For four hundred years George Buchanan's latin text, the Dialogus de Jure Regni apud Scotos has been known to the Latinist legal philosopher as a profound study of the art and science of good government.

The work was published at the time when the Scottish people has forced Mary Queen of Scots to abdicate in favour of her infant son James and George Buchanan sought to establish the rights of the people to bring their Crowned Head to order. This was, for the time, a novel principal to express and the book was widely and eagerly read by those reaching towards the more egalitarian principals of government that has now become part of our democratic parliamentarian system. Despite the fact that the Dialogus was not well received by King James ( to whom the work was dedicated ) or the establishment, and was condemned by the Scottish Parliament, banned after the restoration of Charles II and ordered by the University of Oxford to be publicly burned by common hangman, the book had a profound influence on the political thinking of the time. In England, Parliamentarians cited Buchanan to justify their own proceedings against the King and the tendrels of Buchanan's principals, enunciated first in this Dialogue, can be found interwoven in the Constitutions and Legal systems that have stemmed throughout the world from what has been called the "Mother of Parliaments."

The work, although neglected by our own universities, was for many years in some Continental seats of learning mentioned as a major classic, but only one translation into English by an American Duncan H. McNeill has been published. This important exposition of early democratic thought has been made available to people throughout the world, who study the evolution of principals governing the democratic heritage.

Dialogus de Jure Regni apud Scotos
By George Buchanan (pdf)