Leadership Quote by Algernon Sydney

Sydney’s line is the chilly, clear-eyed argument for government that doesn’t bother flattering anyone. People, he suggests, are trapped between two bad options: total isolation, which is impractical, and crowded coexistence, which is combustible. The sentence works because it frames political order as a social technology, not a moral achievement. “Cannot well live asunder” concedes the fantasy of self-sufficiency is just that; “nor many together” admits the equally naive fantasy that community runs on goodwill. Rule isn’t romantic. It’s infrastructure.

The subtext is consent, but not the sentimental kind. “Some rule to which all must submit” hints at a bargain: you trade a slice of freedom for predictability. Importantly, the rule is positioned as impersonal, a standard that binds everyone, rather than the whim of a sovereign. That’s the republican nerve in the quote: submission is acceptable only if it’s submission to law, not to a person.

Context sharpens the edge. Sydney wrote in the violent afterlife of England’s civil wars and the Restoration, when “order” was constantly invoked to justify repression. He was a politician and anti-absolutist who would later be executed for alleged treason, turning his writings into a kind of moral contraband for later liberals. Read that way, the line is both pragmatic and polemical: yes, society needs rules; no, that doesn’t mean you hand yourself over to kings. The intent is to make government feel inevitable while narrowing what kinds of government can claim legitimacy.