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This remarkable expression of radical republican thought has never before been published. Algernon Sidney was among the most unrelenting partisans of the parliamentary party during the Commonwealth, and died on the scaffold in 1683 for his opposition to Charles II. Sidney's voluminous Discourses Concerning Government was published after his death, but the earlier and more vivid Court Maxims was only recently rediscovered in a manuscript in Warwick Castle. Written during Sidney's continental exile, Court Maxims is of the greatest importance for the study of the international ramifications of seventeenth-century republican thought. Its dialogue structure presents a lively discussion about the principles of government and the practice of politics, articulating a vital tradition of republicanism in an age of absolutism. These characteristics make Court Maxims a unique text, essential reading for anyone interested in republicanism or early modern political thought.

This remarkable expression of radical republican thought has never before been published. Algernon Sidney was among the most unrelenting partisans of the parliamentary party during the Commonwealth, and died on the scaffold in 1683 for his opposition to Charles II. Sidney's voluminous Discourses Concerning Government was published after his death, but the earlier and more vivid Court Maxims was only recently rediscovered in a manuscript in Warwick Castle. Written during Sidney's continental exile, Court Maxims is of the greatest importance for the study of the international ramifications of seventeenth-century republican thought. Its dialogue structure presents a lively discussion about the principles of government and the practice of politics, articulating a vital tradition of republicanism in an age of absolutism. These characteristics make Court Maxims a unique text, essential reading for anyone interested in republicanism or early modern political thought.

"I have lately undertaken to read Algernon Sidney on government. . . . As often as I have read it, and fumbled it over, it now excites fresh admiration that this work has excited so little interest in the literary world. As splendid an edition of it as the art of printing can produce--as well for the intrinsic merit of the work, as for the proof it brings of the bitter sufferings of the advocates of liberty from that time to this, and to show the slow progress of moral, philosophical, and political illumination in the world--ought to be now printed in America."--John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (1823)Written in response to Sir Robert Filmer's "Patriarcha" (1680), the "Discourses Concerning Government" by Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) has been treasured for more than three centuries as a classic defense of republicanism and popular government.Sidney rejected Filmer's theories of royal absolutism and divine right of kings, insisting that title to rule should be based on merit rather than birth; and republics, he thought, were more likely to honor merit than were monarchies. Like John Milton, Sidney revered and idealized the Commonwealth (1649-1660) as England's noble achievement in the grand tradition of ancient Greece and Rome.Sidney's treatise was published posthumously in 1698, fifteen years after he was executed for complicity in a plot to assassinate Charles II. Sidney's papers, including a draft of the "Discourses, " were used as evidence against him. Although there is nothing in the work incompatible with constitutional monarchy, the indictment claimed that it was a "false, seditious, and traitorous libel," citing sentences which stated that the king is subject to law and is responsible to the people.Sidney's "Discourses" was widely read in the colonies and influenced a number of American revolutionary leaders.Thomas G. West is Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas.