Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 66

The changes and chances of seventeenth-century politics had produced a great number of varying theories concerning the State and the nature of government. In the beginning of the century divine right was ranged against a parliamentarianism which looked to the middle ages for its justification. The period of the Commonwealth accustomed people to see a succession of different forms of government set up and then deliberately pulled down. The lesson was clear: the people had in their hands the power and the right to set up forms of government according to their fancy. A large number of political thinkers of different schools took up this idea, and were prepared to treat existing governments as if they had been the deliberate product of popular action. It merely remained to ascertain exactly what policy the people had proposed to pursue when they did this. We consequently find many different suggestions as to the form which this original contract, as they regarded it, received. The seventeenth century and much of the eighteenth were occupied in searching for forms of contract which should afford a reasonable justification for political society, either as it existed, or as the philosopher thought it ought to exist.