"'Tis pity that when laws are faulty they should not be mended or abolisht": Authority, legitimations, and honor in Aphra Behn's The Widdow Ranter

Bacon's heroics in this particular scene, however, is predominantly anchored in the justification, and exoneration, of his war as "just Revenge" (13) for the protection of property that was violated by the natives. Maintaining one's property by sword is lawful defense. The same argument will be used later by Bacon in his confrontation with Wellman and Downright: "Is it unlawfull to defend my self against a Thief that breaks into my doors?" (II.iv.89-90). Bacon's discourse is predicated on two politically charged notions of the 1680s, namely, "property" and "defense," and on their intrinsic connection. Steven Zwicker points out that "the rhetorical fervor surrounding the language of property was vivid in the Exclusion Crisis and yet more heated in 1688 when this language was exalted to a `revolutionary principle'" (145-- 146). Property was ascribed a theoretical status central to the Whig polemics against patriarchalist theories that assumed the King's original holding of all property. Having granted absolute monarchy as the original government, the typical Whig argument is that, because of the increase of population and goods and the introduction of complicated relationships of property, people had to invent laws for its maintenance and regulation. The prevalent economism of Whig political theory is obvious in the fact that the protection of property is assigned as the origin of law and the end of government. Consequently it is the development of property relations that decides what form of government is better fit to serve them. More importantly, it is the degree to which a government successfully provides the protection of property as well as the lives and liberties of the subjects that validates its sovereignty.17

This Whig rationale of the end of government is implied in Bacon's justification of his taking arms without commission: the protection of lives, liberties, and properties.18 Behn, however, does not allow her hero to mouth these three words that are inscribed in contemporary political language as Whig staples. Instead, she paraphrases in the same way that she opts for the "Country's good" (II.i.4) instead of "the common good," another Whig slogan. These words, nonetheless, obsessively mark dramatic speech, taking on different signification according to the speaker. At times, they are consigned to the language of the Virginian Council as hypocritical slogans, the choice of the insidious Dunce for delivery being a telling gesture:

DUNCE By an order of Council.... Whereas Bacon, contrary to Law and Equity, has to satisfie his own Ambition taken up Arms, with a pretence to fight the Indians, but indeed to molest and enslave the whole Colony, and to take away their Liberties and Properties. (III.ii.125-30)

Other times, they sound fake and arrogant as on Timerous's lips when he talks of the "Rabble": "To Stake our Lives and Fortunes against their nothing" (II.iv.54). The preservation of "Lives" and "Fortunes" (I.ii.106) as Bacon's achievement figures also in Whiff s argument with Whimsey with regard to the precise nature of his crime. Finally, they are invested with some dignity in the language of the decent Downright, who represents Bacon's rebellion as a threat to their "Fortunes," "Honours," and "Lives" (I.ii.30-31).