The Honourable Roger North, 1651-1734: On Life, Morality, Law and Tradition (review)

Roger North suffered the fate of many on the wrong side of politics: for centuries his writing was denigrated by those who provided the consensus view of the period in which he lived. For some decades now, Jamie Kassler, with one or two devoted co-workers such as Mary Chan, Janet D. Hine, and Peter Millard, has been labouring to reinstate him as a seriously neglected thinker in a number of intellectual fields. Kassler's initial interest in North's musical ideas developed into a wider concern for his understanding of human behaviour and the basis of state authority. This has meshed with current scholarly interest in the development of an integrated theory of the psychophysical nature of human cognition. The new perception that there may be musical models for understanding human character, and that the role of music in healing was an important aspect of medical theory in his time, has stimulated wider interest in North.

Unfortunately, not only were the works that were printed badly bowdlerized but the mass of North's surviving manuscripts, written over a 40-year period, are undated, sometimes rewritten, re-attempts at the same question, or partly destroyed. If they can be put in chronological order they offer the prospect of a rarely available study of the development of an individual's thought, from youth to old age. To provide a basis for understanding North's manner of working, Jamie Kassler and Mary Chan first produced an exhaustive index of all his works, a necessary basis for further study but only a preliminary approach to his ideas.

This book provides a further contribution to the examination of his thought. Kassler has transcribed and painstakingly edited a work hitherto only in manuscript, entitled Of Etimology. The title is partially misleading as North moves from a defence of etymology and a justification of the importation of foreign words into English, by way of relating law and language, to a consideration of systems of law and the promotion of English common law as a highly desirable form of rule. The edition is prefaced by a long study of North's way of writing and his ideas about the right way to live independently. In this, Kassler uses a wide range of his works and attempts to fit them into the framework of the better-known political theorists of the time.

Readers unfamiliar with North's work would do best to start with the edition as it will give them a clear idea of his style and approach in a single coherent text dating from some time after 1706. Kassler's analysis shows where and how North offers other interpretations which is important but frequently confusing and better appreciated when a single thread has been grasped. This is a scholarly and thoughtful work which presents a coherent interpretation of North. Historians may wish to cavil at some of the background provided but it does not detract from the value of the study.