Discourses Concerning Government

Discourses Concerning Government is a political work published in 1698, and based on a manuscript written in the early 1680s by the English Whig activist Algernon Sidney who was executed on a treason charge in 1683.

[5] Mihoko Suzuki mentions "the lasting importance of the English Revolution and radical Protestantism" for "Sidney's political thought and his commitment to republican principles.

"[6] He was included in the "Whig canon" of writers introduced by Caroline Robbins, with principles in line with those of radical dissidents from the 1689 Settlement of the English monarchy.

[7] Leopold von Ranke's History of England (in the translation by the School of Modern History at Oxford)[8] stated that: The work, more discursive than systematic in its character, contains the results of many varied studies, as far as the existing learning made them in any way possible; it offers wide prospects and general points of view, but bears at the same time the character of the moment, and is founded on the disputes of the time.

But a careful reading displays a remarkably consistent view of government [...][10]The Discourses is explicitly a rebuttal of Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings, a work published in 1680 by the political theorist Robert Filmer, who had died in 1659.

[13] Nicholas von Maltzahn considers that Sidney's was "a voice closer to Milton's than any other in the Restoration, one sharing his republican vocabulary and priorities to a remarkable degree.