eminency in that Kingdom with the Cities of Paris Bourdeaux and many others in the space of these last fifty years have sided with the perpetual Enemies of their own Country Again other great Alterations have happened within the same Kingdom The Races of Kings four times wholly changed Five Kings deposed in less than 150 Years after the death of Charles the Great The Offices of Maire du Palais and Constable erected and laid aside The great Dukedoms and Earldoms little inferior to Soveraign Principalities establish'd and suppress'd The decision of all Causes and the execution of the Laws placed absolutely in the hands of the Nobility their Deputies Seneschals or Vice-Seneschals and taken from them again Parliaments set up to receive Appeals from the other Courts and to judg soveraignly in all cases expresly to curb them The Power of these Parliaments after they had crushed the Nobility brought so low that within the last twenty years they are made to register and give the Power of Laws to Edicts of which the Titles only are read to them and the General Assemblies of Estates that from the time of Pepin had the Power of the Nation in their hands are now brought to nothing and almost forgotten Tho I mention these things 't is not with a design of blaming them for some of them deserve it not and it ought to be consider'd that the Wisdom of man is imperfect and unable to foresee the Effects that may proceed from an infinite variety of Accidents which according to Emergencies necessarily require new Constitutions to prevent or cure the mischiefs arising from them or to advance a good that at the first was not thought on And as the noblest work in which the Wit of man can be exercised were if it could be done to constitute a Government that should last for ever the next to that is to sute Laws to present Exigencies and so much as is in the power of man to foresee And he that should resolve to persist obstinately in the way he first entered upon or to blame those who go out of that in which their Fathers had walked when they find it necessary dos as far as in him lies render the worst of Errors perpetual Changes therefore are unavoidable and the Wit of man can go no farther than to institute such as in relation to the Forces Manners Nature Religion or Interests of a People and their Neighbours are sutable and adequate to what is seen or apprehended to be seen And he who would oblige all Nations at all times to take the same course would prove as foolish as a Physician who should apply the same Medicine to all Distempers or an Architect that would build the same kind of House for all Persons without considering their Estates Dignities the number of their Children or Servants the Time or Climate in which they live and many other Circumstances or which is if possible more sottish a General who should obstinately resolve always to make War in the same way and to draw up his Army in the same form without examining the nature number and strength of his own and his Enemies Forces or the advantages and disadvantages of the Ground But as there may be some universal Rules in Physick Architecture and Military Discipline from which men ought never to depart so there are some in Politicks also which ought always to be observed and wise Legislators adhering to them only will be ready to change all others as occasion may require in order to the publick Good This we may learn from Moses who laying the Foundation of the Law given to the Israelites in that Justice Charity and Truth which having its root in God is subject to no change left them the liberty of having Judges or no Judges Kings or no Kings or to give the Soveraign Power to High Priests or Captains as best pleased themselves and the Mischiefs they afterwards suffer'd proceeded not simply from changing but changing for the worse The like judgment may be made of the Alterations that have happen'd in other places They who aim at the publick Good and wisely institute Means proportionable and adequate to the attainment of it deserve praise and those only are to be dislik'd who either foolishly or maliciously set up a corrupt private Interest in one or a few men Whosoever therefore would judg of the Roman Changes may see that in expelling the Tarquins creating Consuls abating the violence of Usurers admitting Plebeians to marry with the Patricians rendring them capable of Magistracies deducing Colonies dividing Lands gained from their Enemies erecting Tribunes to defend the Rights of the Commons appointing the Decemviri to regulate the Law and abrogating their Power when they abused it creating Dictators and Military Tribunes with a Consular Power as occasions requir'd they acted in the face of the Sun for the good of the Publick and such Acts having always produced Effects sutable to the rectitude of their Intentions they consequently deserve praise But when another Principle began to govern all things were changed in a very different manner Evil Designs tending only to the advancement of private Interests were carried on in the dark by means as wicked as the end If Tarquin when he had a mind to be King poison'd his first Wife and his Brother contracted an incestuous Marriage with his second by the death of her first Husband murder'd her Father and the best men in Rome yet Cesar did worse He favour'd Catiline and his villanous Associates brided and corrupted Magistrates conspir'd with Crassus and Pompey continued in the Command of an Army beyond the time prescribed by Law and turned the Arms with which he had bin entrusted for the service of the Commonwealth to the destruction of it which was rightly represented by his Dream that he had constuprated his Mother In the like manner when Octavius Antonius and Lepidus divided the Empire and then quarrelled among themselves and when Galba Otho Vitellius and Vespasian set up Parties in several Provinces all was managed with Treachery Fraud and Cruelty nothing was intended but the advancement of one Man and the Recompence of the Villains that served him And when the Empire had suffered infinite Calamities by pulling down or rejecting one and setting up another it was for the most part difficult to determine who was the worst of the two or whether the prevailing side had gained or lost by their Victory The question therefore upon which a Judgment may be made to the praise or dispraise of the Roman Government before or after the loss of their Liberty ought not to be Whether either were subject to changes for neither they nor any thing under the Sun was ever exempted from them but whether the Changes that happened after the establishment of Absolute Power in the Emperors did not solely proceed from Ambition and tend to the publick Ruin whereas those Alterations related by our Author concerning Consuls Dictators Decemviri Tribuns and Laws were
Crown till after the death of his two Bastards Lewis and Carloman Charles le Gros and Eudes Duke of Anjou Charles le Gros was deposed from the Empire and Kingdom strip'd of his goods and left to perish through poverty in an obscure Village Charles the Simple and the Nations under him thrived no better Robert Duke of Anjou raised War against him and was crown'd at Rheims but was himself slain soon after in a bloody battel near Soissons His Son-in-law Hebert Earl of Vermandois gathered up the remains of his scatter'd party got Charles into his power and called a General Assembly of Estates who deposed him and gave the Crown to Raoul Duke of Burgundy tho he was no otherwise related to the Royal Blood than by his Mother which in France is nothing at all He being dead Lewis Son to the deposed Charles was made King but his Reign was as inglorious to him as miserable to his Subjects This is the Peace which the French enjoy'd for the space of five or six Ages under their Monarchy and 't is hard to determine whether they suffer'd most by the Violence of those who possessed or the Ambition of others who aspired to the Crown and whether the fury of active or the baseness of slothful Princes was most pernicious to them But upon the whole matter through the defects of those of the latter sort they lost all that they had gained by sweat and blood under the conduct of the former Henry and Otho of Saxony by a Virtue like that of Charlemagne deprived them of the Empire and settled it in Germany leaving France only to Lewis sirnamed Outremer and his Son Lothair These seemed to be equally composed of Treachery Cruelty Ambition and Baseness They were always mutinous and always beaten Their frantick Passions put them always upon unjust Designs and were such plagues to their Subjects and Neighbours that they became equally detested and despised These things extinguished the veneration due to the memory of Pepin and Charles and obliged the whole Nation rather to seek relief from a Stranger than to be ruin'd by their worthless Descendents They had tried all ways that were in their power deposed four crowned Kings within the space of a hundred and fifty years crowned five who had no other Title than the People conferred upon them and restored the Descendents of those they had rejected but all was in vain Their Vices were incorrigible the Mischiefs produc'd by them intolerable they never ceased from murdering one another in battel or by treachery and bringing the Nation into Civil Wars upon their wicked or foolish quarrels till the whole Race was rejected and the Crown placed upon the head of Hugh Capet These mischiefs raged not in the same extremity under him and his Descendents but the abatement proceeded from a cause no way advantagious to Absolute Monarchy The French were by their Calamities taught more strictly to limit the Regal Power and by turning the Dukedoms and Earldoms into Patrimonies which had bin Offices gave an Authority to the chief of the Nobility by which that of Kings was curbed and tho by this means the Commonalty was exposed to some Pressures yet they were small in comparison of what they had suffer'd in former times When many great men had Estates of their own that did not depend upon the Will of Kings they grew to love their Country and tho they chearfully served the Crown in all cases of publick concernment they were not easily engaged in the personal quarrels of those who possessed it or had a mind to gain it To preserve themselves in this condition they were obliged to use their Vassals gently and this continuing in some measure till within the last fifty years the Monarchy was less tumultuous than when the King 's Will had bin less restrained Nevertheless they had not much reason to boast there was a Root still remaining that from time to time produced poisonous Fruit Civil Wars were frequent among them tho not carried on with such desperate madness as formerly and many of them upon the account of disputes between Competitors for the Crown All the Wars with England since Edward II. married Isabella Daughter and as he pretended Heir of Philip Le Bel were of this nature The defeats of Crecy Poitiers and Agincourt with the slaughters and devastations suffer'd from Edward III. the black Prince and Henry V. were merely upon Contests for the Crown and for want of an Interpreter of the Law of Succession who might determine the question between the Heir Male and the Heir General The Factions of Orleans and Burgundy Orleans and Armignac proceeded from the same Spring and the Murders that seem to have bin the immediate causes of those Quarrels were only the effects of the hatred growing from their competition The more odious tho less bloody Contests between Lewis the 11 th and his Father Charles the 7 th with the jealousy of the former against his Son Charles the 8 th arose from the same Principle Charles of Bourbon prepared to fill France with Fire and Blood upon the like quarrel when his designs were overthrown by his death in the assault of Rome If the Dukes of Guise had bin more fortunate they had soon turned the cause of Religion into a claim to the Crown and repair'd the Injury done as they pretended to Pepin's Race by destroying that of Capet And Henry the third thinking to prevent this by the slaughter of Henry le Balafré and his Brother the Cardinal de Guise brought ruin upon himself and cast the Kingdom into a most horrid confusion Our own Age furnishes us with more than one attempt of the same kind attended with the like success The Duke of Orleans was several times in arms against Lewis the 13 th his Brother the Queen-mother drew the Spaniards to favour him Montmorency perished in his Quarrel Fontrailles reviv'd it by a Treaty with Spain which struck at the King's head as well as the Cardinal 's and was suppress'd by the death of Cinq Mars and de Thou Those who understand the Affairs of that Kingdom make no doubt that the Count de Soissons would have set up for himself and bin follow'd by the best part of France if he had not bin kill'd in the pursuit of his Victory at the Battel of Sedan Since that time the Kingdom has suffer'd such Disturbances as show that more was intended than the removal of Mazarin And the Marechal de Turenne was often told that the check he gave to the Prince of Condé at Gien after he had defeated Hocquincourt had preserved the Crown upon the King's head And to testify the Stability good Order and domestick Peace that accompanies Absolute Monarchy we have in our own days seen the House of Bourbon often divided within it self the Duke of Orleans the Count de Soissons the Princes of Condé and Conti in war against the King the Dukes of Angoulesme Vendome Longueville the Count
his Son gave them occasion to resume If this was commendable in them it must be so in other Nations If the Germans might preserve their Liberty as well as the Parthians submit themselves to absolute Monarchy 't is as lawful for the descendents of those Germans to continue in it as for the Eastern Nations to be slaves If one Nation may justly chuse the Government that seems best to them and continue or alter it according to the changes of times and things the same right must belong to others The great variety of Laws that are or have bin in the world proceeds from this and nothing can better shew the wisdom and virtue or the vices and folly of Nations than the use they make of this right they have bin glorious or infamous powerful or despicable happy or miserable as they have well or ill executed it If it be said that the Law given by God to the Hebrews proceeding from his wisdom and goodness must needs be perfect and obligatory to all Nations I answer that there is a simple and a relative perfection the first is only in God the other in the things he has created He saw that they were good which can signify no more than that they were good in their kind and suted to the end for which he designed them For if the perfection were absolute there could be no difference between an Angel and a Worm and nothing could be subject to change or death for that is imperfection This relative perfection is seen also by his Law given to mankind in the persons of Adam and Noah It was good in the kind fit for those times but could never have bin enlarged or altered if the perfection had bin simple and no better evidence can be given to shew that it was not so than that God did asterwards give one much more full and explicit to his People This Law also was peculiarly applicable to that People and season for if it had bin otherwise the Apostles would have obliged Christians to the intire observation of it as well as to abstain from idolatry fornication and blood But if all this be not so then their judicial Law and the form of their Commonwealth must be received by all no human Law can be of any value we are all Brethren no man has a prerogative above another Lands must be equally divided amongst all Inheritances cannot be alienated for above fifty years no man can be raised above the rest unless he be called by God and enabled by his Spirit to conduct the People when this man dies he that has the same Spirit must succeed as Joshua did to Moses and his Children can have no title to his Office when such a man appears a Sanhedrim of seventy men chosen out of the whole People are to judg such causes as relate to themselves whilst those of greater extent and importance are referred to the General Assemblies Here is no mention of a King and consequently if we must take this Law for our pattern we cannot have one If the point be driven to the utmost and the precept of Deuteronomy where God permitted them to have a King if they thought fit when they came into the promised Land be understood to extend to all Nations every one of them must have the same liberty of taking their own time chusing him in their own way dividing the Kingdom having no King and setting up other Governors when they please as before the Election of Saul and after the return from the Captivity and even when they have a King he must be such a one as is describ'd in the same Chapter who no more resembles the Soveraign Majesty that our Author adores and agrees as little with his Maxims as a Tribun of the Roman People We may therefore conclude that if we are to follow the Law of Moses we must take it with all the appendages a King can be no more and no otherwise than he makes him for whatever we read of the Kings they had were extreme deviations from it No Nation can make any Law and our Lawyers burning their Books may betake themselves to the study of the Pentateuch in which tho some of them may be well versed yet probably the profit arising from thence will not be very great But if we are not obliged to live in a conformity to the Law of Moses every People may frame Laws for themselves and we cannot be denied the right that is common to all Our Laws were not sent from Heaven but made by our Ancestors according to the light they had and their present occasions We inherit the same right from them and as we may without vanity say that we know a little more than they did if we find our selves prejudic'd by any Law that they made we may repeal it The safety of the People was their supreme Law and is so to us neither can we be thought less fit to judg what conduces to that end than they were If they in any Age had bin perswaded to put themselves under the power or in our Author's phrase under the sovereign Majesty of a child a fool a mad or desperately wicked person and had annexed the right conferred upon him to such as should succeed it had not bin a just and right Sanction and having none of the qualities essentially belonging to a Law could not have the effect of a Law It cannot be for the good of a People to be governed by one who by nature ought to be governed or by age or accident is rendred unable to govern himself The publick interests and the concernments of private men in their lands goods liberties and lives for the preservation of which our Author says that regal Prerogative is only constituted cannot be preserved by one who is transported by his own passions or follies a slave to his lusts and vices or which is sometimes worse governed by the vilest of men and women who flatter him in them and push him on to do such things as even they would abhor if they were in his place The turpitude and impious madness of such an act must necessarily make it void by overthrowing the ends for which it was made since that justice which was sought cannot be obtain'd nor the evils that were fear'd prevented and they for whose good it was intended must necessarily have a right of abolishing it This might be sufficient for us tho our Ancestors had enslaved themselves But God be thanked we are not put to that trouble We have no reason to believe we are descended from such fools and beasts as would willingly cast themselves and us into such an excess of misery and shame or that they were so tame and cowardly to be subjected by force or fear We know the value they set upon their Liberties and the courage with which they defended them and we can have no better example to incourage us never to suffer them to be violated or diminished
in Sir Robert 't is prevarication and fraud to impute to Schoolmen and Puritans that which in his first page he acknowledged to be the Doctrine of all Reformed and Unreformed Christian Churches and that he knows to have been the principle in which the Grecians Italians Spaniards Gauls Germans and Britains and all other generous Nations ever lived before the name of Christ was known in the World insomuch that the base effeminate Asiaticks and Africans for being careless of their Liberty or unable to govern themselves were by Aristotle and other wise men called Slaves by Nature and looked upon as little different from Beasts This which hath its root in common Sense not being to be overthrown by reason he spares his pains of seeking any but thinks it enough to render his Doctrine plausible to his own Party by joining the Jesuits to Geneva and coupling Buchanan to Doleman as both maintaining the same Doctrine tho he might as well have joined the Puritans with the Turks because they all think that one and one makes two But whoever marks the Proceedings of Filmer and his Masters as well as his Disciples will rather believe that they have learn'd from Rome and the Jesuits to hate Geneva than that Geneva and Rome can agree in any thing farther than as they are obliged to submit to the evidence of Truth or that Geneva and Rome can concur in any design or interest that is not common to Mankind These men allowed to the People a liberty of deposing their Princes This is a desperate Opinion Bellarmin and Calvin look asquint at it But why is this a desperate Opinion If Disagreements happen between King and People why is it a more desperate Opinion to think the King should be subject to the Censures of the People than the People subject to the Will of the King Did the People make the King or the King make the People Is the King for the People or the People for the King Did God create the Hebrews that Saul might reign over them or did they from an opinion of procuring their own good ask a King that might judg them and fight their Battels If God's interposition which shall be hereafter explained do alter the Case did the Romans make Romulus Numa Tullus Hostilius and Tarquinius Priscus Kings or did they make or beget the Romans If they were made Kings by the Romans 't is certain they that made them sought their own good in so doing and if they were made by and for the City and People I desire to know if it was not better that when their Successors departed from the end of their Institution by endeavouring to destroy it or all that was good in it they should be censured and ejected than be permitted to ruin that People for whose good they were created Was it more just that Caligula or Nero should be suffered to destroy the poor remains of the Roman Nobility and People with the Nations subject to that Empire than that the race of such Monsters should be extinguished and a great part of Mankind especially the best against whom they were most fierce preserved by their Deaths I presume our Author thought these Questions might be easily decided and that no more was required to shew the forementioned Assertions weré not at all desperate than to examine the Grounds of them but he seeks to divert us from this enquiry by proposing the dreadful consequences of subjecting Kings to the Censures of their People whereas no consequence can destroy any Truth and the worst of this is That if it were received some Princes might be restrained from doing evil or punished if they will not be restrained We are therefore only to consider whether the People Senate or any Magistracy made by and for the People have or can have such a Right for if they have whatsoever the consequences may be it must stand And as the one tends to the good of Mankind in restraining the Lusts of wicked Kings the other exposes them without remedy to the fury of the most savage of all Beasts Iam not ashamed in this to concur with Buchanan Calvin or Bellarmin and without envy leave to Filmer and his Associates the glory of maintaining the contrary But notwithstanding our Author's aversion to Truth he consesses That Hayward Blackwood Barclay and others who have bravely vindicated the Right of Kings in this point do with one consent admit as an unquestionable truth and assent unto the natural Liberty and Equality of Mankind not so much as once questioning or opposing it And indeed I believe that tho since the sin of our first Parents the Earth hath brought forth Briars and Brambles and the nature of Man hath bin fruitful only in Vice and Wickedness neither the Authors he mentions nor any others have had impudence enough to deny such evident truth as seems to be planted in the hearts of all men or to publish Doctrines so contrary to common Sense Virtue and Humanity till these times The production of Laud Manwaring Sibthorp Hobbs Filmer and Heylin seems to have been reserved as an additional Curse to compleat the shame and misery of our Age and Country Those who had Wit and Learning with something of Ingenuity and Modesty tho they believed that Nations might possibly make an ill use of their Power and were very desirous to maintain the cause of Kings as far as they could put any good colour upon it yet never denied that some had suffered justly which could not be if there were no Power of judging them nor ever asserted any thing that might arm them with an irresistible Power of doing mischief animate them to persist in the most flagitious Courses with assurance of perpetual Impunity or engage Nations in an inevitable necessity of suffering all manner of outrages They knew that the Actions of those Princes who were not altogether detestable might be defended by particular reasons drawn from them or the Laws of their Country and would neither undertake the defence of such as were abominable nor bring Princes to whom they wished well into the odious extremity of justifying themselves by Arguments that favoured Caligula and Nero as well as themselves and that must be taken for a confession that they were as bad as could be imagined since nothing could be said for them that might not as well be applied to the worst that had bin or could be But Filmer Heylin and their Associates scorning to be restrained by such considerations boldly lay the Ax to the Root of the Tree and rightly enough affirm That the whole Fabrick of that which they call Popular Sedition would fall to the ground if the Principle of natural Liberty were removed And on the other hand it must be acknowledged that the whole Fabrick of Tyranny will be much weakened if we prove That Nations have a right to make their own Laws constitute their own Magistrates and that such as are so constituted owe an account of their Actions
Right we do not know who is near to him All Mankind must inherit the Right to which every one hath an equal title and that which is Dominion if in one when 't is equally divided among all men is that universal Liberty which I assert Wherefore I leave it to the choice of such as have inherited our Author's opinions to produce this Jew or Turk that ought to be Lord of the whole Earth or to prove a better title in some other person and to perswade all the Princes and Nations of the World to submit If this be not done it must be confessed this Paternal Right is a meer whimsical Fiction and that no man by birth hath a Right above another or can have any unless by the concession of those who are concerned If this right to an universal Empire be divisible Noah did actually divide it among his three Sons Seventy and two absolute Monarchs did at once arise out of the Multitude that had assembled at Babel Noah nor his Sons nor any of the holy Seed nor probably any elder than Nimrod having bin there many other Monarchs must necessarily have arisen from them Abraham as our Author says was a King Lot must have bin so also for they were equals his Sons Ammon and Moab had no dependance upon the descendents of Abraham Ismael and Esau set up for themselves and great Nations came of them Abraham's Sons by Keturah did so also that is to say every one as soon as he came to be of age to provide for himself did so without retaining any dependence upon the Stock from whence he came Those of that Stock or the head of it pretended to no Right over those who went from them Nay nearness in Blood was so little regarded that tho Lot was Abraham's Brother's Son Eliezer his Servant had bin his Heir if he had died childless The like continued amongst Jacob's Sons no Jurisdiction was given to one above the rest an equal division of Land was made amongst them Their Judges and Magistrates were of several Tribes and Families without any other preference of one before another than what did arise from the advantages God had given to any particular person This I take to be a proof of the utmost extent and certainty that the equality amongst Mankind was then perfect He therefore that will deny it to be so now ought to prove that neither the Prophets Patriarchs or any other men did ever understand or regard the Law delivered by God and Nature to Mankind or that having bin common and free at the first and so continued for many hundreds of years after the Flood it was afterwards abolished and a new one introduced He that asserts this must prove it but till it does appear to us when where how and by whom this was done we may safely believe there is no such thing and that no man is or can be a Lord amongst us till we make him so and that by nature we are all Brethren Our Author by endeavouring farther to illustrate the Patriarchical Power destroys it and cannot deny to any man the Right which he acknowledges to have bin in Ismael and Esau. But if every man hath a Right of setting up for himself with his Family or before he has any he cannot but have a right of joining with others if he pleases As his joining or not joining with others and the choice of those others depends upon his own will he cannot but have a right of judging upon what conditions 't is good for him to enter into such a Society as must necessarily hinder him from exercising the right which he has originally in himself But as it cannot be imagined that men should generally put such Fetters upon themselves unless it were in expectation of a greater good that was thereby to accrue to them no more can be required to prove that they do voluntarily enter into these Societies institute them for their own good and prescribe such rules and forms to them as best please themselves without giving account to any But if every man be free till he enter into such a Society as he chuseth for his own good and those Societies may regulate themselves as they think fit no more can be required to prove the natural equality in which all men are born and continue till they resign it as into a common stock in such measure as they think fit for the constituting of Societies for their own good which I assert and our Author denies SECT XIII There was no shadow of a paternal Kingdom amongst the Hebrews nor precept for it OUr Author is so modest to confess that Jacob's Kingdom consisting of seventy two persons was swallowed up by the power of the greater Monarch Pharaoh But if this was an Act of Tyranny 't is strange that the sacred and eternal Right grounded upon the immutable Laws of God and Nature should not be restored to God's chosen People when he delivered them from that Tyranny Why was not Jacob's Monarchy conferred upon his right Heir How came the People to neglect a point of such importance Or if they did forget it why did not Moses put them in mind of it Why did not Jacob declare to whom it did belong Or if he is understood to have declared it in saying the Scepter should not depart from Judah why was it not delivered into his hands or into his Heirs If he was hard to be found in a people of one kindred but four degrees removed from Jacob their head who were exact in observing Genealogies how can we hope to find him after so many thousand years when we do not so much as know from whom we are derived Or rather how comes that Right which is eternal and universal to have bin nipp'd in the bud and so abolished before it could take any effect in the World as never to have bin heard of amongst the Gentiles nor the People of God either before or after the Captivity from the death of Jacob to this day This I assert and I give up the Cause if I do not prove it To this end I begin with Moses and Aaron the first Rulers of the People who were neither of the eldest Tribe according to birth nor the disposition of Jacob if he did or could give it to any nor were they of the eldest line of their own Tribe and even between them the Superiority was given to Moses who was the younger as 't is said I have made thee a God to Pharaoh and Aaron thy Brother shall be thy Prophet If Moses was a King as our Author says but I deny and shall hereafter prove the matter is worse He must have bin an Usurper of a most unjust Dominion over his Brethren and this Patriarchical power which by the Law of God was to be perpetually fixed in his Descendents perished with him and his Sons continued in an obscure rank amongst the Levites Joshua of the Tribe of Ephraim succeeded him
consists of Equals did speak the opinion of others rather than his own and should confess that he and his Master Plato did acknowledg a natural inequality among men it would be nothing to his purpose for the Inequality and the rational Superiority due to some or to one by reason of that Inequality did not proceed from Blood or Extraction and had nothing Patriarchical in it but consisted solely in the Vertues of the Persons by which they were rendred more able than others to perform their Duty for the good of the Society Therefore if these Authors are to be trusted whatsoever place a Man is advanced to in a City 't is not for his own sake but for that of the City and we are not to ask who was his Father but what are his Vertues in relation to it This induces a necessity of distinguishing between a simple and a relative Inequality for if it were possible for a man to have great Vertues and yet no way beneficial to the Society of which he is or to have some one Vice that renders them useless he could have no pretence to a Magistratical Power more than any other They who are equally free may equally enjoy their freedom but the Powers that can only be executed by such as are endowed with great Wisdom Justice and Valour can belong to none nor be rightly conferred upon any except such as excel in those Vertues And if no such can be found all are equally by turns to participate of the Honours annexed to Magistracy and Law which is said to be written Reason cannot justly exalt those whom Nature which is Reason hath depressed nor depress those whom Nature hath exalted It cannot make Kings Slaves nor Slaves Kings without introducing that Evil which if we believe Solomon and the Spirit by which he spoke the Earth cannot bear This may discover what Lawgivers deserve to be reputed wise or just and what Decrees or Sanctions ought to be reputed Laws Aristotle proceeding by this Rule rather tells us who is naturally a King than where we should find him and after having given the highest Praises to this true natural King and his Government he sticks not to declare that of one man in Vertue equal or inferior to others to be a meer Tyranny even the worst of all as it is the corruption of the best or as our Author calls it the most divine and such as can be fit only for those barbarous and stupid Nations which tho bearing the shape of Men are little different from Beasts Whoever therefore will from Aristotle's words infer that Nature has designed one Man or succession of Men to be Lords of every Country must shew that Man to be endowed with all the Vertues that render him fit for so great an Office which he dos not bear for his own Pleasure Glory or Profit but for the good of those that are under him and if that be not done he must look after other Patrons than Aristotle for his opinion Plato dos more explicitly say that the Civil or Politick Man the Shepherd Father or King of a People is the same designed for the same Work enabled to perform it by the excellency of the same Vertues and made perfect by the infusion of the divine Wisdom This is Plato's Monarch and I confess that wheresoever he dos appear in the World he ought to be accounted as sent from God for the good of that People His Government is the best that can be set up among men and if assurance can be given that his Children Heirs or Successors shall for ever be equal to him in the above-mentioned Vertues it were a folly and a sin to bring him under the government of any other or to an equality with them since God had made him to excel them all and 't is better for them to be ruled by him than to follow their own judgment This is that which gives him the preference He is wise through the knowledg of the Truth and thereby becomes good happy pure beautiful and perfect The divine Light shining forth in him is a guide to others and he is a fit Leader of a People to the good that he enjoys If this can be expressed by words in fashion this is his Prerogative this is the Royal Charter given to him by God and to him only who is so adapted for the performance of his Office He that should pretend to the same Privileges without the same Abilities to perform the Works for which they are granted would exceed the folly of a Child that takes upon him a burden which can only be born by a Giant or the madness of one who presumes to give Physick and understands not the Art of a Physician thereby drawing guilt upon himself and death upon his Patient It were as vain to expect that a Child should carry the Giant 's burden and that an ignorant man should give wholsom Physick as that one who lives void of all knowledg of Good should conduct men to it Whensoever therefore such a Man as is above-described dos not appear Nature and Reason instruct us to seek him or them who are most like to him and to lay such burdens upon them as are proportionable to their strength which is as much as to say to prefer every man according to his merit and assign to every one such Works as he seems able to accomplish But that Plato and Aristotle may neither be thought unreasonably addicted to Monarchy nor wholly rejecting it to have talked in vain of a Monarch that is not to be found 't is good to consider that this is not a fiction Moses Joshua Samuel and others were such as they define and were made to be such by that communion with God which Plato requires And he in all his Writings intending the institution of such a Discipline as should render men happy wise and good could take no better way to bring his Countrymen to it than by shewing them that Wisdom Vertue and Purity only could make a natural difference among men 'T is not my work to justify these Opinions of Plato and his Scholar Aristotle They were men and tho wise and learned subject to error If they erred in these Points it hurts not me nor the Cause I maintain since I make no other use of their Books than to shew the impudence and prevarication of those who gather small scraps out of good Books to justify their Assertions concerning such Kings as are known amongst us which being examined are found to be wholly against them and if they were followed would destroy their Persons and Power But our Author's intention being only to cavil or to cheat such as are not versed in the Writings of the Antients or at least to cause those who do not make Truth their Guide to waver and fluctuate in their Discourses he dos in one page say That without doubt Moses his History of the Creation guided these Philosophers in finding out this
the Commonwealth be named wherever the Multitude or so much as the major part of it consented either by Voice or Procuration to the Election of a Prince not observing that if an Answer could not be given he did overthrow the Rights of all the Princes that are or ever have bin in the world for if the Liberty of one man cannot be limited or diminished by one or any number of men and none can give away the Right of another 't is plain that the Ambition of one man or of many a faction of Citizens or the mutiny of an Army cannot give a Right to any over the Liberties of a whole Nation Those who are so set up have their root in Violence or Fraud and are rather to be accounted Robbers and Pirats than Magistrates Leo Africanus observing in his History that since the extinction of Mahomet's Race to whom his Countrymen thought God had given the Empire of the World their Princes did not come in by the consent of those Nations which they governed says that they are esteemed Thieves and that on this account the most honourable Men among the Arabians and Moors scorn to eat drink or make Alliances with them and if the case were as general as that Author makes it no better Rule could be any where followed by honourable and worthy Men. But a good Cause must not be lost by the fault of an ill Advocate the Rights of Kings must not perish because Filmer knows not how to defend or dos maliciously betray them I have already proved that David and divers of the Judges were chosen by all Israel Jeroboam by ten Tribes all the Kings of Rome except Tarquin the Proud by the whole City I may add many Examples of the Saxons in our own Country Ina and Offa were made Kings omnium consensu These All are expressed plainly by the words Archiepiscopis Episcopis Abbatibus Senatoribus Ducibus Populo terrae Egbert and Ethelward came to the Crown by the same Authority Omnium consensu Rex creatur Ethelwolf the Monk Necessitate cogente factus est Rex consensus publicus in regem dari petiit Ethelstan tho a Bastard Electus est magno consensu Optimatum a Populo consalutatus In the like manner Edwin's Government being disliked they chose Edgar Vnanimi omnium conspiratione Edwino dejecto eligerunt Deo dictante Edgarum in Regem annuente Populo And in another place Edgarus ab omni Anglorum Populo electus est Ironside being deâ—d Canutus was received by the general consent of all Juraverunt illi quod eum regem sibi eligere vellent foedus etiam cum principibus omni populo ipse illi cum ipso percusserunt Whereupon Omnium consensu super totam Angliam Canutus coronatur Hardicanutus gaudenter ab omnibus suscipitur electus est The same Author says that Edward the Confessor Electus est in regem ab omni populo And another Omnium Electione in Edwardum concordatur Tho the name of Conqueror be odiously given to William the Norman he had the same Title to the Crown with his Predecessors In magna exultatione a Clero Populo susceptus ab omnibus Rex acclamatus I cannot recite all the Examples of this kind that the History of almost all Nations furnishes unless I should make a Volume in bulk not inferior to the Book of Martyrs But those which I have mentioned out of the Sacred Roman and English History being more than sufficient to answer our Author's Challenge I take liberty to add that tho there could not be one Example produced of a Prince or any other Magistrate chosen by the general consent of the People or by the major part of them it could be of no advantage to the Cause he has undertaken to maintain For when a People hath either indefinitely or under certain Conditions and Limitations resigned their Power into the hands of a certain number of men or agreed upon Rules according to which persons should from time to time be deputed for the management of their Affairs the Acts of those persons if their Power be without restrictions are of the same value as the Acts of the whole Nation and the assent of every individual man is comprehended in them If the Power be limited whatsoever is done according to that limitation has the same Authority If it do therefore appear as is testified by the Laws and Histories of all our Northern Nations that the power of every People is either wholly or to such a degree as is necessary for creating Kings granted to their several Gemotes Diets Cortez Assemblies of Estates Parliaments and the like all the Kings that they have any where or at any time chosen do reign by the same authority and have the same right as if every individual man of those Nations had assented to their Election But that these Gemotes Diets and other Assemblies of State have every where had such Powers and executed them by rejecting or setting up Kings and that the Kings now in being among us have received their beginning from such Acts has bin fully proved and is so plain in it self that none but those who are grosly stupid or impudent can deny it which is enough to shew that all Kings are not set up by violence deceit faction of a sew powerful men or the mutinies of Armies but from the consent of such multitudes as joining together frame Civil Societies and either in their own persons at general Assemblies or by their Delegates confer a just and legal Power upon them which our Author rejecting he dos as far as in him lies prove them all to be Usurpers and Tyrants SECT VI. They who have a right of chusing a King have the right of making a King THO the Right of Magistrates do essentially depend upon the consent of those they govern it is hardly worth our pains to examin Whether the silent acceptation of a Governor by part of the People be an argument of their concurring in the election of him or by the same reason the tacit consent of the whole Commonwealth may be maintained for when the question is concerning Right fraudulent surmises are of no value much less will it from thence follow that a Prince commanding by Succession Conquest or Usurpation may be said to be elected by the People for evident marks of dissent are often given Some declare their hatred other murmur more privately many oppose the Governour or Government and succeed according to the measure of their Strength Virtue or Furtune Many would resist but cannot and it were ridiculous to say that the Inhabitants of Greece the Kingdom of Naples or Dutchy of Tuscany do tacitly assent to the Government of the Great Turk King of Spain or Duke of Florence when nothing is more certain than that those miserable Nations abhor the Tyrannies they are under and if they were not mastered by a Power that
put the whole Nation into blood Absalom with a few fair words was able to raise all Israel against his Father Sheba the Son of Bichri with as much ease raised a more dangerous Tumult David by Wisdom Valour and the blessing of God surmounted these difficulties and prepared a peaceable Reign for Solomon but after his death they broke out into a Flame that was never quenched till the Nation was so dispersed that no man knew where to find his Enemies Solomon by his Magnificence had reduced Israel to such poverty as inclined them to revolt upon the first offer of an opportunity by Jeroboam From that time forward Israel was perpetually vexed with Civil Seditions and Conspiracies or Wars with their Brethren of Judah Nine Kings with their Families were destroyed by the first and the latter brought such Slaughters upon the miserable People as were never suffer'd by any who were not agitated by the like Fury and the course of these mischiefs was never interrupted till they had brought the Nation into Captivity and the Country to Desolation Tho God according to his promise did preserve a light in the House of David yet the Tribe of Judah was not the more happy Joash was slain by a private Conspiracy and Amaziah as is most probable by publick Authority for having foolishly brought a terrible Slaughter upon Judah Athaliah destroyed the King's Race and was killed her self by Jehoiada who not having learnt from our Author to regard the Power only and not the ways by which it was obtained caused her to be dragg'd out of the Temple and put to a well-deserved Death The whole Story is a Tragedy and if it be pretended that this proceeded rather from the wrath of God against his People for their Idolatry than from such causes as are applicable to other Nations I answer that this Idolatry was the production of the Government they had set up and most sutable to it and chusing rather to subject themselves to the Will of a man than to the Law of God they deservedly suffer'd the evils that naturally follow the worst Counsels We know of none who taking the like course have not suffer'd the like miseries Notwithstanding the admirable Virtue and Success of Alexander his Reign was full of Conspiracies and his knowledg of them prompted him to destroy Parmenio Philotas Clitus Calisthenes Hermolaus and many more of his best Friends If he escaped the Sword he fell by Poison The Murder of his Wives Mother and Children by the rage of his own Soldiers the Fury of his Captains imployed in mutual Slaughters till they were consumed his paternal Kingdom after many Revolutions transferred to Cassander his most mortal Enemy the utter extinction of his conquering Army and particularly the famous Argyraspides who being grown faithless and seditious after the death of Eumenes were sent to perish in unknown parts of the East abundantly testify the admirable stability good order peace and quiet that is enjoy'd under absolute Monarchy The next Government of the like nature that appeared upon the stage of the World was that of Rome introduced by Wars that consumed two thirds of the People confirmed by Proscriptions in which all that were eminent for Nobility Riches or Virtue perished The peace they had under Augustus was like that which the Devil allow'd to the Child in the Gospel whom he rent sorely and left as dead The miserable City was only cast into a Swound after long and violent vexations by Seditions Tumults and Wars it lay as dead and finding no helper like to him who cured the Child it was delivered to new Devils to be tormented till it was utterly destroy'd Tiberius was appointed as a fit instrument for such a purpose It was thought that those who should seel the effects of his Pride Cruelty and Lust would look upon the Death of Augustus as a loss He performed the work for which he was chosen his Reign was an uninterrupted Series of Murders Subornations Perjuries and Poisonings intermixed with the most detestable Impurities the revolts of Provinces and Mutinies of Armies The matter was not mended by his Successors Caligula was kill'd by his own Guards Claudius poison'd by his Wife Spain Gaul Germany Pannonia Maesia Syria and AEgypt revolted at once from Nero the People and Senate followed the example of the Provinces This I think was in our Author's sense Sedition with a witness Nero being dead by the hand of a Slave or his own to prevent that of the Hangman Galba enter'd the City with Blood and Slaughter but when his own Soldiers found he would not give the Mony for which they intended to sell the Empire they killed him and to shew the stability of absolute Monarchy it may be observed that this was not done by the advice of the Senate or by a conspiracy of great men Suscepére duo manipulares Populi Romani Imperium transferendum transtulerunt Two Rascals gave the Empire to Otho and the whole Senate was like to be butcher'd for not being so ready to follow their venerable Authority as they ought to have bin and hardly escaped the fury of their mad and drunken Companions As a farther testimony that these Monarchies are not subject to Seditions and Tumults he had at once only two Competitors against whom he was to defend the well-acquired Empire His Army was defeated at Brescia he kill'd himself and his Successor Vitellius was soon after thrown into the Common Shore The same method still continued Rome was fill'd with Blood and Ashes and to recite all the publick Mischiefs would be to transcribe the History For as Pyrrhus being asked who should succeed him answered He who has the sharpest Sword that was the only Law that governed in the following ages Whoever could corrupt two or three Legions thought he had a good title to the Empire and unless he happen'd to be kill'd by Treachery or another Tumult of his own Soldiers he seldom receded from it without a Battel wherein he that was most successful had no other security than what the present temper of the Soldiers afforded him and the miserable Provinces having neither Virtue nor Force were obliged slavishly to follow the fury or fortune of those Villains In this state did Rome dedicate to Constantine the Triumphal Arch that had bin prepared for Maxentius and those Provinces which had set up Albinus and Niger submitted to Septimius Severus In the vast variety of Accidents that in those Ages disturbed the World no Emperor had a better title than what he purchased by Mony or Violence and enjoyed it no longer than those helps continued which of all things were the most uncertain By this means most of the Princes perished by the Sword Italy was made desolate and Rome was several times sackt and burnt The Mistress of the World being made a Slave the Provinces which had bin acquir'd by the Blood of her antient virtuous Citizens became part of an Usurper's Patrimony who without
and People came to be Master of so much of the Country as procured him the name of King of France killed his eldest Son on suspicion that he was excited against him by Brunehaud and his Second lest he should revenge the death of his Brother he married Fredegonde and was soon after kill'd by her Adulterer Landry The Kingdom continued in the same misery through the rage of the surviving Princes and found no relief tho most of them fell by the Sword and that Brunehaud who had bin a principal cause of those Tragedies was tied to the tails of four wild Horses and suffer'd a death as foul as her life These were Lions and Leopards They involved the Kingdom in desperate troubles but being men of valour and industry they kept up in some measure the Reputation and Power of the Nation and he who attain'd to the Crown defended it But they being fallen by the hands of each other the poisonous Root put forth another Plague more mortal than their Fury The vigour was spent and the Succession becoming more settled ten base and slothful Kings by the French called Les Roys faineans succeeded Some may say They who do nothing do no hurt but the rule is false in relation to Kings He that takes upon him the government of a People can do no greater evil than by doing nothing nor be guilty of a more unpardonable Crime than by Negligence Cowardice Voluptuousness and Sloth to desert his charge Virtue and Manhood perish under him good Discipline is forgotten Justice slighted the Laws perverted or rendred useless the People corrupted the publick Treasures exhausted and the Power of the Government always falling into the hands of Flatterers Whores Favorites Bawds and such base wretches as render it contemptible a way is laid open for all manner of disorders The greatest cruelty that has bin known in the world if accompanied with wit and courage never did so much hurt as this slothful bestiality or rather these slothful Beasts have ever bin most cruel The Reigns of Septimius Severus Mahomet the second or Selim the second were cruel and bloody but their fury was turned against Foreigners and some of their near Relations or against such as fell under the suspicion of making attempts against them The condition of the people was tolerable those who would be quiet might be safe the Laws kept their right course the Reputation of the Empire was maintained the Limits defended and the publick Peace preserved But when the Sword passed into the hands of lewd slothful foolish and cowardly Princes it was of no power against foreign Enemies or the disturbers of domestic Peace tho always sharp against the best of their own Subjects No man knew how to secure himself against them unless by raising civil Wars which will always be frequent when a Crown defended by a weak hand is proposed as a Prize to any that dare invade it This is a perpetual Spring of disorders and no Nation was ever quiet when the most eminent men found less danger in the most violent Attempts than in submitting patiently to the Will of a Prince that suffers his Power to be managed by vile Persons who get credit by flattering him in his Vices But this is not all such Princes naturally hate and fear those who excel them in Virtue and Reputation as much as they are inferior to them in Fortune and think their Persons cannot be secured nor their Authority enlarged except by their destruction 'T is ordinary for them inter scorta ganeas principibus viris perniciem machinare and to make Cruelty a cover to Ignorance and Cowardice Besides the Mischiefs brought upon the Publick by the loss of eminent Men who are the Pillars of every State such Reigns are always accompanied with Tumults and Civil Wars the great Men striving with no less violence who shall get the weak Prince into his power when such regard is had to succession that they think it not fit to devest him of the Title than when with less respect they contend for the Soveraignty it self And whilst this sort of Princes reigned France was not less afflicted with the Contests between Grimbauld Ebroin Grimoald and others for the Mayoralty of the Palace than they had bin before by the rage of those Princes who had contested for the Crown The Issue also was the same After many Revolutions Charles Martel gained the Power of the Kingdom which he had so bravely defended against the Saracens and having transmitted it to his Son Pepin the General Assembly of Estates with the approbation of Mankind conferred the Title also upon him This gave the Nation ease for the present but the deep-rooted Evil could not be so cured and the Kingdom that by the Wisdom Valour and Reputation of Pepin had bin preserved from civil Troubles during his life fell as deeply as ever into them so soon as he was dead His Sons Carloman and Charles divided the Dominions but in a little time each of them would have all Carloman fill'd the Kingdom with Tumult raised the Lombards and marched with a great Army against his Brother till his course was interrupted by death caused as is supposed by such helps as Princes liberally afford to their aspiring Relations Charles deprived his two Sons of their Inheritance put them in Prison and we hear no more of them His third Brother Griffon was not more quiet nor more successful and there could be no Peace in Gascony Italy or Germany till he was kill'd But all the Advantages which Charles by an extraordinary Virtue and Fortune had purchased for his Country ended with his life He left his Son Lewis the Gentle in possession of the Empire and Kingdom of France and his Grandson Bernard King of Italy But these two could not agree and Bernard falling into the hands of Lewis was deprived of his Eyes and some time after kill'd This was not enough to preserve the Peace Lothair Lewis and Pepin all three Sons to Lewis rebelled against him called a Council at Lions deposed him and divided the Empire amongst themselves After five years he escaped from the Monastery where he had bin kept renew'd the War and was again taken Prisoner by Lothair When he was dead the War broke out more fiercely than ever between his Children Lothair the Emperor assaulted Lewis King of Bavaria and Charles King of Rhetia was defeated by them and confined to a Monastery where he died New Quarrels arose between the two Brothers upon the division of the Countries taken from him and Lorrain only was left to his Son Lewis died soon after and Charles getting possession of the Empire and Kingdom ended an inglorious Reign in an unprosperous attempt to deprive Hermingrade Daughter to his Brother Lewis of the Kingdom of Arles and other places left to her by her Father Lewis his Son call'd the Stutterer reigned two years in much trouble and his only legitimate Son Charles the Simple came not to the
their Dominion on the Terra firma and prepared to assault the City it was under God solely preserved by the vigour and wisdom of their Nobility who tho no way educated to War unless by Sea sparing neither persons nor purses did with admirable industry and courage first recover Padoüa and then many other Cities so as at the end of that terrible War they came off without any diminution of their Territories Whereas Portugal having in our age revolted from the House of Austria no one doubts that it had bin immediately reduced if the great men of Spain had not bin pleased with such a lessening of their Master's power and resolved not to repair it by the recovery of that Kingdom or to deprive themselves of an cafy retreat when they should be oppressed by him or his Favourites The like thought was more plainly express'd by the Mareschal de Bassompierre who sceing how hardly Rochel was pressed by Lewis the 13th faid he thought they should be such fools to take it but 't is believ'd they would never have bin such fools and the treachery only of our Countrymen did enable the Cardinal Richlieu to do it as for his own glory and the advancement of the Popish Cause he really intended and nothing is to this day more common in the mouth of their wisest and best men tho Papists than the acknowledgment of their own folly in suffering that place to fall the King having by thar means gotten power to proceed against them at his pleasure The brave Monsieur de Turenne is said to have carried this to a greater height in his last Discourse to the present King of France You think said he you have Armies but you have none the one half of the Officers are the Bawdy-house Companions of Monsieur de xxx or the Creatures of his Whore Madam de xxx the other half may be men of experience and fit for their Imployments but they are such as would be pleased with nothing more than to see you lose two or three Battels that coming to stand in need of them you might cause them to be better used by your Ministers than of late they have bin It may easily be imagin'd how men in such sentiments do serve their Master and nothing is more evident than that the French in this age have had so great advantages that they might have brought Europe and perhaps Asia under their power if the interest of the Nation had bin united to that of the Government and the Strength Vigour and Bravery of the Nobility employ'd that way But since it has pleased God to suffer us to fall into a condition of being little able to help our selves and that they are in so good terms with the Turk as not to attack him 't is our happiness that they do not know their own strength or cannot without ruin to themselves turn it to our prejudice I could give yet more pregnant testimonies of the difference between men fighting for their own interests in the Offices to which they had bin advanced by the votes of numerous Assemblies and such as serve for pay and get preferments by corruption or favour if I were not unwilling to stir the spleen of some men by obliging them to reflect upon what has passed in our own Age and Country to compare the justice of our Tribunals within the time of our memory and the integrity of those who for a while manag'd the publick Treasure the Discipline Valour and Strength of our Armies and Fleets the increase of our Riches and Trade the success of our Wars in Scotland Ireland and at Sea the glory and reputation not long since gained with that condition into which we are of late fallen But I think I shall offend no wise or good man if I say that as neither the Romans nor Grecians in the time of their Liberty ever performed any actions more glorious than freeing the Country from a Civil War that had raged in every part the conquest of two such Kingdoms as Scotland and Ireland and crushing the formidable power of the Hollanders by Sea nor ever produced more examples of Valor Industry Integrity and in all respects compleat disinterested unmovable and incorruptible Virtue than were at that time seen in our Nation So neither of them upon the change of their Affairs did exceed us in weakness cowardice baseness venality lewdness and all manner of corruption We have reason therefore not only to believe that all Princes do not necessarily understand the affairs of their People or provide better for them than those who are otherwise chosen but that as there is nothing of Greatness Power Riches Strength and Happiness which we might not reasonably have hoped for if we had rightly improved the advantages we had so there is nothing of shame and misery which we may not justly fear since we have neglected them If any man think that this evil of advancing Officers for personal respects favour or corruption is not of great extent I desire him to consider that the Officers of State Courts of Justice Church Armies Fleets and Corporations are of such number and power as wholly to corrupt a Nation when they themselves are corrupted and will ever be corrupt when they attain to their Offices by corruption The good mannagement of all Affairs Civil Military and Ecclesiastical necessarily depends upon good order and discipline and 't is not in the power of common men to reform abuses patronized by those in Authority nor to prevent the mischiefs thereupon ensuing and not having power to direct publick actions to the publick good they must consequently want the industry and affection that is required to bring them to a good issue The Romans were easily beaten under the Decemviri tho immediatly before the erection and after the extinction of that Power none of their Neighbours were able to resist them The Goths who with much glory had reigned in Spain for about three hundred years had neither strength nor courage under their lewd and odious King Rodrigo and were in one day subdued with little loss of blood by the Saracens and could not in less than eight hundred years free their Country from them That brave Nation having of late fallen under as base a conduct has now as little heart or power to defend it self Court-Parasites have rendred Valour ridiculous and they who have ever shew'd themselves as much inclin'd to Arms as any people of the world do now abhor them and are sent to the Wars by force laid in Carts and bound like Calves brought to the Shambles and left to starve in Flanders as soon as they arrive It may easily be judged what service can be expected from such men tho they should happen to be well commanded but the great Officers by the corruption of the Court think only of enriching themselves and encreasing the misery of the Soldiers by their frauds both become equally useless to the State Notwithstanding the seeming prosperity
Kingdom of Israel they thought his first work would be to throw off the Roman Yoak and not believing him to be the man they would have brought him to avow the thing that they might destroy him But as that was not his business and that his time was not yet come it was not necessary to give them any other answer than such as might disappoint their purpose This shews that without detracting from the honor due to Austin Ambrose or Tertullian I may justly say that the decision of such questions as arise concerning our Government must be decided by our Laws and not by their Writings They were excellent Men but living in another time under a very different Government and applying themselves to other matters they had no knowledg at all of those that concern us They knew what Government they were under and thereupon judged what a broken and dispersed People ow'd to that which had given Law to the best part of the World before they were in being under which they had bin educated and which after a most cruel persecution was become propitious to them They knew that the Word of the Emperor was a Law to the Senate and People who were under the power of that man that could get the best Army but perhaps had never heard of such mixed Governments as ours tho about that time they began to appear in the world And it might be as reasonably concluded that there ought to be no rule in the Succession or Election of Princes because the Roman Emperors were set up by the violence of the Soldiers and for the most part by the slaughter of him who was in possession of the Power as that all other Princes must be absolute when they have it and do what they please till another more strong and more happy may by the like means wrest the same Power from them I am much mistaken if this be not true but without prejudice to our Cause we may take that which they say according to their true meaning in the utmost extent And to begin with Tertullian 'T is good to consider the subject of his Discourse and to whom he wrote The Treatise cited by our Author is the Apologetick and tends to perswade the Pagans that civil Magistrates might not intermeddle with Religion and that the Laws made by them touching those matters were of no value as relating to things of which they had no cognisance 'T is not says he length of time nor the dignity of the Legislators but equity only that can commend Laws and when any are found to be unjust they are deservedly condemned By which words he denied that the Magistratical Power which the Romans acknowledged in Cesar had any thing to do in spiritual things And little advantage can be taken by Christian Princes from what he says concerning the Roman Emperors for he expresly declares That the Cesars would have believed in Christ if they had either not bin necessary to the secular Government or that Christians might have bin Cesars This seems to have proceeded from an opinion received by Christians in the first Ages that the use of the Civil as well as the Military Sword was equally accursed That Christians were to be Sons of peace Enemies to no man and that Christ by commanding Peter to put up his Sword did for ever disarm all Christians He proceeds to say We cannot fight to defend our Goods having in our Baptism denounc'd the World and all that is in it nor to gain Honors accounting nothing more foreign to us than publick Affairs and acknowledging no other Commonwealth than that of the whole World Nor to save our lives because we account it a happiness to be killed He disswades the Pagans from executing Christians rather from charity to them in keeping them from the crime of slaughtering the Innocent than that they were unwilling to suffer and gives no other reasons of their Prayers for the Emperors than that they were commanded to love their Enemies and to pray for those who persecuted them except such as he drew from a mistake that the World was shortly to finish with the dissolution of the Empire All his Works as well those that were written before he fell into Montanism as those published afterwards are full of the like Opinions and if Filmer acknowledges them to be true he must confess That Princes are not Fathers but Enemies and not only they but all those who render themselves Ministers of the Powers they execute in taking upon them the Sword that Christ had cursed do renounce him and we may consider how to proceed with such as do so If our Author will not acknowledg this then no man was ever guilty of a more vile prevarication than he who alledges those words in favour of his Cause which have their only strength in Opinions that he thinks false and in the Authority of a man whom in that very thing he condemns and must do so or overthrow all that he endeavours to support But Tertullian's Opinions concerning these matters have no relation to our present Question The design of his Apology and the Treatise to Scapula almost upon the same subject was to show that the Civil Magistracy which he comprehends under the name of Cesar had nothing to do with matters of Religion and that as no man could be a Christian who would undertake the work of a Magistrate they who were jealous the publick Offices might be taken out of their hands had nothing to fear from Christians who resolved not to meddle with them Whereas our question is only Whether that Magistratical Power which by Law or Usurpation was then in Cesar must necessarily in all times and in all places be in one man or may be divided and balanced according to the Laws of every Country concerning which he says nothing Or whether we who do not renounce the use of the Civil or Military Sword who have a part in the Government and think it our duty to apply our selves to publick Cares should lay them aside because the antient Christians every hour expecting death did not trouble themselves with them If Ambrose after he was a Bishop employ'd the serocity of a Soldier which he still retained rather in advancing the power of the Clergy than the good of Mankind by restraining the rage of Tyrants it can be no prejudice to our Cause of which he had no cognisance He spoke of the violent and despotical Government to which he had bin a Minister before his Baptism and seems to have had no knowledg of the Gothick Polity that within a few years grew famous by the overthrow of the Roman Tyranny and delivering the world from the Yoak which it could no longer bear And if Austin might say That the Emperor is subject to no Laws because he has a Power of making Laws I may as justly say that our Kings are subject to Laws because they can make no Law and have
Countries they enslaved But if this be equally false sottish absurd and execrable all those Epithets belong to our Author and his Doctrine for attempting to depress all modest and regular Magistracies and endeavouring to corrupt the Scripture to patronize the greatest of Crimes No man therefore who does not delight in error can think that the Apostle designed precisely to determin such questions as might arise concerning any one mans right or in the least degree to prefer any one form of Government before another In acknowledging the Magistrate to be Man's Ordinance he declares that Man who makes him to be may make him to be what he pleaseth and tho there is found more prudence and virtue in one Nation than in another that Magistracy which is established in any one ought to be obeyed till they who made the establishment think fit to alter it All therefore whilst they continue are to be look'd upon with the same respect Every Nation acting freely has an equal right to frame their own Government and to employ such Officers as they please The Authority Right and Power of these must be regulated by the judgment right and power of those who appoint them without any relation at all to the name that is given for that is no way essential to the thing The same name is frequently given to those who differ exceedingly in right and power and the same right and power is as osten annexed to Magistracies that differ in name The same power which had bin in the Roman Kings was given to the Consuls and that which had bin legally in the Dictators for a time not exceeding six months was asterwards usurped by the Cesars and made perpetual The supreme Power which some pretend belongs to all Kings has bin and is enjoy'd in the fullest extent by such as never had the name and no Magistracy was ever more restrain'd than those that had the name of Kings in Sparta Arragon England Poland and other places They therefore that did thus institute regulate and restrain create Magistracies and give them names and powers as seemed best to them could not but have in themselves the coercive as well as the directive over them for the regulation and restriction is coercion but most of all the institution by which they could make them to be or not to be As to the exterior force 't is sometimes on the side of the Magistrate and sometimes on that of the People and as Magistrates under several names have the same work incumbent upon them and the same Power to perform it the same Duty is to be exacted from them and rendred to them which being distinctly proportion'd by the Laws of every Country I may conclude that all Magistratical Power being the Ordinance of Man in pursuance of the Ordinance of God receives its being and measure from the Legislative Power of every Nation And whether the power be placed simply in one a few or many men or in one body composed of the three simple Species whether the single Person be called King Duke Marquess Emperor Sultan Mogol or Grand Signor or the number go under the name of Senat Council Pregadi Diet Assembly of Estates and the like 't is the same thing The same obedience is equally due to all whilst according to the Precept of the Apostle they do the work of God for our good and if they depart from it no one of them has a better Title than the other to our obedience SECT XIII Laws were made to direct and instruct Magistrates and if they will not be directed to restrain them I Know not who they are that our Author introduces to say that the first invention of Laws was to bridle or moderate the overgreat Power of Kings and unless they give some better proof of their judgment in other things shall little esteem them They should have considered that there are Laws in many places where there are no Kings that there were Laws in many before there were Kings as in Israel the Law was given three hundred years before they had any but most especially that as no man can be a rightful King except by Law nor have any just Power but from the Law if that Power be found to be overgreat the Law that gave it must have bin before that which was to moderate or restrain it for that could not be moderated which was not in being Leaving therefore our Author to fight with these Adversaries if he please when he finds them I shall proceed to examin his own Positions The truth is says he the Original of Laws was for the keeping of the Multitude in order Popular Estates could not subsist at all without Laws whereas Kingdoms were govern'd many Ages without them The People of Athens as soon as they gave over Kings were forced to give power to Draco first then to Solon to make them Laws If we will believe him therefore wheresoever there is a King or a man who by having power in his hands is in the place of a King there is no need of Law He takes them all to be so wise just and good that they are Laws to themselves Leges viventes This was certainly verified by the whole succession of the Cesars the ten last Kings of Pharamond's Race all the Successors of Charles the Great and others that I am not willing to name but referring my self to History I desire all reasonable men to consider whether the piety and tender care that was natural to Caligula Nero or Domitian was such a security to the Nations that lived under them as without Law to be sufficient for their preservation for if the contrary appear to be true and that their Government was a perpetual exercise of rage malice and madness by which the worst of men were armed with power to destroy the best so that the Empire could only be saved by their destruction 't is most certain that mankind can never fall into a condition which stands more in need of Laws to protect the innocent than when such Monsters reign who endeavour their extirpation and are too well furnished with means to accomplish their detestable designs Without any prejudice therefore to the Cause that I defend I might confess that all Nations were at the first governed by Kings and that no Laws were imposed upon those Kings till they or the Successors of those who had bin advanced for their virtues by falling into Vice and Corruption did manifestly discover the inconveniences of depending upon their will Besides these there are also children women and fools that often come to the succession of Kingdoms whose weakness and ignorance stands in as great need of support and direction as the desperate fury of the others can do of restriction And if some Nations had bin so sottish not to foresee the mischief of leaving them to their will others or the same in succeeding Ages discovering them could no more be obliged to continue in so pernicious a
a Commonwealths-man as Cato but the washed Swine will return to the Mire He overthrows all by a preposterous conjunction of the rights os Kings which are just and by Law with those of Tyrants which are utterly against Law and gives the sacred and gentle name os Father to those Beasts who by their actions declare themselves enemies not only to all Law and Justice but to Mankind that cannot subsist without them This requires no other proof than to examine whether Attila or Tamerlan did well deserve to be called Fathers of the Countries they destroy'd The first of these was usually called the scourge of God and he gloried in the Name The other being reproved for the detestable cruelties he exercised made answer You speak to me as to a man I am not a man but the scourge of God and plague of Mankind This is certainly sweet and gentle Language savouring much of a fatherly tenderness There is no doubt that those who use it will provide for the safety of the Nations under them and the preservation of the Laws of Nature is rightly referred to them and 't is very probable that they who came to burn the Countries and destroy the Nations that fell under their power should make it their business to preserve them and look upon the former Governors as their Fathers whose acts they were obliged to confirm tho they seldom attained to the Dominion by any other means than the slaughter of them and their Families But if the enmity be not against the Nation and the cause of the war be only for Dominion against the ruling Person or Family as that of Baasha against the house of Jeroboam of Zimri against that of Baasha of Omri against Zimri and of Jehu against Joram the prosecution of it is a strange way of becoming the Son of the Person destroyed And Filmer alone is subtil enough to discover that Jehu by extinguishing the house of Ahab drew an obligation upon himself of looking on him as his Father and confirming his acts If this be true Moses was obliged to confirm the acts of the Kings of the Amalekites Moabites and Amorites that he destroy'd the same duty lay upon Joshua in relation to the Cananites but 't is not so easily decided to which of them he did owe that deference for the same could not be due to all and 't is hard to believe that by killing above thirty Kings he should purchase to himself so many Fathers and the like may be said of divers others Moreover there is a sort of Tyrant who has no Father as Agathocles Dionysius Cesar and generally all those who subvert the Liberties of their own Countrey And if they stood obliged to look upon the former Magistrates as their Predecessors and to confirm their Acts the first should have bin to give impunity and reward to any that would kill them it having bin a fundamental Maxim in those States That any man might kill a Tyrant This being in all respects ridiculous and absurd 't is evident that our Author who by proposing such a false security to Nations for their Liberties endeavours to betray them is not less treacherous to Kings when under a pretence of defending their rights he makes them to be the same with those of Tyrants who are known to have none and are Tyrants because they have none and gives no other hopes to Nations of being preserved by the Kings they set up for that end than what upon the same account may be expected from Tyrants whom all wise men have ever abhorr'd and affirmed to have bin produced to bring destruction upon the World and whose Lives have verifi'd the Sentence This is truly to depose and abolish Kings by abolishing that by which and for which they are so The greatness of their Power Riches State and the pleasures that accompany them cannot but create enemies Some will envy that which is accounted Happiness others may dislike the use they make of their Power some may be unjustly exasperated by the best of their Actions when they find themselves incommoded by them others may be too severe judges of slight miscarriages These things may reasonably temper the joys of those who delight most in the advantages of Crowns But the worst and most dangerous of all their enemies are these accursed Sycophants who by making those that ought to be the best of men like to the worst destroy their Being and by perswading the world they aim at the same things and are bound to no other rule than is common to all Tyrants give a fair pretence to ill men to say They are all of one kind And if this should be received for truth even they who think the miscarriages of their Governors may be easily redressed and desire no more would be the most fierce in procuring the destruction of that which is naught in Principle and cannot be corrected SECT XVII Kings cannot be the Interpreters of the Oaths they take OUR Author's Book is so full of absurdities and contradictions that it would be a rope of Sand if a continued series of frauds did not like a string of Poisons running through the whole give it some consistence with it self and shew it to be the work of one and the same hand After having endeavoured to subvert the Laws of God Nature and Nations most especially our own by abusing the Scriptures falsly alledging the Authority of many good Writers and seeking to obtrude upon Mankind a universal Law that would take from every Nation the right of constituting such Governments within themselves as seem most convenient for them and giving rules for the administration of such as they had established he gives us a full view of his Religion and Morals by destroying the force of the Oath taken by our Kings at their Coronation Others says he affirm that although Laws of themselves do not bind Kings yet the Oaths of Kings at their Coronation tie them to keep all the Laws of their Kingdoms How far this is true let us but examine the Oath of the Kings of England at their Coronation the words whereof are these Art thou pleased to cause to be administred in all thy judgments indifferent and upright Justice and to use discretion with Mercy and Verity Art thou pleased that our upright Laws and Customs be observed and dost thou promise that those shall be protected and maintained by thee c. To which the King answers in the Affirmative being first demanded by the Archbishop of Canterbury Pleaseth it you to confirm and observe the Laws and Customs of the antient times granted from God by just and devout Kings unto the English Nation by Oath unto the said People especially the Laws Liberties and Customs granted unto the Clergy and Laity by the famous King Edward From this he infers That the King is not to observe all Laws but such as are upright because he finds evil Laws mention'd in the Oath of Richard the
despised Tho the Pope's Excommunications proved sometimes to be but bruta fulmina when a just cause was wanting it may be easily judged what obedience a Prince could expect from his Subjects when every man knew he had by perjury drawn the most heavy curses upon himself King John was certainly wicked but he durst not break these bonds till he had procured the Popes absolution for a cover and when he had done so he found himself unsafe under it and could not make good what he had promised to the Pope to obtain it the Parliament declaring that his grants to the Pope were unjust illegal contrary to his Coronation-Oath and that they would not be held by them This went so far in that Kings time that Writs were issued out to men of all conditions to oblige themselves by oath to keep the great Charter and if other means failed to compel the King to perform the conditions T is expresly said in his Charter That the Barons and Commonalty of the land shall streighten and compel us by all means possible as by seizing our Towns Lands and Possessions or any other way till satisfaction be made according to their pleasure And in the Charter of his Son Henry 't is upon the same supposition of not performing the agreement said It shall be lawful for all men in our Kingdom to rise up against us and to do all things that may be grievous to us as if they were absolutely free from any engagements to our person These words seem to have bin contrived to be so full and strong propter duplicitatem Regis which was with too much reason suspected And 't is not as I suppose the language of Slaves and Villains begging something from their Lord but of noble and free men who knew their Lord was no more than what they made him and had nothing but what they gave him nor the language of a Lord treating with such as enjoy'd their liberties by his favour but with those whom he acknowledged to be the Judges of his performing what had bin stipulated and equals the agreements made between the Kings and People of Arragon which I cited before from the Relations of Antonio Perez This is as far as men can go and the experience of all ages manifests that Princes performing their office and observing these stipulations have lived glorious happy and beloved and I can hardly find an example of any who have notoriously broken these Oaths and bin adjudged to have incurred the Penalties who have not lived miserably died shamefully and left an abominable memory to posterity But says our Author Kings cannot be more obliged by voluntary Oaths than other men and may be relieved from unjust and unreasonable promises if they be induced by deceit error force or fear or the performance be grievous Which is to say that no Oath is of any obligation for there is none that is not voluntary or involuntary and there never was any upon which some such thing may not be pretended which would be the same if such as Filmer had the direction of their consciences who take the Oaths and of those who are to exact the performance This would soon destroy all confidence between King and People and not only unhinge the best established Governments but by a detestable practice of annihilating the force of Oaths and most solemn Contracts that can be made by men overthrow all Societies that subsist by them I leave it to all reasonable men to judg how fit a work this would be for the supreme Magistrate who is advanced to the highest degree of human glory and happiness that he may preserve them and how that Justice for the obtaining of which Governments are constituted can be administred if he who is to exact it from others do in his own person utterly subvert it and what they deserve who by such base prevarications would teach them to pervert and abolish the most sacred of all Contracts A worthy person of our Age was accustomed to say that Contracts in writing were invented only to bind Villains who having no Law Justice or Truth within themselves would not keep their words unless such testimonies were given as might compel them But if our Author's Doctrine were received no contract would be of more value than a Cobweb Such as are not absolutely of a profligate conscience so far reverence the religion of an Oath to think that even those which are most unjustly and violently imposed ought to be observed and Julius Cesar who I think was not over-scrupulous when he was taken by Pyrats and set at liberty upon his word caused the Ransom he had promised to be pay'd to them We see the like is practised every day by Prisoners taken in unjust as well as just Wars And there is no honest man that would not abhor a Person who being taken by the Pyrats of Algier should not pay what he had promised sor his Liberty 'T were in vain to say they had no right of exacting or that the performance was grievous he must return to the chains or pay And tho the People of Artois Alsatia or Flanders do perhaps with reason think the King of France has no right to impose Oaths of Allegiance upon them no man doubts that if they chuse rather to take those Oaths than to suffer what might ensue upon their refusal they are as much bound to be faithful to him as his antient Subjects The like may be said of promises extorted by fraud and no other example is necessary to prove they are to be performed than that of Joshua made to the Gibeonites They were an accursed Nation which he was commanded to destroy They came to him with lies and by deceit induced him to make a League with them which he ought not to have done but being made it was to be performed and on that account he did not only spare but defend them and the action was approved by God When Saul by a preposterous zeal violated that League the Anger of God for that breach of faith could no otherwise be appeased than by the death of seven of his Children This case is so full so precise and of such undoubted authority that I shall not trouble my self with any other But if we believe our man of good morals voluntary Oaths and Promises are of no more value than those gained by force or deceit that is to say none are of any For voluntary signifying nothing but free all human Acts are either free or not free that is from the will of the person or some impulse from without If therefore there be no sorce in those that are free nor in those that are not free there is none in any No better use can be made of any pretension of error or that the performance was grievous for no man ought to be grieved at the performance of his Contract David assures us that a good man performs his agreement tho he
sense of the words as they are understood in our Language by those who give them and conducing to the ends for which they are given which can be no other than to defend us from all manner of arbitrary Power and to fix a rule to which we are to conform our Actions and from which according to our deserts we may expect reward or punishment And those who by prevarications cavils or equivocations endeavour to dissolve these Obligations do either maliciously betray the cause of Kings by representing them to the world as men who prefer the Satisfaction of their irregular Appetites before the performance of their duty and trample under foot the most sacred bonds of human Society or from the grossest ignorance do not see that by teaching Nations how little they can rely upon the Oaths of their Princes they instruct them as little to observe their own and that not only because men are generally inclined to follow the examples of those in power but from a most certain conclusion that he who breaks his part of a Contract cannot without the utmost impudence and folly expect the performance of the other nothing being more known amongst men than that all Contracts are of such mutual obligation that he who fails of his part discharges the other If this be so between man and man it must needs be so between one and many millions of men If he were free because he says he is every man must be free also when he pleases if a private man who receives no benefit or perhaps prejudice from a Contract be obliged to perform the conditions much more are Kings who receive the greatest advantages the world can give As they are not by themselves nor for themselves so they are not different in specie from other men they are born live and die as we all do The same Law of Truth and Justice is given to all by God and Nature and perhaps I may say the performance of it is most rigorously exacted from the greatest of men The liberty of Perjury cannot be a privilege annexed to Crowns and 't is absurd to think that the most venerable Authority that can be conferred upon a man is increased by a liberty-to commit or impunity in committing such crimes as are the greatest aggravations of infamy to the basest villains in the world SECT XVIII The next in blood to deceased Kings cannot generally be said to be Kings till they are crowned 'T IS hereupon usually objected that Kings do not come in by Contract nor by Oath but are Kings by or according to proximity of Blood before they are crowned Tho this be a bold Proposition I will not say 't is universally false 'T is possible that in some places the rule of Succession may be set down so precisely that in some cases every man may be able to see and know the sense as well as the Person designed to be the Successor but before I acknowledg it to be universally true I must desire to know what this rule of Succession is and from whence it draws its original I think I may be excused if I make these scruples because I find the thing in dispute to be variously adjudged in several places and have observed five different manners of disposing Crowns esteemed Hereditary besides an infinite number of collateral Controversies arising from them of which we have divers examples and if there be one universal rule appointed one of these only can be right and all the others must be vicious The first gives the inheritance to the eldest Male of the eldest legitimate Line as in France according to that which they call the Salique Law The second to the eldest legitimate Male of the reigning Family as antiently in Spain according to which the Brother of the deceased King has bin often if not always preferr'd before the Son if he were elder as may appear by the dispute between Corbis and Orsua cited before from Titus Livius and in the same Country during the reign of the Goths the eldest Male succeeded whether Legitimate or Illegitimate The fourth receives Females or their Descendents without any other condition distinguishing them from Males except that the younger Brother is preferr'd before the elder Sister but the daughter of the elder Brother is preferr'd before the Son of the younger The fifth gives the Inheritance to Females under a condition as in Sweden where they inherit unless they marry out of the Country without the consent of the Estates according to which rule Charles Gustavus was chosen as any Stranger might have bin tho Son to a Sister of Gustavus Adolphus who by marrying a German Prince had forfeited her right And by the same act of Estates by which her eldest Son was chosen and the Crown entailed upon the Heirs of his Body her second Son the Prince Adolphus was wholly excluded Till these questions are decided by a Judg of such an undoubted Authority that all men may safely submit 't is hard for any man who really seeks the satisfaction of his Conscience to know whether the Law of God and Nature tho he should believe there is one general Law do justify the Customs of the antient Medes and Sabeans mentioned by the Poet who admitted Females or those of France which totally exclude them as unfit to reign over men and utterly unable to perform the duty of a supreme Magistrate as we see they are every where excluded from the exercise of all other Offices in the Commonwealth If it be said that we ought to follow the Customs of our own Country I answer that those of our own Country deserve to be observed because they are of our own Country But they are no more to be called the Laws of God and Nature than those of France or Germany and tho I do not believe that any general Law is appointed I wish I were sure that our Customs in this point were not more repugnant to the light of Nature and prejudicial to our selves than those of some other Nations But if I should be so much an Englishman to think the will of God to have bin more particularly revealed to our Ancestors than to any other Nation and that all of them ought to learn from us yet it would be difficult to decide many questions that may arise For tho the Parliament in the 36th of Henry the sixth made an Act in favour of Richard Duke of York descended from a Daughter of Mortimer who married the Daughter of the Duke of Clarence elder Brother to John of Gaunt they rather asserted their own power of giving the Crown to whom they pleased than determined the question For if they had believed that the Crown had belonged to him by a general and eternal Law they must immediately have rejected Henry as a Usurper and put Richard into the possession of his Right which they did not And tho they did something like to this in the cases of Maud the Empress in relation
and the Verdict is from them tho the Judges having heard the point argued declare the sense of the Law thereupon Wherefore if I should grant that the King might personally assist in judgments his work could only be to prevent frauds and by the advice of the Judges to see that the Laws be duly executed or perhaps to inspect their behaviour If he has more than this it must be by virtue of his politick capacity in which he is understood to be always present in the principal Courts where Justice is always done whether he who wears the Crown be young or old wise or ignorant good or bad or whether he like or dislike what is done Moreover as Governments are instituted for the obtaining of Justice and the King is in a great measure entrusted with the power of executing it 't is probable that the Law would have required his presence in the distribution if there had bin but one Court that at the same time he could be present in more than one that it were certain he would be guilty of no miscarriages that all miscarriages were to be punished in him as well as in the Judges or that it were certain he should always be a man of such wisdom industry experience and integrity as to be an assistance to and a watch over those who are appointed for the administration of Justice But there being many Courts sitting at the same time of equal Authority in several places far distant from each other impossible for the King to be present in all no manner of assurance that the same or greater miscarriages may not be committed in his presence than in his absence by himself than others no opportunity of punishing every delict in him without bringing the Nation into such disorder as may be of more prejudice to the publick than an injury done to a private man the Law which intends to obviate offences or to punish such as cannot be obviated has directed that those men should be chosen who are most knowing in it imposes an Oath upon them not to be diverted from the due course of justice by fear or favour hopes or reward particularly by any command from the King and appoints the severest punishments for them if they prove false to God and their Country If any man think that the words cited from Bracton by our Author upon the question Quis primo principaliter possit debeat judicare c. Sciendum est quod Rex non alius si solus ad haec sufficere possit cum ad hoc per virtutem Sacramenti teneatur are contrary to what I have said I desire the context may be considered that his opinion may be truly understood tho the words taken simply and nakedly may be enough for my purpose For 't is ridiculous to infer that the King has a right of doing any thing upon a supposition that 't is impossible for him to do it He therefore who says the King cannot do it says it must be done by others or not at all But having already proved that the King merely as King has none of the qualities required for judging all or any cases and that many Kings have all the desects of age and person that render men most unable and unfit to give any Sentence we may conclude without contradicting Bracton that no King as King has a power of judging because some of them are utterly unable and unfit to do it and if any one has such a power it must be confer'd upon him by those who think him able and fit to perform that work When Filmer finds such a man we must inquire into the extent of that power which is given to him but this would be nothing to his general proposition sor he himself would hardly have inferr'd that because a power of judging in some cases was conserred upon one Prince on account of his fitness and ability therefore all of them however unfit and unable have a power of deciding all cases Besides if he believe Bracton this power of judging is not inherent in the King but incumbent upon him by virtue of his Oath which our Author endeavours to enervate and annul But as that Oath is grounded upon the Law and the Law cannot presume impossibilities and absurdities it cannot intend and the Oath cannot require that a man should do that which he is unable and unfit to do Many Kings are unfit to judg causes the Law cannot therefore intend they should do it The Context also shews that this imagination of the King 's judging all causes if he could is merely Chymerical for Bracton says in the same Chapter that the power of the King is the power of the Law that is that he has no power but by the Law And the Law that aims at justice cannot make it to depend upon the uncertain humour of a Child a Woman or a foolish Man for by that means it would destroy it self The Law cannot therefore give any such power and the King cannot have it If it be said that all Kings are not so that some are of mature age wise just and good or that the question is not what is good sor the Subject but what is glorious to the King and that he must not lose his right tho the People perish I answer first that whatsoever belongs to Kings as Kings belongs to all Kings this Power of judging cannot belong to all for the Reasons above mentioned it cannot therefore belong to any as King nor without madness be granted to any till he has given testimony of such Wisdom Experience Diligence and Goodness as is required for so great a work It imports not what his Ancestors were Virtues are not entail'd and it were less improper for the Heirs of Hales and Harvey to pretend that the Clients and Patients of their Ancestors should depend upon their advice in matters of Law and Physick than for the Heirs of a great and wise Prince to pretend to Powers given on account of virtue if they have not the same talents for the performance of the works required Common sense declares that Governments are instituted and Judicatures erected for the obtaining of justice The Kings Bench was not established that the Chief Justice should have a great Office but that the oppressed should be relieved and right done The Honor and Profit he receives comes in as it were by accident as the rewards of his service if he rightly perform his duty but he may as well pretend he is there for his own sake as the King God did not set up Moses or Joshua that they might glory in having six hundred thousand men under their command but that they might lead the People into the Land they were to possess that is they were not for themselves but for the People and the glory they acquir'd was by rightly performing the end of their institution Even our Author is obliged to confess this when he says that the Kings Prerogative
most regular Commonwealths that ever were in the world And it can with no more reason be pretended that the Goths received their privileges from Alan or Theodoric the Francs from Pharamond or Meroveus and the English from Ina or Ethelred than that the liberty of Athens was the gift of Themistocles or Pericles that the Empire of Rome proceeded from the liberality of Brutus or Valerius and that the Commonwealth of Venice at this day subsists by the favour of the Contarini or Moresini which must reduce us to matter of right since that of fact void of right can signify nothing SECT XXXII The powers of Kings are so various according to the Constitutions of several States that no consequence can be drawn to the prejudice or advantage of any one merely from the name IN opposition to what is above said some alledg the name of King as if there were a charm in the word and our Author seems to put more weight upon it than in the reasons he brings to support his cause But that we may see there is no efficacy in it and that it conveys no other right than what particular Nations may annex to it we are to consider 1. That the most absolute Princes that are or have bin in the world never had the name of King whereas it has bin frequently given to those whose powers have bin very much restrained The Cesars were never called Kings till the sixth age of Christianity the Califs and Soldan of Egypt and Babylon the Great Turk the Cham of Tartary or the Great Mogol never took that name or any other of the same signification The Czar of Moscovy has it not tho he is as absolute a Monarch and his People as miserable slaves as any in the world On the other side the chief Magistrates of Rome and Athens for some time those of Sparta Arragon Sweden Denmark and England who could do nothing but by Law have bin called Kings This may be enough to shew that a name being no way essential what title soever is given to the chief Magistrate he can have no other power than the Laws and Customs of his Country do give or the People confer upon him 2. The names of Magistrates are often changed tho the power continue to be the same and the powers are sometimes alter'd tho the name remain When Octavius Cesar by the force of a mad corrupted Soldiery had overthrown all Law and Right he took no other title in relation to military Affairs than that of Imperator which in the time of liberty was by the Armies often given to Pretors and Consuls In Civil matters he was as he pretended content with the power of Tribun and the like was observed in his Successor who to new invented Usurpations gave old and approved names On the other side those titles which have bin render'd odious and execrable by the violent exercise of an absolute power are sometimes made popular by moderat elimitations as in Germany where tho the Monarchy seem to be as well temper'd as any the Princes retain the same names of Imperator Cesar and Augustus as those had done who by the excess of their rage and fury had desolated and corrupted the best part of world Sometimes the name is changed tho the power in all respects continue to be the same The Lords of Castille had for many Ages no other title than that of Count and when the Nobility and People thought good they changed it to that of King without any addition to the power The Sovereign Magistrate in Poland was called Duke till within the last two hundred years when they gave the title of King to one of the Jagellan Family which title has continued to this day tho without any change in the nature of the Magistracy And I presume no wise man will think that if the Venetians should give the name of King to their Duke it could confer any other power upon him than he has already unless more should be conferr'd by the Authority of the Great Council 3. The same names which in some places denote the supreme Magistracy in others are subordinate or merely titular In England France and Spain Dukes and Earls are Subjects in Germany the Electors and Princes who are called by those names are little less than Sovereigns and the Dukes of Savoy Tuscany Moscovy and others acknowledg no Superior as well as those of Poland and Castille had none when they went under those titles The same may be said of Kings Some are subject to a foreign power as divers of them were subject to the Persian and Babylonian Monarchs who for that reason were called the Kings of Kings Some also are tributaries and when the Spaniards first landed in America the great Kings of Mexico and Peru had many others under them Threescore and ten Kings gathered up meat under the table of Adonibezek The Romans had many Kings depending upon them Herod and those of his race were of this number and the dispute between him and his Sons Aristobulus and Alexander was to be determined by them neither durst he decide the matter till it was referred to him But a right of Appeal did still remain as appears by the case of St. Paul when Agrippa was King The Kings of Mauritania from the time of Massinissa were under the like dependence Jugurtha went to Rome to justify himself for the death of Micipsa Juba was commanded by the Roman Magistrates Scipio Petreius and Afranius another Juba was made King of the same Country by Augustus and Tiridates of Armenia by Nero and infinite examples of this nature may be alledged Moreover their powers are variously regulated according to the variety of tempers in Nations and Ages Some have restrained the powers that by experience were found to be exorbitant others have dissolved the bonds that were laid upon them and Laws relating to the institution abrogation enlargement or restriction of the regal Power would be utterly insignificant if this could not be done But such Laws are of no effect in any other Country than where they are made The lives of the Spartans did not depend upon the will of Agesilaus or Leonidas because Nabuchodonosor could kill or save whom he pleased and tho the King of Marocco may stab his Subjects throw them to the Lions or hang them upon tenterhooks yet a King of Poland would probably be called to a severe account if he should unjustly kill a single man SECT XXXIII The Liberty of a People is the gift of God and Nature IF any man ask how Nations come to have the power of doing these things I answer that Liberty being only an exemption from the dominion of another the question ought not to be how a Nation can come to be free but how a man comes to have a dominion over it for till the right of Dominion be proved and justified Liberty subsists as arising from the Nature and Being of a man Tertullian speaking of the
of late bin given to Monk and his honourable Dutchess New phrases have bin invented to please Princes or the sense of the old perverted as has happen'd to that of Le Roy s'avisera And that which was no more than a Liberty to consult with the Lords upon a Bill presented by the Commons is by some men now taken for a Right inherent in the King of denying such Bills as may be offer'd to him by the Lords and Commons tho the Coronation Oath oblige him to hold keep and defend the just Laws and Customs quas vulgus elegerit And if a stop be not put to this exorbitant abuse the words still remaining in Acts of Parliament which shew that their Acts are our Laws may perhaps be also abolished But tho this should come to pass by the slackness of the Lords and Commons it could neither create a new Right in the King nor diminish that of the People But it might give a better colour to those who are Enemies to their Country to render the Power of the Crown arbitrary than any thing that is yet among us SECT XXXV The Authority given by our Law to the Acts performed by a King de facto detract nothing from the peoples right of creating whom they please THEY who have more regard to the prevailing Power than to Right and lay great weight upon the Statute of Henry the seventh which authorizes the Acts of a King de facto seem not to consider that thereby they destroy all right of Inheritance that he only is King de facto who is received by the People and that this reception could neither be of any value in it self nor be made valid by a Statute unless the People and their Representatives who make the Statute had in themselves the power of receiving authorizing and creating whom they please For he is not King de facto who calls himself so as Perkin or Simnel but he who by the consent of the Nation is possess'd of the Regal Power If there were such a thing in nature as a natural Lord over every Country and that the right must go by descent it would be impossible for any other man to acquire it or for the people to confer it upon him and to give the Authority to the Acts of one who neither is nor can be a King which belongs only to him who has the right inherent in himself and inseparable from him Neither can it be denied that the same power which gives the validity to such Acts as are performed by one who is not a King that belongs to those of a true King may also make him King for the essence of a King consists in the validity of his Acts. And 't is equally absurd for one to pretend to be a King whose Acts as King are not valid as that his own can be valid if those of another are for then the same indivisible Right which our Author and those of his principles assert to be inseparable from the Person would be at the same time exercised and enjoyed by two distinct and contrary Powers Moreover it may be observed that this Statute was made after frequent and bloody Wars concerning Titles to the Crown and whether the cause were good or bad those who were overcome were not only subject to be killed in the field but afterwards to be prosecuted as Traitors under the colour of Law He who gained the Victory was always set up to be King by those of his party and he never failed to proceed against his Enemies as Rebels This introduced a horrid series of the most destructive mischiefs The fortune of War varied often and I think it may be said that there were few if any great Families in England that were not either destroy'd or at least so far shaken as to lose their Chiefs and many considerable branches of them And experience taught that instead of gaining any advantage to the Publick in point of Government he for whom they fought seldom proved better than his Enemy They saw that the like might again happen tho the title of the reigning King should be as clear as descent of blood could make it This brought things into an uneasy posture and 't is not strange that both the Nobility and Commonalty should be weary of it No Law could prevent the dangers of battel for he that had followers and would venture himself might bring them to such a decision as was only in the hand of God But thinking no more could justly be required to the full performance of their Duty to the King than to expose themselves to the hazard of battel for him and not being answerable for the success they would not have that Law which they endeavour'd to support turned to their destruction by their Enemies who might come to be the interpreters of it But as they could be exempted from this danger only by their own Laws which could authorize the Acts of a King without a Title and justify them for acting under him 't is evident that the power of the Law was in their hands and that the acts of the person who enjoyed the Crown were of no value in themselves The Law had bin impertinent if it could have bin done without Law and the Intervention of the Parliament useless if the Kings de facto could have given authority to their own Acts. But if the Parliament could make that to have the effect of Law which was not Law and exempt those that acted according to it from the penalties of the Law and give the same force to the Acts of one who is not King as of one who is they cannot but have a power of making him to be King who is not so that is to say all depends intirely upon their Authority Besides he is not King who assumes the title to himself or is set up by a corrupt party but he who according to the usages required in the case is made King If these are wanting he is neither de facto nor de jure but Tyrannus sine titulo Nevertheless this very man if he comes to be received by the People and placed in the Throne he is thereby made King de facto His Acts are valid in Law the same service is due to him as to any other they who render it are in the same manner protected by the Law that is to say he is truly King If our Author therefore do allow such to be Kings he must confess that power to be good which makes them so when they have no right in themselves If he deny it he must not only deny that there is any such thing as a King de facto which the Statute acknowledges but that we ever had any King in England for we never had any other than such as I have proved before By the same means he will so unravel all the Law that no man shall know what he has or what he ought to do or avoid and will find no
beyond or contrary to the true meaning of it private men who swear obedience ad legem swear no obedience extra or contra Legem whatsoever they promise or swear can detract nothing from the publick Liberty which the Law principally intends to preserve Tho many of them may be obliged in their several Stations and Capacities to render peculiar services to a Prince the People continue as free as the internal thoughts of a man and cannot but have a right to preserve their Liberty or avenge the violation If matters are well examined perhaps not many Magistrates can pretend to much upon the title of merit most especially if they or their progenitors have continued long in Office The conveniences annexed to the exercise of the Sovereign power may be thought sufficient to pay such scores as they grow due even to the best and as things of that nature are handled I think it will hardly be found that all Princes can pretend to an irresistible power upon the account of beneficence to their People When the family of Medices came to be masters of Tuscany that Country was without dispute in men mony and arms one of the most flourishing Provinces in the World as appears by Macchiavel's account and the relation of what happened between Charles the eighth and the Magistrates of Florence which I have mentioned already from Guicciardin Now whoever shall consider the strength of that Country in those days together with what it might have bin in the space of a hundred and forty years in which they have had no war nor any other plague than the extortion fraud rapin and cruelty of their Princes and compare it with their present desolate wretched and contemptible condition may if he please think that much veneration is due to the Princes that govern them but will never make any man believe that their Title can be grounded upon beneficence The like may be said of the Duke of Savoy who pretending upon I know not what account that every Peasant in the Dutchy ought to pay him two Crowns every half year did in 1662 subtilly find our that in every year there were thirteen halves so that a poor man who had nothing but what he gained by hard labour was through his fatherly Care and Beneficence forced to pay six and twenty Crowns to his Royal Highness to be employ'd in his discreet and virtuous pleasures at Turin The condition of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands and even of Spain it self when they fell to the house of Austria was of the same nature and I will confess as much as can be required if any other marks of their Government do remain than such as are manifest evidences of their Pride Avarice Luxury and Cruelty France in outward appearance makes a better show but nothing in this world is more miserable than that people under the fatherly care of their triumphant Monarch The best of their condition is like Asses and Mastiff-dogs to work and fight to be oppressed and kill'd for him and those among them who have any understanding well know that their industry courage and good success is not only unprofitable but destructive to them and that by increasing the power of their Master they add weight to their own Chains And if any Prince or succession of Princes have made a more modest use of their Power or more faithfully discharged the trust reposed in them it must be imputed peculiarly to them as a testimony of their personal Virtue and can have no effect upon others The Rights therefore of Kings are not grounded upon Conquest the Liberties of Nations do not arise from the Grants of their Princes the Oath of Allegiance binds no privat man to more than the Law directs and has no influence upon the whole Body of every Nation Many Princes are known to their Subjects only by the injuries losses and mischiefs brought upon them such as are good and just ought to be rewarded for their personal Virtue but can confer no right upon those who no way resemble them and whoever pretends to that merit must prove it by his Actions Rebellion being nothing but a renewed War can never be against a Government that was not established by War and of it self is neither good nor evil more than any other War but is just or unjust according to the cause or manner of it Besides that Rebellion which by Samuel is compar'd to Witchcraft is not of private men or a People against the Prince but of the Prince against God The Israelites are often said to have rebelled against the Law Word or Command of God but tho they frequently opposed their Kings I do not find Rebellion imputed to them on that account nor any ill character put upon such actions We are told also of some Kings who had bin subdued and afterwards rebelled against Chedorlaomer and other Kings but their cause is not blamed and we have some reason to believe it good because Abraham took part with those who had rebelled However it can be of no prejudice to the cause I defend for tho it were true that those subdued Kings could not justly rise against the person who had subdued them or that generally no King being once vanquished could have a right of Rebellion against his Conqueror it could have no relation to the actions of a people vindicating their own Laws and Liberties against a Prince who violates them for that War which never was can never be renewed And if it be true in any case that hands and swords are given to men that they only may be Slaves who have no courage it must be when Liberty is overthrown by those who of all men ought with the utmost industry and vigour to have defended it That this should be known is not only necessary for the safety of Nations but advantagious to such Kings as are wise and good They who know the frailty of human Nature will always distrust their own and desiring only to do what they ought will be glad to be restrain'd from that which they ought not to do Being taught by reason and experience that Nations delight in the Peace and Justice of a good Government they will never fear a general Insurrection whilst they take care it be rightly administred and finding themselves by this means to be safe will never be unwilling that their Children or Successors should be obliged to tread in the same steps If it be said that this may sometimes cause disorders I acknowledg it but no human condition being perfect such a one is to be chosen which carries with it the most tolerable inconveniences And it being much better that the irregularities and excesses of a Prince should be restrained or suppressed than that whole Nations should perish by them those Constitutions that make the best provision against the greatest evils are most to be commended If Governments were instituted to gratify the lusts of one man those could not be good that
set limits to them but all reasonable men confessing that they are instituted for the good of Nations they only can deserve praise who above all things endeavour to procure it and appoint means proportioned to that end The great variety of Governments which we see in the world is nothing but the effect of this care and all Nations have bin and are more or less happy as they or their Ancestors have had vigour of Spirit integrity of Manners and wisdom to invent and establish such Orders as have better or worse provided for this common Good which was sought by all But as no rule can be so exact to make provision against all contestations and all disputes about Right do naturally end in force when Justice is denied ill men never willingly submitting to any decision that is contrary to their passions and interests the best Constitutions are of no value if there be not a power to support them This power first exerts it self in the execution of justice by the ordinary Officers But no Nation having bin so happy as not sometimes to produce such Princes as Edward and Richard the Seconds and such Ministers as Gaveston Spencer and Tresilian the ordinary Officers of Justice often want the will and always the power to restrain them So that the Rights and Liberties of a Nation must be utterly subverted and abolished if the power of the whole may not be employed to assert them or punish the violation of them But as it is the fundamental Right of every Nation to be governed by such Laws in such manner and by such persons as they think most conducing to their own good they cannot be accountable to any but themselves for what they do in that most important affair SECT XXXVII The English Government was not ill constituted the defects more lately observed proceeding from the change of manners and corruption of the times I Am not ignorant that many honest and good men acknowledging these Rights and the care of our Ancestors to preserve them think they wanted wisdom rightly to proportionate the means to the end 'T is not enough say they for the General of an Army to desire Victory he only can deserve praise who has skill industry and courage to take the best measures of obtaining it Neither is it enough for wise Legislators to preserve Liberty and to erect such a Government as may stand for a time but to set such clear Rules to those who are to put it in execution that every man may know when they transgress and appoint such means for restraining or punishing them as may be used speedily surely and effectually without danger to the Publick Sparta being thus constituted we hardly find that for more than eight hundred years any King presumed to pass the limits prescribed by the Law If any Roman Consul grew insolent he might be reduced to order without blood or danger to the Publick and no Dictator ever usurped a power over Liberty till the time of Sylla when all things in the City were so changed that the antient foundations were become too narrow In Venice the power of the Duke is so circumscribed that in 1300 years no one except Falerio and Tiepoli have dared to attempt any thing against the Laws and they were immediately suppressed with little commotion in the City On the other side our Law is so ambiguous perplext and intricate that 't is hard to know when 't is broken In all the publick contests we have had men of good judgment and integrity have follow'd both parties The means of transgressing and procuring Partizans to make good by force the most notorious violations of Liberty have bin so easy that no Prince who has endeavoured it ever failed to get great numbers of followers and to do infinite mischiefs before he could be removed The Nation has bin brought to fight against those they had made to be what they were upon the unequal terms of hazarding all against nothing If they had success they gained no more than was their own before and which the Law ought to have secured whereas 't is evident that if at any one time the contrary had happened the Nation had bin utterly enslaved and no victory was ever gained without the loss of much noble and innocent blood To this I answer that no right judgment can be given of human things without a particular regard to the time in which they passed We esteem Scipio Hannibal Pyrrhus Alexander Epaminondas and Cesar to have bin admirable Commanders in War because they had in a most eminent degree all the qualities that could make them so and knew best how to employ the Arms then in use according to the discipline of their times and yet no man doubts that if the most skilful of them could be raised from the Grave restored to the utmost vigour of mind and body set at the head of the best Armies he ever commanded and placed upon the Frontiers of France or Flanders he would not know how to advance or retreat nor by what means to take any of the places in those parts as they are now fortified and defended bnt would most certainly be beaten by any insignificant fellow with a small number of men furnished with such Arms as are now in use and following the methods now practised Nay the manner of marching encamping besieging attacking defending and fighting is so much altered within the last threescore years that no man observing the discipline that was then thought to be the best could possibly defend himself against that which has bin since found out tho the terms are still the same And if it be consider'd that political matters are subject to the same mutations as certainly they are it will be sufficient to excuse our Ancestors who suting their Government to the Ages in which they lived could neither soresee the changes that might happen in future Generations nor appoint remedies for the mischiefs they did not soresee They knew that the Kings of several Nations had bin kept within the limits of the Law by the virtue and power of a great and brave Nobility and that no other way of supporting a mix'd Monarchy had ever bin known in the world than by putting the balance into the hands of those who had the greatest interest in Nations and who by birth and estate enjoy'd greater advantages than Kings could confer upon them for rewards of betraying their Country They knew that when the Nobility was so great as not easily to be number'd the little that was left to the King's disposal was not sufficient to corrupt many and if some might fall under the temptation those who continued in their integrity would easily be able to chastise them for deserting the publick Cause and by that means deter Kings srom endeavouring to seduce them from their duty Whilst things continued in this posture Kings might safely be trusted with the advice of their Council to confer the commands of the Militia in
kill'd his Children and not long after his own Son Rhadamistus also Louis the eleventh of France James the third of Scotland Henry the seventh of England were great Masters of these Arts and those who are acquainted with History will easily judg how happy Nations would be if all Kings did in time certainly learn them Our Author as a farther testimony of his Judgment having said that Kings must needs excel others in Understanding and grounded his Doctrin upon their profound Wisdom imputes to them those base and panick fears which are inconsistent with it or any royal Virtue and to carry the point higher tells us There is no Tyrant so barbarously wicked but his own reason and sense will tell him that tho he be a God yet he must die like a Man and that there is not the meanest of his Sabjects but may find a means to revenge himself of the Injuries offer'd him and from thence concludes that there is no such Tyranny as that of a Multitude which is subject to no such fears But if there be such a thing in the World as a barbarous and wicked Tyrant he is something different from a King or the same and his Wisdom is consistent or inconsistent with Barbarity Wickedness and Tyranny If there be no difference the praises he gives and the rights he ascribes to the one belong also to the other and the excellency of Wisdom may consist with Barbarity Wickedness Tyranny and the panick fears that accompany them which hitherto have bin thought to comprehend the utmost excesses of Folly and Madness and I know no better testimony of the truth of that Opinion than that Wisdom always distinguishing good from evil and being seen only in the rectitude of that distinction in following and adhering to the good rejecting that which is evil preferring safety before danger happiness before misery and in knowing rightly how to use the means of attaining or preserving the one and preventing or avoiding the other there cannot be a more extravagant deviation from Reason than for a man who in a private condition might live safely and happily to invade a Principality or if he be a Prince who by governing with Justice and Clemency might obtain the inward satisfaction of his own Mind hope for the blessing of God upon his just and virtuous Actions acquire the love and praises of men and live in safety and happiness amongst his safe and happy Subjects to fall into that Barbarity Wickedness and Tyranny which brings upon him the displeasure of God and detestation of men and which is always attended with those base and panick fears that comprehend all that is shameful and miserable This being perceiv'd by Machiavel he could not think that any man in his senses would not rather be a Scipio than a Cesar or if he came to be a Prince would not rather chuse to imitate Agesilaus Timoleon or Dion than Nabis Phalaris or Dionysius and imputes the contrary choice to madness Nevertheless 't is too well known that many of our Author 's profound wise men in the depth of their Judgment made perfect by use and experience have fallen into it If there be a difference between this barbarous wicked Tyrant and a King we are to examine who is the Tyrant and who the King for the name conferred or assumed cannot make a King unless he be one He who is not a King can have no Title to the rights belonging to him who is truly a King so that a People who find themselves wickedly and barbarously oppressed by a Tyrant may destroy him and his Tyranny without giving offence to any King But 't is strange that Filmer should speak of the barbarity and wickedness of a Tyrant who looks upon the World to be the Patrimony of one man and for the foundation of his Doctrin afferts such a power in every one that makes himself master of any part as cannot be limited by any Law His Title is not to be questioned Usurpation and Violence confer an incontestable Right the exercise of his Power is no more to be disputed than the Acquisition his will is a Law to his Subjects and no Law can be imposed by them upon his Conduct For if these things be true I know not how any man could ever be called a Tyrant that name having never bin given to any unless for usurping a Power that did not belong to him or an unjust exercise of that which had bin conferred upon him and violating the Laws which ought to be a rule to him 'T is also hard to imagin how any man can be called barbarous and wicked if he be obliged by no Law but that of his own Pleasure for we have no other notion of wrong than that it is a breach of the Law which determines what is right If the lives and goods of Subjects depend upon the Will of the Prince and he in his profound Wisdom preserve them only to be beneficial to himself they can have no other right than what he gives and without injustice may retain when he thinks fit If there be no wrong there can be no just revenge and he that pretends to seek it is not a free man vindicating his Right but a perverse slave rising up against his Master But if there be such a thing as a barbarous and wicked Tyrant there must be a rule relating to the acquisition and exercise of the Power by which he may be distinguish'd from a just King and a Law superior to his Will by the violation of which he becomes barbarous and wicked Tho our Author so far forgets himself to confess this to be true he seeks to destroy the fruits of it by such flattery as comprehends all that is most detestable in Profaneness and Blasphemy and gives the name of Gods to the most execrable of men He may by such language deserve the name of Heylin's Disciple but will find few among the Heathens so basely servile or so boldly impious Tho Claudius Cesar was a drunken sot and transported with the extravagance of his Fortune he detested the impudence of his Predecessor Caligula who affected that Title and in his rescript to the Procurator of Judea gives it no better name than turpem Caii insaniam For this reason it was rejected by all his Pagan Successors who were not as furiously wicked as he yet Filmer has thought fit to renew it for the benefit of Mankind and the glory of the Christian Religion I know not whether these extreme and barbarous Errors of our Author are to be imputed to wickedness or madness or whether to save the pains of a distinction they may not rightly be said to be the same thing but nothing less than the excess of both could induce him to attribute any thing of good to the fears of a Tyrant since they are the chief causes of all the mischiefs he dos Tertullian says they are Metu quam furore saeviores and Tacitus speaking of a most
wicked King says that he did Saevitiam ignaviae obtendere and we do not more certainly find that Cowards are the cruellest of men than that wickedness makes them Cowards that every man's fears bear a proportion with his guilt and with the number virtue and strength of those he has offended He who usurps a Power over all or abuses a Trust reposed in him by all in the highest measure offends all he fears and hates those he has offended and to secure himself aggravates the former Injuries When these are publick they beget a universal Hatred and every man desires to extinguish a Mischief that threatens ruin to all This will always be terrible to one that knows he has deserved it and when those he dreads are the body of the People nothing but a publick destruction can satisfy his rage and appease his fears I wish I could agree with Filmer in exempting multitudes from fears for they having seldom committed any injustice unless through fear would as far as human fragility permits be free from it Tho the Attick Ostracism was not an extreme Punishment I know nothing usually practised in any Commonwealth that did so much savour of injustice but it proceeded solely from a fear that one man tho in appearance virtuous when he came to be raised too much above his fellow Citizens might be tempted to invade the publick Liberty We do not find that the Athenians or any other free Cities ever injur'd any man unless through such a jealousy or the perjury of Witnesses by which the best Tribunals that ever were or can be establish'd in the world may be misled and no injustice could be apprehended from any if they did not fall into such fears But tho Multitudes may have fears as well as Tyrants the Causes and Effects of them are very different A People in relation to domestick Affairs can desire nothing but Liberty and neither hate or fear any but such as do or would as they suspect deprive them of that Happiness Their endeavours to secure that seldom hurt any except such as invade their Rights and if they err the mistake is for the most part discovered before it produce any mischief and the greatest that ever came that way was the death of one or a few men Their Hatred and desire of Revenge can go no farther than the sense of the Injury received or feared and is extinguished by the death or banishment of the Persons as may be gathered from the examples of the Tarquins Decemviri Cassius Melius and Manlius Capitolinus He therefore that would know whether the hatred and fear of a Tyrant or of a People produces the greater mischiefs needs only to consider whether it be better that the Tyrant destroy the People or that the People destroy the Tyrant or at the worst whether one that is suspected of affecting the Tyranny should perish or a whole People amongst whom very many are certainly innocent and experience shows that such are always first sought out to be destroy'd for being so Popular furies or fears how irregular or unjust soever they may be can extend no farther general Calamities can only be brought upon a People by those who are enemies to the whole Body which can never be the Multitude for they are that body In all other respects the fears that render a Tyrant cruel render a People gentle and cautious for every single man knowing himself to be of little power not only fears to do injustice because it may be revenged upon his Person by him or his Friends Kindred and Relations that suffers it but because it tends to the overthrow of the Government which comprehends all publick and private Concernments and which every man knows cannot subsist unless it be so easy and gentle as to be pleasing to those who are the best and have the greatest power and as the publick Considerations divert them from doing those Injuries that may bring immediate prejudice to the Publick so there are strict Laws to restrain all such as would do private Injuries If neither the People nor the Magistrates of Venice Switzerland and Holland commit such extravagances as are usual in other places it dos not perhaps proceed from the temper of those Nations different from others but from a knowledg that whosoever offers an injury to a private person or attemps a publick mischief is exposed to the impartial and inexorable Power of the Law whereas the chief work of an absolute Monarch is to place himself above the Law and thereby rendring himself the Author of all the evils that the People suffer 't is absurd to expect that he should remove them SECT XXX A Monarchy cannot be well regulated unless the Powers of the Monarch are limited by Law OUr Author's next step is not only to reject Popular Governments but all such Monarchies as are not absolute for if the King says he admits the People to be his Companions he leaves to be a King This is the language of French Lackeys Valet de Chambre's Taylors and others like them in Wisdom Learning and Policy who when they fly to England for sear of a well-deserved Gally Gibet or Wheel are ready to say Il faut que le Roy soit absolu autrement il n'est point Roy. And finding no better men to agree with Filmer in this sublime Philosophy I may be pardoned if I do not follow them till I am convinced in these ensuing points 1. It seems absurd to speak of Kings admitting the Nobility or People to part of the Government for tho there may be and are Nations without Kings yet no man can conceive a King without a People These must necessarily have all the power originally in themselves and tho Kings may and often have a power of granting Honors Immunities and Privileges to private Men or Corporations he dos it only out of the publick Stock which he is entrusted to distribute but can give nothing to the people who give to him all that he can rightly have 2. 'T is strange that he who frequently cites Aristotle and Plato should unluckily acknowledg such only to be Kings as they call Tyrants and deny the name of King to those who in their opinion are the only Kings 3. I cannot understand why the Scripture should call those Kings whose Powers were limited if they only are Kings who are absolute or why Moses did appoint that the power of Kings in Israel should be limited if they resolved to have them if that limitation destroy'd the being of a King 4. Nor lastly how he knows that in the Kingdoms which have a shew of Popularity the Power is wholly in the King The first point was proved when we examined the beginning of Monarchies and found it impossible that there could be any thing of justice in them unless they were established by the common consent of those who were to live under them or that they could make any such establishment unless the right and power