The political foundations of Latin America : a long-term counterpoint

Abstract

Just as certain sects, social groups, or types of personality from Europe fouhd a happier life in the New World than in the Old, so we might suppose that certain European Philosophies found warmer reception overseas. Northrop suggests this to be the case for the ideas of John Locke, whose atomistic conception of the sovereign ,individual squared neaüy with Anglo American conditions of life. Locke's want of attention to what Burke was later to call the "mysterious incorporation" of English society made his thought less congenia! to his homeland than to the transatlantic England that was colonized during the century of his birth.