Foreword

by Jon Roland



Algernon Sidney was tried and executed in 1683 for plotting against the 

English monarchy, but exonerated in 1688 after the Glorious Revolution of 

that year. Before his arrest, he wrote these Discourses, in response to a 

book titled Patriarcha, by Sir Robert Filmer, which argued for the divine 

right of kings. Sidney was widely read in the English colonies of America, 

and Thomas Jefferson regarded his writings and those of John Locke as the 

leading sources for the philosophic foundations of liberty and human rights. 

However, while Locke's Second Treatise on Government is still widely 

republished and read today, Sidney's Discourses has become obscure. This is 

probably due in part to the fact that it was written in haste, and poorly 

organized, and that, having been written in response to another work, it is 

sometimes difficult to understand without having read that other work first, 

and Filmer's Patriarcha has also fallen into obscurity, perhaps because its 

thesis has been rejected by subsequent generations.



In a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1823, John Adams wrote:



     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 [i.e. wonder] 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 published in America.



During a visit to the University of Copenhagen, Sidney wrote in the 

visitor's book



     Manus haec inimica tyrannis

     Einse petit placidam cum liberate quietem.

     (This hand, enemy to tyrants,

     By the sword seeks calm peacefulness with liberty.)



This was printed beneath the frontispiece of early editions of the 

Discourses, and that tradition is continued here. To this day, it remains 

the official motto of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.



In the Apology in the Day of His Death, Sidney wrote:



     I had from my youth endeavored to uphold the common rights of mankind, 

     the laws of this land, and the true Protestant religion, against 

     corrupt principles, arbitrary power, and Popery, and I do now willingly 

     lay down my life for the same.



The many illegalities in the trial of Sidney remind us today, in this time 

of similarly illegal trials, that the struggle for liberty continues. Sidney 

is one of the heroes in that struggle. In these his words he fights on.