Originally published: Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1962.

Includes bibliographical references: p. [302]-303 and index.

Introduction. The roots of liberal-democratic theory -- Problems of interpretation -- Hobbe : the political obligation of the market. Phi losophy and political theory -- Human nature and the state of nature -- Models of society -- Political obligation -- Penetration and limits of Hobbe's political theory -- The Levellers : franchise and freedom. Th e problem of franchise -- Types of franchise -- The record -- Theoretic al implications -- Harrington : the opportunity state. Unexamined ambi guities -- The balance and the gentry -- The bourgeois society -- The e qual commonwealth and the equal agrarian -- The self-cancelling balance principle -- Harrington's stature --Locke : the political theory of ap propriation. Interpretations -- The theory of property right -- Class differentials in natural rights and rationality -- The ambiguous state of nature -- The ambiguous civil society -- Unsettled problems reconsid ered -- Possessive individualism and liberal democracy. The seventeent h-century foundations -- The twentieth-century dilemma -- Appendix : So cial classes and franchise classes in England, circa 1648.