This article presents the first addition in recent years to the canon of the British eighteenth-century statesman and political thinker Lord Bolingbroke (1678–1751), a manuscript essay “On the Character of a Great Patriot.” For the first time, this article identifies Bolingbroke as the likely author of this unascribed, undated, and untitled essay in the Senate House Library manuscript collection. Using internal and contextual evidence, the article demonstrates that the “Character” is a description of Bolingbroke's opposition colleague William Pulteney, and that it was written in the final months of 1731, most likely for publication in the opposition journal the Craftsman. The “Character” dates from a period in which Bolingbroke wrote very little, and it is thus a crucial addition to his biography as well as an early exposition of his theory of opposition politics. Moreover, study of the essay shows that Bolingbroke drew extensively on the example of Pulteney when formulating his idea about the necessity of a systematic opposition party, not fully formulated until On the Spirit of Patriotism (1736). The “Character” thus sheds further light on the important relationship between political practice and theory in the age of Walpole.

中文翻译：

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论“伟大爱国者”的性格：博林布鲁克的新论文

本文介绍了近年来对英国 18 世纪政治家和政治思想家博林布鲁克勋爵（Lord Bolingbroke，1678-1751 年）的经典著作的首次补充，他的手稿文章“论伟大爱国者的性格”。本文首次将 Bolingbroke 确定为参议院图书馆手稿收藏中这篇未署名、未注明日期和未命名文章的可能作者。文章使用内部和上下文证据表明，“人物”是对波林布鲁克的反对派同事威廉·普尔特尼的描述，它写于 1731 年的最后几个月，最有可能在反对派期刊上发表工匠. “人物”起源于波林布鲁克很少写作的时期，因此它是对他的传记的重要补充，也是他对反对派政治理论的早期阐述。此外，对这篇文章的研究表明，博林布鲁克在阐述他关于有系统的反对党的必要性的想法时，广泛借鉴了普尔特尼的例子，直到论爱国主义精神（1736 年）。“人物”由此进一步阐明了沃波尔时代政治实践与理论之间的重要关系。