ramsay, Essay, 126–30.92 Ramsay, Essay, 163–70.93 Ramsay, Essay, 136.94 Ramsay, Essay, 141–43.95 Ramsay, Essay, 147–49.96 Ramsay, Essay, 170.97 Ramsay, Essay, 67–71. While Ramsay did not discuss the separation, there was a prevalent distinction between ideas of popular government and a full democracy that would include the headless masses; see J. C. D. Clark, ‘A General Theory of Party, Opposition and Government, 1688–1832’, The Historical Journal, 23 (1980), 297; Johann P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London, 1986), 62; Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998), 30–31.98 Ramsay, Essay, 178.99 Ramsay, Essay, 179–81, 191–92. Ramsay cited Philippe de Commines, The Reign of Louis XI, V, xviii.100 Ramsay, Essay, 101.101 Ramsay, Essay, 179–81.102 Ramsay, Essay, 163, 188.103 See Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 14–17; H. T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (London, 1970); Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Political Writings, edited by David Armitage (Cambridge, 1997).104 Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, 16–17.105 Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Contributions to the Craftsman, edited by Simon Varey (Oxford, 1982), No. 123, 59–62. For a discussion of Bolingbroke's opposition to Walpole, see Quentin Skinner, ‘The Principles and Practice of Opposition: The Case of Bolingbroke versus Walpole’, in Historical Perspectives, edited by McKendrick, 93–128 (116–18).106 Bolingbroke, Contributions to the Craftsman, No. 111, 49-51, No. 123, 59, No. 149, 90, No. 161, 96.107 Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, A Dissertation upon Parties, in Political Writings, 1–193, (82–84, 123–25).108 Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, The Works of Lord Bolingbroke. With a Life Prepared Expressly for This Edition, Containing Additional Information Relative to His Personal and Public Character, Selected from the Best Authorities. In Four Volumes (Philadelphia, PA, 1841), IV, 145, 182.109 Bolingbroke, Works, IV, 146–47, 164.110 Bolingbroke, Works, IV, 181, 202.111 Bolingbroke, Works, IV, 190.112 Bolingbroke, Works, IV, 193, 198.113 Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, The Idea of a Patriot King, in Political Writings, 231, 217–296.114 Bolingbroke, Works, IV, 194.115 Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, 94, 99. For discussion of the potential sources of this natural law system, see Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, 106–10. See also Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke (Chicago, IL, 1965), 53–55; Dickinson, Bolingbroke, 170–71; Barry M. Burrows, ‘Whig versus Tory – A Genuine Difference?’, Political Theory, 4 (1976), 455–69. There is considerable variation in opinion regarding the potential source of Bolingbroke's system, which, like Ramsay's, contained a deistic and complex approach to theology and natural law.
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