"The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of Parliamentary influence"
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Hart’s sentence wears the calm tweed of academic narration, but it’s really a compact theory of political change: power doesn’t simply rise; it provokes. The Stuarts “steadily attempted” to consolidate authority sounds almost managerial, smoothing over what was, in practice, a combustible mix of divine-right rhetoric, fiscal improvisation, and religious brinkmanship. By choosing that measured phrasing, Hart signals a historian’s preference for structural forces over melodrama, yet he quietly keeps the causal fuse lit: the very attempt to tighten the crown’s grip manufactures the conditions for its loosening.
The key move is in the second clause. “Resistance” isn’t romanticized as heroic liberty, and “immense growth” isn’t framed as inevitable progress. Hart implies an almost Newtonian recoil: centralization triggers organization, coalition-building, and institutional muscle. Parliamentary influence expands not because Parliament suddenly becomes virtuous, but because it becomes useful - the arena where grievances can be aggregated, resources can be negotiated, and legitimacy can be claimed against an overreaching executive.
Context matters: Hart, writing from an early 20th-century American vantage point, is mapping England’s 17th-century crisis (James I, Charles I, civil war, and the post-Glorious Revolution settlement) into a legible origin story for constitutional government. The subtext is a cautionary civics lesson: when executive power treats opposition as an obstacle to be crushed, it often ends up professionalizing that opposition into an enduring institution. Resistance, in Hart’s telling, is less a moral posture than an engine of statecraft.
The key move is in the second clause. “Resistance” isn’t romanticized as heroic liberty, and “immense growth” isn’t framed as inevitable progress. Hart implies an almost Newtonian recoil: centralization triggers organization, coalition-building, and institutional muscle. Parliamentary influence expands not because Parliament suddenly becomes virtuous, but because it becomes useful - the arena where grievances can be aggregated, resources can be negotiated, and legitimacy can be claimed against an overreaching executive.
Context matters: Hart, writing from an early 20th-century American vantage point, is mapping England’s 17th-century crisis (James I, Charles I, civil war, and the post-Glorious Revolution settlement) into a legible origin story for constitutional government. The subtext is a cautionary civics lesson: when executive power treats opposition as an obstacle to be crushed, it often ends up professionalizing that opposition into an enduring institution. Resistance, in Hart’s telling, is less a moral posture than an engine of statecraft.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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