This article explores the transformations and differences between republicanism and liberalism in the political languages of the eighteenth-century British debate. We intend to demonstrate how the dynamics proper to what we are calling the English “oligarchic moment” are expressed in distinct political languages: on the one hand, the resumption of a certain kind of machiavellian republicanism turns against the predominance of oligarchies and appeals to the protagonism of the crown; on the other, the defense of the social and economic transformations brought by the expansion of commerce and civil life leads to the diagnosis of the incompatibility of ancient republicanism with modernity. It also emphasizes the need for coexistence between the private individual and the modern citizen. This debate, inseparable from the contextual and historical problems of the English political process, illustrates a central transformation for the emergence of the political languages that constitute the prevailing ideologies and institutions of liberal democracy.
Keywords:
Liberalism; Republicanism; British political theory; Constitution; Mixed government