free states became a highly subversive ideology in early - modern Britain. The strategy followed by the theorists I have been con-side ring was to appropriate the supreme moral value of freedom and apply it exclusively to certain rather radical forms of representative government. This eventually allowed them to stigmatise with the opprobrious name of slavery a number of government such as the ancient regime in France and the rule of the British in North America – that were widely regarded as legitimate and even progressive. So it is hardly surprising to find that, throughout the period I have been surveying, the neo – roman theory was subjected to a continuing barrage of violently hostile criticism.