girl upon his lap, " Madam, you have come in the nick of time, for
I was just about to steal this pretty lady." "Why should you?"
"Why shouldn't I, unless you cause your father to restore a child of
mine that lie has stolen?" It was only, he said, a kind of political
romance; so far from any treason against her father that he hoped
she would let him know it was to be dedicated to him. So the
book was restored; and it was published in the time of Cromwell's
Commonwealth, in the year 1656.

This treatise, which had its origin in the most direct pressure of the
problem of government upon the minds of men continues the
course of thought on which Machiavelli's " Prince " had formed
one famous station, and Hobbes's Leviathan," another.

Oceana," when published, was widely read and actively attacked.
One opponent of its doctrines was Dr. Henry Ferne, afterward
Bishop of Chester. Another was Matthew Wren, eldest son to the
Bishop of Ely. He was one of those who met for scientific research
at the house of Dr. Wilkins, and had, said Harrington, " an
excellent faculty of magnifying a louse and diminishing a
commonwealth."

In 1659, Harrington published an abridgment of his Oceana as
"The Art of Lawgiving," in three books. Other pieces followed, in
which he defended or developed his opinions. He again urged
them when Cromwell's Commonwealth was in its death-throes.
Then he fell back upon argument at nightly meetings of a Rota
Club which met in the New Palace Yard, Westminster. Milton's
old pupil, Cyriac Skinner, was one of its members; and its
elections were by ballot, with rotation in the tenure of all offices.