8 - Community, representation and consent

Summary

The notion of community is central both to Lawson's secular and ecclesiastical politics; but when taken in conjunction with the associated concepts of consent and representation it might seem to suggest some neo-democratic commitment on Lawson's part. And certainly the inheritance of precept is similar, but Lawson is not Rousseau. Neither, despite a redolence of echoes from the 1640s, is Lawson's work at one with the ‘radical’ Levellers. He may as easily be seen in chorus with the ‘conservative’ Clubmen. If Lawson's apparent bringing together of those opposing wings of the English Revolution seems to be a dialectical tour de force, it is because we have become too confident in the classificatory power of the ‘radical’ and ‘conservative’ labels.

As Tierney has demonstrated, Lawson's theory of community is a variation on medieval themes of Roman Law ideas of corporation. But Tierney has oversimplified its operation and its consequences for Lawson's notions of representation and consent. Most generally, the notion of legal corporation can be seen as the answer to the problems of giving a diversity of individuals unequivocable status under the law. To see people as members of a defined corporation was to effect a legal economy of scale. Because of their common corporate status all were similarly answerable to and protected by the relevant pattern of laws; but there was a crucial difference between members as directly responsible for and active in the corporation, and members as subsumed appendages.