"Who will wear a shoe that hurts him, because the shoe-maker tells him 'tis well made?"
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A craftsman may praise his handiwork, but the only test that matters is whether the wearer can walk without pain. The image strips authority of its mystique: expertise, pedigree, and official assurances cannot override lived experience. If a shoe hurts, the wearer is the judge; if a government harms, the people are the judges. The analogy rebukes submission to power merely because power claims legitimacy.
Algernon Sydney wrote as a republican critic of Stuart absolutism in 17th-century England. Against doctrines of divine right and hereditary rule, he argued that political authority is a trust grounded in the good of the governed. Sidney’s target included the fashionable theory that monarchy was lawful by nature or scripture. He counters with common sense: the purpose of shoes is to fit feet, and the purpose of government is to secure liberty and welfare. Craft without comfort is failed craft; sovereignty without the people’s safety and consent is failed sovereignty.
The line also answers a perennial temptation to defer to experts, priests, courtiers, or theorists who declare a regime well made while citizens feel the pinch of tax, censorship, and fear. No credentialed claim can annul the evidence of injury. By placing judgment with those affected, Sydney affirms a politics of accountability. The wearer knows where it pinches; the people know when law becomes oppression.
This standard is practical, not metaphysical. It implies that legitimacy is not a label affixed from above but a condition maintained by performance: protection of rights, impartial justice, and the common good. When rulers violate that trust, the title erodes, and resistance or replacement is justified. Sydney’s thought helped shape later Whig and American ideas of consent of the governed. The lesson endures: measure institutions by the freedom and security they deliver, not by the confidence with which their architects praise them.
Algernon Sydney wrote as a republican critic of Stuart absolutism in 17th-century England. Against doctrines of divine right and hereditary rule, he argued that political authority is a trust grounded in the good of the governed. Sidney’s target included the fashionable theory that monarchy was lawful by nature or scripture. He counters with common sense: the purpose of shoes is to fit feet, and the purpose of government is to secure liberty and welfare. Craft without comfort is failed craft; sovereignty without the people’s safety and consent is failed sovereignty.
The line also answers a perennial temptation to defer to experts, priests, courtiers, or theorists who declare a regime well made while citizens feel the pinch of tax, censorship, and fear. No credentialed claim can annul the evidence of injury. By placing judgment with those affected, Sydney affirms a politics of accountability. The wearer knows where it pinches; the people know when law becomes oppression.
This standard is practical, not metaphysical. It implies that legitimacy is not a label affixed from above but a condition maintained by performance: protection of rights, impartial justice, and the common good. When rulers violate that trust, the title erodes, and resistance or replacement is justified. Sydney’s thought helped shape later Whig and American ideas of consent of the governed. The lesson endures: measure institutions by the freedom and security they deliver, not by the confidence with which their architects praise them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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