The 'Oceans' on its appearance excited great attention. Answers were published, and those Harrington in turn answered. Richard Baxter's ' Holy Commonwealth' was written principally against the ' Oceans; ' but so far was this work from gratifying the party for whose favour it was designed, that in 1683 it was publicly burnt by a decree of the University of Oxford, together with some of the writings of Hobbes and Milton, and other works, among which how ever tho ' Oceans' was not included. In 1659 Harrington published an abridgment of the Octane,' under the title of the ' Art of Law giving ; ' and ho subsequently published several tracts, many of which are quite of a temporary nature, and the others devoted more or less to the same subject as the ' Oceana.' He had also founded a club, called the Rota Club, at which he gave nightly discourses on the advantage of a commonwealth and of the ballot. The club was broken up after the Restoration. But the members of the club bad become marked men.
On the 28th of December 1661, he was seized by order of the king on a charge of treasonable designs and practices, and was carried to dm Tower. Ile was at first ignorant of the precise charge against him; but on a private examination taken by Lord Lauderdale, Sir George Carteret, and Sir Edward Walker, it came out that be was suspected of having taken part in a conspiracy to subvert the monarchy and establish a commonwealth. He stoutly denied all cognisance of the proceedings which those gentlemen with great show of circum stance and detail attributed to him ; but his denial was set down, it appears, to faithfulness to an oath. He subsequently presented through his sisters several petitions to the king, praying that he might either be released from confinement or brought to a public trial. Having received no answer to his petitions he made application for a Habeas Corpus : and shortly after this had been granted he was removed without previous notice, and without any communication being made to his friends, to a rock opposite Plymouth, called St. Nicholas's
Island. His close confinement here soon produced an effect upon his health, and upon petition be was allowed to be removed to Plymouth.
Shortly after he became deranged, owing, as has been suggested, to a medicine recommended to him for the cure of the scurvy, but more probably from the effect of his severe imprisonment. Lord Bath, the governor of Plymouth, then made intercession with the king, and Harrington was released. On being removed to London, and obtaining the best medical advice, he rallied considerably as regards bodily health, but his mind was never again right. At his advanced age, and in this unsatisfactory state of health, he married. He died of palsy on the 11th of September 1677, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.
The ' Oceana,' which is Harringtou's chief work, is an imaginary account of the construction of a commonwealth in a country of which Oceana is the imaginary name. It opens with an exposition of the grounds and arguments for a commonwealth ; and the principles which are there established are afterwards sought to be applied in detail. Harrington lays great stress on a doctrine which he enunciates thus : that dominion follows the balance of property; by which he means that the form of government in a state must depend on the mode in which property is distributed therein. Proceeding on this doctrine, be requires what be calls an equal Agrarian law as the foundation of his commonwealth. Its other chief features are popular election of councillors by ballot, and the going out at certain periods of a certain number of these councillors, which is also managed by ballot.