Generations We see nothing in Scripture of Precept or Example that is not utterly abhorrent to this Chimera The only sort of Kings mentioned there with approbation is such a one as may not raise his Heart above his Brethren If God had constituted a Lord Paramount with an absolute Power and multitudes of Nations were to labour and fight for his Greatness and Pleasure this were to raise his Heart to a height that would make him forget he was a Man Such as are versed in Scripture not only know that it neither agrees with the Letter or Spirit of that Book but that it is unreasonable in it self unless he were of a Species different from the rest of Mankind His exaltation would not agree with God's Indulgence to his Creatures tho he were the better for it much less when probably he would be made more unhappy and worse by the Pride Luxury and other Vices that always attend the highest Fortunes 'T is no less incredible that God who disposes all things in Wisdom and Goodness and appoints a due Place for all should without distinction ordain such a Power to every one succeeding in such a Line as cannot be executed the Wise would refuse and Fools cannot take upon them the burden of it without ruin to themselves and such as are under them or expose Mankind to a multitude of other Absurdities and Mischiefs subjecting the Aged to be governed by Children the Wise to depend on the Will of Fools the Strong and Valiant to expect defence from the Weak or Cowardly and all in general to receive Justice from him who neither knows nor cares for it SECT VII Abraham and the Patriarchs were not Kings IF any Man say that we are not to seek into the depth of God's Counsels I answer That if he had for Reasons known only to himself affixed such a Right to any one Line he would have set a Mark upon those who come of it that Nations might know to whom they owe Subjection or given some testimony of his Presence with Filmer and Heylin if he had sent them to reveal so great a Mystery 'Till that be done we may safely look upon them as the worst of men and teachers only of Lies and Follies This perswades me little to examine what would have bin if God had at once created many Men or the Conclusions that can be drawn from Adam's having bin alone For nothing can be more evident than that if many had bin created they had bin all equal unless God had given a Preference to one All their Sons had inherited the same Right after their death and no Dream was ever more empty than his Whimsey of Adam's Kingdom or that of the ensuing Patriarchs To say the truth 't is hard to speak seriously of Abraham's Kingdom or to think any Man to be in earnest who mentions it He was a Stranger and a Pilgrim in the Land where he lived and pretended to no Authority beyond his own Family which consisted only of a Wife and Slaves He lived with Lot as with his Equal and would have no Contest with him because they were Brethren His Wife and Servants could neither make up nor be any part of a Kingdom in as much as the despotical Government both in Practice and Principle differs from the Regal If his Kingdom was to be grounded on the Paternal Right it vanished away of it self he had no Child Eliezer of Damascus for want of a better was to be his Heir Lot tho his Nephew was excluded He durst not own his own Wife He had not one foot of Land till he bought a Field for a burying place His three hundred and eighteen Men were Servants bought according to the custom of those days or their Children and the War he made with them was like to Gideon's Enterprize which shews only that God can save by a few as well as by many but makes nothing to our Author's purpose For if they had been as many in number as the Army of Semiramis they could have no relation to the Regal much less to the Paternal Power for a Father doth not buy but beget Children Notwithstanding this our Author bestows the proud Title of Lord Paramount upon him and transmits it to Isaac who was indeed a King like his Father great admirable and glorious in Wisdom and Holiness but utterly void of all worldly splendor or power This spiritual Kingdom was inherited by Jacob whose Title to it was not founded on Prerogative of Birth but Election and peculiar Grace but he never enjoyed any other worldly Inheritance than the Field and Cave which Abraham had bought for a burying place and the Goods he had gained in Laban's Service The Example of Judah his Sentence upon Thamar is yet farther from the purpose if it be possible for he was then a Member of a private Family the fourth Son of a Father then living neither in possession nor under the promise of the Privileges of Primogeniture tho Ruben Simeon and Levi fell from it by their Sins Whatsoever therefore the Right was which belonged to the Head of the Family it must have bin in Jacob but as he professed himself a keeper of Sheep as his Fathers had bin the exercise of that Emploiment was so far from Regal that it deserves no explication If that Act of Judah is to be imputed to a Royal Power I have as much as I ask He tho living with his Father and elder Brothers when he came to be of Age to have Children had the same Power over such as were of or came into his Family as his Father had over him for none can go beyond the Power of Life and Death The same in the utmost extent cannot at the same time equally belong to many If it be divided equally it is no more than that Universal Liberty which God hath given to Mankind and every Man is a King till he devest himself of his Right in consideration of something that he thinks better for him SECT VIII Nimrod was the first King during the Life of Chush Cham Shem and Noah THE Creation is exactly described in the Scripture but we know so little of what passed between the finishing of it and the Flood that our Author may say what he pleases and I may leave him to seek his Proofs where he can find them In the mean time I utterly deny that any Power did remain in the Heads of Families after the Flood that dos in the least degree resemble the Regal in Principle or Practice If in this I am mistaken such Power must have been in Noah and transmitted to one of his Sons The Scripture says only that he built an Altar sacrificed to the Lord was a Husbandman planted a Vineyard and performed such Offices as bear nothing of the Image of a King for the space of three hundred and fifty Years We have reason to believe that his Sons after his Death continued in the same manner of
Othniel was of Judah Ehud of Benjamin Barak of Napthalim and Gideon of Manasseh The other Judges were of several Tribes and they being dead their Children lay hid amongst the common People and we hear no more of them The first King was taken out of the least Family of the least and youngest Tribe The second whilst the Children of the first King were yet alive was the youngest of eight Sons of an obscure man in the Tribe of Judah Solomon one of his youngest Sons succeeded him Ten Tribes deserted Rehoboam and by the command of God set up Jeroboam to be their King The Kingdom of Israel by the destruction of one Family passed into another That of Judah by God's peculiar promise continued in David's race till the Captivity but we know not that the eldest Son was ever preferred and have no reason to presume it David their most reverenced King left no precept for it and gave an example to the contrary he did not set up the eldest but the wisest After the Captivity they who had most wisdom or valour to defend the People were thought most fit to command and the Kingdom at the last came to the Asmonean Race whilst the posterity of David was buried in the mass of the common People and utterly deprived of all worldly Rule or Glory If the Judges had not a regal Power or the regal were only just as instituted by God and eternally annexed to Paternity all that they did was evil There could be nothing of Justice in the Powers exercised by Moses Joshua Gideon Samuel and the rest of the Judges If the power was regal and just it must have continued in the descendants of the first Saul David and Solomon could never have bin Kings The right failing in them their descendants could inherit none from them and the others after the Captivity were guilty of the like injustice Now as the Rule is not general to which there is any one just exception there is not one of these Examples that would not overthrow our Author's doctrine If one deviation from it were lawful another might be and so to infinity But the utmost degree of impudent madness to which perhaps any man in the world hath ever arrived is to assert that to be universal and perpetual which cannot be verified by any one Example to have bin in any place of the World nor justified by any precept If it be objected That all these things were done by God's immediate disposition I answer that it were an impious madness to believe that God did perpetually send his Prophets to overthrow what he had ordained from the beginning and as it were in spite to bring the minds of men into inextricable confusion and darkness and by particular commands to overthrow his universal and eternal Law But to render this point more clear I desire it may be considered That we have but three ways of distinguishing between good and evil 1. When God by his Word reveals it to us 2. When by his deeds he declareth it because that which he does is good as that which he says is true 3. By the light of Reason which is good in as much as it is from God And first It cannot be said we have an explicit word for that continuance of the power in the eldest for it appears not and having none we might conclude it to be left to our liberty For it agrees not with the goodness of God to leave us in a perpetual ignorance of his Will in a matter of so great importance nor to have suffered his own people or any other to persist without the least reproof or admonition in a perpetual opposition to it if it had displeased him To the 2d The Dispensations of his Providence which are the emanations of his Will have gone contrary to this pretended Law There can therefore be no such thing for God is constant to himself his works do not contradict his Word and both of them do equally declare to us that which is good Thirdly If there be any precept that by the light of Nature we can in matters of this kind look upon as certain 't is that the Government of a People should be given to him that can best perform the duties of it No man has it for himself or from himself but for and from those who before he had it were his Equals that he may do good to them If there were a Man who in Wisdom Valour Justice and Purity surpassed all others he might be called a King by Nature because he is best able to bear the weight of so great a charge and like a good Shepherd to lead the People to good Detur digniori is the voice of Reason and that we may be sure Detur seniori is not so Solomon tells us That a wise Child is better than an old and foolish King But if this pretended right do not belong to him that is truly the eldest nothing can be more absurd than a fantastical pretence to a right deduced from him that is not so Now lest I should be thought to follow my own inventions and call them reason or the light of God in us I desire it may be observed that God himself has ever taken this method When he raised up Moses to be the leader of his people he endowed him with the most admirable gifts of his Spirit that ever he bestowed upon a man When he chose seventy men to assist him he endowed them with the same spirit Joshua had no other title to succeed him than the like evidence of God's presence with him When the People through sin fell into misery he did not seek out their Descendants nor such as boasted in a prerogative of Birth but shewed whom he designed for their Deliverer by bestowing such gifts upon him as were required for the performance of his work and never fail'd of doing this till that miserable sinful people rejecting God and his Government desired that which was in use among their accursed Neighbours that they might be as like to them in the most shameful Slavery to Man as in the worship of Idols set up against God But if this pretended Right be grounded upon no word or work of God nor the reason of Man 't is to be accounted a meer figment that hath nothing of truth in it SECT XIV If the paternal Right had included Dominion and was to be transferred to a single Heir it must perish if he were not known and could be applied to no other person HAving shewed that the first Kings were not Fathers nor the first Fathers Kings that all the Kings of the Jews and Gentiles mentioned in Scripture came in upon titles different from and inconsistent with that of Paternity and that we are not led by the Word nor the Works of God nor the Reason of Man or Light of Nature to believe there is any such thing we may safely conclude there never was any such thing or that
or Fraud Or is it possible that any one man can make himself Lord of a People or parcel of that Body to whom God had given the liberty of governing themselves by any other means than Violence or Fraud unless they did willingly submit to him If this Right be not devolved upon any one Man is not the invasion of it the most outragious Injury that can be done to all Mankind and most particularly to the Nation that is enslaved by it Or if the Justice of every Government depends necessarily upon an original Grant and a Succession certainly deduced from our first Fathers dos not he by his own Principles condemn all the Monarchies of the World as the most detestable Usurpations since not one of them that we know do any way pretend to it Or tho I who deny any Power to be just that is not founded upon consent may boldly blame Usurpation is it not an absurd and unpardonable impudence in Filmer to condemn Userpation in a People when he has declared that the Right and Power of a Father may be gained by Usurpation and that Nations in their Obedience are to regard the Power not the Means by which it was gained But not to lose more time upon a most frivolous fiction I affirm that the Liberty which we contend for is granted by God to every man in his own Person in such a manner as may be useful to him and his Posterity and as it was exercised by Noah Shem Abraham Isaac Jacob c. and their Children as has bin proved and not to the vast Body of all Mankind which never did meet together since the first Age after the Flood and never could meet to receive any benefit by it His next Question deserves scorn and hatred with all the effects of either if it proceed from malice tho perhaps he may deserve compassion if his Crime proceed from ignorance Was a general Meeting of a whole Kingdom says he ever known for the Election of a Prince But if there never was any general Meetings of whole Nations or of such as they did delegate and entrust with the Power of the whole how did any man that was elected come to have a Power over the whole Why may not a People meet to chuse a Prince as well as any other Magistrate Why might not the Athenians Romans or Carthaginians have chosen Princes as well as Archons Consuls Dictators or Suffetes if it had pleased them Who chose all the Roman Kings except Tarquin the proud if the People did not since their Histories testify that he was the first who took upon him to reign sine jussu populi Who ever heard of a King of the Goths in Spain that was not chosen by the Nobility and People Or how could they chuse him if they did not meet in their Persons or by their Deputies which is the same thing when a People has agreed it should be so How did the Kings of Sweden come by their Power unless by the like Election till the Crown was made hereditary in the time of Gustavus the First as a Reward of his Vertue and Service in delivering that Country from the Tyranny of the Danes How did Charles Gustavus come to be King unless it was by the Election of the Nobility He acknowledged by the Act of his Election and upon all occasions that he had no other right to the Crown than what they had conferred on him Did not the like Custom prevail in Hungary and Bohemia till those Countries fell under the Power of the House of Austria and in Denmark till the Year 1660 Do not the Kings of Poland derive their Authority from this popular Election which he derides Dos not the stile of the Oath of Allegiance used in the Kingdom of Arragon as it is related by Antonio Perez Secretary of State to Philip 2d shew that their Kings were of their own making Could they say We who are as good as you make you our King on condition that you keep and observe our Privileges and Liberties and if not not if he did not come in by their Election Were not the Roman Emperors in disorderly times chosen by the Souldiers and in such as were more regular by the Senate with the consent of the People Our Author may say the whole Body of these Nations did not meet at their Elections tho that is not always true for in the Infancy of Rome when the whole People dwelt within the Walls of a small City they did meet for the choice of their Kings as afterwards for the choice of other Magistrates Whilst the Goths Franks Vandals and Saxons lived within the Precincts of a Camp they frequently met for the Election of a King and raised upon a Target the Person they had chosen but finding that to be inconvenient or rather impossible when they were vastly increased in number and dispersed over all the Countries they had conquered no better way was found than to institute Gemotes Parliaments Diets Cortez Assemblies of Estates or the like to do that which formerly had bin performed by themselves and when a People is by mutual compact joined together in a civil Society there is no difference as to Right between that which is done by them all in their own Persons or by some deputed by all and acting according to the Powers received from all If our Author was ignorant of these things which are the most common in all Histories he might have spared the pains of writing upon more abstruse Points but 't is a stupendous folly in him to presume to raise Doctrines depending upon the universal Law of God and Nature without examining the only Law that ever God did in a publick manner give to Man If he had looked into it he might have learnt That all Israel was by the command of God assembled at Mispeth to chuse a King and did chuse Saul He being slain all Judah came to Hebron and made David their King after the death of Ishbosheth all the Tribes went to Hebron and anointed him King over them and he made a Covenant with them before the Lord. When Solomon was dead all Israel met together in Shechem and ten Tribes disliking the proceedings of Rehoboam rejected him and made Jeroboam their King The same People in the time of the Judges had general Assemblies as often as occasion did require to set up a Judg make War or the like and the several Tribes had their Assemblies to treat of Businesses relating to themselves The Histories of all Nations especially of those that have peopled the best parts of Europe are so full of Examples in this kind that no man can question them unless he be brutally ignorant or maliciously contentious The great matters among the Germans were transacted omnium consensu De minoribus consultant Principes de majoribus omnes The Michelgemote among the Saxons was an Assembly of the whole People The Baronagium is truly said
transcribing his words and shewing how vilely he is abused by Filmer concluding that if he be in the right the choice and constitution of Government the making of Laws Coronation Inauguration and all that belongs to the chusing and making of Kings or other Magistrates is meerly from the People and that all Power exercised over them which is not so is Usurpation and Tyranny unless it be by an immediate Commission from God which if any man has let him give testimony of it and I will confess he comes not within the reach of our reasonings but ought to be obeyed by those to whom he is sent or over whom he is placed Nevertheless our Author is of another opinion but scorning to give us a reason he adds to Hooker's words As if these Solemnities were a kind of deed whereby the right of Dominion is given which strange untrue and unnatural Conceits are set abroad by Seedsmen of Rebellion and a little farther Unless we will openly proclaim defiance unto all Law Equity and Reason we must say for there is no remedy that in Kingdoms hereditary Birthright giveth a Right unto Soveraign Dominion c. Those Solemnities do either serve for an open testification of the Inheritor's Right or belong to the form of inducing him into the possession These are bold Censures and do not only reach Mr. Hooker whose modesty and peaceableness of spirit is no less esteemed than his Learning but the Scriptures also and the best of human Authors upon which he founded his Opinions But why should it be thought a strange untrue or unnatural Conceit to believe that when the Scriptures say Nimrod was the first that grew powerful in the Earth long before the death of his Fathers and could consequently neither have a right of Dominion over the multitude met together at Babylon nor subdue them by his own strength he was set up by their Consent or that they who made him their Governor might prescribe Rules by which he should govern Nothing seems to me less strange than that a Multitude of reasonable Creatures in the performance of Acts of the greatest importance should consider why they do them And the infinite variety which is observed in the constitution mixture and regulation of Governments dos not only shew that the several Nations of the World have considered them but clearly prove that all Nations have perpetually continued in the exercise of that Right Nothing is more natural than to follow the voice of Mankind The wisest and best have ever employed their studies in forming Kingdoms and Commonwealths or in adding to the perfections of such as were already constituted which had bin contrary to the Laws of God and Nature if a general Rule had bin set which had obliged all to be for ever subject to the Will of one and they had not bin the best but the worst of men who had departed from it Nay I may say that the Law given by God to his peculiar People and the Commands delivered by his Servants in order to it or the prosecution of it had bin contrary to his own eternal and universal Law which is impossible A Law therefore having bin given by God which had no relation to or consistency with the absolute paternal power Judges and Kings created who had no pretence to any preference before their Brethren till they were created and commanded not to raise their Hearts above them when they should be created the Wisdom and Vertue of the best men in all ages shewn in the constitution or reformation of Governments and Nations in variously framing them preserving the possession of their natural Right to be governed by none and in no other way than they should appoint The opinions of Hooker That all publick regiment of what kind soever ariseth from the deliberate advice of men seeking their own good and that all other is meer Tyranny are not untrue and unnatural conceits set abroad by the Seedsmen of Rebellion but real Truths grounded upon the Laws of God and Nature acknowledged and practised by Mankind And no Nation being justly subject to any but such as they set up nor in any other manner than according to such Laws as they ordain the right of chusing and making those that are to govern them must wholly depend upon their Will SECT VII The Laws of every Nation are the measure of Migistratical Power OUr Author lays much weight upon the word Hereditary but the question is What is inherited in an Hereditary Kingdom and how it comes to be hereditary 'T is in vain to say the Kingdom for we do not know what he means by the Kingdom 't is one thing in one place and very different in others and I think it not easy to find two in the world that in power are exactly the same If he understand all that is comprehended within the precincts over which it reaches I deny that any such is to be found in the World If he refer to what preceding Kings enjoyed no determination can be made till the first original of that Kingdom be examined that it may be known what that first King had and from whence he had it If this variety be denied I desire to know whether the Kings of Sparta and Persia had the same power over their Subjects if the same whether both were absolute or both limited if limited how came the Decrees of the Persian Kings to pass for Laws if absolute how could the Spartan Kings be subject to Fines Imprisonment or the sentence of Death and not to have power to send for their own Supper out of the Common Hall Why did Xenophon call Agesilaus a good and faithful King obedient to the Laws of his Country when upon the command of the Ephori he left the War that he had with so much glory begun in Asia if he was subject to none How came the Ephori to be established to restrain the Power of Kings if it could no way be restrained if all owed obedience to them and they to none Why did Theopompus his Wife reprove him for suffering his power to be diminished by their creation if it could not be diminished Or why did he say he had made the Power more permanent in making it less odious if it was perpetual and unalterable We may go farther and taking Xenophon and Plutarch for our guides assert that the Kings of Sparta never had the powers of War or Peace Life and Death which our Author esteems inseparable from Regality and conclude either that no King has them or that all Kings are not alike in power If they are not in all places the same Kings do not reign by an universal Law but by the particular Laws of each Country which give to every one so much power as in the opinion of the givers conduces to the end of their institution which is the publick good It may be also worth our inquiry how this inherited Power came to be hereditary We know that the
Sons of Vespasian and Constantine inherited the Roman Empire tho their Fathers had no such title but gaining the Empire by violence which Hooker says is meer Tyranny that can create no right they could devolve none to their Children The Kings of France of the three races have inherited the Crown but Meroveus Pepin and Hugh Capet could neither pretend title nor conquest or any other Right than what was conferred upon them by the Clergy Nobility and People and consequently whatsoever is inherited from them can have no other Original for that is the gift of the People which is bestowed upon the first under whom the Successors claim as if it had bin by a peculiar Act given to every one of them It will be more hard to shew how the Crown of England is become hereditary unless it be by the Will of the People for tho it were granted that some of the Saxon Kings came in by inheritance which I do not having as I think proved them to have bin absolutely elective yet William the Norman did not for he was a Bastard and could inherit nothing William Rufus and Henry did not for their elder Brother Robert by right of inheritance ought to have bin preferred before them Stephen and Henry the second did not for Maud the only Heiress of Henry the first was living when both were crowned Richard John and those who followed did not for they were Bastards born in adultery They must therefore have received their Right from the People or they could have none at all and their Successors fall under the same condition Moreover I find great variety in the deduction of this hereditary Right In Sparta there were two Kings of different Families endowed with an equal power If the Heraclidae did reign as Fathers of the People the AEacidae did not if the right was in the AEacidae the Heraclidae could have none for 't is equally impossible to have two Fathers as two thousand 'T is in vain to say that two Families joined and agreed to reign jointly for 't is evident the Spartans had Kings before the time of Hercules or Achilles who were the Fathers of the two Races If it be said that the regal power with which they were invested did entitle them to the right of Fathers it must in like manner have belonged to the Roman Consuls Military Tribunes Dictators and Pretors for they had more Power than the Spartan Kings and that glorious Nation might change their Fathers every year and multiply or diminish the number of them as they pleased If this be most ridiculous and absurd 't is certain that the Name and Office of King Consul Dictator or the like dos not confer any determined Right upon the Person that hath it Every one has a right to that which is allotted to him by the Laws of the Country by which he is created As the Persians Spartans Romans or Germans might make such Magistrates and under such names as best pleased themselves and accordingly enlarge or diminish their Power the same Right belongs to all Nations and the Rights due unto as well as the Duties incumbent upon every one are to be known only by the Laws of that place This may seem strange to those who know neither Books nor Things Histories nor Laws but is well explain'd by Grotius who denying the Soveraign Power to be annexed to any Man speaks of divers Magistrates under several names that had and others that under the same names had it not and distinguishes those who have the Summum Imperium summo modo from those who have it modo non summo and tho probably he looked upon the first sort as a thing meerly speculative if by that summo modo a right of doing what one pleases be understood yet he gives many Examples of the other and among those who had liberrimum imperium if any had it he names the Kings of the Sabeans who nevertheless were under such a condition that tho they were as Agatharchidas reports obeyed in all things whilst they continued within the Walls of their Palace might be stoned by any that met them without it He finds also another obstacle to the Absolute power Cum Rex partem habeat summi Imperii partem Senatus sive Populus which parts are proportioned according to the Laws of each Kingdom whether Hereditary or Elective both being equally regulated by them The Law that gives and measures the Power prescribes Rules how it should be transmitted In some places the supreme Magistrates are annually elected in others their Power is for life in some they are meerly elective in others hereditary under certain Rules or Limitations The antient Kingdoms and Lordships of Spain were hereditary but the Succession went ordinarily to the eldest of the reigning Family not to the nearest in Blood This was the ground of the Quarrel between Corbis the Brother and Orsua the Son of the last Prince decided by Combat before Scipio I know not whether the Goths brought that custom with them when they conquered Spain or whether they learnt it from the Inhabitants but certain it is that keeping themselves to the Families of the Balthei and Amalthei they had more regard to Age than Proximity and almost ever preferred the Brother or eldest Kinsman of the last King before his Son The like custom was in use among the Moors in Spain and Africa who according to the several Changes that happened among the Families of Almohades Almoranides and Benemerini did always take one of the reigning Blood but in the choice of him had most respect to Age and Capacity This is usually called the Law of Thanestry and as in many other places prevailed also in Ireland till that Country fell under the English Government In France and Turky the Male that is nearest in Blood succeeds and I do not know of any deviation from that Rule in France since Henry the First was preferred before Robert his elder Brother Grandchild to Hugh Capet but notwithstanding the great veneration they have for the Royal Blood they utterly exclude Females lest the Crown should fall to a Stranger or a Woman that is seldom able to govern her self should come to govern so great a People Some Nations admit Females either simply as well as Males or under a condition of not marrying out of their Country or without the consent of the Estates with an absolute exclusion of them and their Children if they do according to which Law now in force among the Swedes Charles Gustavus was chosen King upon the resignation of Queen Christina as having no Title and the Crown setled upon the Heirs of his Body to the utter exclusion of his Brother Adolphus their Mother having married a German Tho divers Nations have differently disposed their Affairs all those that are not naturally Slaves and like to Beasts have preferred their own Good before the personal Interests of him that expects the Crown so as upon no pretence
we examine things more distinctly we shall find that all things varied according to the humour of the Prince Whilst Pharaoh lived who had received such signal Services from Joseph the Israelites were well used but when another rose up who knew him not they were persecuted with all the extremities of injustice and cruelty till the furious King persisting in his design of exterminating them brought destruction upon himself and the Nation Where the like Power hath prevailed it has ever produced the like effects When some great men of Persia had perswaded Darius that it was a fine thing to command that no man for the space of thirty days should make any Petition to God or Man but to the King only Daniel the most wise and holy Man then in the world must be thrown to the Lions When God had miraculously saved him the same Sentence was passed against the Princes of the Nation When Haman had filled Ahasuerus his ears with Lies all the Jews were appointed to be slain and when the fraud of that Villain was detected leave was given them with the like precipitancy to kill whom they pleased When the Israelites came to have Kings they were made subject to the same Storms and always with their Blood suffer'd the Penalty of their Prince's madness When one kind of fury possessed Saul he slew the Priests persecuted David and would have killed his brave Son Jonathan When he sell under another he took upon him to do the Priest's Office pretended to understand the Word of God better than Samuel and spared those that God had commanded him to destroy Upon another whimsey he killed the Gibeonites and never rested from finding new Inventions to vex the People till he had brought many thousands of them to perish with himself and his Sons on Mount Gilboa We do not find any King in Wisdom Valour and Holiness equal to David and yet he falling under the temptations that attend the greatest Fortunes brought Civil Wars and a Plague upon the Nation When Solomon's heart was drawn away by strange Women he filled the Land with Idols and oppressed the People with intolerable Tributes Rehoboam's Folly made that Rent in the Kingdom which could never be made up Under his Successors the people served God Baal or Ashtaroth as best pleased him who had the Power and no other marks of Stability can be alledged to have bin in that Kingdom than the constancy of their Kings in the practice of Idolatry their cruelty to the Prophets hatred to the Jews and civil Wars producing such Slaughters as are reported in few other Stories The Kingdom was in the space of about two hundred years possessed by nine several Families not one of them getting possession otherwise than by the slaughter of his Predecessor and the extinction of his Race and ended in the Bondage of the ten Tribes which continues to this day He that desires farther proofs of this Point may seek them in the Histories of Alexander of Macedon and his Successors He seems to have bin endow'd with all the Vertues that Nature improved by Discipline did ever attain so that he is believed to be the Man meant by Aristotle who on account of the excellency of his Vertues was by Nature framed for a King and Plutarch ascribes his Conquests rather to those than to his Fortune But even that Vertue was overthrown by the Successes that accompanied it He burnt the most magnificent Palace of the world in a frolick to please a mad drunken Whore Upon the most frivolous suggestions of Eunuchs and Rascals he kill'd the best and bravest of his Friends and his Valour which had no equal not subsisting without his other Vertues perished when he became lewd proud cruel and superstitious so as it may be truly said he died a Coward His Successors did not differ from him When they had killed his Mother Wise and Children they exercised their fury against one another and tearing the Kingdom to pieces the Survivors left the Sword as an Inheritance to their Families who perished by it or under the weight of the Roman Chains When the Romans had lost that Liberty which had bin the Nurse of their Vertue and gained the Empire in lieu of it they attained to our Author 's applauded Stability Julius being slain in the Senate the first Question was whether it could be restored or not And that being decided by the Battel of Philippi the Conquerors set themselves to destroy all the eminent men in the City as the best means to establish the Monarchy Augustus gained it by the death of Antonius and the corruption of the Souldiers and he dying naturally or by the fraud of his Wife the Empire was transferred to her Son Tiberius under whom the miserable People suffer'd the worst effects of the most impure Lust and inhuman Cruelty He being stifled the Government went on with much uniformity and stability Caligula Claudius Nero Galba Otho Vitellius regularly and constantly did all the mischief they could and were not more like to each other in the Villanies they committed than in the Deaths they suffered Vespasian's more gentle Reign did no way compensate the Blood he spilt to attain the Empire And the Benefits received from Titus his short-liv'd Vertue were infinitely overbalanced by the detestable Vices of his Brother Domitian who turned all things into the old Channel of Cruelty Lust Rapine and Perfidiousness His slaughter gave a little breath to the gasping perishing World and men might be vertuous under the Government of Nerva Trajan Antoninus Aurelius and a few more tho even in their time Religion was always dangerous But when the Power sell into the hands of Commodus Heliogabalus Caracalla and others of that sort nothing was sase but obscurity or the utmost excesses of lewdness and baseness However whilst the Will of the Governor passed for a Law and the Power did usually sall into the hands of such as were most bold and violent the utmost security that any man could have for his Person or Estate depended upon his temper and Princes themselves whether good or bad had no longer Leases of their lives than the furious and corrupted Soldiers would give them and the Empire of the World was changeable according to the Success of a Battel Matters were not much mended when the Emperors became Christians Some favour'd those who were called Orthodox and gave great Revenues to corrupt the Clergy Others supported Arianism and persecuted the Orthodox with as much asperity as the Pagans had done Some revolted and shewed themselves more fierce against the professors of Christianity than they that had never had any knowledg of it The World was torn in pieces amongst them and osten suffered as great miseries by their sloth ignorance and cowardice as by their fury and madness till the Empire was totally dissolved and lost That which under the weakness and irregularity of a popular Government had conquer'd all from the Euphrates to Britain and
care of his Hens The Monarchy of France must have perished under the base Kings they call Les Roys faineants if the Scepter had not bin wrested out of their unworthy hands The World is full of Examples in this kind and when it pleases God to bestow a just wise and valiant King as a blessing upon a Nation 't is only a momentary help his Virtues end with him and there being neither any divine Promise nor human Reason moving us to believe that they shall always be renewed and continued in his Successors men cannot rely upon it and to alledg a possibility of such a thing is nothing to the purpose On the other side in a popular or mixed Government every man is concerned Every one has a part according to his quality or merit all changes are prejudicial to all whatsoever any man conceives to be for the publick good he may propose it in the Magistracy or to the Magistrate the body of the People is the publick defence and every man is arm'd and disciplin'd The advantages of good success are communicated to all and every one bears a part in the losses This makes men generous and industrious and fills their hearts with love to their Country This and the desire of that praise which is the reward of Virtue raised the Romans above the rest of Mankind and wheresoever the same ways are taken they will in a great measure have the same effects By this means they had as many Soldiers to fight for their Country as there were Freemen in it Whilst they had to deal with the free Nations of Italy Greece Africa or Spain they never conquer'd a Country till the Inhabitants were exhausted But when they came to fight against Kings the success of a Battel was enough to bring a Kingdom under their power Antiochus upon a rufflle received from Acilius at Thermipolae left all that he possessed in Greece and being defeated by Scipio Nasica he quitted all the Kingdoms and Territories of Asia on this side Taurus Paulus Emilius became Master of Macedon by one prosperous fight against Perseus Syphax Gentius Tigranes Ptolomy and others were more easily subdued The mercenary Armies on which they relied being broken the Cities and Countries not caring for their Masters submitted to those who had more virtue and better fortune If the Roman Power had not bin built upon a more sure soundation they could not have subsisted Notwithstanding their Valour they were osten beaten but their losses were immediately repair'd by the excellence of their Discipline When Hannibal had gained the Battels of Trebia Ticinum Thrasimene and Cannae defeated the Romans in many other Encounters and slain above two hundred thousand of their Men with Paulus Emilius C. Servilius Sempronius Gracchus Quintius Marcellus and many other excellent Commanders When about the same time the two brave Scipio's had bin cut off with their Armies in Spain and many great losses had bin sustain'd in Sicily and by Sea one would have thought it impossible for the City to have resisted But their Virtue Love to their Country and good Government was a strength that increased under all their Calamities and in the end overcame all The nearer Hannibal came to the Walls the more obstinate was their resistance Tho he had kill'd more great Captains than any Kingdom ever had others daily stepp'd up in their place who excell'd them in all manner of Virtue I know not if at any time that conquering City could glory in a greater number of men fit for the highest Enterprises than at the end of that cruel War which had consumed so many of them but I think that the finishing Victories by them obtained are but ill prooss of our Author's assertion that they thought basely of the common good and sought only to save themselves We know of none except Cecilius Metellus who after the Battel of Cannae had so base a thought as to design the withdrawing himself from the publick ruin but Scipio asterwards sirnamed Africanus threatning death to those who would not swear never to abandon their Country forced him to leave it This may in general be imputed to good Government and Discipline with which all were so seasoned from their infancy that no affection was so rooted in them as an ardent love to their Country and a resolution to die for it or with it but the means by which they accomplished their great ends so as after their defeats to have such men as carried on their noblest designs with more glory than ever was their annual Elections of Magistrates many being thereby advanc'd to the supreme Commands and every one by the Honours they enjoy'd fill'd with a desire of rendring himself worthy of them I should not much insist upon these things if they had bin seen only in Rome but tho their Discipline seems to have bin more perfect better observed and to have produc'd a Virtue that surpassed all others the like has bin found tho perhaps not in the same degree in all Nations that have enjoyed their Liberty and were admitted to such a part of the Government as might give them a love to it This was evident in all the Nations of Italy The Sabins Volsci AEqui Tuscans Samnites and others were never conquer'd till they had no men lest The Samnites alone inhabiting a small and barren Province suffer'd more defeats before they were subdued than all the Kingdoms of Numidia AEgypt Macedon and Asia and as 't is exprest in their Embassy to Hannibal never yielded till they who had brought vast numbers of men into the Field and by them defeated some of the Roman Armies were reduced to such weakness that they could not resist one Legion We hear of few Spartans who did not willingly expose their Lives for the service of their Country and the Women themselves were so far inflamed with the same affection that they refused to mourn for their Children and Husbands who died in the defence of it When the brave Brasidas was slain some eminent men went to comfort his Mother upon the news of his death and telling her he was the most valiant man in the City she answer'd that he was indeed a valiant man and died as he ought to do but that through the goodness of the Gods many others were lest as valiant as he When Xerxes invaded Greece there was not a Citizen of Athens able to bear Arms who did not leave his Wife and Children to shift for themselves in the neighbouring Cities and their Houses to be burnt when they imbarked with Themistocles and never thought of either till they had defeated the Barbarians at Salamine by Sea and at Platea by Land When men are thus spirited some will ever prove excellent and as none did ever surpass those who were bred under this discipline in all moral military and civil Virtues those very Countries where they flourished most have not produced any eminent men since they lost that Liberty which was the
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
had a power like to that of the Sanhedrin and by them Kings were condemned to fines imprisonment banishment and death as appears by the examples of Pausanias Clonymus Leonidas Agis and others The Hebrew Discipline was the same Reges Davidicae stirpis says Maimonides judicabant judicabantur They gave testimony in judgment when they were called and testimony was given against them Whereas the Kings of Israel as the same Author says were superbi corde elati spretores legis nec judicabant nec judicabantur proud insolent and contemners of the Law who would neither judg nor submit to judgment as the Law commanded The Fruits they gathered were sutable to the Seed they had sown their Crimes were not left unpunish'd they who despised the Law were destroy'd without Law and when no ordinary course could be taken against them for their excesses they were overthrown by force and the Crown within the space of sew years transported into nine several Families with the utter extirpation of those that had possess'd it On the other hand there never was any Sedition against the Spartan Kings and after the moderate Discipline according to which they liv'd was established none of them died by the hands of their Subjects except only two who were put to death in a way of Justice the Kingdom continued in the same races till Cleomenes was defeated by Antigonus and the Government overthrown by the insolence of the Macedonians This gave occasion to those bestial Tyrants Nabis and Machanidas to set up such a Government as our Author recommends to the World which immediately brought destruction upon themselves and the whole City The Germans who pretended to be descended from the Spartans had the like Government Their Princes according to their merit had the credit of perswading not the power of commanding and the question was not what part of the Government their Kings would allow to the Nobility and People but what they would give to their Kings and 't is not much material to our present dispute whether they learnt this from some obscure knowledg of the Law which God gave to his People or whether led by the light of reason which is also from God they discovered what was altogether conformable to that Law Whoever understands the affairs of Germany knows that the present Emperors notwithstanding their haughty Title have a power limited as in the days of Tacitus If they are good and wise they may perswade but they can command no farther than the Law allows They do not admit the Princes Noblemen and Cities to the power which they all exercise in their general Diets and each of them within their own Precincts but they exercise that which has bin by publick consent bestow'd upon them All the Kingdoms peopled from the North observed the same rules In all of them the powers were divided between the Kings the Nobility Clergy and Commons and by the Decrees of Councils Diets Parliaments Cortez and Assemblies of Estates Authority and Liberty were so balanced that such Princes as assumed to themselves more than the Law did permit were severely punished and those who did by force or fraud invade Thrones were by force thrown down from them This was equally beneficial to Kings and People The Powers as Theopompus King of Sparta said were most safe when they were least envied and hated Lewis the 11th of France was one of the first that broke this Golden Chain and by more subtil Arts than had bin formerly known subverted the Laws by which the fury of those Kings had bin restrain'd and taught others to do the like tho all of them have not so well saved themselves from punishment James the third of Scotland was one of his most apt Scholars and Buchanan in his life says That he was precipitated into all manner of Infamy by men of the most abject condition that the corruption of those times and the ill Example of neighbouring Princes were considerable motives to pervert him for Edward the fourth of England Charles of Burgundy Lewis the 11th of France and John the second of Portugal had already laid the Foundations of Tyranny in those Countries and Richard the third was then most cruelly exercising the same in the Kingdom of England This could not have bin if all the Power had always bin in Kings and neither the People nor the Nobility had ever had any For no man can be said to gain that which he and his Predecessors always possessed or to take from others that which they never had nor to set up any sort of Government if it had bin always the same But the foresaid Lewis the 11th did assume to himself a Power above that of his Predecessors and Philip de Commines shews the ways by which he acquir'd it with the miserable effects of his Acquisition both to himself and to his people Modern Authors observe that the change was made by him and for that reason he is said by Mezeray and others to have brought those Kings out of Guardianship they were not therefore so till he did emancipate them Nevertheless this Emancipation had no resemblance to the unlimited Power of which our Author dreams The General Assemblies of Estates were often held long after his death and continued in the exercise of the Sovereign Power of the Nation Davila speaking of the General Assembly held at Orleans in the time of Francis the second asserts the whole Power of the Nation to have bin in them Monsieur de Thou says the same thing and adds that the King dying suddenly the Assembly continued even at the desire of the Council in the exercise of that Power till they had setled the Regency and other Affairs of the highest importance according to their own judgment Hottoman a Lawyer of that Time and Nation famous for his Learning Judgment and Integrity having diligently examin'd the antient Laws and Histories of that Kingdom distinctly proves that the French Nation never had any Kings but of their own chusing that their Kings had no Power except what was conferr'd upon them and that they had bin removed when they excessively abused or readred themselves unworthy of that Trust. This is sufficiently clear by the forecited examples of Pharamond's Grandchildren and the degenerated Races of Meroveus and Pepin of which many were deposed some of the nearest in Blood excluded and when their Vices seemed to be incorrigible they were wholly rejected All this was done by virtue of that Rule which they call the Salique Law And tho some of our Princes pretending to the Inheritance of that Crown by marrying the Heirs General denied that there was any such thing no man can say that for the space of above twelve hundred years Females or their Descendents who are by that Law excluded have ever bin thought to have any right to the Crown And no Law unless it be explicitly given by God can be of greater Authority than one which
acknowledged himself to be the Servant of the Commonwealth and the rather because 't is true and that he is placed in the Throne to that end Nothing is more essential and fundamental in the Constitutions of Kingdoms than that Diets Parliaments and Assemblies of Estates should see this perform'd 'T is not the King that gives them a right to judg of matters of War or Peace to grant Supplies of men and mony or to deny them and to make or abrogate Laws at their pleasure All the Powers rightly belonging to Kings or to them proceed from the same root The Northern Nations seeing what mischiess were generally brought upon the Eastern by referring too much to the irregular will of a man and what those who were more generous had suffer'd when one man by the force of a corrupt mercenary Soldiery had overthrown the Laws by which they lived feared they might fall into the same misery and therefore retained the greater part of the Power to be exercised by their General Assemblies or by Delegates when they grew so numerous that they could not meet These are the Kingdoms of which Grotius speaks where the King has his part and the Senat or People their part of the Supreme Authority and where the Law prescribes such limits that if the King attempt to seize that part which is not his he may justly be opposed Which is as much as to say that the Law upholds the Power it gives and turns against those who abuse it This Doctrin may be displeasing to Court-Parasites but no less profitable to such Kings as follow better Counsels than to the Nations that live under them the Wisdom and Virtue of the best is always fortified by the concurrence of those who are placed in part of the Power they always do what they will when they will nothing but that which is good and 't is a happy impotence in those who through ignorance or malice desire to do evil not to be able to effect it The weakness of such as by defects of Nature Sex Age or Education are not able of themselves to bear the weight of a Kingdom is thereby supported and they together with the People under them preserved from ruin the furious rashness of the Insolent is restrained the extravagance of those who are naturally lews is aw'd and the bestial madness of the most violently wicked and outragious suppress'd When the Law provides for these matters and prescribes ways by which they may be accomplished every man who receives or fears an Injury seeks a remedy in a legal way and vents his Passions in such a manner as brings no prejudice to the Common-wealth If his Complaints against a King may be heard and redressed by Courts of Justice Parliaments and Diets as well as against private men he is satisfied and looks no farther for a Remedy But if Kings like those of Israel will neither judg nor be judged and there be no Power orderly to redress private or publick Injuries every man has recourse to force as if he liv'd in a Wood where there is no Law and that force is always mortal to those who provoke it No Guards can preserve a hated Prince from the vengeance of one resolute hand and they as often sall by the Swords of their own Guards as of others Wrongs will be done and when they that do them cannot or will not be judged publickly the injur'd Persons become Judges in their own case and executioners of their own sentence If this be dangerous in matters of private Concernment 't is much more so in those relating to the publick The lewd extravagancies of Edward and Richard the Seconds whilst they acknowledged the power of the Law were gently reproved and restrained with the removal of some profligate Favourites but when they would admit of no other Law than their own Will no relief could be had but by their Deposition The lawful Spartan Kings who were obedient to the Laws of their Country liv'd in safety and died with glory whereas 't was a strange thing to see a lawless Tyrant die without such infamy and misery as held a just proportion with the wickedness of his Life They did as Plutarch says of Dionysius many mischiefs and suffer'd more This is confirmed by the examples of the Kingdom of Israel and of the Empires of Rome and Greece they who would submit to no Law were destroy'd without any I know not whether they thought themselves to be Gods as our Author says they were but I am sure the most part of them died like Dogs and had the burial of Asses rather than of Men. This is the happiness to which our Author would promote them all If a King admit a People to be his companions he ceaseth to be a King and the State becomes a Democracy And a little farther If in such Assemblies the King Nobility and People have equal shares in the Soveraignty then the King hath but one voice the Nobility likewise one and the People one and then any two of these voices should have power to overrule the third Thus the Nobility and Commons should have a power to make a Law to bridle the King which was never seen in any Kingdom We have heard of Nations that admitted a man to reign over them that is made him King but of no man that made a People The Hebrews made Saul David Jeroboam and other Kings when they returned from Captivity they conferred the same Title upon the Asmonean race as a reward of their Valour and Virtue the Romans chose Romulus Numa Hostilius and others to be their Kings the Spartans instituted two one of the Heraclidae the other of the AEacidae Other Nations set up one a few or more Magistrates to govern them and all the World agrees that Qui dat esse dat modum esse He that makes him to be makes him to be what he is and nothing can be more absurd than to say that he who has nothing but what is given can have more than is given to him If Saul and Romulus had no other title to be Kings than what the People conferred upon them they could be no otherwise Kings than as pleased the People They therefore did not admit the People to be partakers of the Government but the People who had all in themselves and could not have made a King if they had not had it bestow'd upon him what they thought fit and retained the rest in themselves If this were not so then instead of saying to the multitude Will ye have this man to reign they ought to say to the man Wilt thou have this multitude to be a People And whereas the Nobles of Arragon used to say to their new made King We who are as good as you make you our King on condition you keep and maintain our Rights and Liberties and if not not he should have said to them I who am better than you make you to be a People
pleased only to affirm it without giving the least shadow of a reason to perswade us to believe him This might justify me if I should reject his assertion as a thing said gratis but I may safely go a step farther and affirm That men lived under Laws before there were any Kings which cannot be denied if such a Power necessarily belongs to Kings as he ascribes to them For Nimrod who established his Kingdom in Babel is the first who by the Scripture is said to have bin a mighty one in the Earth He was therefore the first King or Kings were not mighty and he being the first King Mankind must have lived till his time without Laws or else Laws were made before Kings To say that there was then no Law is in many respects most absurd for the nature of man cannot be without it and the violences committed by ill men before the Flood could not have bin blamed if there had bin no Law for that which is not cannot be transgressed Cain could not have seared that every man who met him would slay him if there had not bin a Law to slay him that had slain another But in this case the Scripture is clear at least from the time that Noah went out of the Ark for God then gave him a Law sufficient for the state of things at that time if all violence was prohibited under the name of shedding Blood tho not under the same penalty as Murder But Penal Laws being in vain if there be none to execute them such as know God dos nothing in vain may conclude that he who gave this Law did appoint some way for its execution tho unknown to us There is therefore a Law not given by Kings but laid upon such as should be Kings as well as on any other Persons by one who is above them and perhaps I may say that this Law presseth most upon them because they who have most power do most frequently break out into acts of Violence and most of all disdain to have their will restrained and he that will exempt Kings from this Law must either find that they are excepted in the Text or that God who gave it has not a Power over them Moreover it has bin proved at the beginning of this Treatise that the first Kings were of the accursed race and reigned over the accursed Nations whilst the holy Seed had none If therefore there was no Law where there was no King the accursed Posterity of Cham had Laws when the blessed Descendents of Shem had none which is most absurd the word Outlaw or Lawless being often given to the wicked but never to the just and righteous The impious folly of such Assertions gos farther than our Author perhaps suspected for if there be no Law where there is no King the Israelites had no Law till Saul was made King and then the Law they had was from him They had no King before sor they asked one They could not have asked one of Samuel if he had bin a King He had not bin offended and God had not imputed to them the sin of rejecting him if they had asked that only which he had set over them If Samuel were not King Moses Joshua and the other Judges were not Kings for they were no more than he They had therefore no King and consequently if our Author say true no Law If they had no Law till Saul was King they never had any for he gave them none and the Prophets were to blame for denouncing judgments against them for receding from or breaking their Law if they had none He cannot say that Samuel gave them a Law for that which he wrote in a Book and laid up before the Lord was not a Law to the People but to the King If it had bin a Law to the People it must have bin made publick but as it was only to the King he laid it up before God to restify against him if he should adventure to break it Or if it was a Law to the People the matter is not mended for it was given in the time of a King by one who was not King But in truth it was the Law of the Kingdom by which he was King and had bin wholly impertinent if it was not to bind him for it was given to no other person and to no other end Our Author's Assertion upon which all his Doctrine is grounded That there is no Nation that allows Children any action or remedy for being unjustly governed is as impudently false as any other proposed by him for tho a Child will not be heard that complains of the Rod yet our own Law gives relief to Children against their Fathers as well as against other persons that do them injuries upon which we see many ill effects and I do rather relate than commend the practice In other places the Law gives relief against the extravagancies of which Fathers may be guilty in relation to their Children tho not to that excess as to bring them so near to an equality as in England They cannot imprison sell or kill their Children without exposing themselves to the same punishments with other men and if they take their Estates from them the Law is open and gives relief against them but on the other side Children are punished with Death if they strike or outragiously abuse their Parents which is not so with us Now if the Laws of Nations take such care to preserve private men from being too hardly used by their true and natural Fathers who have such a love and tenderness for them in their own Blood that the most wicked and barbarous do much more frequently commit crimes for them than against them how much more necessary is it to restrain the fury that Kings who at the best are but phantastical Fathers may exercise to the destruction of the whole People 'T is a folly to say that David and some other Kings have had or that all should have a tenderness of affection towards their People as towards their Children for besides that even the first Proposition is not acknowledged and will be hardly verified in any one instance there is a vast distance between what men ought to be and what they are Every man ought to be just true and charitable and if they were so Laws would be of no use but it were a madness to abolish them upon a supposition that they are so or to leave them to a future punishment which many do not believe or not regard I am not obliged to believe that David loved every Israelite as well as his Son Absalom but tho he had I could not from thence inser that all Kings do so unless I were sure that all of them were as wise and virtuous as he But to come more close to the matter Do we not know of many Kings who have come to their Power by the most wicked means that can enter into the heart of man even
he attempt it they shall hinder him This was the Law of God not to be abrogated by man a Law of Liberty directly opposite to the necessity of submitting to the will of a man This was a Gift bestowed by God upon his Children and People whereas slavery was a great part of the Curse denounced against Cham for his wickedness and perpetually incumbent upon his Posterity The great Sanhedrin were constituted Judges as Grotius says most particularly of such matters as concern'd their Kings and Maimonides affirms that the Kings were judged by them The distribution of the power to the inferior Sanhedrins in every Tribe and City with the right of calling the People together in general Assemblies as often as occasion required were the foundations of their Liberty and being added to the Law of the Kingdom prescribed in the 17 th of Deuteronomy if they should think fit to have a King established the Freedom of that People upon a solid foundation And tho they in their fury did in a great measure wave the benefits God had bestowed upon them yet there was enough left to restrain the Lusts of their Kings Ahab did not treat with Naboth as with a Servant whose Person and Estate depended upon his Will and dos not seem to have bin so tender-hearted to grieve much for his refusal if by virtue of his royal Authority he could have taken away his Vineyard and his Life But that failing he had no other way of accomplishing his design than by the fraud of his accursed Wife and the perfidious wretches she employed And no better proof that it did fail can reasonably be required than that he was obliged to have recourse to such fordid odious and dangerous Remedies but we are furnished with one that is more unquestionable Hast thou killed and also taken possession In the place where Dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall they lick thy Blood even thine This shews that the Kings were not only under a Law but under a Law of equality with the rest of the People even that of Retaliation He had raised his heart above his Brethren but God brought him down and made him to suffer what he had done he was in all respects wicked but the justice of this sentence consisted in the Law he had broken which could not have bin if he had bin subject to none But as this Retaliation was the sum of all the Judicial Law given by God to his People the Sentence pronounced against Ahab in conformity to it and the execution committed to Jehu shews that the Kings were no less obliged to perform the Law than other men tho they were not so easily punished for transgressing it as others were and if many of them did escape it perfectly agrees with what had bin foretold by Samuel SECT III. Samuel did not describe to the Israelites the glory of a free Monarchy but the Evils the People should suffer that he might divert them from desiring a King THO no restraint had bin put upon the Lusts of the Hebrew Kings it could be no prejudice to any other Nation They deflected from the Law of God and rejecting him that he should reign over them no longer they fell into that misery which could affect none but those who enjoy the same Blessings and with the same fury despise them If their Kings had more Power than consisted with their welfare they gave it and God renounces the institution of such He gave them a Law of Liberty and if they fell into the shame and misery that accompanies slavery it was their own work They were not obliged to have any King and could not without a crime have any but one who must not raise his heart above the rest of them This was taught by Moses And Samuel who spoke by the same Spirit could not contradict him and in telling the people what such a King as they desired would do when he should be established he did announce to them the misery they would bring upon themselves by chusing such a one as he had forbidden This free Monarchy which our Author thinks to be so majestically described was not only displeasing to the Prophet but declared by God to be a rejection of him and inconsistent with his reign over them This might have bin sufficient to divert any other people from their furious resolution but the Prophet farther enforcing his disswasion told them that God who had in all other cases bin their helper would not hear them when they should cry to him by reason of their King This is the majestick description of that free Monarchy with which our Author is so much pleased It was displeasing to the Prophet hateful to God an aggravation of all the crimes they had committed since they came out of Egypt and that which would bring as it did most certain and irreparable destruction upon themselves But it seems the Regal Majesty in that Age was in its infancy and little in comparison of that which we find described by Tacitus Suetonius and others in later times He shall take your Sons says Samuel and set them over his Chariots and your Daughters to make them Confectioners and Cooks but the Majesty of the Roman Emperors was carried to a higher pitch of Glory Ahab could not without employing treachery and fraud get a small spot of ground for his mony to make a Garden of Herbs But Tiberius Caligula and Nero killed whom they pleased and took what they pleased of their Estates When they had satiated their cruelty and avarice by the murders and confications of the most eminent and best men they commonly exposed their Children to the Lust of their Slaves If the power of doing evil be glorious the utmost excess is its perfection and 't is pity that Samuel knew no more of the effects produced by unrestrained Lust that he might have made the description yet more majestick and as nothing can be suffer'd by man beyond constupration torments and death instead of such trifles as he mention'd he might have shew'd them the effects of Fury in its greatest exaltation If it be good for a Nation to live under such a Power why did not God of his own goodness institute it Did his Wisdom and Love to his People fail Or if he himself had not set up the best Government over them could he be displeased with them for asking it Did he separate that Nation from the rest of Mankind to make their condition worse than that of others Or can they be said to have sinned and rejected God when they desir'd nothing but the Government which by a perpetual Ordinance he had established over all the Nations of the World Is not the Law of Nature a Rule which he has given to things and the Law of man's Nature which is Reason an emanation of the divine Wisdom or some footsteps of divine Light remaining in us Is it possible that this which is from God can be contrary to his
most opposite to his Maxims He lived says he in Henry the third's time since Parliaments were instituted as if there had bin a time when England had wanted them or that the establishment of our Liberty had bin made by the Normans who if we will believe our Author came in by force of Arms and oppressed us But we have already proved the Essence of Parliaments to be as antient as our Nation and that there was no time in which there were not such Councils or Assemblies of the People as had the power of the whole and made or unmade such Laws as best pleased themselves We have indeed a French word from a People that came from France but the Power was always in our selves and the Norman Kings were obliged to swear they would govern according to the Laws that had bin made by those Assemblies It imports little vvhether Bracton lived before or after they came amongst us His vvords are Omnes sub eo ipse sub nullo sed tantum sub Deo All are under him and he under none but God only If he offend since no Writ can go out against him their Remedy is by petitioning him to amend his Faults which if he will not do it is punishment enough for him to expect God as an avenger Let none presume to look into his Deeds much less to oppose him Here is a mixture of Sense and Nonsense Truth and Falshood the vvords of Bracton vvith our Author's foolish Inferences from them Bracton spoke of the politick capacity of the King vvhen no Law had forbidden him to divide it from his natural He gave the name of King to the sovereign Power of the Nation as Jacob called that of his Descendents The Scepter vvhich he said should not depart from Judah till Shiloh came tho all men know that his Race did not reign the third part of that time over his own Tribe nor full fourscore years over the whole Nation The same manner of speech is used in all parts of the world Tertullian under the name of Cesar comprehended all magistratical Power and imputed to him the Acts of which in his person he never had any knowledg The French say their King is always present sur son lit de justice in all the Sovereign Courts of the Kingdom which are not easily numbred and that Maxim could have in it neither sense nor truth if by it they meant a Man who can be but in one place at one time and is always comprehended within the Dimensions of his own Skin These things could not be unknown to Bracton the like being in use amongst us and he thought it no offence so far to follow the dictates of Reason prohibited by no Law as to make a difference between the invisible and omnipresent King who never dies and the Person that wears the Crown whom no man without the guilt of Treason may endeavour to kill since there is an Act of Parliament in the case I will not determine whether he spoke properly or no as to England but if he did not all that he said being upon a false supposition is nothing to our purpose The same Bracton says the King doth no wrong in as much as he doth nothing but by Law The Power of the King is the Power of the Law a power of right not of wrong Again If the King dos injustice he is not King In another place he has these words The King therefore ought to exercise the Power of the Law as becomes the Vicar and Minister of God upon Earth because that Power is the Power of God alone but the Power of doing wrong is the Power of the Devil and not of God And the King is his Minister whose Work he dos Whilst he dos Justice he is the Vicar of the Eternal King but if he deflect from it to act unjustly he is the Minister of the Devil He also says that the King is singulis major universis minor and that he who is in justitia exequenda omnibus major in justitia recipienda cuilibet ex plebe fit aequalis I shall not say Bracton is in the right when he speaks in this manner but 't is a strange impudence in Filmer to cite him as a Patron of the absolute Power of Kings who dos so extremely depress them But the grossest of his follies is yet more pardonable than his detestable fraud in falsifying Bracton's words and leaving out such as are not for his purpose which shew his meaning to be directly contrary to the sense put upon them That this may appear I shall set down the words as they are found in Bracton Ipse autem Rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo sub Lege quia Lex facit Regem Attribuat ergo Rex Legi quod Lex attribuit ei id est dominationem potestatem Non est enim Rex ubi dominatur volunt as non Lex quod sub Lege esse debeat cum sit Dei vicarius evidenter apparet If Bracton therefore be a competent Judg the King is under the Law and he is not a King nor God's Vicegerent unless he be so and we all know how to proceed with those who being under the Law offend against it For the Law is not made in vain In this case something more is to be done than petitioning and 't is ridiculous to say that if he will not amend 't is punishment enough for him to expect God an Avenger for the same may be said of all Malefactors God can sufficiently punish Thieves and Murderers but the future Judgment of which perhaps they have no belief is not sufficient to restrain them from committing more Crimes nor to deter others from following their example God was always able to punish Murderers but yet by his Law he commands man to shed the blood of him who should shed man's blood and declares that the Land cannot be purged of the Guilt by any other means He had Judgments in store for Jeroboam Ahab and those that were like them but yet he commanded that according to that Law their Houses should be destroy'd from the earth The dogs lick'd up the blood of Ahab where they had licked that of Naboth and eat Jezebel who had contrived his murder But says our Author we must not look into his deeds much less oppose them Must not David look into Saul's deeds nor oppose them Why did he then bring together as many men as he could to oppose and make foreign Alliances against him even with the Moabites and the accursed Philistins Why did Jehu not only destroy Ahab's house but kill the King of Judah and his forty Brothers only for going to visit his Children Our Author may perhaps say because God commanded them But if God commanded them to do so he did not command them and all mankind not to do so and if he did not forbid they have nothing to restrain them from
may be alledged From which we may safely conclude that if the death of one King do really invest the next Heir with the Right and Power or that he who is so invested be subject to no Law but his own Will all matters relating to that Kingdom must have bin horribly confused during the reigns of 22 Kings of Pharamonds race they can have had no rightful King from the death of Chilperic to King John and the Succession since that time is very liable to be questioned if not utterly overthrown by the house of Austria and others who by the Counts of Hapsburg derive their Descent from Pharamond and by the house of Lorrain claiming from Charles who was excluded by Capet all which is most absurd and they who pretend it bring as much confusion into their own Laws and upon the Polity of their own Nation as shame and guilt upon the memory of their Ancestors who by the most extreme injustice have rejected their natural Lord or dispossessed those who had bin in the most solemn manner placed in the Government and to whom they had generally sworn Allegiance 3. If the next Heir be actually King seized of the power by the death of his Predecessor so that there is no intermission then all the Solemnities and religious Ceremonies used at the Coronations of their Kings with the Oaths given and taken are the most profane abuses of sacred things in contempt of God and Man that can be imagined most especially if the Act be as our Author calls it voluntary and the King receiving nothing by it be bound to keep it no longer than he pleases The Prince who is to be sworn might spare the pains of watching all night in the Church fasting praying confessing communicating and swearing that he will to the utmost of his power defend the Clergy maintain the union of the Church obviate all excess rapine extortion and iniquity take care that in all judgments Justice may be observed with Equity and Mercy c. or of invoking the assistance of the Holy Ghost for the better performance of his Oath and without ceremony tell the Nobility and People that he would do what he thought fit 'T were to as little purpose for the Archbishop of Rheims to take the trouble of saying Mass delivering to him the Crown Scepter and other ensigns of Royalty explaining what is signified by them anointing him with the Oil which they say was deliver'd by an Angel to St. Remigius blessing him and praying to God to bless him if he rightly performed his Oath to God and the People and denouncing the contrary in case of failure on his part if these things conferred nothing upon him but what he had before and were of no obligation to him Such ludifications of the most sacred things are too odious and impious to be imputed to Nations that have any virtue or profess Christianity This cannot fall upon the French and Spaniards who had certainly a great zeal to Religion whatever it was and were so eminent for moral Virtues as to be a reproach to us who live in an Age of more Knowledg But their meaning is so well declared by their most solemn Acts that none but those who are wilfully ignorant can mistake One of the Councils held at Toledo declared by the Clergy Nobility and others assisting That no man should be placed in the Royal Seat till he had sworn to preserve the Church c. Another held in the same place signified to Sisinandus who was then newly crown'd That if he or any of his Successors should contrary to their Oaths and the Laws of their Country proudly and cruelly presume to exercise Domination over them he should be excommunicated and separated from Christ and them to eternal judgment The French Laws and their best Writers asserting the same things are confirmed by perpetual practice Henry of Navarr tho certainly according to their Rules and in their esteem a most accomplish'd Prince was by two General Assemblies of the Estates held at Blois deprived of the Succession for being a Protestant and notwithstanding the greatness of his Reputation Valour Victories and Affability could never be admitted till he had made himself capable of the ceremonies of his Coronation by conforming to the Religion which by the Oath he was to defend Nay this present King tho haughty enough by nature and elevated by many successes has acknowledged as he says with joy that he can do nothing contrary to Law and calls it a happy impotence in pursuance of which he has annulled many Acts of his Father and Grandfather alienating the demeasnes of the Crown as things contrary to Law and not within their power These things being confirmed by all the good Authors of that Nation Filmer finds only the worst to be fit for his turn and neither minding Law nor History takes his Maxims from a vile flattering discourse of Bellay calculated for the personal interest of Henry the fourth then King of Navarr in which he says That the Heir apparent tho furious mad a fool vicious and in all respects abominably wicked must be admitted to the Crown But Bellay was so far from attaining the ends designed by his Book that by such Doctrines which filled all men with horror he brought great prejudice to his Master and procured little favour from Henry who desired rather to recommend himself to his People as the best man they could set up than to impose a necessity upon them of taking him if he had bin the worst But our Author not contented with what this Sycophant says in relation to such Princes as are placed in the Government by a Law establishing the Succession by inheritance with an impudence peculiar to himself asserts the same right to be in any man who by any means gets into Power and imposes the same necessity of obedience upon the Subject where there is no Law as Bellay dos by virtue of one that is established 4. In the last place As Bellay acknowledges that the right belongs to Princes only where 't is established by Law I deny that there is was or ever can be any such No People is known to have bin so mad or wicked as by their own consent for their own good and for the obtaining of Justice to give the power to Beasts under whom it could never be obtain'd or if we could believe that any had bin guilty of an act so full of folly turpitude and wickedness it could not have the force of a Law and could never be put in execution for tho the rules by which the proximity should be judged be never so precise it will still be doubted whose case sutes best with them Tho the Law in some places gives private Inheritances to the next Heir and in others makes allotments according to several proportions no one knows to whom or how far the benefit shall accrue to any man till it be adjudged by a Power to which the parties
ready to use it and their extravagances having bin often chastised by Law sufficiently proves that their power is not derived from a higher original than the Law of their own Countries If it were true that the answer sometimes given by Kings to Bills presented for their Assent did as our Author says amount to a denial it could only shew that they have a negative voice upon that which is agreed by the Parliament and is far from a power of acting by themselves being only a check upon the other parts of the Government But indeed it is no more than an elusion and he that dos by art obliquely elude confesses he has not a right absolutely to refuse 'T is natural to Kings especially to the worst to scrue up their Authority to the height and nothing can more evidently prove the defect of it than the necessity of having recourse to such pitiful evasions when they are unwilling to do that which is required But if I should grant that the words import a denial and that notwithstanding those of the Coronation Oath Quas vulgus elegerit they might deny no more could be inferred from thence than that they are entrusted with a power equal in that point to that of either House and cannot be supreme in our Author's sense unless there were in the same State at the same time three distinct supreme and absolute Powers which is absurd His cases relating to the proceedings of the Star-Chamber and Council-Table do only prove that some Kings have encroached upon the rights of the Nation and bin suffer'd till their excesses growing to be extreme they turn'd to the ruin of the Ministers that advised them and sometimes of the Kings themselves But the jurisdiction of the Council having bin regulated by the Statute of the 17 Car. 1. and the Star-Chamber more lately abolished they are nothing to our dispute Such as our Author usually impute to treason and rebellion the changes that upon such occasions have ensued but all impartial men do not only justify them but acknowledg that all the Crowns of Europe are at this day enjoy'd by no other title than such acts solemnly performed by the respective Nations who either disliking the person that pretended to the Crown tho next in blood or the government of the present possessor have thought fit to prefer another person or family They also say that as no Government can be so perfect but some defect may be originally in it or afterwards introduced none can subsist unless they be from time to time reduced to their first integrity by such an exertion of the power of those for whose sake they were instituted as may plainly shew them to be subject to no power under Heaven but may do whatever appears to be for their own good And as the safety of all Nations consists in rightly placing and measuring this power such have bin found always to prosper who have given it to those from whom usurpations were least to be feared who have bin least subject to be awed cheated or corrupted and who having the greatest interest in the Nation were most concerned to preserve its power liberty and welfare This is the greatest trust that can be reposed in men This power was by the Spartans given to the Ephori and the Senat of twenty eight in Venice to that which they call Concilio de Pregadi in Germany Spain France Sweedland Denmark Poland Hungary Bohemia Scotland England and generally all the Nations that have lived under the Gothick Polity it has bin in their General Assemblies under the names of Diets Cortez Parliaments Senats and the like But in what hands soever it is the power of making abrogating changing correcting and interpreting Laws has bin in the same Kings have bin rejected or deposed the Succession of the Crown settled regulated or changed and I defy any man to shew me one King amongst all the Nations abovementioned that has any right to the Crown he wears unless such acts are good If this power be not well placed or rightly proportioned to that which is given to other Magistrates the State must necessarily fall into great disorders or the most violent and dangerous means must be frequently used to preserve their Liberty Sparta and Venice have rarely bin put to that trouble because the Senats were so much above the Kings and Dukes in power that they could without difficulty bring them to reason The Gothick Kings in Spain never ventur'd to dispute with the Nobility and Witza and Rodrigo exposed the Kingdom as a prey to the Moors rather by weakning it through the neglect of Military discipline joined to their own ignorance and cowardice and by evil example bringing the youth to resemble them in lewdness and baseness than by establishing in themselves a power above the Law But in England our Ancestors who seem to have had some such thing in their eye as balancing the powers by a fatal mistake placed usually so much in the hands of the King that whensoever he happened to be bad his extravagances could not be repress'd without great danger And as this has in several ages cost the Nation a vast proportion of generous blood so 't is the cause of our present difficulties and threatens us with more but can never deprive us of the rights we inherit from our fathers SECT XXVIII The English Nation has always bin governed by it self or its Representatives HAVING proved that the People of England have never acknowledged any other human Law than their own and that our Parliaments having the power of making and abrogating Laws they only can interpret them and decide hard cases it plainly appears there can be no truth in our Author's assertion that the King is the Author Corrector and Moderator of both Statute and Common Law and nothing can be more frivolous than what he adds that neither of them can be a diminution of that natural power which Kings have over their People as fathers in as much as the differences between paternal and monarchical Power as he asserts it are vast and irreconcileable in principle and practice as I have proved at large in the former parts of this Work But lest we should be too proud of the honour he is pleased to do to our Parliaments by making use of their Authority he says We are first to remember that till the Conquest which name for the glory of our Nation he gives to the coming in of the Normans there could be no Parliament assembled of the General States because we cannot learn that until those days it was intirely united in one Secondly he doubts Whether the Parliament in the time of the Saxons were composed of the Nobility and Clergy or whether the Commons were also called but concludes there could be no Knights of any Shires because there were no Shires Thirdly That Henry the first caused the Commons first to assemble Knights and Burgesses of their own chusing and would make this to be an act
Author presume that they will always be of profound wisdom to comprehend all of them and of perfect integrity always to act according to their understanding Which is no less than to lay the foundation of the Government upon a thing merely contingent that either never was or very often fails as is too much verified by experience and the Histories of all Nations or else to refer the decision of all to those who through the infirmities of age sex or person are often uncapable of judging the least or subject to such passions and vices as would divert them from Justice tho they did understand it both which seem to be almost equally preposterous 2. The Law must also presume that the Prince is always present in all the places where his name is used The King of France is as I have said already esteemed to be present on the seat of Justice in all the Parliaments and sovereign Courts of the Kingdom and if his corporeal Presence were by that phrase to be understood he must be in all those distinct and far distant places at the same time which absurdity can hardly be parallel'd unless by the Popish opinion of Transubstantiation But indeed they are so far from being guilty of such monstrous absurdity that he cannot in person be present at any trial and no man can be judged if he be This was plainly asserted to Lewis the 13th who would have bin at the Trial of the Duke of Candale by the President de Bellievre who told him that as he could judg no man himself so they could not judg any if he were present upon which he retired 3. The Laws of most Kingdoms giving to Kings the Confiscation of Delinquents estates if they in their own persons might give judgment upon them they would be constituted both Judges and Parties which besides the foremention'd incapacities to which Princes are as much subject as other men would tempt them by their own personal interest to subvert all manner of Justice This therefore not being the meaning of the Law we are to inquire what it is and the thing is so plain that we cannot mistake unless we do it wilfully Some name must be used in all manner of Transactions and in matters of publick concernment none can be so fit as that of the principal Magistrate Thus are Leagues made not only with Kings and Emperors but with the Dukes of Venice and Genoa the Avoyer and Senat of a Canton in Switzerland the Burgermaster of an Imperial Town in Germany and the States-General of the United Provinces But no man thinking I presume these Leagues would be of any value if they could only oblige the Persons whose names are used 't is plain that they do not stipulate only for themselves and that their stipulations would be of no value if they were merely personal And nothing can more certainly prove they are not so than that we certainly know these Dukes Avoyers and Burgermasters can do nothing of themselves The power of the States-General of the United Provinces is limited to the points mentioned in the Act of Union made at Vtrecht The Empire is not obliged by any stipulation made by the Emperor without their consent Nothing is more common than for one King making a League with another to exact a confirmation of their Agreement by the Parliaments Diets or General Estates because says Grotius a Prince dos not stipulate for himself but for the people under his Government and a King deprived of his Kingdom loses the right of sending an Ambassador The Powers of Europe shewed themselves to be of this opinion in the case of Portugal When Philip the second had gained the possession they treated with him concerning the affairs relating to that Kingdom Few regarded Don Antonio and no man considered the Dukes of Savoy Parma or Braganza who perhaps had the most plausible Titles But when his Grandson Philip the fourth had lost that Kingdom and the people had set up the Duke of Braganza they all treated with him as King And the English Court tho then in amity with Spain and not a little influenced by a Spanish faction gave example to others by treating with him and not with Spain touching matters relating to that State Nay I have bin informed by those who well understood the affairs of that time that the Lord Cottington advising the late King not to receive any persons sent from the Duke of Braganza Rebel to his Ally the King of Spain in the quality of Ambassadors the King answered that he must look upon that person to be King of Portugal who was acknowledged by the Nation And I am mistaken if his Majesty now reigning did not find all the Princes and States of the world to be of the same mind when he was out of his Kingdom and could oblige no man but himself and a few followers by any Treaty he could make For the same reason the names of Kings are used in Treaties when they are either Children or otherwise uncapable of knowing what Alliances are fit to be made or rejected and yet such Treaties do equally oblige them their successors and people as if they were of mature age and fit for government No man therefore ought to think it strange if the King's name be used in domestick affairs of which he neither ought nor can take any cognizance In these cases he is perpetually a Minor He must suffer the Law to take its due course and the Judges tho nominated by him are obliged by Oath not to have any regard to his Letters or personal Commands If a man be sued he must appear and a Deliquent is to be tried coram rege but no otherwise than secundum legem terrae according to the Law of the Land not his personal will or opinion And the judgments given must be executed whether they please him or not it being always understood that he can speak no otherwise than the Law speaks and is always present as far as the Law requires For this reason a noble Lord who was irregularly detain'd in prison in 1681 being by Habeas Corpus brought to the Bar of the King's Bench where he sued to be releas'd upon bail and an ignorant Judg telling him he must apply himself to the King he replied that he came thither for that end that the King might eat drink or sleep where he pleased but when he render'd Justice he was always in that place The King that renders Justice is indeed always there He never sleeps he is subject to no infirmity he never dies unless the Nation be extinguished or so dissipated as to have no Government No Nation that has a sovereign Power within it self dos ever want this King He was in Athens and Rome as well as at Babylon and Sufa and is as properly said to be now in Venice Switserland or Holland as in France Morocco or Turky This is he to whom we all owe a simple and unconditional obedience
Life and the Equality properly belonging to Brethren 'T is not easy to determine whether Shem or Japhet were the Elder but Ham is declared to be the younger and Noah's Blessing to Shem seems to be purely Prophetical and Spiritual of what should be accomplished in his Posterity with which Japhet should be perswaded to join If it had bin worldly the whole Earth must have bin brought under him and have for ever continued in his Race which never was accomplished otherwise than in the Spiritual Kingdom of Christ which relates not to our Author's Lord Paramount As to earthly Kings the first of them was Nimrod the sixth Son of Chush the Son of Ham Noah's younger and accursed Son This Kingdom was set up about a hundred and thirty Years after the Flood whilst Chush Ham Shem and Noah were yet living whereas if there were any thing of Truth in our Author's Proposition all Mankind must have continued under the Government of Noah whilst he lived and that Power must have bin transmitted to Shem who lived about three hundred and seventy Years after the erection of Nimrod's Kingdom and must have come to Japhet if he was the Elder but could never come to Cham who is declared to have bin certainly the Younger and condemned to be a Servant to them both much less to the younger Son of his Son whilst he and those to whom he and his Posterity were to be Subjects were still living This Rule therefore which the Partizans of Absolute Monarchy fancy to be universal and perpetual falling out in its first beginning directly contrary to what they assert and being never known to have bin recovered were enough to silence them if they had any thing of modesty or regard to Truth But the Matter may be carried farther For the Scripture doth not only testify that this Kingdom of Nimrod was an Usurpation void of all Right proceeding from the most violent and mischievous Vices but exercised with the utmost fury that the most wicked Man of the accursed Race who set himself up against God and all that is good could be capable of The progress of this Kingdom was sutable to its Institution that which was begun in wickedness was carried on with madness and produced Confusion The mighty Hunter whom the best Interpreters call a cruel Tyrant receding from the simplicity and innocence of the Patriarchs who were Husbandmen or Shepherds arrogating to himself a Dominion over Shem to whom he and his Fathers were to be Servants did thereby so peculiarly become the Heir of God's Curse that whatsoever hath bin said to this day of the Power that did most directly set it self against God and his People hath related literally to the Babel that he built or figuratively to that which resembles it in Pride Cruelty Injustice and Madness But the shameless rage of some of these Writers is such that they rather chuse to ascribe the beginning of their Idol to this odious Violence than to own it from the consent of a willing People as if they thought that as all Action must be sutable to its Principle so that which is unjust in its practice ought to scorn to be derived from that which is not detestable in its principle 'T is hardly worth our pains to examin whether the Nations that went from Babel after the confusion of Languages were more or less than seventy two for they seem not to have gone according to Families but every one to have associated himself to those that understood his Speech and the chief of the Fathers as Noah and his Sons were not there or wore subject to Nimrod each of which Points doth destroy even in the Root all pretence to Paternal Government Besides 't is evident in Scripture that Noah lived three hundred and fifty Years after the Flood Shem five hundred Abraham was born about two hundred and ninety Years after the Flood and lived one hundred seventy five Years He was therefore born under the Government of Noah and died under that of Shem He could not therefore exercise a Regal Power whilst he lived for that was in Shem So that in leaving his Country and setting up a Family for himself that never acknowledged any Superior and never pretending to reign over any other he fully shewed he thought himself free and to owe subjection to none And being as far from arrogating to himself any Power upon the Title of Paternity as from acknowledging it in any other left every one to the same liberty The punctual enumeration of the Years that the Fathers of the holy Seed lived gives us ground of making a more than probable conjecture that they of the collateral Lines were in number of days not unequal to them and if that be true Ham and Chush were alive when Nimrod set himself up to be King He must therefore have usurped this Power over his Father Grandfather and great Grandfather or which is more probable he turned into violence and oppression the Power given to him by a multitude which like a Flock without a Shepherd not knowing whom to obey set him up to be their Chief I leave to our Author the liberty of chusing which of these two doth best sute with his Paternal Monarchy but as far as I can understand the first is directly against it as well as against the Laws of God and Man the other being from the consent of the Multitude cannot be extended farther than they would have it nor turned to their prejudice without the most abominable ingratitude and treachery from whence no Right can be derived nor any justifiable Example taken Nevertheless if our Author resolve that Abraham was also a King he must presume that Shem did emancipate him before he went to seek his Fortune This was not a Kingly posture but I will not contradict him if 1 may know over whom he reigned Paternal Monarchy is exercised by the Father of the Family over his Descendants or such as had bin under the dominion of him whose Heir he is But Abraham had neither of these Those of his nearest Kindred continued in Mesopotamia as appears by what is said of Bethuel and Laban He had only Lot with him over whom he pretended no right He had no Children till he was a hundred years old that is to say he was a King without a Subject and then he had but one I have heard that Soveraigns do impatiently bear Competitors but now I find Subjection also doth admit of none Abraham's Kingdom was too great when he had two Children and to disburthen it Ishmael must be expelled soon after the birth of Isaac He observed the same method after the death of Sarah He had Children by Keturah but he gave them Gifts and sent them away leaving Isaac like a Stoical King reigning in and over himself without any other Subject till the birth of Jacob and Esau. But his Kingdom was not to be of a larger extent than that of his Father
The two Twins could not agree Jacob was sent away by his Mother he reigned over Esau only and 't is not easy to determine who was the Heir of his worldly Kingdom for the Jacob had the birth-right we do not find he had any other Goods than what he had gotten in Laban's service If our Author say true the right of Primogeniture with the Dominion perpetually annexed by the Laws of God and Nature must go to the eldest Isaac therefore tho he had not bin deceived could not have conferred it upon the younger for Man cannot overthrow what God and Nature have instituted Jacob in the Court Language had bin a double Rebel in beguiling his Father and supplanting his Brother The blessing of being Lord over his Brethren could not have taken place Or if Isaac had Power and his Act was good the Prerogative of the elder is not rooted in the Law of God or Nature but a matter of conveniency only which may be changed at the Will of the Father whether he know what he do or not But if this Paternal Right to Dominion were of any value or Dominion over Men were a thing to be desired why did Abraham Isaac and Jacob content themselves with such a narrow Territory when after the death of their Ancestors they ought according to that rule to have bin Lords of the World All Authors conclude that Shem was the eldest by birth or preferred by the appointment of God so as the Right must have bin in him and from him transmitted to Abraham and Isaac but if they were so possessed with the contemplation of a Heavenly Kingdom as not to care for the greatest on Earth 't is strange that Esau whose modesty is not much commended should so far forget his Interest as neither to lay claim to the Empire of the World nor dispute with his Brother the possession of the Field and Cave bought by Abraham but rather to fight for a dwelling on Mount Seir that was neither possessed by nor promised to his Fathers If he was fallen from his Right Jacob might have claimed it but God was his Inheritance and being assured of his Blessing he contented himself with what he could gain by his Industry in a way that was not at all sutable to the Pomp and Majesty of a King Which way soever theresore the business be turned whether according to Isaac's Blessing Esau should serve Jacob or our Author's opinion Jacob must serve Esau neither of the two was effected in their Persons And the Kingdom of two being divided into two each of them remained Lord of himself SECT IX The Power of a Father belongs only to a Father THIS leads us to an easy determination of the Question which our Author thinks insoluble If Adam was Lord of his Children he doth not see how any can be free from the subjection of his Parents For as no good Man will ever desire to be free from the respect that is due to his Father who did beget and educate him no wise Man will ever think the like to be due to his Brother or Nephew that did neither If Esau and Jacob were equally free if Noah as our Author affirms divided Europe Asia and Africa amongst his three Sons tho he cannot prove it and if seventy two Nations under so many Heads or Kings went from Babylon to people the Earth about a hundred and thirty years after the Flood I know not why according to the same rule and proportion it may not be safely concluded that in four thousand years Kings are so multiplied as to be in number equal to the Men that are in the World that is to say they are according to the Laws of God and Nature all free and independent upon each other as Shem Ham and Japhet were And therefore tho Adam and Noah had reigned alone when there were no Men in the World except such as issued from them that is no reason why any other should reign over those that he hath not begotten As the Right of Noah was divided amongst the Children he left and when he was dead no one of them depended on the other because no one of them was Father of the other and the Right of a Father can only belong to him that is so the like must for ever attend every other Father in the World This paternal Power must necessarily accrue to every Father He is a King by the same Right as the Sons of Noah and how numerous soever Families may be upon the increase of Mankind they are all free till they agree to recede from their own Right and join together in or under one Government according to such Laws as best please themselves SECT X. Such as enter into Society must in some degree diminish their Liberty REASON leads them to this No one Man or Family is able to provide that which is requisite for their convenience or security whilst every one has an equal Right to every thing and none acknowledges a Superior to determine the Controversies that upon such occasions must continually arise and will probably be so many and great that Mankind cannot bear them Therefore tho I do not believe that Bellarmin said a Commonwealth could not exercise its Power for he could not be ignorant that Rome and Athens did exercise theirs and that all the Regular Kingdoms in the World are Commonwealths yet there is nothing of absurdity in saying That Man cannot continue in the perpetual and entire fruition of the Liberty that God hath given him The Liberty of one is thwarted by that of another and whilst they are all equal none will yield to any otherwise than by a general consent This is the ground of all just Governments for violence or fraud can create no Right and the same consent gives the Form to them all how much soever they differ from each other Some small numbers of Men living within the Precincts of one City have as it were cast into a common Stock the Right which they had of governing themselves and Children and by common Consent joining in one body exercised fuch Power over every single Person as seemed beneficial to the whole and this Men call perfect Democracy Others chose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in Wisdom and Vertue and this according to the signification of the word was called Aristocracy Or when one Man excelled all others the Government was put into his hands under the name of Monarchy But the wisest best and far the greatest part of mankind rejecting these simple Species did form Governments mixed or composed of the three as shall be proved hereafter which commonly received their respective Denomination from the part that prevailed and did deserve Praise or Blame as they were well or ill proportioned It were a folly hereupon to say that the Liberty for which we contend is of no use to us since we cannot endure the Solitude Barbarity Weakness Want Misery and Dangers
assert that which is agreeable to divine or human Story as to matter of fact and as little conformable to common sense It does not only appear contrary to his general Proposition That all Governments have not begun with the Paternal power but we do not find that any ever did They who according to his rules should have bin Lords of the whole Earth lived and died private men whilst the wildest and most boisterous of their Children commanded the greatest part of the then inhabited World not excepting even those Countries where they spent and ended their days and instead of entring upon the Government by the right of Fathers or managing it as Fathers they did by the most outragious injustice usurp a violent Domination over their Brethren and Fathers It may easily be imagined what the Right is that could be thus acquired and transmitted to their Successors Nevertheless our Author says All Kings either are or ought to be reputed next Heirs c. But why reputed if they were not How could any of the accursed race of Ham be reputed Father of Noah or Shem to whom he was to be a Servant How could Nimrod and Ninus be reputed Fathers of Ham and of those whom they ought to have obeyed Can reason oblige me to believe that which I know to be false Can a Lie that is hateful to God and good men not only be excused but enjoyned when as he will perhaps say it is for the King's Service Can I serve two Masters or without the most unpardonable injustice repute him to be my Father who is not my Father and pay the obedience that is due to him who did beget and educate me to one from whom I never received any good If this be so absurd that no man dares affirm it in the person of any 't is as preposterous in relation to his Heirs For Nimrod the first King could be Heir to no man as King and could transmit to no man a Right which he had not If it was ridiculous and abominable to say that he was Father of Chush Ham Shem and Noah 't is as ridiculous to say he had the Right of Father if he was not their Father or that his Successors inherited it from him if he never had it If there be any way through this it must have accrued to him by the extirpation of all his Elders and their Races so as he who will assert this pretended Right to have been in the Babylonian Kings must assert that Noah Shem Japhet Ham Chush and all Nimrod's elder Brothers with all their Descendents were utterly extirpated before he began to reign and all Mankind to be descended from him This must be if Nimrod as the Scripture says was the first that became mighty in the Earth unless men might be Kings without having more Power than others for Chush Ham and Noah were his Elders and Progenitors in the direct Line and all the Sons of Shem and Japhet and their Descendents in the Collaterals were to be preferred before him and he could have no Right at all that was not directly contrary to those Principles which our Author says are grounded upon the eternal and indispensable Laws of God and Nature The like may be said of the seventy two Heads of Colonies which following as I suppose Sir Walter Raleigh he says went out to people the Earth and whom he calls Kings for according to the same Rule Noah Shem and Japhet with their Descendents could not be of the number so that neither Nimrod nor the others that established the Kingdoms of the World and from whence he thinks all the rest to be derived could have any thing of Justice in them unless it were from a Root altogether inconsistent with his Principles They are therefore false or the Establishments before mentioned could have no Right If they had none they cannot be reputed to have any for no man can think that to be true which he knows to be false having none they could transmit none to their Heirs and Successors And if we are to believe that all the Kingdoms of the Earth are established upon this Paternal Right it must be proved that all those who in birth ought to have bin preferred before Nimrod and the seventy two were extirpated or that the first and true Heir of Noah did afterwards abolish all these unjust Usurpations and making himself Master of the whole left it to his Heirs in whom it continues to this day When this is done I will acknowledg the Foundation to be well laid and admit of all that can be rightly built upon it but if this fails all fails The poison of the Root continues in the Branches If the right Heir be not in possession he is not the right who is in possession If the true Heir be known he ought to be restored to his Right If he be not known the Right must perish That cannot be said to belong to any man if no man knows to whom it belongs and can have no more effect than if it were not This conclusion will continue unmoveable tho the division into seventy two Kingdoms were allowed which cannot be without destroying the Paternal Power or subjecting it to be subdivided into as many parcels as there are men which destroys Regality for the same thing may be required in every one of the distinct Kingdoms and others derived from them We must know who was that true Heir of Noah that recovered all How when and to whom he gave the several Portions and that every one of them do continue in the possession of those who by this prerogative of birth are raised above the rest of mankind and if they are not 't is an impious folly to repute them so to the prejudice of those that are and if they do not appear to the prejudice of all mankind who being equal are thereby made subject to them For as Truth is the Rule of Justice there can be none when he is reputed superior to all who is certainly inferior to In this place two Pages are wanting in the Original Manuscript degenerated from that Reason which distinguisheth men from beasts Tho it may be fit to use some Ceremonies before a man be admitted to practise Physick or set up a Trade 't is his own skill that makes him a Doctor or an Artificer and others do but declare it An Ass will not leave his stupidity tho he be covered with Scarlet and he that is by nature a Slave will be so still tho a Crown be put upon his Head and 't is hard to imagine a more violent inversion of the Laws of God and Nature than to raise him to the Throne whom Nature intended for the Chain or to make them Slaves to Slaves whom God hath endowed with the Vertues required in Kings Nothing can be more preposterous than to impute to God the frantick Domination which is often exercised by wicked foolish and vile Persons over the wise valiant just
may be liable to hard Censures but those who use them most gently must confess that such an extreme deviation from the end of their Institution annuls it and the Wound thereby given to the natural and original Rights of those Nations cannot be cured unless they resume the Liberties of which they have bin deprived and return to the antient Custom of chusing those to be Magistrates who for their Vertues best deserve to be preferred before their Brethren and are endowed with those Qualities that best enable men to perform the great end of providing for the Publick Safety SECT XVII God having given the Government of the World to no one Man nor declared how it should be divided left it to the Will of Man OUR Author's next Inquiry is What becomes of the Right of Fatherhood in case the Crown should escheat for want of an Heir Whether it doth not escheat to the People His answer is 'T is but the negligence or ignorance of the People to lose the knowledg of the true Heir c. And a little below The Power is not devolved to the Multitude No the Kingly Power escheats on independent Heads of Families All such prime Heads have Power to consent in the uniting or conferring their Fatherly Right of Sovereign Authority on whom they please and he that is so elected claims not his Power as a Donative from the People but as being substituted by God from whom he receives his Royal Charter of Vniversal Father c. In my opinion before he had asked What should be done in case the Crown should escheat for want of an Heir he ought to have proved there had bin a Man in the world who had the Right in himself and telling who he was have shewed how it had bin transmitted for some Generations that we might know where to seek his Heir and before he accused the Multitude of ignorance or negligence in not knowing this Heir he ought to have informed us how it may be possible to know him or whâ—t it would avail us if we did know him for 't is in vain to know to whom a Right belongs that never was and never can be executed But we may go farther and affirm that as the Universal Right must have bin in Noah and Shem if in any who never exercised it we have reason to believe there never was any such thing And having proved from Scripture and Human History That the first Kingdoms were set up in a direct opposition to this Right by Nimrod and others he that should seek and find their Heirs would only find those who by a most accursed Wickedness had usurped and continued a Dominion over their Fathers contrary to the Laws of God and Nature and we should neither be more wise nor more happy than we are tho our Author should furnish us with certain and authentick Genealogies by which we might know the true Heirs of Nimrod and the seventy two Kings that went from Babylon who as he supposes gave beginning to all the Kingdoms of the Earth Moreover if the Right be Universal it must be in one for the Univers being but one the whole Right of commanding it cannot at the same time be in many and proceed from the Ordinance of God or of Man It cannot proceed from the Ordinance of God for he doth nothing in vain He never gave a Right that could not be executed No man can govern that which he dos not so much as know No man did ever know all the World no man therefore did or could govern it and none could be appointed by God to do that which is absolutely impossible to be done for it could not consist with his Wisdom We find this in our selves It were a shame for one of us poor weak short sighted Creatures in the disposal of our Affairs to appoint such a method as were utterly ineffectual for the preservation of our Families or destructive to them and the blasphemy of imputing to God such an Ordinance as would be a Reproach to one of us can sute only with the wicked and impudent Fury of such as our Author who delights in Monsters This also shews us that it cannot be from Men One or a few may commit Follies but mankind dos not universally commit and perpetually persist in any They cannot therefore by a general and permanent Authority enact that which is utterly absurd and impossible or if they do they destroy their own Nature and can no longer deserve the name of reasonable Creatures There can be therefore no such man and the solly of seeking him or his Heir that never was may be left to the Disciples of Filmer The Difficulties are as great if it be said The World might be divided into parcels and we are to seek the Heirs of the first Possessors for besides that no man can be obliged to seek that which cannot be found all men knowing that Caliginosa nocte haec premit Deus and that the Genealogies of mankind are so confused that unless possibly among the Jews we have reason to believe there is not a man in the world who knows his own Original it could be of no advantage to us tho we knew that of every one for the Division would be of no value unless it were at the first rightly made by him who had all the Authority in himself which dos no where appear and rightly deduced to him who according to that division claims a right to the parcel he enjoys and I fear our Author would terribly shake the Crowns in which the Nations of Europe are concerned if they should be perswaded to search into the Genealogies of their Princes and to judg of their Rights according to the proofs they should give of Titles rightly deduced by succession of Blood from the seventy two first Kings from whom our Author fancies all the Kingdoms of the World to be derived Besides tho this were done it would be to no purpose for the seventy two were not sent out by Noah nor was he or his Sons of that number but they went or were sent from Babylon where Nimrod reigned who as has bin already proved neither had nor could have any right at all but was a mighty Hunter even a proud and cruel Tyrant usurping a power to which he had no right and which was perpetually exercised by him and his Successors against God and his People from whence I may sasely conclude That no right can ever be derived and may justly presume it will be denied by none who are of better Morals and of more sound principles in matters of Law and Religion than Filmer and Heylin since 't is no less absurd to deduce a right from him that had none than to expect pure and wholsom Waters from a filthy polluted and poisonous Fountain If it be pretended that some other man since Noah had this universal Right it must either remain in one single person as his right Heir or be divided If in
be advanced to the Throne before a great number of Families that come from the Daughters of the House of Valois Or what title those could have before the Daughters of the other Lines descended from Hugh Capet Pepin Meroveus or Pharamond I know not how such questions would be received but I am inclined to think that the wickedness and folly of those who should thereby endeavour to overthrow the most antient and most venerated Constitutions of the greatest Nations and by that means to involve them in the most inextricable difficulties would be requited only with Stones It cannot be denied that the most valiant wise learned and best polished Nations have always followed the same rule tho the weak and barbarous acted otherwise and no man ever heard of a Queen or a man deriving his title from a Female among the antient civilized Nations but if this be not enough the Law of God that wholly omits Females is sufficient to shew that Nature which is his Handmaid cannot advance them When God describes who should be the King of his People if they would have one and how he should govern no mention is made of Daughters The Israelites offer'd the Kingdom to Gideon and to his Sons God promised and gave it to Saul David Jeroboam Jehu and their Sons When all of them save David by their Crimes fell from the Kingdom the Males only were extirpated and the Females who had no part in the Promises did not fall under the Penalties or the Vengeance that was executed upon those Families and we do not in the Word of God or in the History of the Jews hear of any Feminin Reign except that which was usurped by Athaliah nor that any consideration was had of their Descendants in relation to the Kingdom which is enough to shew that it is not according to the Law of God nor to the Law of Nature which cannot differ from it So that Females or such as derive their right by inheritance from Females must have it from some other Law or they can have none at all But tho this question were authentically decided and concluded that Females might or might not succeed we should not be at the end of our contests for if they were excluded it would not from thence follow as in France that their Descendants should be so also for the Privilege which is denied to them because they cannot without receding from the modesty and gentleness of the Sex take upon them to execute all the Duties required may be transferred to their Children as Henry the second and Henry the seventh were admitted tho their Mothers were rejected If it be said that every Nation ought in this to follow their own Constitutions we are at an end of our Controversies for they ought not to be followed unless they are rightly made They cannot be rightly made if they are contrary to the universal Law of God and Nature If there be a general Rule 't is impossible but some of them being directly contrary to each other must be contrary to it If therefore all of them are to be followed there can be no general Law given to all but every People is by God and Nature left to the liberty of regulating these matters relating to themselves according to their own prudence or convenience and this seems to be so certainly true that whosoever does as our Author propose Doctrines to the contrary must either be thought rashly to utter that which he dos not understand or maliciously to cast balls of Division among all Nations whereby every man's Sword would be drawn against every man to the total subversion of all Order and Government SECT XIX Kings cannot confer the right of Father upon Princes nor Princes upon Kings LEst what has bin said before by our Author should not be sufficient to accomplish his design of bringing confusion upon Mankind and some may yet lie still for want of knowing at whose command he should cut his Brother's throat if he has not power or courage to set up a title for himself he has a new project that would certainly do his work if it were received Not content with the absurdities and untruths already uttered in giving the incommunicable right of Fathers not only to those who as is manifestly testified by sacred and prophane Histories did usurp a power over their Fathers or such as owed no manner of obedience to them and justifying those Usurpations which are most odious to God and all good men he now fancies a Kingdom so gotten may escheat for want of an Heir whereas there is no need of seeking any if Usurpation can confer a Right and that he who gets the Power into his hands ought to be reputed the right Heir of the first Progenitor for such a one will be seldom wanting if violence and fraud be justified by the command of God and Nations stand obliged to render obedience till a stronger or more successful Villain throws him from the Throne he had invaded But if it should come to pass that no man would step into the vacant place he has a new way of depriving the People of their Right to provide for the Government of themselves Because says he the dependency of antient Families is oft obscure and worn out of knowledg therefore the Wisdom of all or most Princes hath thought fit many times to adopt those for Heads of Families and Princes of Provinces whose merits abilities or fortunes have enobled them and made them fit and capable of such royal favours All such prime Heads and Fathers have power to consent to the uniting and conferring of their fatherly right and soveraignty on whom they please c. I may justly ask how any one or more Families come to be esteemed more antient than others if all are descended from one common Father as the Scriptures testify or to what purpose it were to enquire what Families were the most antient if there were any such when the youngest and most mean by usurpation gets an absolute right of Dominion over the eldest tho his own Progenitors as Nimrod did but I may certainly conclude That whatever the Right be that belongs to those antient Families it is inherent in them and cannot be conferred on any other by any human power for it proceeds from Nature only The Duty I owe to my Father dos not arise from an usurped or delegated Power but from my birth derived from him and 't is as impossible for any man to usurp or receive by the grant of another the right of a Father over me as for him to become or pretend to be made my Father by another who did not beget me But if he say true this right of Father dos not arise from Nature nor the obedience that I owe to him that begot from the benefits which I have received but is meerly an artificial thing depending upon the Will of another and that we may be sure there can be no error in
whatever to admit of one who is evidently guilty of such Vices as are prejudicial to the State For this reason the French tho much addicted to their Kings rejected the vile remainders of Meroveus his Race and made Pepin the Son of Charles Martel King And when his Descendents sell into the like Vices they were often deposed till at last they were wholly rejected and the Crown given to Capet and to his Heirs Male as formerly Yet for all this Henry his Grandchild being esteemed more fit to govern than his elder Brother Robert was as is said before made King and that Crown still remains in his Descendents no consideration being had of the Children of Robert who continued Dukes of Burgundy during the reigns of ten Kings And in the memory of our Fathers Henry of Navarr was rejected by two Assemblies of the Estates because he differed in Religion from the Body of the Nation and could never be received as King till he had renounced his own tho he was certainly the next in Blood and that in all other respects he excelled in those Vertues which they most esteem We have already proved that our own History is full of the like Examples and might enumerate a multitude of others if it were not too tedious and as the various Rules according to which all the hereditary Crowns of the World are inherited shew that none is set by Nature but that every People proceeds according to their own Will the frequent deviations from those Rules do evidently testify that Salus Populi est Lex suprema and that no Crown is granted otherwise than in submission to it But tho there were a Rule which in no case ought to be transgressed there must be a Power of judging to whom it ought to be applied 'T is perhaps hard to conceive one more precise than that of France where the eldest Legitimate Male in the direct Line is preserred and yet that alone is not sufficient There may be Bastardy in the case Bastards may be thought legitimate and legitimate Sons Bastards The Children born of Isabel of Portugal during her Marriage with John the Third of Castile were declared Bastards and the Title of the House of Austria to that Crown depends upon that Declaration We often see that Marriages which have bin contracted and for a long time taken to be good have bin declared null and the legitimation of the present King of France is founded solely upon the abolition of the marriage of Henry the Fourth with Marguerite of Valois which for the space of twenty seven Years was thought to have bin good Whilst Spain was divided into five or six Kingdoms and the several Kings linked to each other by mutual Alliances incestuous Marriages were often contracted and upon better consideration annulled many have bin utterly void through the preingagement of one of the Parties These are not feigned Cases but such as happen frequently and the diversity of Accidents as well as the humours of Men may produce many others which would involve Nations in the most satal Disorders if every one should think himself obliged to follow such a one who pretended a Title that to him might seem plausible when another should set up one as pleasing to others and there were no Power to terminate those Disputes to which both must submit but the decision must be lest to the Sword This is that which I call the Application of the Rule when it is as plain and certain as humane Wisdom can make it but if it be lest more at large as where Females inherit the difficulties are inextricable and he that says The next Heir is really King when one is dead before he be so declared by a Power that may judg of his Title dos as far as in him lies expose Nations to be split into the most desperate Factions and every man to fight for the Title which he fancies to be good till he destroy those of the contrary Party or be destroyed by them This is the blessed way proposed by our Author to prevent Sedition But God be thanked our Ancestors found a better They did not look upon Robert the Norman as King of England after the death of his Father and when he did proudly endeavour on pretence of Inheritance to impose himself upon the Nation that thought fit to prefer his younger Brothers before him he paid the Penalty of his solly by the loss of his Eyes and Liberty The French did not think the Grandchild of Pharamond to be King after the death of his Father nor seek who was the next Heir of the Merovingian Line when Chilperic the third was dead nor regard the Title of Charles of Lorrain after the death of his Brother Lothair or of Robert of Burgundy eldest Son of King Robert but advanced Meroveus Pepin Capet and Henry the first who had no other Right than what the Nobility and People bestowed upon them And if such Acts do not destroy the Pretences of all who lay claim to Crowns by Inheritance and do not create a Right I think it will be hard to find a lawful King in the world or that there ever have bin any since the first did plainly come in like Nimrod and those who have bin every where since Histories are known to us owed their exaltation to the Consent of Nations armed or unarmed by the deposition or exclusion of the Heirs of such as had reigned before them Our Author not troubling himself with these things or any other relating to the matter in question is pleased to slight Hooker's Opinions concerning Coronation and Inauguration with the heaps of Scripture upon which he grounds them whereas those Solemnities would not only have bin foolish and impertinent but profane and impious if they were not Deeds by which the Right of Dominion is really conferred What could be more wickedly superstitious than to call all Israel together before the Lord and to cast Lots upon every Tribe Family and Person for the election of a King if it had bin known to whom the Crown did belong by a natural and unalterable Right Or if there had bin such a thing in Nature how could God have cauled that Lot to fall upon one of the youngest Tribe for ever to discountenance his own Law and divert Nations from taking any notice of it It had bin absurd for the Tribe of Judah to chuse and anoint David and for the other Tribes to follow their example after the death of Ishbosheth if he had bin King by a Right not depending on their Will David did worse in slaying the Sons of Rimmon saying they had killed a righteous Man lying upon his bed if Ishbosheth whose Head they presented had most unrighteously detained from him as long as he lived the Dominion of the ten Tribes The King Elders and People had most scornfully abused the most sacred things by using such Ceremonies in making him King and compleating their work in a Covenant made between him
and them before the Lord if he had bin already King and if those Acts had bin empty Ceremonies conferring no Right at all I dare not say that a League dos imply an absolute equality between both Parties for there is a Foedus inequale wherein the weaker as Grotius says dos usually obtain protection and the stronger honour but there can be none at all unless both Parties are equally free to make it or not to make it David therefore was not King till he was elected and those Covenants made and he was made King by that Election and Covenants This is not shaken by our Author's supposition That the People would not have taken Joas Manasseh or Josiah if they had had a right of chusing a King since Solomon says Wo unto the Kingdom whose King is a Child For first they who at the first had a right of chusing whom they pleased to be King by the Covenant made with him whom they did chuse may have deprived themselves of the farther execution of it and rendred the Crown hereditary even to Children unless the Conditions were violated upon which it was granted In the second place if the infancy of a King brings Wo upon a People the Government of such a one cannot be according to the Laws of God and Nature for Governments are not instituted by either for the pleasure of a Man but for the good of Nations and their Weal not their Wo is sought by both and if Children are any where admitted to rule 't is by the particular Law of the place grounded perhaps upon an opinion that it is the best way to prevent dangerous Contests or that other ways may be found to prevent the Inconveniences that may proceed from their weakness Thirdly It cannot be concluded that they might not reject Children because they did not such matters require positive Proofs Suppositions are of no value in relation to them and the whole matter may be altered by particular Circumstances The Jews might reasonably have a great veneration for the House of David they knew what was promised to that Family and whatever respect was paid or privilege granted on that account can be of no advantage to any other in the world They might be farther induced to set up Joas in hope the defects of his Age might be supplied by the Vertue Experience and Wisdom of Jehoiada We do not know what good opinion may have bin conceived of Manasseh when he was twelve years old but much might be hoped from one that had bin virtuously educated and was probably under the care of such as had bin chosen by Hezekiah and tho the contrary did fall out the mischiefs brought upon the People by his wicked Reign proceeded not from the weakness of his childhood but from the malice of his riper years And both the Examples of Joas and Josiah prove that neither of them came in by their own right but by the choice of the People Jehoiada gathered the Levites out of all the Cities of Judah and the chief of the Fathers of Israel and they came to Jerusalem And all the Congregation made a Covenant with the King in the House of God and brought out the King's Son and put upon him the Crown and gave him the Testimony and made him King whereupon they slew Athaliah And when Ammon was stain the people of the Land slew them that had conspired against King Ammon and the people of the Land made Josiah his Son King in his stead which had been most impertinent if he was of himself King before they made him so Besides tho Infancy may be a just cause of excepting against and rejecting the next Heir to a Crown 't is not the greatest or strongest 'T is far more easy to find a Remedy against the solly of a Child if the State be well regulated than the more rooted Vices of grown men The English who willingly received Henry the sixth Edward the fifth and sixth tho Children resolutely opposed Robert the Norman And the French who willingly submitted to Charles the ninth Lewis the thirteenth and fourteenth in their Infancy rejected the lewd remainders of Meroveus his Race Charles of Lorrain with his Kindred descended from Pepin Robert Duke of Burgundy with his Descendents and Henry of Navarr till he had satisfied the Nobility and People in the point of Religion And tho I do not know that the Letter upon the words Vaeregnocujus Rex puer est recited by Lambard was written by Eleutherius Bishop of Rome yet the Authority given to it by the Saxons who made it a Law is much more to be valued than what it could receive from the Writer and whoever he was he seems rightly to have understood Solomon's meaning who did not look upon him as a Child that wanted years or was superannuated but him only who was guilty of Insolence Luxury Folly and Madness and he that said A wise Child was better than an old and foolish King could have no other meaning unless he should say it was worse to be governed by a wise Person than a Fool which may agree with the judgment of our Author but could never enter into the heart of Solomon Lastly Tho the practice of one or more Nations may indicate what Laws Covenants or Customs were in force among them yet they cannot bind others The diversity of them proceeds from the variety of mens Judgments and declares that the direction of all such Affairs depends upon their own Will according to which every People for themselves forms and measures the Magistracy and magistratical Power which as it is directed solely for the good hath its exercises and extent proportionable to the Command of those that institute it and such Ordinances being good for men God makes them his own SECT VIII There is no natural propensity in Man or Beast to Monarchy I See no reason to believe that God did approve the Government of one over many because he created but one but to the contrary in as much as he did endow him and those that came from him as well the youngest as the eldest Line with understanding to provide for themselves and by the invention of Arts and Sciences to be beneficial to each other he shewed that they ought to make use of that understanding in forming Governments according to their own convenience and such occasions as should arise as well as in other matters and it might as well be inferr'd that it is unlawful for us to build clothe arm defend or nourish our selves otherwise than as our first Parents did before or soon after the Flood as to take from us the liberty of instituting Governments that were not known to them If they did not find out all that conduces to the use of man but a Faculty as well as a Liberty was left to every one and will be to the end of the world to make use of his Wit Industry and Experience according to present Exigencies to
much esteemed for Valour and Wisdom God's peculiar People had a peculiar regard to that Wisdom and Valour which was accompanied with his Presence hoping for deliverance only from him The second is known by the name of the great Sanhedrin which being instituted by Moses according to the command of God continued till they were all save one slain by Herod And the third part which is the Assembly of the People was so common that none can be ignorant of it but such as never looked into the Scripture When the Tribes of Reuben Gad and half that of Manasseh had built an Altar on the side of Jordan The whole Congregation of the Children of Israel gathered together at Shiloh to go up to war against them and sent Phineas the Son of Eleazer and with him ten Princes c. This was the highest and most important action that could concern a People even War or Peace and that not with Strangers but their own Brethren Joshua was then alive The Elders never failed but this was not transacted by him or them but by the collected body of the People for They sent Phineas This Democratical Embassy was Democratically received It was not directed to one man but to all the Children of Reuben Gad and Manasseh and the answer was sent by them all which being pleasing to Phineas and the ten that were with him they made their report to the Congregation and all was quiet The last eminent Act performed by Joshua was the calling of a like Assembly to Sechem composed of Elders Heads of Families Judges Officers and all the People to whom he proposed and they agreeing made a Covenant before the Lord. Joshua being dead the Proceedings of every Tribe were grounded upon Counsels taken at such Assemblies among themselves for their own concernments as appears by the Actions of Judah Simeon c. against the Canaanites and when the Levite complained that his Wife had bin forced by those of Gibeah the whole Congregation of Israel met together at Mispeth from all parts even from Dan to Beersheba as one man and there resolved upon that terrible War which they made against the Tribe of Benjamin The like Assembly was gathered together for the Election of Saul every man was there and tho the Elders only are said to have asked a King of Samuel they seem to have bin deputed from the whole Congregation for God said Hearken to the voice of the People In the same manner the Tribe of Judah and after that the rest chose and anointed David to be their King After the death of Solomon all Israel met together to treat with Rehoboam and not receiving satisfaction from him ten of the Tribes abrogated his Kingdom If these Actions were considered singly by themselves Calvin might have given the name of a Democracy to the Hebrew Government as well as to that of Athens for without doubt they evidently manifest the supreme Power to have bin in the supreme manner in these General Assemblies but the Government as to its outward order consisting of those three parts which comprehend the three simple species tho in truth it was a Theocracy and no times having bin appointed nor occasions specified upon which Judges should be chosen or these Assemblies called whereas the Sanhedrim which was the Aristocratical part was permanent the whole might rightly be called an Aristocracy that part prevailing above the others and tho Josephus calls it a Theocracy by reason of God's presence with his People yet in relation to man he calls it an Aristocracy and says that Saul's first Sin by which he fell from the Kingdom was that Gubernationem optimatum sustulit which could not be if they were governed by a Monarch before he was chosen Our Author taking no notice of these matters first endeavours to prove the excellency of Monarchy from natural instinct and then begging the question says that God did always govern his People by Monarchy whereas he ought in the first place to have observed that this instinct if there be any such thing is only an irrational appetite attributed to Beasts that know not why they do any thing and is to be followed only by those men who being equally irrational live in the same ignorance and the second being proved to be absolutely false by the express words of the Scripture There was then no King in Israel several times repeated and the whole series of the History he hath no other evasion than to say That even then the Israelites were under the Kingly Government of the Fathers of particular Families It appears by the forementioned Text cited also by our Author that in the Assembly of the People gathered together to take counsel concerning the War against Benjamin were four hundred thousand Footmen that drew Sword They all arose together saying Not a man of us shall go to his Tent. So all the men of Israel were gathered together against the City This is repeated several times in the relation The Benjamites proceeded in the like manner in preparing for their defence and if all these who did so meet to consult and determine were Monarchs there were then in Israel and Benjamin four hundred and twenty six thousand seven hundred Monarchs or Kings tho the Scriptures say there was not one If yet our Author insist upon his notion of Kingly Government I desire to know who were the Subjects if all these were Kings for the text says that the whole Congregation was gathered together as one man from Dan to Beersheba If there can be so many Kings without one Subject what becomes of the Right of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that was to have bin devolved upon one man as Heir to them and thereby Lord of all If every man had an equal part in that inheritance and by virtue of it became a King why is not the same eternally subdivided to as many men as are in the World who are also Kings If this be their natural condition how comes it to be altered till they do unthrone themselves by consent to set up one or more to have a power over them all Why should they devest themselves of their natural Right to set up one above themselves unless in consideration of their own good If the 426700 Kings might retain the power in themselves or give it to one why might they not give it to any such number of men as should best please themselves or retain it in their own hands as they did till the days of Saul or frame limit and direct it according to their own pleasure If this be true God is the Author of Democracy and no assertor of human Liberty did ever claim more than the People of God did enjoy and exercise at the time when our Author says they were under the Kingly Government which Liberty being not granted by any peculiar concession or institution the same must belong to all Mankind 'T is in vain to say the 426700 men
should attribute Order and Stability to it whereas Order doth principally consist in appointing to every one his right Place Office or Work and this lays the whole weight of the Government upon one Person who very often dos neither deserve nor is able to bear the least part of it Plato Aristotle Hooker and I may say in short all wise men have held that Order required that the wisest best and most valiant Men should be placed in the Offices where Wisdom Vertue and Valour are requisite If common sense did not teach us this we might learn it from the Scripture When God gave the conduct of his People to Moses Joshua Samuel and others he endowed them with all the Vertues and Graces that were required for the right performance of their Duty When the Israelites were oppressed by the Midianites Philistins and Ammonites they expected help from the most wise and valiant When Hannibal was at the Gates of Rome and had filled Italy with Fire and Blood or when the Gauls overwhelmed that Country with their multitudes and fury the Senate and People of Rome put themselves under the conduct of Camillus Manlius Fabius Scipio and the like and when they failed to chuse such as were fit for the work to be done they received such defeats as convinced them of their Error But if our Author say true Order did require that the Power of defending the Country should have bin annexed as an Inheritance to one Family or lest to him that could get it and the exercise of all Authority committed to the next in Blood tho the weakest of Women or the basest of Men. The like may be said of judging or doing of Justice and 't is absurd to pretend that either is expected from the Power not the Person of the Monarch for experience doth too well shew how much all things halt in relation to Justice or Defence when there is a defect in him that ought to judg us and to fight our Battels But of all things this ought least to be alledged by the Advocates for absolute Monarchy who deny that the Authority can be separated from the Person and lay it as a fundamental Principle that whosoever hath it may do what he pleases and be accountable to no man Our Author's next work is to shew that Stability is the effect of this good Order but he ought to have known that Stability is then only worthy of praise when it is in that which is good No man delights in sickness or pain because it is long or incurable nor in slavery and misery because it is perpetual much less will any man in his senses commend a permanency in vice and wickedness He must therefore prove that the Stability he boasts of is in things that are good or all that he says of it signifies nothing I might leave him here with as little fear that any man who shall espouse his Quarrel shall ever be able to remove this Obstacle as that he himself should rise out of his Grave and do it But I hope to prove that of all things under the Sun there is none more mutable or unstable than Absolute Monarchy which is all that I dispute against professing much veneration for that which is mixed regulated by Law and directed to the Publick Good This might be proved by many Arguments but I shall confine my self to two the one drawn from Reason the other from matters of Fact Nothing can be called stable that is not so in Principle and Practice in which respect human Nature is not well capable of Stability but the utmost deviation from it that can be imagined is when such an Error is laid for a Foundation as can never be corrected All will confess that if there be any Stability in man it must be in Wisdom and Vertue and in those Actions that are thereby directed for in weakness solly and madness there can be none The Stability therefore that we seek in relation to the exercise of Civil and Military Powers can never be found unless care be taken that such as shall exercise those Powers be endowed with the Qualities that should make them stable This is utterly repugnant to our Author's Doctrine He lays for a Foundation That the Succession goes to the next in Blood without distinction of Age Sex or personal Qualities whereas even he himself could not have the impudence to say that Children and Women where they are admitted or Fools Madmen and such as are full of all wickedness do not come to be the Heirs of reigning Families as well as of the meanest The Stability therefore that can be expected from such a Government either depends upon those who have none in themselves or is referred wholly to Chance which is directly opposite to Stability This would be the case tho it were as we say an even Wager whether the Person would be fit or unfit and that there were as many men in the world able as unable to perform the Duty of a King but Experience shewing that among many millions of men there is hardly one that possesses the Qualities required in a King 't is so many to one that he upon whom the Lot shall fall will not be the man we seek in whose Person and Government there can be such a stability as is asserted And that failing all must necessarily fail for there can be no stability in his Will Laws or Actions who has none in his Person That we may see whether this be verified by Experience we need not search into the dark relations of the Babylonian and Assyrian Monarchies Those rude Ages afford us little instruction and tho the fragments of History remaining do sufficiently show that all things there were in perpetual fluctuation by reason of the madness of their Kings and the violence of those who transported the Empire from one Place or Family to another I will not much rely upon them but slightly touching some of their Stories pass to those that are better known to us The Kings of those Ages seem to have lived rather like Beasts in a Forest than Men joined in Civil Society they followed the Example of Nimrod the mighty Hunter Force was the only Law that prevailed the stronger devoured the weaker and continued in Power till he was ejected by one of more strength or better fortune By this means the race of Ninus was destroy'd by Belochus Arbaces rent the Kingdom asunder and took Media to himself Morodach extinguished the Race of Belochus and was made King Nabuchodonosor like a Flood overwhelmed all sor a time destroy'd the Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Egypt with many others and found no obstacle till his rage and pride turned to a most bestial madness And the Assyrian Empire was wholly abolish'd at the death of his Grandchild Belshazzar and no Stability can be found in the reigns of those great Kings unless that name be given to the Pride Idolatry Cruelty and Wickedness in which they remained constant If
destroyed the Kingdoms of Asia Egypt Macedon Numidia and a multitude of others was made a Prey to unknown barbarous Nations and rent into as many pieces as it had bin composed of when it enjoy'd the Stability that accompanies Divine and Absolute Monarchy The like may be said of all the Kingdoms in the World they may have their ebbings and flowings according to the Vertues or Vices of Princes or their Favorites but can never have any Stability because there is and can be none in them Or if any Exception may be brought against this Rule it must be of those Monarchies only which are mixed and regulated by Laws where Diets Parliaments Assemblies of Estates or Senats may supply the defects of a Prince restrain him if he prove extravagant and reject such as are found to be unworthy of their Office which are as odious to our Author and his Followers as the most popular Governments and can be of no advantage to his cause There is another ground of perpetual Fluctuation in Absolute Monarchies or such as are grown so strong that they cannot be restrained by Law tho according to their Institution they ought to be distinct from but in some measure relating to the Inclinations of the Monarch that is the impulse of Ministers Favorites Wives or Whores who frequently govern all things according to their own Passions or Interests And tho we cannot say who were the Favorites of every one of the Assyrian or Egyptian Kings yet the Examples before-mentioned of the different method follow'd in Egypt before and after the death of Joseph and in Persia whilst the idolatrous Princes and Haman or Daniel Esther and Mordecai were in credit the violent Changes happening thereupon give us reason to believe the like were in the times of other Kings and if we examine the Histories of later Ages and the Lives of Princes that are more exactly known we shall find that Kingdoms are more frequently swayed by those who have Power with the Prince than by his own Judgment So that whosoever hath to deal with Princes concerning Foreign or Domestick Affairs is obliged more to regard the humour of those Persons than the most important Interests of a Prince or People I might draw too much envy upon my self if I should take upon me to cite all the Examples of this kind that are found in modern Histories or the Memoirs that do more precisely shew the Temper of Princes and the secret Springs by which they were moved But as those who have well observed the management of Affairs in France during the Reigns of Francis the First Henry the Second Francis the Second Charles the Ninth Henry the Third Henry the Fourth and Lewis the Thirteenth will confess that the Interests of the Dukes of Montmorency and Guise Queen Katherine de Medicis the Duke of Epernon La Fosseuse Madame de Guiche de Gabriele d' Entragues the Marechal d' Ancre the Constable de Luines and the Cardinal de Richelieu were more to be consider'd by those who had any private or publick Business to treat at Court than the Opinions of those Princes or the most weighty Concernments of the State so it cannot be denied that other Kingdoms where Princes legally have or wrongfully usurp the like Power are governed in the like manner or if it be there is hardly any Prince's Reign that will not furnish abundant proof of what I have asserted I agree with our Author that good Order and Stability produce Strength If Monarchy therefore excel in them Absolute Monarchies should be of more strength than those that are limited according to the proportion of their Riches extent of Territory and number of People that they govern and those limited Monarchies in the like proportion more strong than popular Governments or Commonwealths If this be so I wonder how a few of those giddy Greeks who according to our Author had learning enough only to make them seditious came to overthrow those vast Armies of the Persians as often as they met with them and seldom found any other difficulty than what did arise from their own Countrymen who sometimes sided with the Barbarians Seditions are often raised by a little prating but when one Man was to fight against fifty or a hundred as at the Battels of Salamine Platea Marathon and others then Industry Wisdom Skill and Valour was required and if their Learning had not made them to excel in those Vertues they must have bin overwhelmed by the prodigious multitudes of their Enemies This was so well known to the Persians that when Cyrus the younger prepar'd to invade his Brother Artaxerxes he brought together indeed a vast Army of Asiaticks but chiefly relied upon the Counsel and Valour of ten thousand Grecians whom he had engaged to serve him These giddy heads accompanied with good hands in the great Battel near Babylon found no resistance from Artaxerxes his Army and when Cyrus was killed by accident in the pursuit of the Victory they had gained and their own Officers treacherously murder'd they made good their retreat into Greece under the conduct of Xenophon in despite of above four hundred thousand Horse and Foot who endeavour'd to oppose them They were destitute of Horse Mony Provisions Friends and all other help except what their Wisdom and Valour furnished them and thereupon relying they passed over the Bellies of all the Enemies that ventur'd to appear against them in a march of a thousand miles These things were performed in the weakness of popular confusion but Agesilaus not being sensible of so great defects accompanied only with six and thirty Spartans and such other Forces as he could raife upon his personal credit adventured without Authority or Mony to undertake a War against that great King Artaxerxes and having often beaten Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes his Lieutenants was preparing to assault him in the heart of his Kingdom when he was commanded by the Ephori to return for the defence of his own Country It may in like manner appear strange that Alexander with the Forces of Greece much diminished by the Phocean Peloponnesian Theban and other intestine Wars could overthrow all the powers of the East and conquer more Provinces than any other Army ever saw if so much order and stability were to be found in absolute Monarchies and if the Liberty in which the Grecians were educated did only fit them for Seditions and it would seem no less astonishing that Rome and Greece whilst they were free should furnish such numbers of men excelling in all moral Vertues to the admiration of all succeeding Ages and thereby become so powerful that no Monarchs were able to resist them and that the same Countries since the loss of their Liberty have always bin weak base cowardly and vicious if the same Liberty had not bin the Mother and Nurse of their Vertue as well as the root of their Power It cannot be said that Alexander was a Monarch in our Author's sense for the power
it Some being incensed against their Kings as the Romans exasperated by the Villanies of Tarquin and the Tuscans by the Cruelties of Mezentius abolished the name of King Others as Athens Sicion Argos Corinth Thebes and the Latins did not stay for such extremities but set up other Governments when they thought it best for themselves and by this conduct prevented the evils that usually fall upon Nations when their Kings degenerate into Tyrants and a Nation is brought to enter into a War by which all may be lost and nothing can be gained which was not their own before The Romans took not this salutary Course the mischief was grown up before they perceived or set themselves against it and when the effects of Pride Avarice Cruelty and Lust were grown to such a height that they could no longer be endured they could not free themselves without a War and whereas upon other occasions their Victories had brought them increase of Strength Territory and Glory the only reward of their Virtue in this was to be delivered from a Plague they had unadvisedly suffered to grow up among them I confess this was most of all to be esteemed for if they had bin overthrown their condition under Tarquin would have bin more intolerable than if they had fallen under the power of Pirrhus or Hannibal and all their following Prosperity was the fruit of their recover'd Liberty But it had bin much better to have reformed the State after the death of one of their good Kings than to be brought to fight for their Lives against that abominable Tyrant Our Author in pursuance of his aversion to all that is good disapproves this and wanting reasons to justify his dislike according to the custom of Impostors and Cheats hath recourse to the ugly terms of a back-door Sedition and Faction as if it were not as just for a People to lay aside their Kings when they receive nothing but evil and can rationally hope for no benefit by them as for others to set them up in expectation of good from them But if the truth be examin'd nothing will be found more orderly than the changes of Government or of the Persons and Races of those that governed which have bin made by many Nations When Pharamond's Grandson seemed not to deserve the Crown he had worn the French gave it to Meroveus who more resembled him in Virtue In process of time when this Race also degenerated they were rejected and Pepin advanced to the Throne and the most remote in blood of his Descendents having often bin preferred before the nearest and Bastards before the legitimate Issue they were at last all laid aside and the Crown remains to this day in the Family of Hugh Capet on whom it was bestow'd upon the rejection of Charles of Lorrain In like manner the Castilians took Don Sancho sirnamed the Brave second Son to Alphonso the Wise before Alphonso el Desheredado Son of the elder Brother Ferdinand The States of Arragon preferred Martin Brother to John the first before Mary his Daughter married to the Count de Foix tho Females were not excluded from the Succession and the House of Austria now enjoys that Crown from Joan Daughter to Ferdinand In that and many other Kingdoms Bastards have bin advanced before their legitimate Brothers Henry Count of Trastamara Bastard to Alphonso the II King of Castile received the Crown as a reward of the good Service he had done to his Country against his Brother Peter the Cruel without any regard had to the House of La Cerda descended from Alphonso el Desheredado which to this day never enjoy'd any greater honour than that of Duke de Medina Celi Not long after the Portuguese conceiving a dislike of their King Ferdinand and his Daughter married to John King of Castile rejected her and her Uncle by the Father's side and gave the Crown to John a Knight of Calatrava and Bastard to an Uncle of Ferdinand their King About the beginning of this age the Swedes deposed their King Sigismund for being a Papist and made Charles his Uncle King Divers Examples of the like nature in England have bin already mentioned All these transportations of Crowns were Acts performed by Assemblies of the three Estates in the several Kingdoms and these Crowns are to this day enjoy'd under Titles derived from such as were thus brought in by the deposition or rejection of those who according ing to descent of blood had better Titles than the present Possessors The Acts therefore were lawful and good or they can have no Title at all and they who made them had a just power so to do If our Author can draw any advantage from the resemblance of Regality that he finds in the Roman Consuls and Athenian Archons I shall without envy leave him the enjoyment of it but I am much mistaken if that do not prove my assertion that those Governments were composed of the three simple species for if the Monarchical part was in them it cannot be denied that the Aristocratical was in the Senate or Areopagi and the Democratical in the People But he ought to have remembred that if there was something of Monarchical in those Governments when they are said to have bin Popular there was something of Aristocratical and Democratical in those that were called Regal which justifies my proposition on both sides and shews that the denomination was taken from the part that prevail'd and if this were not so the Governments of France Spain and Germany might be called Democracies and those of Rome and Athens Monarchies because the People have a part in the one and an image of Monarchy was preserved in the other If our Author will not allow the cases to be altogether equal I think he will find no other difference than that the Consuls and Archons were regularly made by the Votes of the consenting People and orderly resign'd their Power when the time was expir'd for which it was given whereas Tarquin Dionysius Agathocles Nabis Phalaris Cesar and almost all his Successors whom he takes for compleat Monarchs came in by violence fraud and corruption by the help of the worst men by the slaughter of the best and most commonly when the method was once establish'd by that of his Predecessor who if our Author say true was the Father of his Country and his also This was the root and foundation of the only Government that deserves praise this is that which stampt the divine character upon Agathocles Dionysius and Cesar and that had bestow'd the same upon Manlius Marius or Catiline if they had gain'd the Monarchies they affected But I suppose that such as God has bless'd with better judgment and a due regard to Justice and Truth will say that all those who have attained to such greatness as destroys all manner of good in the places where they have set up themselves by the most detestable Villanies came in by a backdoor and that such Magistrates as were
orderly chosen by a willing People were the true Shepherds who came in by the gate of the Sheepfold and might justly be called the Ministers of God so long as they performed their duty in providing for the good of the Nations committed to their charge SECT XVII Good Governments admit of Changes in the Superstructures whilst the Foundations remain unchangeable IF I go a step farther and confess the Romans made some changes in the outward Form of their Government I may safely say they did well in it and prosper'd by it After the Expulsion of the Kings the Power was chiefly in the Nobility who had bin Leaders of the People but it was necessary to humble them when they began to presume too much upon the advantages of their Birth and the City could never have been great unless the Plebeians who were the Body of it and the main strength of their Armies had bin admitted to a participation of Honours This could not be done at the first They who had bin so vilely opprest by Tarquin and harass'd with making or cleansing Sinks were not then fit for Magistracies or the Command of Armies but they could not justly be excluded from them when they had men who in courage and conduct were equal to the best of the Patricians and it had bin absurd for any man to think it a disparagement to him to marry the Daughter of one whom he had obey'd as Dictator or Consul and perhaps follow'd in his Triumph Rome that was constituted for War and sought its Grandeur by that means could never have arriv'd to any considerable height if the People had not bin exercised in Arms and their Spirits raised to delight in Conquests and willing to expose themselves to the greatest fatigues and dangers to accomplish them Such men as these were not to be used like Slaves or opprest by the unmerciful hand of Usurers They who by their sweat and blood were to defend and enlarge the Territories of the State were to be convinced they fought for themselves and they had reason to demand a Magistracy of their own vested with a Power that none might offend to maintain their Rights and to protect their Families whilst they were abroad in the Armies These were the Tribunes of the People made as they called it Sacrosancti or inviolable and the creation of them was the most considerable Change that happened till the time of Marius who brought all into disorder The creation or abolition of Military Tribunes with Consular Power ought to be accounted as nothing for it imported little whether that Authority were exercised by two or by five That of the Decemviri was as little to be regarded they were intended only for a Year and tho new ones were created for another on pretence that the Laws they were to frame could not be brought to perfection in so short a time yet they were soon thrown down from the Power they usurped and endeavoured to retain contrary to Law The creation of Dictators was no novelty they were made occasionally from the beginning and never otherwise than occasionally till Julius Cesar subverted all order and invading that supreme Magistracy by force usurped the Right which belong'd to all This indeed was a mortal Change even in root and principle All other Magistrates had bin created by the People for the publick good and always were within the power of those that had created them But Cesar coming in by force sought only the satisfaction of his own raging Ambition or that of the Soldiers whom he had corrupted to destroy their Country and his Successors governing for themselves by the help of the like Raskals perpetually exposed the Empire to be ravaged by them But whatever opinion any man may have of the other Changes I dare affirm there are few or no Monarchies whose Histories are so well known to us as that of Rome which have not suffer'd Changes incomparably greater and more mischievous than those of Rome whilst it was free The Macedonian Monarchy fell into pieces immediately after the death of Alexander 'T is thought he perished by Poison His Wives Children and Mother were destroyed by his own Captains The best of those who had escaped his fury fell by the Sword of each other When the famous Argyraspides might have expected some reward of their labours and a little rest in old age they were maliciously sent into the East by Antigonus to perish by hunger and misery after he had corrupted them to betray Eumenes No better fate attended the rest all was in confusion every one follow'd whom he pleased and all of them seemed to be filled with such a rage that they never ceased from mutual slaughters till they were consumed and their Kingdoms continued in perpetual Wars against each other till they all fell under the Roman Power The fortune of Rome was the same after it became a Monarchy Treachery Murder and Fury reigned in every part there was no Law but Force he that could corrupt an Army thought he had a sufficient Title to the Empire by this means there were frequently three or four and at one time thirty several Pretenders who called themselves Emperors of which number he only reigned that had the happiness to destroy all his Competitors and he himself continued no longer than till another durst attempt the destruction of him and his Posterity In this state they remained till the wasted and bloodless Provinces were possess'd by a multitude of barbarous Nations The Kingdoms established by them enjoy'd as little Peace or Justice that of France was frequently divided into as many parts as the Kings of Meroveus or Pepin's Race had Children under the names of the Kingdoms of Paris Orleans Soissons Arles Burgundy Austrasia and others These were perpetually vexed by the unnatural fury of Brothers or nearest Relations whilst the miserable Nobility and People were obliged to fight upon their foolish Quarrels till all fell under the power of the strongest This mischief was in some measure cured by a Law made in the time of Hugh Capet that the Kingdom should no more be divided But the Appannages as they call them granted to the King's Brothers with the several Dukedoms and Earldoms erected to please them and other great Lords produced frequently almost as bad effects This is testified by the desperate and mortal Factions that went under the names of Burgundy and Orleans Armagnac and Orleans Montmorency and Guise These were followed by those of the League and the Wars of the Huguenots They were no sooner finish'd by the taking of Rochel but new ones began by the Intrigues of the Duke of Orleans Brother to Lewis the 13th and his Mother and pursued with that animosity by them that they put themselves under the protection of Spain To which may be added that the Houses of Condé Soissons Montmorency Guise Vendosme Angouleme Bouillon Rohan Longueville Rochfocault Epernon and I think I may say every one that is of great
they fear which are the principal Arguments that perswade men to expose themselves to labours or dangers 'T is a folly to say that the vigilance and wisdom of the Monarch supplies the desect of care in others for we know that no men under the Sun were ever more void of both and all manner of virtue requir'd to such a work than very many Monarchs have bin And which is yet worse the strength and happiness of the People being frequently dangerous to them they have not so much as the will to promote it nay sometimes set themselves to destroy it Antient Monarchies afford us frequent examples of this kind and if we consider those of France and Turky which seem most to flourish in our Age the People will appear to be so miserable under both that they cannot sear any change of Governor or Government and all except a few Ministers are kept so far from the knowledg of or power in the management of Affairs that if any of them should fancy a possibility of something that might befal them worse than what they suffer or hope for that which might alleviate their misery they could do nothing towards the advancement of the one or prevention of the other Tacitus observes that in his time no man was able to write what passed Inscitia Reipublicae ut alienae They neglected the publick Affairs in which they had no part In the same Age it was said that the People who whilst they fought for their own Interests had bin invincible being enslaved were grown sordid idle base running after Stage-plays and Shows so as the whole strength of the Roman Armies consisted of Strangers When their Spirits were depressed by servitude they had neither courage to defend themselves nor will to fight for their wicked Masters and least of all to increase their Power which was destructive to themselves The same thing is found in all places Tho the Turk commands many vast Provinces that naturally produce as good Soldiers as any yet his greatest strength is in Children that do not know their Fathers who not being very many in number may perish in one Battel and the Empire by that means be lost the miserable Nations that groan under That Tyranny having neither courage power nor will to defend it This was the fate of the Mamalukes They had for the space of almost two hundred years domineer'd in Egypt and a great part of Asia but the people under them being weak and disaffected they could never recover the Defeat they received from Selim near Tripoli who pursuing his Victory in a few months utterly abolished their Kingdom Notwithstanding the present pride of France the numbers and warlike Inclinations of that People the bravery of the Nobility extent of Dominion convenience of Situation and the vast Revenues of their King his greatest Advantages have bin gained by the mistaken Counsels of England the valour of our Soldiers unhappily sent to serve him and the Strangers of whom the strength of his Armies consists which is so unsteady a support that many who are well versed in Affairs of this nature incline to think he subsists rather by little Arts and corrupting Ministers in Foreign Courts than by the Power of his own Armies and that some reformation in the Counsels of his Neighbours might prove sufficient to overthrow that Greatness which is grown formidable to Europe the same misery to which he has reduced his People rendring them as unable to defend him upon any change of Fortune as to defend their own Rights against him This proceeds not from any particular defect in the French Government but that which is common to all Absolute Monarchies And no State can be said to stand upon a steady Foundation except those whose strength is in their own Soldiery and the body of their own People Such as serve for Wages often betray their Masters in distress and always want the courage and industry which is found in those who fight for their own Interests and are to have a part in the Victory The business of Mercenaries is so to perform their duty as to keep their Employments and to draw profit from them but that is not enough to support the Spirits of men in extream dangers The Shepherd who is a hireling flies when the Thief comes and this adventitious help failing all that a Prince can reasonably expect from a disaffected and oppressed People is that they should bear the Yoak patiently in the time of his Prosperity but upon the change of his Fortune they leave him to shift for himself or join with his Enemies to avenge the Injuries they had received Thus did Alphonso and Ferdinand Kings of Naples and Lodovico Sforza Duke of Milan fall in the times of Charles the Eighth and Louis the Twelfth Kings of France The two first had bin false violent and cruel nothing within their Kingdom could oppose their fury but when they were invaded by a Foreign Power they lost all as Guicciardin says without breaking one Lance and Sforza was by his own mercenary Soldiers delivered into the hands of his Enemies I think it may be hard to find Examples of such as proceeding in the same way have had better Success But if it should so fall out that a People living under an Absolute Monarchy should through custom or fear of something worse if that can be not only suffer patiently but desire to uphold the Government neither the Nobility nor Commonalty can do any thing towards it They are strangers to all publick Concernments All things are govern'd by one or a few men and others know nothing either of Action or Counsel Filmer will tell us 't is no matter the profound Wisdom of the Prince provides for all But what if this Prince be a Child a Fool a superannuated Dotard or a Madman Or if he dos not fall under any of these extremities and possesses such a proportion of Wit Industry and Courage as is ordinarily seen in men how shall he supply the Office that indeed requires profound Wisdom and an equal measure of Experience and Valour 'T is to no purpose to say a good Council may supply his defects for it dos not appear how he should come by this Council nor who should oblige him to follow their advice If he be left to his own will to do what he pleases tho good advice be given to him yet his judgment being perverted he will always incline to the worst If a necessity be imposed upon him of acting according to the advice of his Council he is not that absolute Monarch of whom we speak nor the Government Monarchical but Aristocratical These are imperfect Fig-leave coverings of Nakedness It was in vain to give good counsel to Sardanapalus and none could defend the Assyrian Empire when he lay wallowing amongst his Whores without any other thought than of his Lusts. None could preserve Rome when Domitian's chief business was to kill Flies and that of Honorius to take
by him only and by him if with industry and courage they make use of the means he has given them for their own defence God helps those who help themselves and men are by several reasons suppose to prevent the increase of a suspected Power induced to succour an industrious and brave People But such as neglect the means of their own preservation are ever left to perish with shame Men cannot rely upon any League The State that is defended by one Potentat against another becomes a Slave to their Protector Mercenary Souldiers always want Fidelity or Courage and most commonly both If they are not corrupted or beaten by the Invader they make a prey of their Masters These are the followers of Camps who have neither faith nor piety but prefer Gain before Right They who expose their Blood to sale look where they can make the best bargain and never fail of pretences for following their interests Moreover private Families may by several arts increase their Wealth as they increase in number but when a People multiplies as they will always do in a good Climat under a good Government such an enlargement of Territory as is necessary for their subsistence can be acquired only by War This was known to the Northern Nations that invaded the Roman Empire but for want of such Constitutions as might best improve their Strength and Valour the numbers they sent out when they were overburden'd provided well for themselves but were of no use to the Countries they left and whilst those Goths Vandals Franks and Normans enjoyed the most opulent and delicious Provinces of the World their Fathers languished obscurely in their frozen Climats For the like reasons or through the same defect the Switzers are obliged to serve other Princes and often to imploy that valour in advancing the power of their Neighbours which might be used to increase their own Genoua Lucca Geneva and other small Commonwealths having no Wars are not able to nourish the men they breed but sending many of their Children to seek their Fortunes abroad scarce a third part of those that are born among them die in those Cities and if they did not take this course they would have no better than the Nations inhabiting near the River Niger who sell their Children as the increase of their Flocks This dos not less concern Monarchies than Commonwealths nor the absolute less than the mixed All of them have bin prosperous or miserable glorious or contemptible as they were better or worse arm'd disciplin'd or conducted The Assyrian Valour was irresistible under Nabuchodonozor but was brought to nothing under his base and luxurious Grandson Belsbazzar The Persians who under Cyrus conquer'd Asia were like Swine exposed to slaughter when their Discipline failed and they were commanded by his proud cruel and cowardly Successors The Macedonian Army overthrown by Paulus Emilius was not less in number than that with which Alexander gained the Empire of the East and perhaps had not bin inferior in Valour if it had bin as well commanded Many poor and almost unknown Nations have bin carried to such a height of Glory by the Bravery of their Princes that I might incline to think their Government as fit as any other for disciplining a People to War if their Virtues continued in their Families or could be transmitted to their Successors The impossibility of this is a breach never to be repaired and no account is to be made of the good that is always uncertain and seldom enjoy'd This disease is not only in absolute Monarchies but in those also where any regard is had to Succession of Blood tho under the strictest limitations The fruit of all the Victories gained by Edward the first and third or Henry the fifth of England perished by the baseness of their Successors the glory of our Arms was turned into shame and we by the loss of Treasure Blood and Territory suffer'd the punishment of their Vices The effects of these changes are not always equally violent but they are frequent and must fall out as often as occasion is presented It was not possible for Lewis the 13th of France to pursue the great designs of Henry the Fourth Christina of Sweden could not supply the place of her brave Father nor the present King in his infancy accomplish what the great Charles Gustavus had nobly undertaken and no remedy can be found for this mortal infirmity unless the power be put into the hands of those who are able to execute it and not left to the blindness of fortune When the Regal power is committed to an annual or otherwise chosen Magistracy the Virtues of excellent men are of use but all dos not depend upon their persons One man finishes what another had begun and when many are by practice rendred able to perform the same things the loss of one is easily supplied by the election of another When good Principles are planted they do not die with the person that introduced them and good Constitutions remain tho the Authors of them perish Rome did not fall back into slavery when Brutus was killed who had led them to recover their Liberty Others like to him pursued the same ends and notwithstanding the loss of so many great Commanders consumed in their almost continual Wars they never wanted such as were fit to execute whatever they could design A well-governed State is as fruitful to all good purposes as the seven-headed Serpent is said to have bin in evil when one head is cut off many rise up in the place of it Good Order being once established makes good men and as long as it lasts such as are fit for the greatest imployments will never be wanting By this means the Romans could not be surprised No King or Captain ever invaded them who did not find many excellent Commanders to oppose him whereas they themselves found it easy to overthrow Kingdoms tho they had bin established by the bravest Princes through the baseness of their Successors But if our Author say true 't is of no advantage to a popular State to have excellent men and therefore he imposes a necessity upon every People to chuse the worst men for being the worst and most like to themselves lest that if virtuous and good men should come into power they should be excluded for being vicious and wicked c. Wise men would seize upon the State and take it from the People For the understanding of these words 't is good to consider whether they are to be taken simply as usually applied to the Devil and some of his instruments or relatively as to the thing in question If simply it must be concluded that Valerius Brutus Cincinnatus Capitolinus Mamercus Paulus Emilius Nasica and others like to them were not only the worst men of the City but that they were so often advanced to the supreme Magistracies because they were so if in the other sense relating to Magistracy and the command of Armies
the worst are the most ignorant unfaithful slothful or cowardly and our Author to make good his proposition must prove that when the People of Rome Carthage Athens and other States had the power of chusing whom they pleased they did chuse Camillus Corvinus Torquatus Fabius Rullus Scipio Amiloar Hannibal Asdrubal Pelopidas Epaminondas Pericles Aristides Themistocles Phocion Alcibiades and others like to them for their Ignorance Infidelity Sloth and Cowardice and on account of those Vices most like to those who chose them But if these were the worst I desire to know what wit or eloquence can describe or comprehend the excellency of the best or of the Discipline that brings whole Nations to such perfection that worse than these could not be found among them And if they were not so but such as all succeeding Ages have justly admir'd for their Wisdom Virtue Industry and Valour the impudence of so wicked and false an Assertion ought to be rejected with scorn and hatred But if all Governments whether Monarchical or Popular absolute or limited deserve praise or blame as they are well or ill constituted for making War and that the attainment of this end do entirely depend upon the qualifications of the Commanders and the Strength Courage Number Affection and temper of the People out of which the Armies are drawn those Governments must necessarily be the best which take the best care that those Armies may be well commanded and so provide for the good of the People that they may daily increase in Number Courage and Strength and be so satisfied with the present state of things as to fear a change and fight for the preservation or advancement of the publick Interest as of their own We have already found that in Hereditary Monarchies no care at all is taken of the Commander He is not chosen but comes by chance and dos not only frequently prove defective but for the most part utterly uncapable of performing any part of his duty whereas in Popular Governments excellent men are generally chosen and there are so many of them that if one or more perish others are ready to supply their places And this Discourse having if I mistake not in the whole series shewn that the advantages of popular Governments in relation to the increase of Courage Number and Strength in a People out of which Armies are to be formed and bringing them to such a temper as prepares them bravely to perform their duty are as much above those of Monarchies as the prudence of choice surpasses the accidents of birth it cannot be denied that in both respects the part which relates to War is much better perform'd in Popular Governments than in Monarchies That which we are by reason led to believe is confirmed to us by experience We every where see the difference between the Courage of men fighting for themselves and their posterity and those that serve a Master who by good success is often render'd insupportable This is of such efficacy that no King could ever boast to have overthrown any considerable Commonwealth unless it were divided within it self or weakned by Wars made with such as were also free which was the case of the Grecian Commonwealths when the Macedonians fell in upon them Whereas the greatest Kingdoms have bin easily destroy'd by Commonwealths and these also have lost all Strength Valour and Spirit after the change of their Government The Power and Virtue of the Italians grew up decayed and perished with their Liberty When they were divided into many Common-wealths every one of them was able to send out great Armies and to suffer many Defeats before they were subdued so that their Cities were delivered up by the old Men Women and Children when all those who were able to bear arms had bin slain And when they were all brought under the Romans either as Associates or Subjects they made the greatest Strength that ever was in the World Alexander of Epirus was in Valour thought equal and in Power little inferior to Alexander of Macedon but having the fortune to attack those who had bin brought up in Liberty taught to hazard or suffer all things for it and to think that God has given to men Hands and Swords only to defend it he perished in his attempt whilst the other encountring slavish Nations under the conduct of proud cruel and for the most part unwarlike Tyrants became Master of Asia Pyrrhus seems to have bin equal to either of them but the Victories he obtain'd by an admirable Valour and Conduct cost him so dear that he desir'd Peace with those Enemies who might be defeated not subdued Hannibal wanting the prudence of Pyrrhus lost the fruits of all his Victories and being torn out of Italy where he had nested himself fell under the Sword of those whose Fathers he had defeated or slain and died a banish'd man from his ruin'd Country The Gauls did once bring Rome when it was small to the brink of Destruction but they left their Carcases to pay for the mischiefs they had done and in succeeding times their Invasions were mention'd as Tumults rather than Wars The Germans did perhaps surpass them in numbers and strength and were equal to them in fortune as long as Rome was free They often enter'd Italy but they continued not long there unless under the weight of their Chains Whereas the same Nations and others like to them assaulting that Country or other Provinces under the Emperors found no other difficulty than what did arise upon contests among themselves who should be Master of them No manly Virtue or Discipline remain'd among the Italians Those who govern'd them relied upon tricks and shifts they who could not defend themselves hired some of those Nations to undertake their Quarrels against others These trinklings could not last The Goths scorning to depend upon those who in Valour and Strength were much inferior to themselves seized upon the City that had commanded the World whilst Honorius was so busy in providing for his Hens that he could not think of defending it Arcadius had the luck not to lose his principal City but passing his time among Fidlers Players Eunuchs Cooks Dancers and Buffoons the Provinces were securely plunder'd and ransack'd by Nations that are known only from their Victories against him 'T is in vain to say that this proceeded from the fatal corruption of that Age for that corruption proceeded from the Government and the ensuing desolation was the effect of it And as the like disorder in Government has bin ever since in Greece and the greatest part of Italy those Countries which for Extent Riches convenience of Situation and numbers of men are equal to the best in the world and for the Wit Courage and Industry of the Natives perhaps justly preferable to any have since that time bin always exposed as a prey to the first Invader Charles the Eighth of France is by Guicciardin and other Writers represented as a Prince equally weak in
Body Mind Mony and Forces but as an ill Hare is said to make a good Dog he conquer'd the best part of Italy without breaking a Lance. Ferdinand and Alphonso of Arragon Kings of Naples had governed by Trepanners false Witnesses corrupt Judges mercenary Soldiers and other Ministers of Iniquity but these could afford no help against an Invader and neither the oppressed Nobility nor People concerning themselves in the quarrel they who had bin proud fierce and cruel against their poor Subjects never durst look an Enemy in the face and the Father dying with anguish and fear the Son shamefully fled from his ill governed Kingdom The same things are no less evident in Spain No People ever defended themselves with more Obstinacy and Valour than the Spaniards did against the Carthaginians and Romans who surpassed them in Wealth and Skill Livy calls them Gentem ad bella gerenda reparanda natam and who generally kill'd themselves when they were master'd and disarm'd Nullam sine armis vitam esse rati But tho the mixture of Roman Blood could not impair their Race and the conjunction of the Goths had improved their Force yet no more was requir'd for the overthrow of them all than the weakness and baseness of the two lewd Tyrants Witza and Rodrigo who disdained all Laws and resolved to govern according to their Lust. They who for more than two hundred years had resisted the Romans were intirely subdued by the vile half naked Moors in one slight Skirmish and do not to this day know what became of the King who brought the Destruction upon them That Kingdom after many revolutions is with many others come to the House of Austria and enjoys all the Wealth of the Indies whereupon they are thought to have affected an universal Monarchy Sed ut sunt levia Aulicorum ingenia this was grounded upon nothing except their own Vanity They had Mony and Craft but wanting that solid Virtue and Strength which makes and preserves Conquests their Kings have nothing but Milan that did not come to them by Marriage And tho they have not received any extraordinary disasters in War yet they languish and consume through the defects of their own Government and are forced to beg assistance from thier mortal and formerly despis'd Enemies These are the best hopes of defence that they have from abroad and the only Enemy an Invader ought to fear in their desolate Territories is that want and famin which testifies the good Order Strength and Stability of our Author 's divine Monarchy the profound Wisdom of their Kings in subtilly finding out so sure a way of defending the Country their paternal care in providing for the good of their Subjects and that whatsoever is defective in the Prince is assuredly supplied by the Sedulity of a good Council We have already said enough to obviate the objections that may be drawn from the prosperity of the French Monarchy The beauty of it is false and painted There is a rich and haughty King who is bless'd with such Neighbours as are not likely to disturb him and has nothing to fear from his miserable Subjects but the whole body of that State is full of boils and wounds and putrid sores There is no real strength in it The People is so unwilling to serve him that he is said to have put to death above fourscore thousand of his own Soldiers within the space of fifteen years for flying from their Colours and if he were vigorously attack'd little help could be expected from a discontented Nobility or a starving and despairing People If to diminish the force of these arguments and examples it be said that in two or three thousand years all things are changed the antient Virtue of Mankind is extinguished and the love that every one had to his Country is turned into a care of his private Interests I answer that Time changes nothing and the Changes produced in this time proceed only from the change of Governments The Nations which have bin governed arbitrarily have always suffer'd the same Plagues and bin infected with the same Vices which is as natural as for Animals ever to generate according to their kinds and Fruits to be of the same nature with the Roots and Seeds from which they come The same Order that made men valiant and industrious in the service of their Country during the first ages would have the same effect if it were now in being Men would have the same love to the publick as the Spartans and Romans had if there was the same reason for it We need no other proof of this than what we have seen in our own Country where in a few years good Discipline and a just encouragement given to those who did well produced more examples of pure compleat incorruptible and invincible Virtue than Rome or Greece could ever boast or if more be wanting they may easily be found among the Switzers Hollanders and others but 't is not necessary to light a Candle to the Sun SECT XXIV Popular Governments are less subject to Civil Disorders than Monarchies manage them more ably and more easily recover out of them 'T Is in vain to seek a Government in all points free from a possibility of Civil Wars Tumults and Seditions that is a Blessing denied to this life and reserved to compleat the Felicity of the next But if these are to be accounted the greatest evils that can fall upon a People the rectitude or defects of Governments will best appear if we examin which Species is more or less exposed to or exempted from them This may be done two ways 1. By searching into the causes from whence they may or usually do arise 2. Which kind has actually bin most frequently and dangerously disturbed by them To the first Seditions Tumults and Wars do arise from mistake or from malice from just occasions or unjust from mistake when a People thinks an evil to be done or intended which is not done nor intended or takes that to be evil which is done tho in truth it be not so Well regulated Cities may fall into these errors The Romans being jealous of their newly recover'd Liberty thought that Valerius Publicola designed to make himself King when he built a House in a place that seemed too strong and eminent for a private man The Spartans were not less suspicious of Lycurgus and a lewd young Fellow in a Sedition put out one of his eyes but no People ever continued in a more constant affection to their best deserving Citizens than both the Romans and Spartans afterwards manifested to those virtuous and wrongfully suspected men Sometimes the fact is true but otherwise understood than was intended When the Tarquins were expelled from Rome the Patricians retained to themselves the principal Magistracies but never thought of bringing back Kings or of setting up a corrupt Oligarchy among themselves as the Plebeians imagin'd And this mistake being discover'd the fury they had conceived vanished and
venture their Lives and Fortunes when their Consciences are not concern'd in the Contest and that they are to gain nothing by the Victory If reason teaches that till this expeditious way of ending Controversies be received the ambition of men will be apt to imbroil Nations in their Quarrels and others judging variously of those matters which can be reduced to no certain Rule will think themselves in Conscience obliged to follow the Party that seems to them to be most just experience manifests the same and that Ambition has produced more violent mischiefs than all the other desires and passions that have ever possessed the hearts of men That this may appear it will not be amiss to divide them into such as proceed from him who is in possession of the Power through jealousy of State as they call it to prevent the enterprizes of those who would dispossess him and such as arise between Competitors contending for it Tarquin's Counsel concerning the Poppies and Periander's heads of Corn is of the first sort The most eminent are always most feared as the readiest to undertake and most able to accomplish great Designs This eminence proceeds from Birth Riches Virtue or Reputation and is sometimes wrought up to the greatest height by a conjunction of all these But I know not where to find an example of such a man who could long subsist under Absolute Monarchy If he be of high Birth he must like Brutus conceal his Virtue and gain no reputation or resolve to perish if he do not prevent his own death by that of the Tyrant All other ways are ineffectual the suspicions fears and hatred thereupon arising are not to be removed Personal respects are forgotten and such services as cannot be sufficiently valued must be blotted out by the death of those who did them Various ways may be taken and pretences used according to the temper of Times and Nations but the thing must be done and whether it be colour'd by a trick of Law or performed by a Mute with a Bowstring imports little Henry the fourth was made King by the Earl of Northumberland and his brave Son Hotspur Edward the fourth by the valiant Earl of Warwick Henry the seventh by Stanley but neither of them could think himself safe till his Benefactor was dead No continued fidelity no testimonies of modesty and humility can prevent this The modesty of Germanicus in rejecting the Honours that were offer'd to him and his industry in quieting the mutinied Legions accelerated his ruin When 't was evident he might be Emperor if he pleased he must be so or die There was no middle station between the Throne and the Grave 'T is probable that Caligula Nero and other Beasts like to them might hate Virtue for the good which is in it but I cannot think that either they their Predecessors or Successors would have put themselves upon the desperate design of extirpating it if they had not found it to be inconsistent with their Government and that being once concluded they spared none of their nearest Relations Artaxerxes killed his Son Darius Herod murder'd the best of his Wives and all his Sons except the worst Tiberius destroy'd Agrippa Posthumus and Germanicus with his Wife and two Sons How highly soever Constantine the Great be commended he was polluted with the Blood of his Father-in-law Wife and Son Philip the second of Spain did in the like manner deliver himself from his fears of Don Carlos and 't is not doubted that Philip the fourth for the same reasons dispatched his Brother Don Carlos and his Son Balthasar The like cases were so common in England that all the Plantagenets and the noble Families allied to them being extinguish'd our Ancestors were sent to seek a King in one of the meanest in Wales This method being known those who are unwilling to die so tamely endeavour to find out ways of defending themselves and there being no other than the death of the Person who is in the Throne they usually seek to compass it by secret Conspiracy or open Violence and the number of Princes that have bin destroy'd and Countries disturb'd by those who through fear have bin driven to extremities is not much less than of those who have suffer'd the like from men following the impulse of their own Ambition The disorders arising from Contests between several Competitors before any one could be settled in the possession of Kingdoms have bin no less frequent and bloody than those above-mention'd and the miseries suffer'd by them together with the ruin brought upon the Empires of Macedon and Rome may be sufficient to prove it however to make the matter more clear I shall alledg others But because it may be presumption in me to think I know all the Histories of the World or tedious to relate all those I know I shall content my self with some of the most eminent and remarkable And if it appear that they have all suffer'd the same mischiefs we may believe they proceed not from Accidents but from the power of a permanent Cause that always produces the same or the like Effects To begin with France The Succession not being well settled in the time of Meroveus who dispossess'd the Grandchildren of Pharamond he was no sooner dead than Gillon set up himself and with much slaughter drove Chilperic his Son out of the Kingdom and he after a little time returning with like fury is said to have seen a Vision first of Lions and Leopards then of Bears and Wolves and lastly of Dogs and Cats all tearing one another to pieces This has bin always accounted by the French to be a representation of the nature and fortune of the three Races that were to command them and has bin too much verified by experience Clovis their first Christian and most renowned King having by good means or evil exceedingly enlarged his Territories but chiefly by the murders of Alaric and Ragnacaire with his Children and suborning Sigismond of Metz to kill his Father Sigebert left his Kingdom to be torn in pieces by the rage of his four Sons each of them endeavouring to make himself Master of the whole and when according to the usual fate of such Contests success had crown'd Clothaire who was the worst of them all by the slaughter of his Brothers and Nephews with all the flower of the French and Gaulish Nobility the advantages of his Fortune only resulted to his own person For after his death the miserable Nations suffer'd as much from the madness of his Sons as they had done by himself and his Brothers They had learnt from their Predecessors not to be slow in doing mischief but were farther incited by the rage of two infamous Strumpets Fredegonde and Brunehaud which is a sort of Vermin that I am inclin'd to think has not usually govern'd Senates or Popular Assemblies Chilperic the second who by the slaughter of many Persons of the Royal Blood with infinite numbers of the Nobility
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
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
Monarchies by the violence of some Princes and the baseness folly and cowardice of others together with what they have suffer'd in contests for the several Crowns whilst men divided into divers Factions ftrive with as much vehemency to advance the Person they favour as if they or their Country were interested in the quarrel and fight as fiercely for a Master as they might reasonably do to have none I am not able to determine which of the two evils is the most mortal 'T is evident the Vices of Princes result to the damage of the People but whether Pride and Cruelty or Stupidity and Sloth be the worst I cannot tell All Monarchies are subject to be afflicted with Civil Wars but whether the most frequent and bloody do arise from the quarrels of divers Competitors for Crowns before any one gain the possession of them or afterwards through the fears of him that would keep what he has gained or the rage of those who would wrest it from him is not so easily decided But Commonwealths are less troubled with those Distempers Women Children or such as are notoriously foolish or mad are never advanced to the supreme Power Whilst the Laws and that Disciplin which nourishes Virtue is in force Men of Wisdom and Valor are never wanting and every man desires to give testimony of his Virtue when he knows 't will be rewarded with Honour and Power If unworthy persons creep into Magistracies or are by mistake any way prefer'd their Vices for the most part turn to their own hurt and the State cannot easily receive any great damage by the incapacity of one who is not to continue in Office above a year and is usually encompassed with those who having born or are aspiring to the same are by their Virtue able to supply his defects cannot hope for a reward from one unable to corrupt them and are sure of the favour of the Senate and People to support them in the defence of the publick Interest As long as this good Order continues private quarrels are suppress'd by the authority of the Magistrate or prove to be of little effect Such as arise between the Nobles and Commons frequently produce good Laws for the maintenance of Liberty as they did in Rome for above three hundred years after the expulsion of Tarquin and almost ever terminated with little or no blood Sometimes the errors of one or both parties are discovered by the discourse of a wise and good man and those who have most violently opposed one another become the best Friends every one joining to remove the evil that causes the division When the Senate and People of Rome seemed to be most furiously incensed against each other the creation of Tribuns communication of Honours and Marriages between the Patrician and Plebeian Families or the mitigation of Usury composed all and these were not only harmless things but such as gave opportunities of correcting the defects that had bin in the first Constitution of the Government without which they could never have attained to the Greatness Glory and Happiness they afterwards enjoy'd Such as had seen that People meeting in tumult running through the City crying out against the Kings Consuls Senate or Decemviri might have thought they would have filled all with blood and slaughter but no such thing hapned They desired no more than to take away the Kingdom which Tarquin had wickedly usurped and never went about so much as to punish one Minister of the mischiefs he had done or to take away his Goods till upon pretence of treating his Ambassadors by a new treachery had cast the City into greater danger than ever Tho the Decemviri had by the like Villanies equally provoked the People they were used with the like gentleness Appius Claudius and Oppius having by voluntary death substracted themselves from publick punishment their Collegues were only banished and the Magistracies of the City reduced to the former order without the effusion of more blood They who contended for their just Rights were satisfied with the recovery of them whereas such as follow the impulse of an unruly Ambition never think themselves safe till they have destroyed all that seem able to disturb them and satiated their rage with the blood of their Adversaries This makes as well as shews the difference between the Tumults of Rome or the secession of the common People to Mount Aventine and the Battels of Towton Teuxbury Eveshal Lewes Hexham Barnet St. Albans and Bosworth 'T is in vain to say these ought rather to be compared to those of Pharsalia Actium or Philippi for when the Laws of a Commonwealth are abolish'd the name also ceases Whatever is done by force or fraud to set up the Interests and Lusts of one man in opposition to the Laws of his Country is purely and absolutely Monarchical Whatsoever passed between Marius Sylla Cinna Catiline Caesar Pompey Crassus Augustus Antonius and Lepidus is to be imputed to the Contests that arise between Competitors for Monarchy as well as those that in the next age happened between Galba Otho Vitellius and Vespasian Or which is worse whereas those in Commonwealths fight for themselves when there is occasion and if they succeed enjoy the fruits of their Victory so as even those who remain of the vanquished party partake of the Liberty thereby established or the good Laws thereupon made such as follow'd the Ensigns of these men who sought to set up themselves did rather like beasts than men hazard and suffer many unspeakable evils to purchase misery to themselves and their Posterity and to make him their Master who increasing in Pride Avarice and Cruelty was to be thrown down again with as much Blood as he had bin set up These things if I mistake not being in the last degree evident I may leave to our Author all the advantages he can gain by his rhetorical Description of the Tumults of Rome when Blood was in the Market-place suckt up with Sponges and the Jakes stuffed with Carcases to which he may add the crimes of Sylla's Life and the miseries of his Death but withal I desire to know what number of Sponges were sufficient to suck up the Blood of five hundred thousand men slain in one day when the Houses of David and Jeroboam contended for the Crown of Israel or of four hundred thousand who fell in one battel between Joash and Amaziah on the same occasion what Jakes were capacious enough to contain the Carcases of those that perished in the quarrels between the Successors of Alexander the several Competitors for the Roman Empire or those which have happened in France Spain England and other places upon the like occasions If Sylla for some time acted as an absolute Monarch 't is no wonder that he died like one or that God punished him as Herod Philip the second of Spain and some others because the hand of his fellow-Citizens had unjustly spar'd him If when he was become detestable to God
against them and placed the only hopes of their safety in the publick Calamity and lawful Kings when they have fallen into the first degree of madness so as to assume a power above that which was allowed by the Law have in fury proved equal to the worst Usurpers Clonymus of Sparta was of this sort He became says Plutarch an Enemy to the City because they would not allow him the absolute Power he affected and brought Pyrrhus the fiercest of their Enemies with a mighty and excellently well disciplin'd Army to destroy them Vortigern the Britan call'd in the Saxons with the ruin of his own People who were incensed against him for his Lewdness Cruelty and Baseness King John for the like reasons offer'd the Kingdom of England to the Moors and to the Pope Peter the Cruel and other Kings of Castille brought vast Armies of Moors into Spain to the ruin of their own People who detested their Vices and would not part with their Privileges Many other examples of the like nature might be alledged and I wish our own experience did not too well prove that such designs are common Let him that doubts this examin the Causes of the Wars with Scotland in the Years 1639 1640 the slaughters of the Protestants in Ireland 1641 the whole course of Alliances and Treaties for the space of fourscore Years the friendship contracted with the French frequent Quarrels with the Dutch together with other circumstances that are already made too publick if he be not convinced by this he may soon see a man in the Throne who had rather be a Tributary to France than a lawful King of England whilst either Parliament or People shall dare to dispute his Commands insist upon their own Rights or defend a Religion inconsistent with that which he has espoused and then the truth will be so evident as to require no proof Grotius was never accused of dealing hardly with Kings or laying too much weight upon imaginary cases nevertheless amongst other reasons that in his opinion justify Subjects in taking arms against their Princes he alledges this propter immanem saevitiam and quando Rex in Populi exitium fertur in as much as it is contrary to and inconsistent with the ends for which Governments are instituted which were most impertinent if no such thing could be for that which is not can have no effect There are therefore Princes who seek the destruction of their People or none could be justly opposed on that account If King James was of another opinion I could wish the course of his Government had bin suted to it When he said that whilst he had the power of making Judges and Bishops he would make that to be Law and Gospel which best pleased him and filled those places with such as turned both according to his Will and Interests I must think that by overthrowing Justice which is the rule of civil and moral Actions and perverting the Gospel which is the light of the spiritual man he left nothing unattempted that he durst attempt by which he might bring the most extensive and universal evils upon our Nation that any can suffer This would stand good tho Princes never erred unless they were transported with some inordinate Lusts for 't is hard to find one that dos not live in the perpetual power of them They are naturally subject to the impulse of such appetites as well as others and whatever evil reigns in their nature is fomented by education 'T is the handle by which their Flatterers lead them and he that discovers to what Vice a Prince is most inclin'd is sure to govern him by rendring himself subservient In this consists the chief art of a Courtier and by this means it comes to pass that such Lusts as in private men are curbed by fear do not only rage as in a wild Beast but are perpetually inflamed by the malice of their own Servants their hatred to the Laws of God or Men that might restrain them increases in proportion with their Vices or their fears of being punished for them And when they are come to this they can set no limits to their fury and there is no extravagance into which they do not frequently fall But many of them do not expect these violent motives the perversity of their own nature carries them to the extremities of evil They hate Virtue for its own sake and virtuous men for being most unlike to themselves This Virtue is the dictate of Reason or the remains of Divine Light by which men are made beneficent and beneficial to each other Religion proceeds from the same spring and tends to the same end and the good of Mankind so intirely depends upon these two that no people ever enjoyed any thing worth desiring that was not the product of them and whatsoever any have suffer'd that deserves to be abhorr'd and feared has proceeded either from the defect of these or the wrath of God against them If any Prince therefore has bin an enemy to Virtue and Religion he must also have bin an enemy to Mankind and most especially to the People under him Whatsoever he dos against those that excel in Virtue and Religion tends to the destruction of the People who subsist by them I will not take upon me to define who they are or to tell the number of those that do this but 't is certain there have bin such and I wish I could say they were few in number or that they had liv'd only in past ages Tacitus dos not fix this upon one Prince but upon all that he writes of and to give his Readers a tast of what he was to write he says that Nobility and Honours were dangerous but that Virtue brought most certain destruction and in another place that after the slaughter of many excellent men Nero resolved to cut down Virtue it self and therefore kill'd Thraseas Patus and Bareas Soranus And whosoever examines the Christian or Ecclesiastical Histories will find those Princes to have bin no less enemies to Virtue and Religion than their Predecessors and consequently enemies to the Nations under them unless Religion and Virtue be things prejudicial or indifferent to Mankind But our Author may say these were particular cases and so was the slaughter of the Prophets and Apostles the crucifixion of Christ and all the Villanies that have ever bin committed yet they proceeded from a universal principle of hatred to all that is good exerting it self as far as it could to the ruin of mankind And nothing but the over-ruling Power of God who resolved to preserve to himself a People could set bounds to their Rage which in other respects had as full success as our Author or the Devil could have wished Dionysius his other example of Justice deserves observation More falshood lewdness treachery ingratitude cruelty baseness avarice impudence and hatred to all manner of Good was hardly ever known in a mortal Creature For this reason
of France matters there are not much better managed The warlike temper of that people is so worn out by the frauds and cruelties of corrupt Officers that few men list themselves willingly to be Soldiers and when they are engaged or forced they are so little able to endure the miseries to which they are exposed that they daily run away from their Colours tho they know not whither to go and expect no mercy if they are taken The King has in vain attempted to correct this humour by the severity of martial Law but mens minds will not be forced and tho his Troops are perfectly well arm'd cloth'd and exercised they have given many testimonies of little worth When the Prince of Condé had by his own valour and the strength of the King's Guards broken the first line of the Prince of Orange's Army at the battel of Seneff and put the rest into disorder he could not make the second and third line of his own Army to advance and reinforce the first by which means he lost all the fair hopes he had conceived of an entire Victory Not long after the Marechal de Crequi was abandoned by his whole Army near Trier who ran away hardly striking a stroke and left him with sixteen horse to shift for himself When Monsieur de Turenne by the excellency of his Conduct and Valour had gain'd such a Reputation amongst the Soldiers that they thought themselves secure under him he did not suffer such disgraces but he being kill'd they return'd to the usual temper of forced and ill-used Soldiers half the Army was lost in a retreat little differing from a flight and the rest as they themselves confess saved by the bravery of two English Regiments The Prince of Condé was soon after sent to command but he could not with all his courage skill and reputation raise their fallen Spirits nor preserve his Army any other way than by lodging them in a Camp near Schlestadt so fortified by Art and Nature that it could not be forc'd To these we may add some Examples of our own In our late War the Scots Foot whether Friends or Enemies were much inferior to those of the Parliament and their Horse esteemed as nothing Yet in the year 1639 and 1640 the King's Army tho very numerous excellently armed and mounted and in appearance able to conquer many such Kingdoms as Scotland being under the conduct of Courtiers and affected as men usually are towards those that use them ill and seek to destroy them they could never resist a wretched Army commanded by Leven but were shamefully beaten at Newborn and left the Northern Counties to be ravaged by them When Van Tromp set upon Blake in Foleston-Bay the Parliament had not above thirteen Ships against threescore and not a man that had ever seen any other fight at Sea than between a Merchant ship and a Pirat to oppose the best Captain in the world attended with many others in valour and experience not much inferior to him Many other Difficulties were observ'd in the unsetled State Few Ships want of Mony several Factions and some who to advance particular Interests betray'd the Publick But such was the power of Wisdom and Integrity in those that sat at the Helm and their diligence in chusing men only for their Merit was blessed with such success that in two years our Fleets grew to be as famous as our Land Armies the Reputation and Power of our Nation rose to a greater height than when we possessed the better half of France and the Kings of France and Scotland were our Prisoners All the States Kings and Potentates of Europe most respectfully not to say submissively sought our Friendship and Rome was more afraid of Blake and his Fleet than they had bin of the great King of Sweden when he was ready to invade Italy with a hundred thousand men This was the work of those who if our Author say true thought basely of the publick Concernments and believing things might be well enough managed by others minded only their private Affairs These were the effects of the negligence and ignorance of those who being suddenly advanced to Offices were removed before they understood the Duties of them These Diseases which proceed from popular corruption and irregularity were certainly cured by the restitution of that Integrity good Order and Stability that accompany divine Monarchy The justice of the War made against Holland in the year 1665 the probity of the Gentleman who without partiality or bribery chose the most part of the Officers that carried it on the Wisdom Diligence and Valour manifested in the conduct and the Glory with which it was ended justifies all that our Author can say in its commendation If any doubt remains the subtilty of making the King of France desire that the Netherlands might be an accession to his Crown the ingenious ways taken by us to facilitate the conquest of them the Industry of our Ambassadors in diverting the Spaniards from entring into the War till it was too late to recover the Losses sustain'd the honourable Design upon the Smyrna Fleet and our frankness in taking the quarrel upon our selves together with the important Figure we now make in Europe may wholly remove it and in confirmation of our Author's Doctrine shew that Princes do better perform the Offices that require Wisdom Industry and Valour than annual Magistrates and do more seldom err in the choice of Officers than Senates and popular Assemblies SECT XXIX There is no assurance that the Distempers of a State shall be cured by the Wisdom of a Prince BVT says our Author the Virtue and Wisdom of a Prince supplies all Tho he were of a duller understanding by use and experience he must needs excel all Nature Age or Sex are as it seems nothing to the case A Child as soon as he comes to be a King has experience the head of a Fool is filled with Wisdom as soon as a Crown is set upon it and the most vicious do in a moment become virtuous This is more strange than that an Ass being train'd to a Course should outrun the best Arabian Horse or a Hare bred up in an Army become more strong and fierce than a Lion for Fortune dos not only supply all natural defects in Princes and correct their vices but gives them the benefit of use and experience when they have none Some Reasons and Examples might have bin expected to prove this extraordinary Proposition But according to his laudable custom he is pleased to trouble himself with neither and thinks that the impudence of an Assertion is sufficient to make that to pass which is repugnant to experience and common sense as may appear by the following discourse I will not insist upon terms for tho duller understanding signifies nothing in as much as no understanding is dull and a man is said to be dull only because he wants it but presuming he means little understanding I shall so
were in them Secondly Neither Plato nor Aristotle acknowledg either reason or justice in the power os a Monarch unless he has more of the Virtues conducing to the good of the Civil Society than all those who compose it and employ them for the publick advantage and not to his own pleasure and profit as being set up by those who seek their own good for no other reason than that he should procure it To this end a Law is set as a rule to him and the best men that is such as are most like to himself made to be his Assistants because say they Lex est mens sine affectu quasi Deus whereas the best of men have their affections and passions and are subject to be misled by them Which shews that as the Monarch is not sor himself nor by himself he dos not give but receive power nor admit others to the participation of it but is by them admitted to what he has Whereupon they conclude that to prefer the absolute power of a man as in those Governments which they call Barbarorum regna before the regular Government of Kings justly exercising a power instituted by Law and directed to the publick good is to chuse rather to be subject to the lust of a Beast than to be governed by a God And because such a choice can only be made by a Beast I leave our Author to find a description of himself in their Books which he so often cites But if Aristotle deserve credit the Princes who reign for themselves and not for the People preferring their own pleasure or profit before the publick become Tyrants which in his language is Enemies to God and Man On this account Boccalini introduces the Princes of Europe raising a mutiny against him in Parnassus for giving such definitions of Tyrants as they said comprehended them all and forcing the poor Philosopher to declare by a new definition that Tyrants were certain men of antient times whose race is now extinguished But with all his Wit and Learning he could not give a reason why those who do the same things that rendred the Antient Tyrants detestable should not be so also in our days In the third place The Scriptures declare the necessity of setting bounds to those who are placed in the highest dignities Moses seems to have had as great abilities as any man that ever lived in the world but he alone was not able to bear the weight of the Government and therefore God appointed Seventy chosen men to be his assistants This was a perpetual Law to Israel and as no King was to have more power than Moses or more abilities to perform the duties of his Office none could be exempted from the necessity of wanting the like helps Our Author therefore must confess that they are Kings who have them or that Kingly Government is contrary to the Scriptures When God by Moses gave liberty to his People to make a King he did it under these conditions He must be one of their Brethren They must chuse him he must not multiply Gold Silver Wives or Horses he must not lift up his Heart above his Brethren And Josephus paraphrasing upon the place says He shall do nothing without the advice of the Sanhedrin or if he do they shall oppose him This agrees with the confession of Zedekiah to the Princes which was the Sanhedrin The King can do nothing without you and seems to have bin in pursuance of the Law of the Kingdom which was written in a Book and laid up before the Lord and could not but agree with that of Mosis unless they spake by different Spirits or that the Spirit by which they did speak was subject to error or change and the whole series of God's Law shews that the Pride Magnificence Pomp and Glory usurped by their Kings was utterly contrary to the will of God They did lift up their hearts above their Brethren which was for bidden by the Law All the Kings of Israel and most of the Kings of Jadah utterly rejected it and every one of them did very much depart from the observation of it I will not deny that the People in their institution of a King intended they should do so they had done it themselves and would have a King that might uphold them in their disobedience they were addicted to the Idolatry of their accursed Neighbours and desired that Government by which it was maintained amongst them In doing this they did not reject Samuel but they rejected God that he should not reign over them They might perhaps believe that unless their King were such as the Law did not permit he would not perform what they intended or that the name of King did not belong to him unless he had a power that the Law denied But since God and his Prophets give the name of King to the chief Magistrate endow'd with a power that was restrain'd within very narrow limits whom they might without offence set up we also may safely give the same to those of the same nature whether it please Fihner or not 4. The practice of most Nations and I may truly say of all that deserve imitation has bin as directly contrary to the absolute power of one man as their Constitutions or if the original of many Governments lie hid in the impenetrable darkness of Antiquity their progress may serve to shew the intention of the Founders Aristotle seems to think that the first Monarchs having bin chosen for their Virtue were little restrain'd in the exercise of their Power but that they or their Children falling into Corruption and Pride grew odious and that Nations did on that account either abolish their Authority or create Senates and other Magistrates who having part of the Power might keep them in order The Spartan Kings were certainly of this nature and the Persian till they conquer'd Babylon Nay I may safely say that neither the Kings which the frantick people set up in opposition to the Law of God nor those of the bordering Nations whose example they chose to follow had that absolute power which our Author attributes to all Kings as inseparable from the name Achish the Philistin lov'd and admir'd David he look'd upon him as an Angel of God and promised that he should be the keeper of his head for ever but when the Princes suspected him and said he shall not go down with us to Battel he was obliged to dismiss him This was not the language of Slaves but of those who had a great part in the Government and the Kings submission to their will shows that he was more like to the Kings of Sparta than to an absolute Monarch who dos whatever pleases him I know not whether the Spartans were descended from the Hebrews as some think but their Kings were under a regulation much like that of the 17 of Deut. tho they had two Their Senate of twenty eight and the Ephori
has bin in force for so many Ages What the beginning of it was is not known But Charles the sixth receding from this Law and thinking to dispose of the Succession otherwise than was ordained by it was esteemed mad and all his Acts rescinded And tho the Reputation Strength and Valour of the English commanded by Henry the fifth one of the bravest Princes that have ever bin in the world was terrible to the French Nation yet they opposed him to the utmost of their power rather than suffer that Law to be broken And tho our Success under his Conduct was great and admirable yet soon aster his death with the expence of much Blood and Treasure we lost all that we had on that side and suffer'd the Penalty of having unadvisedly entred into that Quarrel By virtue of the same Law the Agreement made by King John when he was Prisoner at London by which he had alienated part of that Dominion as well as that of Francis the first concluded when he was under the same Circumstances at Madrid were reputed null and upon all occasions that Nation has given sufficient testimony that the Laws by which they live are their own made by themselves and not imposed upon them And 't is as impossible for them who made and deposed Kings exalted or depressed reigning Families and prescribed Rules to the Succession to have received from their own Creatures the Power or part of the Government they had as for a man to be begotten by his own Son Nay tho their Constitutions were much changed by Lewis the 11 th yet they retained so much of their antient Liberty that in the last Age when the House of Valois was as much depraved as those of Meroveus and Pepin had bin and Henry the third by his own Lewdness Hypocrisy Cruelty and Impurity together with the baseness of his Minions and Favorites had rendred himself odious and contemptible to the Nobility and People the great Cities Parliaments the greater and in political matters the sounder part of the Nation declared him to be fallen from the Crown and pursued him to the death tho the blow was given by the hand of a base and half-distracted Monk Henry of Bourbon was without controversy the next Heir but neither the Nobility nor the People who thought themselves in the Government would admit him to the Crown till he had given them satisfaction that he would govern according to their Laws by abjuring his Religion which they judged inconsistent with them The later Commotions in Paris Bourdeaux and other places together with the Wars for Religion shew that tho the French do not complain of every Grievance and cannot always agree in the defence and vindication of their violated Liberties yet they very well understand their Rights and that as they do not live by or for the King but he reigns by and for them so their Privileges are not from him but that his Crown is from them and that according to the true Rule of their Government he can do nothing against their Laws or if he do they may oppose him The Institution of a Kingdom is the act of a free Nation and whoever denies them to be free denies that there can be any thing of right in what they set up That which was true in the beginning is so and must be so for ever This is so far acknowledged by the highest Monarchs that in a Treatise published in the year 1667 by Authority of the present King of France to justify his pretensions to some part of the Low-Countries notwithstanding all the Acts of himself and the King of Spain to extinguish them it is said That Kings are under the happy inability to do any thing against the Laws of their Country And tho perhaps he may do things contrary to Law yet he grounds his Power upon the Law and the most able and most trusted of his Ministers declare the same About the year 1660 the Count D' Aubijoux a man of eminent quality in Languedoc but averse to the Court and hated by Cardinal Mazarin had bin tried by the Parliament of Tholouse for a Duel in which a Gentleman was kill'd and it appearing to the Court then in that City that he had bin acquitted upon forged Letters of Grace false Witnesses powerful Friends and other undue means Mazarin desired to bring him to a new Trial but the Chancellor Seguier told the Queen-Mother it could not be for the Law did not permit a man once acquitted to be again question'd for the same Fact and that if the course of the Law were interrupted neither the Salique Law nor the succession of her Children or any thing else could be secure in France This is farther proved by the Histories of that Nation The Kings of Meroveus and Pepin's Races were suffer'd to divide the Kingdom amongst their Sons or as Hottoman says the Estates made the Division and allotted to each such a part as they thought fit But when this way was found to be prejudicial to the Publick an Act of State was made in the time of Hugh Capet by which it was ordain'd that for the future the Kingdom should not be dismembred which Constitution continuing in force to this day the Sons or Brothers of their Kings receive such an Apannage they call it as is bestow'd on them remaining subject to the Crown as well as other men And there has been no King of France since that time except only Charles the sixth who has not acknowledged that he cannot alienate any part of their Dominion Whoever imputes the acknowledgment of this to Kingcraft and says that they who avow this when 't is for their advantage will deny it on a different occasion is of all men their most dangerous Enemy In laying such fraud to their charge he destroys the veneration by which they subsist and teaches Subjects not to keep Faith with those who by the most malicious deceits show that they are tied by none Human Societies are maintained by mutual Contracts which are of no value if they are not observ'd Laws are made and Magistrates created to cause them to be performed in publick and private matters and to punish those who violate them But none will ever be observed if he who receives the greatest benefit by them and is set up to oversee others give the example to those who of themselves are too much inclin'd to break them The first step that Pompey made to his own ruin was by violating the Laws he himself had proposed But it would be much worse for Kings to break those that are established by the Authority of a whole People and confirmed by the succession of many Ages I am far from laying any such blemishes on them or thinking that they deserve them I must believe the French King speaks sincerely when he says he can do nothing against the Laws of his Country And that our King James did the like when he
be a guide to Kings equally provide for the good of King and People Whereas they who admit of no participants in power and acknowledg no rule but their own Will set up an interest in themselves against that of their People lose their affections which is their most important Treasure and incur their hatred from whence results their greatest danger SECT XXXI The Liberties of Nations are from God and Nature not from Kings WHatsoever is usually said in opposition to this seems to proceed from a groundless conceit that the Liberties enjoy'd by Nations arise from the Concessions of Princes This point has bin already treated but being the foundation of the Doctrine I oppose it may not be amiss farther to examin how it can be possible for one man born under the same condition with the rest of Mankind to have a Right in himself that is not common to all others till it be by them or a certain number of them conferred upon him or how he can without the utmost absurdity be said to grant Liberties and Privileges to them who made him to be what he is If I had to do with a man that sought after Truth I should think he had bin led into this extravagant opinion by the terms ordinarily used in Patents and Charters granted to particular men and not distinguishing between the Proprietor and the Dispenser might think Kings had given as their own that which they only distribute out of the publick Treasury and could have had nothing to distribute by parcels if it had not bin given to them in gross by the Publick But I need not use our Author so gently The perversity of his judgment and obstinate hatred to Truth is sufficient to draw him into the most absurd errors without any other inducement and it were not charity but folly to think he could have attributed in general to all Princes without any regard to the ways by which they attain to their Power such an authority as never justly belonged to any This will be evident to all those who consider that no man can confer upon others that which he has not in himself If he be originally no more than they he cannot grant to them or any of them more than they to him In the 7th 8th 9th and subsequent Sections of the first Chapter it has bin proved that there is no resemblance between the paternal Right and the absolute Power which he asserts in Kings that the right of a Father whatever it be is only over his Children that this right is equally inherited by them all when he dies that every one cannot inherit Dominion for the right of one would be inconsistent with that of all others that the right which is common to all is that which we call Liberty or exemption from Dominion that the first Fathers of Mankind after the Flood had not the exercise of Regal Power and whatsoever they had was equally devolved to every one of their Sons as appears by the examples of Noah Shem Abraham Isaac Jacob and their Children that the erection of Nimrod's Kingdom was directly contrary to and inconsistent with the paternal right if there was any regality in it that the other Kingdoms of that time were of the same nature that Nimrod not exceeding the age of threescore years when he built Babel could not be the Father of those that assisted him in that attempt that if the seventy two Kings who as our Author says went from Babylon upon the confusion of Languages were not the Sons of Nimrod he could not govern them by the right of a Father if they were they must have bin very young and could not have Children of their own to people the Kingdoms they set up that whose Children soever they were who out of a part of Mankind did within a hundred and thirty two years after the Flood divide into so many Kingdoms they shewed that others in process of time might subdivide into as many as they pleased and Kingdoms multiplying in the space of four thousand years since the 72 in the same proportion they did in one hundred and thirty two years into seventy two there would now be as many Kings in the World as there are men that is no man could be subject to another that this equality of Right and exemption from the domination of any other is called Liberty that he who enjoys it cannot be deprived of it unless by his own consent or by force that no one man can force a Multitude or if he did it could confer no right upon him that a multitude consenting to be governed by one man doth confer upon him the power of governing them the powers therefore that he has are from them and they who have all in themselves can receive nothing from him who has no more than every one of them till they do invest him with it This is proved by sacred and prophane Histories The Hebrews in the creation of Judges Kings or other Magistrates had no regard to Paternity or to any who by extraction could in the least pretend to the right of Fathers God did never direct them to do it nor reprove them for neglecting it If they would chuse a King he commanded them to take one of their Brethren not one who called himself their Father When they did resolve to have one he commanded them to chuse him by lot and caused the Lot to fall upon a young man of the youngest Tribe David and the other Kings of Israel or Judah had no more to say for themselves in that point than Saul All the Kings of that Nation before and after the Captivity ordinarily or extraordinarily set up justly or unjustly were raised without any regard to any prerogative they could claim or arrogate to themselves on that account All that they had therefore was from their elevation and their elevation from those that elevated them 'T was impossible for them to confer any thing upon those from whom they received all they had or for the People to give power to Kings if they had not had it in themselves which Power universally residing in every one is that which we call Liberty The method of other Nations was much like to this They placed those in the Throne who seemed best to deserve so great an honour and most able to bear so great a burden The Kingdoms of the Heroes were nothing else but the Government of those who were most beneficent to the Nations amongst whom they lived and whose Virtues were thought fit to be raised above the ordinary level of the World Tho perhaps there was not any one Athenian or Roman equal to Theseus or Romulus in courage and strength yet they were not able to subdue many or if any man should be so vain to think that each of them did at first subdue one man then two and so proceeding by degrees conquered a whole People he cannot without madness ascribe the same to Numa who being sent for
from a foreign Country was immediately made King of a fierce People that had already conquer'd many of their Neighbours and was grown too boisterous even for Romulus himself The like may be said of the first Tarquin and of Servius they were Strangers and tho Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Martius were Romans they had as little title to a Dominion over their Fellow-Citizens or means of attaining to it as if they had come from the farthest parts of the Earth This must be in all places unless one man could prove by a perfect and uninterrupted Genealogy that he is the eldest Son of the eldest Line of Noah and that Line to have continued perpetually in the Government of the World for if the Power has bin divided it may be subdivided into infinity if interrupted the chain is broken and can never be made whole But if our Author can perform this for the service of any man I willingly surrender my Arms and yield up the Cause I defend If he fail 't is ridiculous to pretend a Right that belongs to no man or to go about to retrieve a Right which for the space of four thousand years has lain dorment and much more to create that which never had a subsistence This leads us necessarily to a conclusion That all Kingdoms are at the first erected by the consent of Nations and given to whom they please or else all are set up by force or some by force and some by consent If any are set up by the consent of Nations those Kings do not confer Liberties upon those Nations but receive all from them and the general Proposition is false If our Author therefore or his Followers would confute me they must prove that all the Kingdoms of the World have their beginning from force and that Force doth always create a Right or if they recede from the general Proposition and attribute a peculiar right to one or more Princes vvho are so absolute Lords of their People that those under them have neither Liberty Privilege Property or Part in the Government but by their Concessions they must prove that those Princes did by force gain the Power they have and that their Right is derived from it This force also must have bin perpetually continued for if that force be the root of the Right that is pretended another force by the same rule may overturn extinguish or transfer it to another hand If Contracts have interven'd the force ceases and the Right that afterwards doth accrue to the persons must proceed from and be regulated according to those Contracts This may be sufficient to my purpose For as it has bin already proved that the Kingdoms of Israel Judah Rome Sparta France Spain England and all that we are concerned in or that deserve to be examples to us did arise from the Consent of the respective Nations and were frequently reduced to their first Principles when the Princes have endeavour'd to transgress the Laws of their Institution it could be nothing to us tho Attila or Tamerlan had by force gained the Dominions they possess'd But I dare go a step further and boldly assert that there never was or can be a man in the world that did or can subdue a Nation and that the right of one grounded upon force is a meer whimsey It was not Agathocles Dionysius Nabis Marius Sylla or Cesar but the mercenary Soldiers and other Villains that joined with them who subdued the Syracusans Spartans or Romans And as the work was not performed by those Tyrants alone if a right had bin gained by the violence they used it must have bin common to all those that gained it and he that commanded them could have had no more than they thought fit to confer upon him When Miltiades desired leave to wear an Olive Garland in commemoration of the Victory obtained at Marathon and Athenian did in my opinion rightly say If you alone did fight against the Persians it is just that you only should be crowned but if others did participate in the Victory they ought also to have a part in the Honour And the principal difference that I have observ'd between the most regular proceedings of the wisest Senats or Assemblies of the people in their Persons or Delegates and the fury of the most dissolute Villains has bin that the first seeking the publick good do usually set up such a Man and invest him with such Powers as seem most conducing to that Good whereas the others following the impulse of a bestial rage and aiming at nothing but the satisfaction of their own lusts always advance one from whom they expect the greatest advantages to themselves and give him such Powers as most conduce to the accomplishment of their own ends but as to the Person 't is the same thing Cesar and Nero did no more make themselves what they were than Numa and could no more confer any Right Liberty or Privilege upon the Army that gave them all they had than the most regular Magistrate can upon the Senat or People that chose them This also is common to the worst as well as the best that they who set up either do as into a publick Treasury confer upon the Person they chuse a Power of distributing to particular men or numbers of men such Honors Privileges and Advantages as they may seem according to the Principles of the Government to deserve But there is this difference that the ends of the one being good and those of the other evil the first do for the most part limit the Powers that something may remain to reward Services done to the Publick in a manner proportion'd to the merit of every one placing other Magistrates to see it really performed so as they may not by the weakness or vices of the Governor be turned to the publick detriment the others think they never give enough that the Prince having all in his power may be able to gratify their most exorbitant desires if by any ways they can get his favour and his infirmities and vices being most beneficial to them they seldom allow to any other Magistrate a power of opposing his Will or suffer those who for the publick good would assume it The World affords many examples of both sorts and every one of them have had their progress sutable to their Constitution The regular Kingdoms of England France Spain Poland Bohemia Denmark Sweden and others whether elective or hereditary have had High Stewards Constables Mayors of the Palace Rixhofmeisters Parliaments Diets Assemblies of Estates Cortez and the like by which those have bin admitted to succeed who seemed most fit for the publick Service the unworthy have bin rejected the infirmities of the weak supplied the malice of the unjust restrained and when necessity required the Crown transferr'd from one Line or Family to another But in the furious Tyrannies that have bin set up by the violence of a corrupted Soldiery as in the antient Roman Empire the
not the least similitude of either And tho it were true that Fathers are held by no contracts which generally 't is not for when the Son is of age and dos something for the Father to which he is not obliged or gives him that which he is not bound to give suppose an Inheritance received from a Friend goods of his own acquisition or that he be emancipated all good Laws look upon those things as a valuable consideration and give the same force to contracts thereupon made as to those that pass between strangers it could have no relation to our question concerning Kings One principal reason that renders it very little necessary by the Laws of Nations to restrain the power of Parents over their Children is because 't is presumed they cannot abuse it they are thought to have a Law in their Bowels obliging them more strictly to seek their good than all those that can be laid upon them by another Power and yet if they depart from it so as inhumanly to abuse or kill their Children they are punished with as much rigour and accounted more unpardonable than other men Ignorance or wilful malice perswading our Author to pass over all this he boldly affirms That the Father of a family governs it by no other Law than his own Will and from thence infers that the condition of Kings is the same He would seem to soften the harshness of this Proposition by saying That a King is always tied by the same Law of Nature to keep this general ground that the safety of the Kingdom is his chief Law But he spoils it in the next page by asserting That it is not right for Kings to do injury but it is right that they go unpunished by the People if they do so that in this point it is all one whether Samuel describe a King or a Tyrant for patient obedience is due unto both no remedy in the Text against Tyrants but crying and praying unto God in that day In this our Author according to the custom of Theaters runs round in a Circle pretends to grant that which is true and then by a lie endeavours to destroy all again Kings by the Law of Nature are obliged to seek chiefly the good of the Kingdom but there is no remedy if they do it not which is no less than to put all upon the Conscience of those who manifestly have none But if God has appointed that all other transgressions of the Laws of Nature by which a private man receives damage should be punished in this world notwithstanding the right reserved to himself of a future punishment I desire to know why this alone by which whole Nations may be and often are destroy'd should escape the hands of Justice If he presume no Law to be necessary in this case because it cannot be thought that Kings will transgress as there was no Law in Sparta against Adultery because it was not thought possible for men educated under that discipline to be guilty of such a Crime and as divers Nations left a liberty to Fathers to dispose of their Children as they thought fit because it could not be imagined that any one would abuse that power he ought to remember that the Spartans were mistaken and for want of that Law which they esteemed useless Adulteries became as common there as in any part of the world and the other error being almost every where discovered the Laws of all civilized Nations make it capital for a man to kill his Children and give redress to Children if they suffer any other extreme injuries from their Parents as well as other persons But tho this were not so it would be nothing to our question unless it could be supposed that whoever gets the power of a Nation into his hands must be immediately filled with the same tenderness of affection to the People under him as a Father naturally has towards the Children he hath begotten He that is of this opinion may examine the lives of Herod Tiberius Caligula and some later Princes of like inclinations and conclude it to be true if he find that the whole course of their actions in relation to the People under them do well sute with the tender and sacred name of Father and altogether false if he find the contrary But as every man that considers what has bin or sees what is every day done in the world must confess that Princes or those who govern them do most frequently so utterly reject all thoughts of tenderness and piety towards the Nations under them as rather to seek what can be drawn from them than what should be done for them and sometimes become their most bitter and publick enemies 't is ridiculous to make the safety of Nations to depend upon a supposition which by daily experience we find to be false and impious to prefer the lusts of a man who violates the most sacred Laws of Nature by destroying those he is obliged to preserve before the welfare of that People for whose good he is made to be what he is if there be any thing of justice in the power he exercises Our Author foolishly thinks to cover the enormity of this nonsense by turning Salutem Populi into Salutem Regni for tho Regnum may be taken for the power of commanding in which sense the preservation of it is the usual object of the care of Princes yet it dos more rightly signify the body of that Nation which is governed by a King And therefore if the Maxim be true as he acknowledges it to be then Salus Populi est lex Suprema and the first thing we are to inquire is whether the Government of this or that man do conduce to the accomplishment of that supreme Law or not for otherwise it ought to have bin said Salus Regis est lex suprema which certainly never entred into the head of a wiser or better man than Filmer His reasons are as good as his Doctrin No Law says he can be imposed on Kings because there were Kings before any Laws were made This would not follow tho the Proposition were true for they who imposed no Laws upon the Kings they at first made from an opinion of their Virtue as in those called by the antients Heroum regna might lay restrictions upon them when they were found not to answer the expectation conceived of them or that their Successors degenerated from their Virtue Other Nations also being instructed by the ill effects of an unlimited Power given to some Kings if there was any such might wisely avoid the Rock upon which their Neighbours had split and justly moderate that Power which had bin pernicious to others However a Proposition of so great importance ought to be proved but that being hard and perhaps impossible because the original of Nations is almost wholly unknown to us and their practice seems to have bin so various that what is true in one is not so in another he is
turning his lawful Power into Tyranny disobeying the word of the Prophet slaying the Priests sparing the Amalekites and oppressing the Innocent overthrew his own Right and God declared the Kingdom which had bin given him under a conditional promise of perpetuity to be intirely abrogated This did not only give a right to the whole people of opposing him but to every particular man and upon this account David did not only fly from his fury but resisted it He made himself head of all the discontented persons that would follow him he had at first four and afterwards six hundred men he kept these in Arms against Saul and lived upon the Country and resolved to destroy Nabal with all his House only for refusing to send Provisions for his men Finding himself weak and unsafe he went to Achish the Philistin and offer'd his service even against Israel This was never reputed a sin in David or in those that follow'd him by any except the wicked Court-flatterer Doeg the Edomite and the drunken fool Nabal who is said to have bin a man of Belial If it be objected That this was rather a Flight than a War in as much as he neither killed Saul nor his men or that he made war as a King anointed by Samuel I answer that he who had six hundred men and entertain'd as many as came to him sufficiently shewed his intention rather to resist than to fly And no other reason can be given why he did not farther pursue that intention than that he had no greater power and he who arms six hundred men against his Prince when he can have no more can no more be said to obey patiently than if he had so many hundreds of thousands This holds tho he kill no man for that is not the War but the manner of making it and 't were as absurd to say David made no War because he killed no men as that Charles the eighth made no War in Italy because Guicciardin says he conquer'd Naples without breaking a Lance. But as David's strength increased he grew to be less sparing of Blood Those who say Kings never die but that the right is immediatly transfer'd to the next Heirs cannot deny that Ishbosheth inherited the right of Saul and that David had no other right of making war against him than against Saul unless it were conferred upon him by the Tribe of Judah that made him King If this be true it must be confessed that not only a whole People but a part of them may at their own pleasure abrogate a Kingdom tho never so well established by common consent for none was ever more solemnly instituted than that of Saul and few Subjects have more strongly obliged themselves to be obedient If it be not true the example of Nabal is to be follow'd and David tho guided by the Spirit of God deserves to be condemned as a fellow that rose up against his Master If to elude this it be said That God instituted and abrogated Saul's Kingdom and that David to whom the right was transmitted might therefore proceed against him and his Heirs as privat men I answer that if the obedience due to Saul proceeded from God's Institution it can extend to none but those who are so peculiarly instituted and anointed by his Command and the hand of his Prophet which will be of little advantage to the Kings that can give no testimony of such an Institution or Unction and an indisputable right will remain to every Nation of abrogating the Kingdoms which are instituted by and for themselves But as David did resist the Authority of Saul and Ishbosbeth without assuming the Power of a King tho designed by God and anointed by the Prophet till he was made King of Judah by that Tribe or arrogating to himself a Power over the other Tribes till he was made King by them and had enter'd into a Covenant with them 't is much more certain that the Persons and Authority of ill Kings who have no title to the Privileges due to Saul by virtue of his institution may be justly resisted which is as much as is necessary to my purpose Object But David's Heart smote him when he had cut off the skirt of Saul's Garment and he would not suffer Abishai to kill him This might be of some force if it were pretended that every man was obliged to kill an ill King whensoever he could do it which I think no man ever did say and no man having ever affirmed it no more can be concluded than is confessed by all But how is it possible that a man of a generous Spirit like to David could see a great and valiant King chosen from amongst all the Tribes of Israel anointed by the command of God and the hand of the Prophet famous for victories obtained against the enemies of Israel and a wonderful deliverance thereby purchased to that People cast at his feet to receive Life or Death from the hand of one whom he had so furiously persecuted and from whom he least deserved and could least expect mercy without extraordinary commotion of mind most especially when Abishai who saw all that he did and thereby ought best to have known his thoughts expressed so great a readiness to kill him This could not but make him reflect upon the instability of all that seemed to be most glorious in men and shew him that if Saul who had bin named even among the Prophets and assisted in an extraordinary manner to accomplish such great things was so abandoned and given over to fury misery and shame he that seemed to be most firmly established ought to take care lest he should fall Surely these things are neither to be thought strange in relation to Saul who was God's Anointed nor communicable to such as are not Some may suppose he was King by virtue of God's unction tho if that were true he had never bin chosen and made King by the People but it were madness to think he became God's Anointed by being King for if that were so the same Right and Title would belong to every King even to those who by his command were accursed and destroyed by his Servants Moses Joshua and Samuel The same men at the same time and in the same sense would be both his anointed and accursed loved and detested by him and the most sacred Privileges made to extend to the worst of his enemies Again the War made by David was not upon the account of being King as anointed by Samuel but upon the common natural right of defending himself against the violence and fury of a wicked man he trusted to the promise that he should be King but knew that as yet he was not so and when Saul found he had spared his Life he said I now know well that thou shalt surely be King and that the Kingdom of Israel shall surely be established in thy hand not that it was already Nay David himself was so far from
no Power but what is given by the Laws If this be not the case I desire to know who made the Laws to which they and their Predecessors have sworn and whether they can according to their own will abrogate those antient Laws by which they are made to be what they are and by which we enjoy what we have or whether they can make new Laws by their own Power If no man but our Author have impudence enough to assert any such thing and if all the Kings we ever had except Richard the second did renounce it we may conclude that Austin's words have no relation to our dispute and that 't were to no purpose to examine whether the Fathers mention any reservation of Power to the Laws of the Land or to the People it being as lawful for all Nations if they think fit to frame Governments different from those that were then in being as to build Bastions Halfmoons Hornworks Ravelins or Counterscarps or to make use of Muskets Cannon Mortars Carabines or Pistols which were unknown to them What Solomon says of the Hebrew Kings dos as little concern us We have already proved their Power not to have bin absolute tho greater than that which the Law allows to ours It might upon occasion be a prudent advice to private persons living under such Governments as were usual in the Eastern Countries to keep the King's Commandments and not to say What dost thou because where the Word of a King is there is Power and all that he pleaseth he will do But all these words are not his and those that are must not be taken in a general sense for tho his Son was a King yet in his words there was no power He could not do what he pleased nor hinder others from doing what they pleased He would have added weight to the Yoak that lay upon the necks of the Israelites but he could not and we do not find him to have bin master of much more than his own Tongue to speak as many foolish things as he pleased In other things whether he had to deal with his own people or with strangers he was weak and impotent and the wretches who flatter'd him in his follies could be of no help to him The like has befallen many others Those who are wise virtuous valiant just and lovers of their People have and ought to have Power but such as are lewd vicious foolish and haters of their People ought to have none and are often deprived of all This was well known to Solomon who says That a wise Child is better than an old and foolish King that will not be advised When Nabuchodonosor set himself in the place of God his Kingdom was taken from him and he was driven from the society of men to herd with beasts There was Power for a time in the word of Nero he murdered many excellent men but he was call'd to account and the World abandon'd the Monster it had too long endur'd He found none to defend him nor any better help when he desir'd to die than the hand of a Slave Besides this some Kings by their Institution have little Power some have bin deprived of what they had for abusing or rendring themselves unworthy of it and Histories afford us innumerable examples of both sorts But tho I should confess that there is always Power in the word of a King it would be nothing to us who dispute concerning Right and have no regard to that Power which is void of it A Thief or a Pyrat may have Power but that avails him not when as often befel the Cesars he meets with one who has more and is always unsafe since having no effect upon the Consciences of men every one may destroy him that can And I leave it to Kings to consider how much they stand obliged to those who placing their Rights upon the same foot expose their Persons to the same dangers But if Kings desire that in their Word there should be power let them take care that it be always accompanied with Truth and Justice Let them seek the good of their People and the hands of all good men will be with them Let them not exalt themselves insolently and every one will desire to exalt them Let them acknowledg themselves to be the Servants of the Publick and all men will be theirs Let such as are most addicted to them talk no more of Cesars nor the Tributes due to them We have nothing to do with the name of Cesar. They who at this day live under it reject the Prerogatives antiently usurped by those that had it and are govern'd by no other Laws than their own We know no Law to which we owe obedience but that of God and our selves Asiatick Slaves usually pay such Tributes as are imposed upon them and whilst braver Nations lay under the Roman Tyranny they were forced to submit to the same burdens But even those Tributes were paid for maintaining Armies Fleets and Garisons without which the poor and abject life they led could not have bin preserved We owe none but what we freely give None is or can be imposed upon us unless by our selves We measure our Grants according to our own Will or the present occasions for our own safety Our Ancestors were born free and as the best provision they could make for us they left us that Liberty intire with the best Laws they could devise to defend it 'T is no way impair'd by the Opinions of the Fathers The words of Solomon do rather confirm it The happiness of those who enjoy the like and the shameful misery they lie under who have suffer'd themselves to be forced or cheated out of it may perswade and the justice of the Cause encourage us to think nothing too dear to be hazarded in the defence of it SECT IX Our own Laws confirm to us the enjoyment of our native Rights IF that which our Author calls Divinity did reach the things in dispute between us or that the Opinions of the Fathers which he alledges related to them he might have spared the pains of examining our Laws for a municipal Sanction were of little force to confirm a perpetual and universal Law given by God to mankind and of no value against it since man cannot abrogate what God hath instituted nor one Nation free it self from a Law that is given to all But having abused the Scriptures and the Writings of the Fathers whose Opinions are to be valued only so far as they rightly interpret them he seems desirous to try whether he can as well put a false sense upon our Law and has fully compassed his design Aocording to his custom he takes pieces of passages from good Books and turns them directly against the plain meaning of the Authors expressed in the whole scope and design of their Writings To show that he intends to spare none he is not ashamed to cite Bracton who of all our antient Law-writers is
resolved upon by another Power The Jewish Doctors generally agree that the Kings of Judah could make no Law because there was a curse denounced against those who should add to or detract from that which God had given by the hand of Moses that they might sit in Judgment with the High Priest and Sanhedrin but could not judg by themselves unless the Sanhedrin did plainly fail of performing their duty Upon this account Maimonides excuses David for commanding Solomon not to suffer the grey hairs of Joab to go down to the grave in peace and Solomon for appointing him to be kill'd at the soot of the Altar for he having killed Abner and Amasa and by those actions shed the blood of war in time of peace the Sanhedrin should have punished him but being protected by favour or power and even David himself fearing him Solomon was put in mind of his duty which he performed tho Joab laid hold upon the horns of the Altar which by the express words of the Law gave no protection to wilful Murderers The use of the military Sword amongst them was also moderated Their Kings might make War upon the seven accursed Nations that they were commanded to destroy and so might any other man for no peace was to be made with them but not against any other Nation without the assent of the Sanhedrin And when Amaziah contrary to that Law had foolishly made war upon Joash King of Israel and thereby brought a great slaughter upon Judah the Princes that is the Sanhedrin combined against him pursued him to Lachish and killed him there The Legislative Power of Sparta was evidently in the People The Laws that go under the name of Lycurgus were proposed by him to the general Assembly of the People and from them received their Authority But the discipline they contained was of such efficacy for framing the minds of men to virtue and by banishing Silver and Gold they so far banished all manner of Crimes that from the institution of those Laws to the times of their Corruption which was more than eight hundred years we hardly find that three men were put to death of whom two were Kings so that it seems difficult to determine where the power of judging did reside tho 't is most probable considering the nature of their Government that it was in the Senate and in Cases extraordinary in the Ephori with a right of appealing to the People Their Kings therefore could have little to do with the Sword of Justice neither the Legislative nor the Judicial Power being any ways in them The military Sword was not much more in their Power unless the excellency of their Virtues gave them the credit of perswading when the Law denied the right of commanding They were obliged to make war against those and those only who were declared Enemies by the Senate and Ephori and in the manner place and time they directed so that Agesilaus tho carrying on a glorious War in Persia no sooner received the Parchment Roll wherein he was commanded by the Ephori to come home for the defence of his own Country than he immediately returned and is on that account called by no less a man than Xenophon a good and faithful King rendring obedience to the Laws of his Country By this it appears that there are Kings who may be feared by those that do ill and not by such as do well for having no more power than what the Law gives and being obliged to execute it as the Law directs they cannot depart from the Precept of the Apostle My own actions therefore or the sense of my own guilt arising from them is to be the measure of my fear of that Magistrate who is the Minister of God and not his Power The like may be said of almost all the Nations of the world that have had any thing of Civil Order amongst them The supreme Magistrate under what name soever he was known whether King Emperor Asymnetes Suffetes Consul Dictator or Archon has usually a part assigned to him in the administration of Justice and making War but that he may know it to be assigned and not inherent and so assigned as to be employ'd for the publick good not to his own profit or pleasure it is circumscribed by such rules as he cannot safely transgress This is above all seen in the German Nations from whom we draw our Original and Government and is so well described by Tacitus in his treatise of their Customs and Manners that I shall content my self to refer to it and to what I have cited from him in the former part of this Work The Saxons coming into our Country retain'd to themselves the same rights They had no Kings but such as were set up by themselves and they abrogated their Power when they pleased Off a acknowledged that he was chosen for the fence of their Liberty not from his own merit but by their favour and in the Conventus Pananglicus at which all the chief men as well Secular as Ecclesiastical were present it was decreed by the King Archbishops Bishops Abbots Dukes and Senators that the Kings should be chosen by the Priests and by the Elders of the People In pursuance of which Egbert who had no right to the succession was made King Ethelwerd was chosen in the same manner by the consent of all Ethelwolf a Monk for want of a better was advanced to the same Honor. His Son Alfred tho crowned by the Pope and marrying without the consent of the Nobility and Kingdom against their Customs and Statutes acknowledged that he had received the Crown from the bounty of the Princes Elders and People and in his Will declared that he left the People as he had found them free as the inward thoughts of Man His Son Edward was elected to be his Successor Ethelstan tho a Bastard and without all Title was elected by the consent of the Nobility and People Eadred by the same Authority was elected and preferred before the Sons of Edmond his Predecessor Edwin tho rightly chosen was deposed for his ill life and Edgar elected King by the will of God and consent of the People But he also was deprived of the Crown for the Rape of a Nun and after seven years restored by the whole People coram omni multitudine populi Anglorum Ethelred who is said to have bin cruel in the beginning wretched in the course and infamous in the end of his Reign was deposed by the same power that had advanced him Canutus made a Contract with the Princes and the whole People and thereupon was by general consent crown'd King over all England After him Harold was chosen in the usual manner He being dead a Message was sent to Hardi Canute with an offer of the Crown which he accepted and accordingly was received Edward the Consessor was elected King with the consent of the Clergy
and People at London and Harold excused himself for not performing his Oath to William the Norman because he said he had made it unduly and presumptuously without consulting the Nobility and People and without their Authority William was received with great joy by the Clergy and People and saluted King by all swearing to observe the antient good and approved Laws of England and tho he did but ill perform his Oath yet before his death he seemed to repent of the ways he had taken and only wishing his Son might be King of England he confessed in his last Will made at Caen in Normandy that he neither found nor left the Kingdom as an Inheritance If he possessed no right except what was conferred upon him no more was conserred than had bin enjoy'd by the antient Kings according to the approved Laws which he swore to observe Those Laws gave no power to any till he was elected and that which they did then give was so limited that the Nobility and People reserved to themselves the disposition of the greatest Affairs even to the deposition and expulsion of such as should not well perform the duty of their Oaths and Office And I leave it to our Author to prove how they can be said to have had the Sword and the Power so as to be feared otherwise than as the Apostle says by those that do evil which we acknowledg to be not only in the King but in the lowest Officer of Justice in the world If it be pretended that our later Kings are more to be seared than William the Norman or his Predecessors it must not be as has bin proved either from the general right of Kings or from the Doctrine of the Apostle but from something else that is peculiar and subsequent which I leave our Author's Disciples to prove and an answer may be found in due time But to show that our Ancestors did not mistake the words of the Apostle 't is good to consider when to whom and upon what occasion he spoke The Christian Religion was then in its infancy his discourses were addressed to the Professors of it who tho they soon grew to be considerable in number were for the most part of the meanest sort of People Servants or Inhabitants of the Cities rather than Citizens and Freemen joined in no civil Body or Society nor such as had or could have any part in the Government The occasion was to suppress the dangerous mistake of many converted Jews and others who knowing themselves to be freed from the power of Sin and the Devil presumed they were also freed from the obligation of human Laws And if this Error had not bin crop'd in the bud it would have given occasion to their Enemies who desired nothing more to destroy them all and who knowing that such Notions were stirring among them would have bin glad that they who were not easily to be discovered had by that means discovered themselves This induced a necessity of diverting a poor mean scatter'd People from such thoughts concerning the State to convince them of the Error into which they were fallen that Christians did not owe the same obedience to Civil Laws and Magistrates as other men and to keep them from drawing destruction upon themselves by such ways as not being warranted by God had no promise of his Protection St. Paul's work was to preserve the Professors of Christianity as appears by his own words I exhort that first of all Supplications Prayers Intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men for Kings and for all that are in Authority that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty Put them in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers to obey Magistrates to be ready for every good work St. Peter agrees with him fully in describing the Magistrate and his Duty shewing the reasons why obedience should be pay'd to him and teaching Christians to be humble and contented with their condition as free yet not using their Liberty for a cover to malice and not only to fear God and honor the King of which conjunction of words such as Filmer are very proud but to honor all men as is said in the same verse This was in a peculiar manner the work of that time in which those who were to preach and propagate the Gospel were not to be diverted from that Duty by entangling themselves in the care of State-affairs but it dos in some sense agree with all times for it can never be the duty of a good man to oppose such a Magistrate as is the Minister of God in the exercise of his Office nor to deny to any man that which is his due But as the Christian Law exempts no man from the Duty he ows to his Father Master or the Magistrate it dos not make him more a Slave than he was before nor deprive him of any natural or civil Right and if we are obliged to pay Tribute Honor or any other thing where it is not due it must be by some Precept very different from that which commands us to give to Cesar that which is Cesar's If he define the Magistrate to be the Minister of God doing Justice and from thence draws the Reasons he gives for rendring Obedience to him we are to inquire whose Minister he is who overthrows it and look for some other reason sor rendring obedience to him than the words of the Apostles If David who was willing to lay down his life sor the people who hated iniquity and would not suffer a liar to come into his presence was the Minister of God I desire to know whose Minister Caligula was who set up himself to be worshipped for a God and would at once have destroyed all the people that he ought to have protected Whose Minister was Nero who besides the abominable impurities of his lise and hatred to all virtue as contrary to his Person and Government set fire to the great City If it be true that contrariorum contraria est ratio these questions are easily decided and if the reasons of things are eternal the same distinction grounded upon truth will be good for ever Every Magistrate and every man by his works will for ever declare whose Minister he is in what spirit he lives and consequently what obedience is due to him according to the Precept of the Apostle If any man ask what I mean by Justice I answer That the Law of the Land as far as it is Sanctio recta jubens honesta prohibens contraria declares what it is But there have bin and are Laws that are neither just nor commendable There was a Law in Rome that no God should be worshipped vvithout the consent of the Senat Upon vvhich Tertullian says scoffingly That God shall not be God unless he please Man and by virtue of this Law the first Christians were exposed to all manner of cruelties and some
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
continue in any If the Power be not conferred upon them they have it not and if they have it not their want of leisure to do Justice cannot have bin the cause for which Laws are made and they cannot be the signification of their Will but are that to which the Prince ows Obedience as well as the meanest Subject This is that which Bracton calls esse sub lege and says that Rex in regno superiores habet Deum Legem Fortescue says The Kings of England cannot change the Laws and indeed they are so far from having any such Power that the Judges swear to have no regard to the King's Letters or Commands but if they receive any to proceed according to Law as if they had not bin And the breach of this Oath dos not only bring a blemish upon their Reputation but exposes them to capital Punishments as many of them have found 'T is not therefore the King that makes the Law but the Law that makes the King It gives the rule for Succession making Kingdoms sometimes Hereditary and sometimes Elective and more often than either simply Hereditary under condition In some places Males only are capable of inheriting in others Females are admitted Where the Monarchy is regular as in Germany England c. the Kings can neither make nor change Laws They are under the Law and the Law is not under them their Letters or Commands are not to be regarded In the administration of Justice the question is not what pleases them but what the Law declares to be right which must have its course whether the King be busy or at leisure whether he will or not The King who never dies is always present in the supreme Courts and neither knows nor regards the pleasure of the man that wears the Crown But lest he by his Riches and Power might have some influence upon judicial Proceedings the great Charter that recapitulates and acknowledges our antient inherent Liberties obliges him to swear that he will neither sell delay nor deny Justice to any man according to the Laws of the Land which were ridiculous and absurd if those Laws were only the signification of his Pleasure or any way depended upon his Will This Charter having bin confirmed by more than thirty Parliaments all succeeding Kings are under the obligation of the same Oath or must renounce the benefit they receive from our Laws which if they do they will be found to be equal to every one of us Our Author according to his custom having laid down a false proposition gos about to justify it by false examples as those of Draco Solon the Decemviri and Moses of whom no one had the Power he attributes to them and it were nothing to us if they had The Athenians and Romans as was said before were so far from resigning the absolute Power without appeal to themselves that nothing done by their Magistrates was of any force till it was enacted by the People And the power given to the Decemviri sine provocatione was only in private cases there being no superior Magistrate then in being to whom Appeals could be made They were vested with the same Power the Kings and Dictators enjoy'd from whom there lay no Appeal but to the People and always to them as appears by the case of Horatius in the time of Tullus Hostilius that of Marcus Fabius when Papirius Cursor was Dictator and of Nenius the Tribun during that of Q. Fabius Maximus all which I have cited already and reser to them There was therefore a reservation of the supreme Power in the People notwithstanding the creation of Magistrates without Appeal and as it was quietly exercised in making Strangers or whom they pleased Kings restraining the power of Dictators to six months and that of the Decemviri to two years when the last did contrary to Law endeavour by force to continue their Power the People did by force destroy it and them The case of Moses is yet more clear he was the most humble and gentle of all men he never raised his heart above his brethren and commanded Kings to live in the same modesty he never desired the People should depend upon his will In giving Laws to them he fulfill'd the will of God not his own and those Laws were not the signification of his will but of the will of God They were the production of God's Wisdom and Goodness not the invention of Man given to purify the People not to advance the glory of their Leader He was not proud and insolent nor pleas'd with that ostentation of Pomp to which fools give the name of Majesty and whoever so far exalts the power of a man to make Nations depend upon his pleasure dos not only lay a burden upon him which neither Moses nor any other could ever bear and every wise man will always abhor but with an impious fury endeavours to set up a Government contrary to the Laws of God presumes to accuse him of want of wisdom or goodness to his own People and to correct his Errors which is a work fit to be undertaken by such as our Author From hence as upon a solid foundation he proceeds and making use of King James's words infers that Kings are above the Laws because he so teaches us But he might have remembred that having affirmed the People could not judg of the disputes that might happen between them and Kings because they must not be judges in their own case 't is absurd to make a King judg of a case so nearly concerning himself in the decision of which his own Passions and Interests may probably lead him into errors And if it be pretended that I do the same in giving the judgment of those matters to the People the case is utterly different both in the nature and consequences The King's judgment is merely for himself and if that were to take place all the Passions and Vices that have most power upon men would concur to corrupt it He that is set up for the publick good can have no contest with the whole People whose good he is to procure unless he deflect from the end of his Institution and set up an interest of his own in opposition to it This is in its nature the highest of all delinquencies and if such a one may be judg of his own crimes he is not only sure to avoid punishment but to obtain all that he sought by them and the worse he is the more violent will his desires be to get all the power into his hands that he may gratify his lusts and execute his pernicious designs On the other side in a popular Assembly no man judges for himself otherwise than as his good is comprehended in that of the publick Nothing hurts him but what is prejudicial to the Commonwealth such amongst them as may have received private Injuries are so far only considered by others as their Sufferings may have influence upon the
publick if they be few and the matters not great others will not suffer their quiet to be disturbed by them if they are many and grievous the Tyranny thereby appears to be so cruel that the Nation cannot subsist unless it be corrected or suppress'd Corruption of Judgment proceeds from private Passions which in these cases never govern and tho a zeal for the publick good may possibly be misguided yet till it Le so it can never be capable of excess The last Tarquin and his lewd Son exercised their Fury and Lust in the murders of the best men in Rome and the rape of Lucretia Appius Claudius was filled with the like madness Caligula and Nero were so well established in the power of committing the worst of Villanies that we do not hear of any man that offer'd to defend himself or woman that presumed to refuse them If they had bin judges in these cases the utmost of all Villanies and Mischiefs had bin established by Law but as long as the judgment of these matters was in the People no private or corrupt Passion could take place Lucius Brutus Valerius Horatius and Virginius with the People that followed them did not by the expulsion of the Kings or the suppression of the Decemviri assume to themselves a power of committing Rapes and Murders nor any advantages beyond what their equals might think they deserved by their virtues and services to the Commonwealth nor had they more credit than others for any other reason than that they shewed themselves most forward in procuring the publick Good and by their Valour and Conduct best able to promote it Whatsoever happen'd after the overthrow of their Liberty belongs not to my Subject for there was nothing of popularity in the judgments that were made One Tyrant destroy'd another the same Passions and Vices for the most part reigned in both The last was often as bad as his Predecessor whom he had overthrown and one was sometimes approved by the People for no other reason than that it was thought impossible for him to be worse than he who was in possession of the Power But if one instance can be of force amongst an infinite number of various Accidents the words of Valerius Asiaticus who by wishing he had bin the man that had kill'd Caligula did in a moment pacify the fury of the Soldiers who were looking for those that had done it shew that as long as men retain any thing of that Reason which is truly their Nature they never fail of judging rightly of Virtue and Vice whereas violent and ill Princes have always done the contrary and even the best do often deflect from the rules of Justice as appears not only by the examples of Edward the first and third who were brought to confess it but even those of David and Solomon Moreover to shew that the decision of these Controversies cannot belong to any King but to the People we are only to consider that as Kings and all other Magistrates whether supreme or subordinate are constituted only for the good of the People the People only can be fit to judg whether the end be accomplished A Physician dos not exercise his Art for himself but for his Patients and when I am or think I shall be sick I send for him of whom I have the best opinion that he may help me to recover or preserve my health but I lay him aside it I find him to be negligent ignorant or unfaithful and it would be ridiculous for him to say I make my self judg in my own case for I only or such as I shall consult am fit to be the judg of it He may be treacherous and through corruption or malice endeavour to poison me or have other defects that render him unfit to be trusted but I cannot by any corrupt passion be led wilfully to do him injustice and if I mistake 't is only to my own hurt The like may be said of Lawyers Stewards Pilots and generally of all that do not act for themselves but for those who employ them And if a Company going to the Indies should find that their Pilot was mad drunk or treacherous they whose lives and goods are concerned can only be fit to judg whether he ought to be trusted or not since he cannot have a right to destroy those he was chosen to preserve and they cannot be thought to judg perversly because they have nothing to lead them but an opinion of truth and cannot err but to their own prejudice In the like manner not only Solon and Draco but Romulus Numa Hostilius the Consuls Dictators and Decemviri were not distinguished from others that it might be well with them Sed ut bonum faelix faustumque sit Populo Romano but that the prosperity and happiness of the People might be procured which being the thing always intended it were absurd to refer the judgment of the performance to him who is suspected of a design to overthrow it and whose passions interests and vices if he has any lead him that way If King James said any thing contrary to this he might be answered with some of his own words I was says he sworn to maintain the Laws of the Land and therefore had bin perjured if I had broken them It may also be presumed he had not forgotten what his Master Buchanan had taught in the Books he wrote chiefly for his Instruction that the violation of the Laws of Scotland could not have bin so fatal to most of his Predecessors Kings of that Country nor as he himself had made them to his Mother if Kings as Kings were above them SECT XV. A general presumption that Kings will govern well is not a sufficient security to the People BUT says our Author yet will they rule their Subjects by the Law and a King governing in a settled Kingdom leaves to be a King and degenerates into a Tyrant so soon as he ceases to rule according unto his Laws Yet where he sees them rigorous or doubtful he may mitigate or interpret This is therefore an effect of their goodness they are above Laws but will rule by Law we have Filmers's word for it But I know not how Nations can be assured their Princes will always be so good Goodness is always accompanied with Wisdom and I do not find those admirable qualities to be generally inherent or entail'd upon supreme Magistrates They do not seem to be all alike and we have not hitherto found them all to live in the same Spirit and Principle I can see no resemblance between Moses and Caligula Joshua and Claudius Gideon and Nero Samson and Vitellius Samuel and Otho David and Domitian nor indeed between the best of these and their own Children If the Sons of Moses and Joshua had bin like to them in wisdom valour and integrity 't is probable they had bin chosen to succeed them if they were not the like is less to be presumed of others
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
2d which he swears to abolish Now what Laws are upright and what evil who shall judg but the King c. So that in effect the King doth swear to keep no Laws but such as in his judgment are upright c. And if he did strictly swear to observe all Laws he could not without Perjury give his consent to the repealing or abrogating of any Statute by Act of Parliament c. And again But let it be supposed for Truth that Kings do swear to observe all Laws of their Kingdoms yet no man can think it reason that the Kings should be more bound by their voluntary Oaths than common Persons Now if a private Person make a Contract either with Oath or without Oath he is no farther bound than the equity and justice of the Contract ties him for a man may have relief against an unreasonable and unjust Promise if either deceit or error force or fear induced him thereunto or if it be hurtful or grievous in the performance since the Law in many cases gives the King a Prerogative above common persons Lest I should be thought to insist upon small advantages I will not oblige any man to shew where Filmer found this Oath nor observe the faults committed in the Translation but notwithstanding his false representation I find enough for my purpose and intend to take it in his own words But first I shall take leave to remark that those who for private interests addict themselves to the personal service of Princes tho the ruin of their Country find it impossible to perswade Mankind that Kings may govern as they please when all men know there are Laws to direct and restrain them unless they can make men believe they have their power from a universal and superior Law or that Princes can attempt to dissolve the obligations laid upon them by the Laws which they so solemnly swear to observe without rendring themselves detestable to God and Man and subject to the revenging hands of both unless they can invalidate those Oaths Mr. Hobbes I think was the first who very ingeniously contrived a compendious way of justifying the most abominable Perjuries and all the mischiefs ensuing thereupon by pretending that as the King's Oath is made to the People the People may absolve him from the obligation and that the People having conferred upon him all the Power they had he can do all that they could he can therefore absolve himself and is actually free since he is so when he pleases This is only false in the minor for the People not having conferred upon him all but only a part of their Power that of absolving him remains in themselves otherwise they would never have obliged him to take the Oath He cannot therefore absolve himself The Pope finds a help for this and as Christ's Vicar pretends the power of Absolution to be in him and exercised it in absolving King John But our Author despairing to impose either of these upon our Age and Nation with more impudence and less wit would enervate all Coronation-Oaths by subjecting them to the discretion of the taker whereas all men have hitherto thought their force to consist in the declared sense of those who give them This doctrine is so new that it surpasses the subtilty of the Schoolmen who as an ingenious Person said of them had minced Oaths so fine that a million of them as well as Angels may stand upon the point of a needle and were never yet equalled but by the Jesuits who have overthrown them by mental reservations which is so clearly demonstrated from their books that it cannot be denied but so horrible that even those of their own Order who have the least spark of common honesty condemn the practice And one of them being a Gentleman of a good family told me he would go the next day and take all the Oaths that should be offer'd if he could satisfy his conscience in using any manner of equivocation or mental reservation or that he might put any other sense upon them than he knew to be intended by those who offer'd them And if our Author's conscience were not more corrupted than that of the Jesuit who had lived fifty years under the worst Discipline that I think ever was in the world I would ask him seriously if he truly believe that the Nobility Clergy and Commonalty of England who have bin always so zealous for their antient Laws and so resolute in defending them did mean no more by the Oaths they so solemnly imposed and upon which they laid so much weight than that the King should swear to keep them so far only as he should think fit But he swears only to observe those that are upright c. How can that be understood otherwise than that those who give the Oath do declare their Laws and Customs to be upright and good and he by taking the Oath affirms them to be so Or how can they be more precisely specified than by the ensuing Clause Granted from God by just and devout Kings by Oath especially those of the famous King Edward But says he by the same Oath Richard the 2d was bound to abolish those that were evil If any such had crept in through error or bin obtruded by malice the evil being discovered and declared by the Nobility and Commons who were concerned he was not to take advantage of them or by his refusal to evade the abolition but to join with his people in annulling them according to the general Clause of assenting to those Quas vulgus elegerit Magna Charta being only an abridgment of our antient Laws and Customs the King that swears to it swears to them all and not being admitted to be the interpreter of it or to determin what is good or evil fit to be observed or annulled in it can have no more power over the rest This having bin confirmed by more Parliaments than we have had Kings since that time the same obligation must still lie upon them all as upon John and Henry in whose time that claim of right was compiled The Act was no less solemn than important and the most dreadful curses that could be conceived in words which were denounced against such as should any way infringe it by the Clergy in Westminster-Hall in the presence and with the assent of K. Henry the 3d many of the principal Nobility and all the Estates of the Kingdom shew whether it was referred to the King's Judgment or not when 't is evident they feared the violation from no other than himself and such as he should employ I confess the Church as they then called the Clergy was fallen into such corruption that their Arms were not much to be feared by one who had his conscience clear but that could not be in the case of perjury and our Ancestors could do no better than to employ the spiritual sword reserving to themselves the use of the other in case that should be
better or worse one than another cannot spring from any other root than the consent of the several Nations where they are in force and their opinions that such methods were best for them But if God have made a discrimination of people he that would thereupon ground a Title to the dominion of any one must prove that Nation to be under the curse of Slavery which for any thing I know was only denounced against Cham and 't is as hard to determine whether the sense of it be temporal spiritual or both as to tell preeisely what Nations by being only descended from him fall under the Penalties threatned If these therefore be either intirely false or impossible to be proved true there is no discrimination or not known to us and every People has a right of disposing of their Government as well as the Polanders Danes Swedes Germans and such as are or were under the Roman Empire And if any Nation has a natural Lord before he be admitted by their consent it must be by a peculiar act of their own as the Crown of France by an act of that Nation which they call the Salique Law is made hereditary to Males in a direct Line or the nearest to the direct and others in other places are otherwise disposed I might rest here with full assurance that no Disciple of Filmer can prove this of any people in the world nor give so much as the shadow of a reason to perswade us there is any such thing in any Nation or at least in those where we are concerned and presume little regard will be had to what he has said since he cannot prove of any that which he so boldly affirms of all But because good men ought to have no other object than Truth which in matters of this importance can never be made too evident I will venture to go farther and assert That as the various ways by which several Nations dispose of the succession to their respective Crowns shew they were subject to no other Law than their own which they might have made different by the same right they made it to be what it is even those who have the greatest veneration for the reigning Families and the highest regard for proximity of blood have always preferr'd the safety of the Commonwealth before the concernments of any Person or Family and have not only laid aside the nearest in blood when they were found to be notoriously vicious and wicked but when they have thought it more convenient to take others And to prove this I intend to make use of no other Examples than those I find in the Histories of Spain France and England Whilst the Goths governed Spain not above four persons in the space of three hundred years were the immediate successors of their Fathers but the Brother Cousin German or some other man of the Families of the Balthei or Amalthei was preferred before the Children of the deceased King and if it be said this was according to the Law of that Kingdom I answer that it was therefore in the power of that Nation to make Laws for themselves and consequently others have the same right One of their Kings called Wamba was deposed and made a Monk after he had reigned well many years but falling into a swound and his friends thinking him past recovery cut off his hair and put a Monk's Frock upon him that according to the superstition of those times he might die in it and the cutting off the hair being a most disgraceful thing amongst the Goths they would not restore him to his Authority Suintila another of their Kings being deprived of the Crown for his ill Government his Children and Brothers were excluded and Sisinandus crowned in his room This Kingdom being not long after overthrown by the Moors a new one arose from its ashes in the person of Don Pelayo first King of the Asturia's which increasing by degrees at last came to comprehend all Spain and so continues to this day But not troubling my self with all the deviations from the common rule in the collateral Lines of Navarr Arragon and Portugal I find that by fifteen several Instances in that one series of Kings in the Asturia's and Leon who afterwards came to be Kings of Castille it is fully proved that what respect soever they shew'd to the next in blood who by the Law were to succeed they preferred some other person as often as the supreme Law of taking care that the Nation might receive no detriment perswaded them to it Don Pelayo enjoy'd for his life the Kingdom conferred upon him by the Spaniards who with him retired into the Mountains to defend themselves against the Moors and was succeeded by his Son Favila But tho Favila left many Sons when he died Alphonso sirnamed the Chast was advanced to the Crown and they all laid aside Fruela Son to Alphonso the Catholick was for his cruelty deposed put to death and his Sons excluded Aurelio his Cousin German succeeded him and at his death Silo who married his Wives Sister was preferr'd before the Males of the Blood Royal. Alphonso sirnamed El Casto was first violently dispossess'd of the Crown by a Bastard of the Royal Family but he being dead the Nobility and People thinking Alphonso more fit to be a Monk than a King gave the Crown to Bermudo called El Diacono but Bermudo after several years resigning the Kingdom they conceived a better opinion of Alphonso and made him King Alphonso dying without issue Don Ramiro Son to Bermudo was preserred before the Nephews of Alphonso Don Ordonno fourth from Ramiro left four legitimate Sons but they being young the Estates laid them aside and made his Brother Fruela King Fruela had many Children but the same Estates gave the Crown to Alphonso the Fourth who was his Nephew Alphonso turning Monk recommended his Son Ordonno to the Estates of the Kingdom but they resused him and made his Brother Ramiro King Ordonno third Son to Ramiro dying left a Son called Bermudo but the Estates took his Brother Sancho and advanced him to the throne Henry the First being accidentally killed in his youth left only two Sisters Blanche married to Lewis Son to Philip August King of France and Berenguela married to Alphonso King of Leon. The Estates made Ferdinand Son of Berenguela the youngest Sister King excluding Blanche with her Husband and Children for being Strangers and Berenguela her self because they thought not fit that her Husband should have any part in the Government Alphonso El Savio seems to have bin a very good Prince but applying himself more to the study of Astrology than to affairs of Government his eldest Son Ferdinand de la Cerda dying and leaving his Sons Alphonso and Ferdinand very young the Nobility Clergy and People deposed him excluded his Grandchildren and gave the Crown to Don Sancho his younger Son sirnamed El Bravo thinking him more fit to command them against
the Moors than an old Astrologer or a Child Alphonso and Sancho being dead Alphonso El Desheredado laid claim to the Crown but it was given to Ferdinand the Fourth and Alphonso with his descendents the Dukes de Medina Celi remain excluded to this day Peter sirnamed the Cruel was twice driven out of the Kingdom and at last killed by Bertrand to Guesclin Constable of France or Henry Count of Trastamara his Bastard-Brother who was made King without any regard to the Daughters of Peter or to the House of La Cerda Henry the Fourth lest a Daughter called Joan whom he declared his Heir but the Estates gave the Kingdom to Isabel his Sister and crowned her with Ferdinand of Arragon her Husband Joan Daughter to this Ferdinand and Isabel salling mad the Estates committed the care of the Government to her Father Ferdinand and after his death to Charles her Son But the French have taught us that when a King dies his next Heir is really King before he take his Oath or be crowned From them we learn that Le mort saisit le vif And yet I know no History that proves more plainly than theirs that there neither is nor can be in any man a right to the Government of a People which dos not receive its being manner and measure from the Law of that Country which I hope to justify by four Reasons 1. When a King of Pharamond's Race died the Kingdom was divided into as many parcels as he had Sons which could not have bin if one certain Heir had bin assigned by nature for he ought to have had the whole and if the Kingdom might be divided they who inhabited the several parcels could not know to whom they owed obedience till the division was made unless he who was to be King of Paris Metz Soissons or Orleans had worn the Name of his Kingdom upon his forehead But in truth if there might be a division the Doctrine is false and there was no Lord of the whole This wound will not be healed by saying The Father appointed the division and that by the Law of nature every man may dispose of his own as he thinks fit for we shall soon prove that the Kingdom of France neither was nor is disposeable as a Patrimony or Chattel Besides if that Act of Kings had bin then grounded upon the Law of nature they might do the like at this day But the Law by which such Divisions were made having bin abrogated by the Assembly of Estates in the time of Hugh Capet and never practised since it follows that they were grounded upon a temporary Law and not upon the Law of Nature which is eternal If this were not so the pretended certainty could not be for no man could know to whom the last King had bequeathed the whole Kingdom or parcels of it till the Will were opened and that must be done before such Witnesses as may deserve credit in a matter of this importance and are able to judg whether the Bequest be rightly made for otherwise no man could know whether the Kingdom was to have one Lord or many nor who he or they were to be which intermission must necessarily subvert their Polity and this Doctrine But the truth is the most Monarchical men among them are so far from acknowledging any such right to be in the King of alienating bequeathing or dividing the Kingdom that they do not allow him the right of making a Will and that of the last King Lewis the 13th touching the Regency during the minority of his Son was of no effect 2. This matter was made more clear under the second race If a Lord had bin assigned to them by nature he must have bin of the Royal Family But Pepin had no other Title to the Crown except the merits of his Father and his own approved by the Nobility and People who made him King He had three sons the eldest was made King of Italy and dying before him lest a Son called Bernard Heir of that Kingdom The Estates of France divided what remained between Charles the Great and Carloman The last of these dying in few years left many Sons but the Nobility made Charles King of all France and he dispossessed Bernard of the Kingdom of Italy inherited from his Father so that he also was not King of the whole before the expulsion of Bernard the Son of his elder Brother nor of Aquitain which by inheritance should have belonged to the Children of his younger Brother any otherwise than by the will of the Estates Lewis the Debonair succeeded upon the same title was deposed and put into a Monastery by his three Sons Lothair Pepin and Lewis whom he had by his first Wife But tho these lest many Sons the Kingdom came to Charles the Bald. The Nobility and People disliking the eldest Son of Charles gave the Kingdom to Lewis le Begue who had a legitimate Son called Charles le Simple and two Bastards Lewis and Carloman who were made Kings Carloman had a Son called Lewis le faineant he was made King but afterwards deposed for his vicious Lise Charles le Gros succeeded him but for his ill Government was also deposed and Odo who was a stranger to the Royal Blood was made King The same Nobility that had made five Kings since Lewis le Begue now made Charles le Simple King who according to his name was entrapped at Peronne by Ralph Duke of Burgundy and forced to resign his Crown leaving only a Son called Lewis who fled into England Ralph being dead they took Lewis sirnamed Outremer and placed him in the Throne he had two Sons Lothair and Charles Lothair succeeded him and died without Issue Charles had as fair a title as could be by Birth and the Estates confessed it but their Ambassadors told him that he having by an unworthy Life render'd himself unworthy of the Crown they whose principal care was to have a good Prince at the head of them had chosen Hugh Capet and the Crown continues in his race to this day tho not altogether without interruption Robert Son to Hugh Capet succeeded him He left two Sons Robert and Henry but Henry the younger Son appearing to the Estates of the Kingdom to be more fit to reign than his elder Brother they made him King Robert and his descendents continuing Dukes of Burgundy only for about ten Generations at which time his Issue Male failing that Dutchy returned to the Crown during the Life of King John who gave it to his second Son Philip for an Apannage still depending upon the Crown The same Province of Burgundy was by the Treaty of Madrid granted to the Emperor Charles the fifth by Francis the first but the People resused to be alienated and the Estates of the Kingdom approved their refusal By the same Authority Charles the 6th was removed from the Government when he appeared to be mad and other examples of a like nature
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
person or a few were delegated by many For they who have a right inherent in themselves may resign it to others and they who can give a Power to others may exercise it themselves unless they recede from it by their own act for it is only matter of convenience of which they alone can be the Judges because 't is for themselves only that they judg If this were not so it would be very prejudicial to Kings for 't is certain that Cassivellaunus Caractatus Arviragus Galgacus Hengist Horsa and others amongst the Britans and Saxons what name soever may have bin abusively given to them were only temporary Magistrates chosen upon occasion of present Wars but we know of no time in which the Britans had not their Great Council to determine their most important Affairs and the Saxons in their own Country had their Councils where all were present and in which Tacitus assures us they dispatched their greatest business These were the same with the Micklegemots which they afterwards held here and might have bin called by the same name if Tacitus had spoken Dutch If a People therefore have not a power to create at any time a Magistracy which they had not before none could be created at all for no Magistracy is eternal And if for the validity of the Constitution it be necessary that the beginning must be unknown or that no other could have bin before it the Monarchy amongst us cannot be established upon any right for tho our Ancestors had their Councils and Magistrates as well here as in Germany they had no Monarchs This appears plainly by the testimony of Cesar and Tacitus and our later Histories show that as soon as the Saxons came into this Country they had their Micklegemots which were general Assemblies of the Noble and Free men who had in themselves the Power of the Nation and tho when they increased in numbers they erected seven Kingdoms yet every one retained the same usage within it self These Assemblies were evidently the same in power with our Parliaments and tho they differ'd in name or form it matters not for they who could act in the one could not but have a power of instituting the other that is the same people that could meet together in their own persons and according to their own pleasure order all matters relating to themselves whilst three of four Counties only were under one Government and their numbers were not so great or their habitation so far distant that they might not meet altogether without inconvenience with the same right might depute others to represent them when being joined in one no place was capable of receiving so great a multitude and that the Frontiers would have bin exposed to the danger of foreign Invasions if any such thing had bin practised But if the Authority of Parliaments for many Ages representing the whole Nation were less to be valued as our Author insinuates because they could not represent the whole when it was not joined in one body that of Kings must come to nothing for there could be no one King over all when the Nation was divided into seven distinct Governments And 't is most absurd to think that the Nation which had seven great Councils or Micklegemots at the same time they had seven Kingdoms could not as well unite the seven Councils as the seven Kingdoms into one 'T is to as little purpose to say that the Nation did not unite it self but the several parcels came to be inherited by one for that one could inherit no more from the others than what they had and the seven being only Magistrates set up by the Micklegemots c. the one must be so also And 't is neither reasonable to imagine nor possible to prove that a fierce Nation jealous of Liberty and who had obstinately defended it in Germany against all Invaders should conquer this Country to enslave themselves and purchase nothing by their valour but that servitude which they abhorred or be less free when they were united into one state than they had bin when they were divided into seven and least of all that one man could first subdue his own People and then all the rest when by endeavouring to subdue his own he had broken the trust reposed in him and lost the right conferred upon him and without them had not power to subdue any But as it is my fate almost ever to dissent from our Author I affirm that the variety of Government which is observed to have bin amongst the Saxons who in some Ages were divided in others united sometimes under Captains in other times under Kings sometimes meeting personally in the Micklegemots sometimes by their Delegates in the Wittenagemots dos evidently testify that they ordered all things according to their own pleasure which being the utmost Act of Liberty it remained inviolable under all those changes as we have already proved by the confession of Offa Ina Alfred Canutus Edward and other particular as well as universal Kings And we may be sure those of the Norman Race can have no more power since they came in by same way and swore to govern by the same Laws 2. I am no way concerned in our Author's doubt Whether Parliaments did in those days consist of Nobility and Clergy or whether the Commons were also called For if it were true as he asserts that according to the eternal Law of God and Nature there can be no Government in the World but that of an absolute Monarch whose Sovereign Majesty can be diminished by no Law or Custom there could be no Parliaments or other Magistracies that did not derive their power and being from his Will But having proved that the Saxons had their general Councils and Assemblies when they had no Kings that by them Kings were made and the greatest Affairs determined whether they had Kings or not it can be of no importance whether in one or more Ages the Commons had a part in the Government or not For the same Power that instituted a Parliament without them might when they thought fit receive them into it or rather if they who had the Government in their hands did for reasons known to themselves recede from the exercise of it they might resume it when they pleased Nevertheless it may be worth our pains to enquire what our Author means by Nobility If such as at this day by means of Patents obtained for mony or by favour without any regard to merit in the persons or their Ancestors are called Dukes Marquesses c. I give him leave to impute as late and base an Original to them as he pleases without fearing that the Rights of our Nation can thereby be impaired and am content that if the King do not think fit to support the Dignity of his own Creatures they may fall to the ground But if by Noblemen we are to understand such as have bin ennobled by the virtues of their Ancestors manifested in services done
those that conquer'd This was not the work of two men and those who had bin free at home can never be thought to have left their own Country to fight as slaves for the glory and profit of two men in another It cannot be said that their wants compelled them for their Leaders suffer'd the same and could not be relieved but by their assistance and whether their enterprize was good or bad just or unjust it was the same to all No one man could have any right peculiar to himself unless they who gained it did confer it upon him and 't is no way probable that they who in their own Country had kept their Princes within very narrow limits as has bin proved should resign themselves and all they had as soon as they came hither But we have already shewn that they always continued most obstinate defenders of their Liberty and the Government to which they had bin accustomed that they managed it by themselves and acknowledged no other Laws than their own Nay if they had made such a resignation of their Right as was necessary to create one in their Leaders it would be enough to overthrow the proposition for 't is not then the Leader that gives to the People but the People to the Leader If the people had not a right to give what they did give none was conferred upon the receiver if they had a right he that should pretend to derive a benefit from thence must prove the grant that the nature and intention of it may appear 2. To the second If it be said that Records testify all Grants to have bin originally from the King I answer That tho it were confessed which I absolutely deny and affirm that our Rights and Liberties are innate inherent and enjoy'd time out of mind before we had Kings it could be nothing to the question which is concerning Reason and Justice and if they are wanting the defect can never be supplied by any matter of fact tho never so clearly proved Or if a Right be pretended to be grounded upon a matter of fact the thing to be proved is that the people did really confer such a right upon the first or some other Kings And if no such thing do appear the proceedings of one or more Kings as if they had it can be of no value But in the present case no such grant is pretended to have bin made either to the first or to any of the following Kings the Right they had not their Successors could not inherit and consequently cannot have it or at most no better title to it than that of Usurpation But as they who enquire for truth ought not to deny or conceal any thing I may grant that Mannors c. were enjoyed by tenure from Kings but that will no way prejudice the cause I defend nor signify more than that the Countries which the Saxons had acquired were to be divided among them and to avoid the quarrels that might arise if every man took upon him to seize what he could a certain method of making the distribution was necessarily to be fixed and it was fit that every man should have something in his own hands to justify his Title to what he possessed according to which controversies should be determined This must be testified by some body and no man could be so fit or of so much credit as he who was chief among them and this is no more than is usual in all the Societies of the World The Mayor of every Corporation the Speaker or Clerk of the House of Peers or House of Commons the first President of every Parliament or Presidial in France the Consul Burgermaster Advoyer or Bailiff in every free Town of Holland Germany or Switzerland sign the publick Acts that pass in those places The Dukes of Venice and Genoa do the like tho they have no other power than what is conferred upon them and of themselves can do little or nothing The Grants of our Kings are of the same nature tho the words mero motu nostro seem to imply the contrary sor Kings speak always in the plural number to shew that they do not act for themselves but for the Societies over which they are placed and all the veneration that is or can be given to their Acts dos not exalt them but those from whom their Authority is derived and for whom they are to execute The Tyrants of the East and other Barbarians whose power is most absolute speak in the single number as appears by the decrees of Nabuchodonosor Cyrus Darius and Abasaerus recited in Scripture with others that we hear of daily from those parts but wheresoever there is any thing of civility or regularity in Government the Prince uses the plural to shew that he acts in a publick capacity From hence says Grotius the rights of Kings to send Ambassadors make Leagues c. do arise the confederacies made by them do not terminate with their lives because they are not for themselves they speak not in their own Persons but as representing their People and ae King who is depriv'd of his Kingdom loses the right of sending Ambassadors because he can no longer speak for those who by their own consent or by a foreign force are cut off from him The question is not whether such a one be justly or unjustly deprived sor that concerns only those who do it or suffer it but whether he can oblige the People and 't is ridiculous for any Nation to treat with a man that cannot perform what shall be agreed or for him to stipulate that which can oblige and will be made good only by himself But tho much may be left to the discretion of Kings in the distribution of Lands and the like yet it no way diminishes the right of the People nor consers any upon them otherwise to dispose of what belongs to the publick than may tend to the common good and the accomplishment of those ends for which they are entrusted Nay if it were true that a conquered Country did belong to the Crown the King could not dispose of it because 't is annexed to the Office and not alienable by the Person This is not only found in regular mixed Monarchies as in Sweden where the Grants made by the last Kings have bin lately rescinded by the General Assembly of Estates as contrary to Law but even in the most absolute as in France where the present King who has stretched his power to the utmost has lately acknowledged that he cannot do it and according to the known maxim of the State that the demeasnes of the Crown which are designed for the defraying of publick Charges cannot be alienated all the Grants made within the last fifteen years have bin annulled even those who had bought Lands of the Crown have bin called to account and the Sums given being compared with the profits received and a moderate interest allowed to the purchasers so much
he refused In the same place they met and chose Saul to be their King He being dead the men of Judah assembled themselves and anointed David Not long after all the Tribes met at Hebron made a Contract with him and received him as their King In the same manner tho by worse Counsel they made Absalom King And the like was attempted in favour of Sheba the Son of Bichri tho they then had a King chosen by themselves When they found themselves oppressed by the Tributes that had bin laid upon them by Solomon they met at Shechem and being displeased with Rehoboam's answer to their complaints ten of the Tribes made Jeroboam King Jehu and all the other Kings of Israel whether good or bad had no other Title than was conferred upon them by the prevailing part of the People which could not have given them any unless they had met together nor meet together without the consent and against the will of those that reigned unless the Power had bin in themselves Where Governments are more exactly regulated the power of judging when 't is fit to call the Senate or People together is refer'd to one or more Magistrates as in Rome to the Consuls or Tribuns in Athens to the Archons and in Thebes to the Beotarches but none of them could have these Powers unless they had bin given by those who advanced them to the Magistracies to which they were annexed nor could they have bin so annexed if those who created them had not had the right in themselves If these Officers neglected their duty of calling such Assemblies when the publick Affairs required the people met by their own Authority and punished the Person or abrogated the Magistracy as appears in the case of the Decemviri and many others that might be alledged if the thing were not so plain as to need no further proof The reason of this is that they who institute a Magistracy best know whether the end of the Institution be rightly pursued or not And all just Magistracies being the same in essence tho differing in form the same right must perpetually belong to those who put the Sovereign Power into the hands of one a few or many men which is what our Author calls the disposal of the Sovereignty Thus the Romans did when they created Kings Consuls Military Tribuns Dictators or Decemviri and it had bin most ridiculous to say that those Officers gave authority to the people to meet and chuse them for they who are chosen are the Creatures of those who chuse and are nothing more than others till they are chosen The last King of Sweden Charles Gustavus told a Gentleman who was Ambassador there That the Swedes having made him King when he was poor and had nothing in the world he had but one work to do which was so to reign that they might never repent the good opinion they had conceived of him They might therefore meet and did meet to confer the Sovereignty upon him or he could never have had it For tho the Kingdom be hereditary to Males or Females and his Mother was Sister to the Great Gustavus yet having married a stranger without the consent of the Estates she performed not the condition upon which women are admitted to the Succession and thereby falling from her right he pretended not to any The Act of his Election declares he had none and gives the Crown to him and the Heirs of his body with this farther declaration that the benefit of his Election should no way extend to his Brother Prince Adolphus and 't is confessed by all the Swedish Nation that if the King now reigning should die without children the Estates would proceed to a new Election 'T is rightly observ'd by our Author that if the people might meet and give the Sovereign Power they might also direct and limit it for they did meet in this and other Countries they did confer the Sovereign Power they did limit and direct the exercise and the Laws of each people shew in what manner and measure it is every where done This is as certain in relation to Kings as any other Magistrates The Commission of the Roman Dictators was to take care that the Commonwealth might receive no detriment The same was sometimes given to the Consuls King Offa's confession that he was made King to preserve the publick Liberty expresses the same thing And Charles Gustavus who said he had no other work than to govern in such a manner that they who had made him King might not repent shew'd there was a Rule which he stood obliged to follow and an end which he was to procure that he might merit and preserve their good opinion This power of conferring the Sovereignty was exercised in France by those who made Meroveus King in the prejudice of the two Grandchildren of Pharamond Sons to Clodion by those who excluded his Race and gave the Crown to Pepin by those who deposed Lewis le Debonair and Charles le Gros by those who brought in five Kings that were either Bastards or Strangers between him and Charles le Simple by those who rejected his Race and advanced Hugh Capet by those who made Henry the first King to the prejudice of Robert his elder Brother and continued the Crown in the Race of Henry for ten Generations whilst the Descendents of Robert were only Dukes of Burgundy The like was done in Castille and Arragon by frequently preferring the younger before the elder Brother the Descendents of Females before those of the Male-line in the same degree the more remote in Blood before the nearest and sometimes Bastards before the legitimate Issue The same was done in England in relation to every King since the coming in of the Normans as I shewed in the last Section and other places of this Work That they who gave the Sovereignty might also circumscribe and direct it is manifest by the several ways of providing for the Succession instituted by several Nations Some are merely elective as the Empire of Germany and the Kingdom of Poland to this day the Kingdom of Denmark till the year 1660 that of Sweden till the time of Gustavus Ericson who delivered that Nation from the oppression of Christiern the second the cruel King of the Danes In others the Election was confined to one or more Families as the Kingdom of the Goths in Spain to the Balthei and Amalthei In some the eldest Man of the reigning Family was preferr'd before the nearest as in Scotland before the time of Kennethus In other places the nearest in Blood is preferr'd before the elder if more remote In some no regard is had to Females or their Descendents as in France and Turky In others they or their Descendents are admitted either simply as well as Males or under a condition of marrying in the Country or with the consent of the Estates as in Sweden And no other reason can be given for this almost infinite variety of
Towns and Provinces upon the most eminent men in them And whilst those Kings were exercised in almost perpetual Wars and placed their glory in the greatness of the actions they atchieved by the power and valour of their people it was their interest always to chuse such as seemed best to deserve that honour It was not to be imagined that through the weakness of some and malice of others those dignities should by degrees be turned into empty titles and become the rewards of the greatest crimes and the vilest services or that the noblest of their Descendents for want of them should be brought under the name of Commoners and deprived of all privileges except such as were common to them with their Grooms Such a stupendous change being in process of time insensibly introduced the foundations of that Government which they had established were removed and the superstructure overthrown The balance by which it subsisted was broken and 't is as impossible to restore it as for most of those who at this day go under the name of Noblemen to perform the duties required from the antient Nobility of England And tho there were a charm in the name and those who have it should be immediately filled with a spirit like to that which animated our Ancestors and endeavour to deserve the Honors they possess by such Services to the Country as they ought to have perform'd before they had them they would not be able to accomplish it They have neither the interest nor the estates required for so great a work Those who have estates at a rack Rent have no dependents Their Tenants when they have paid what is agreed owe them nothing and knowing they shall be turn'd out of their Tenements as soon as any other will give a little more they look upon their Lords as men who receive more from them than they confer upon them This dependence being lost the Lords have only more mony to spend or lay up than others but no command of men and can therefore neither protect the weak nor curb the insolent By this means all things have bin brought into the hands of the King and the Commoners and there is nothing left to cement them and to maintain the union The perpetual jarrings we hear every day the division of the Nation into such factions as threaten us with ruin and all the disorders that we see or fear are the effects of this rupture These things are not to be imputed to our original Constitutions but to those who have subverted them And if they who by corrupting changing enervating and annihilating the Nobility which was the principal support of the antient regular Monarchy have driven those who are truly Noblemen into the same interest and name with the Commons and by that means increased a party which never was and I think never can be united to the Court they are to answer for the Consequences and if they perish their destruction is from themselves The inconveniences therefore proceed not from the institution but from the innovation The Law was plain but it has bin industriously rendred perplex They who were to have upheld it are overthrown That which might have bin easily performed when the people was armed and had a great strong virtuous and powerful Nobility to lead them is made difficult now they are disarmed and that Nobility abolished Our Ancestors may evidently appear not only to have intended well but to have taken a right course to accomplish what they intended This had effect as long as the cause continued and the only fault that can be ascribed to that which they established is that it has not proved to be perpetual which is no more than may be justly said of the best human Constitutions that ever have bin in the world If we will be just to our Ancestors it will become us in our time rather to pursue what we know they intended and by new Constitutions to repair the breaches made upon the old than to accuse them of the defects that will for ever attend the Actions of men Taking our Affairs at the worst we shall soon find that if we have the same spirit they had we may easily restore our Nation to its antient liberty dignity and happiness and if we do not the fault is owing to our selves and not to any want of virtue and wisdom in them SECT XXXVIII The Power of calling and dissolving Parliaments is not simply in the King The variety of Customs in chusing Parliament men and the Errors a people may commit neither prove that Kings are or ought to be Absolute THE original of magistratical Power the intention of our Ancestors in its creation and the ways prescribed for the direction and limitation of it may I presume sufficiently appear by what has bin said But because our Author taking hold of every twig pretends that Kings may call and dissolve Parliaments at their pleasure and from thence infers the Power to be wholly in them alledges the various customs in several parts of this Nation used in the elections of Parliament men to proceed from the King's will and because a people may commit Errors thinks all Power ought to be put into the hands of the King I answer 1. That the Power of calling and dissolving Parliaments is not simply in Kings They may call Parliaments if there be occasion at times when the Law dos not exact it they are placed as Sentinels and ought vigilantly to observe the motions of the Enemy and give notice of his approach But if the Sentinel fall asleep neglect his duty or maliciously endeavour to betray the City those who are concern'd may make use of all other means to know their danger and to preserve themselves The ignorance incapacity negligence or luxury of a King is a great calamity to a Nation and his malice is worse but not an irreparable ruin Remedies may be and often have bin found against the worst of their Vices The last French Kings of the Races of Meroveus and Pepin brought many mischiefs upon the Kingdom but the destruction was prevented Edward and Richard the Seconds of England were not unlike them and we know by what means the Nation was preserved The question was not who had the Right or who ought to call Parliaments but how the Commonwealth might be saved from ruin The Consuls or other chief Magistrates in Rome had certainly a right of assembling and dismissing the Senat But when Hannibal was at the Gates or any other imminent danger threatned them with destruction if that Magistrate had bin drunk mad or gained by the Enemy no wise man can think that Formalities were to have bin observed In such cases every man is a Magistrate and he who best knows the danger and the means of preventing it has a right of calling the Senat or People to an Assembly The people would and certainly ought to follow him as they did Brutus and Valerius against Tarquin or Horatius and
be ravaged by Swedes Tartars and Cosacks The present Emperor who passed his time in setting Songs in Musick with a wretched Italian Eunuch when he ought to have bin at the head of a brave Army raised to oppose the Turks in the year 1664 and which under good conduct might have overthrown the Ottoman Empire as soon as he was delivered from the fear of that Enemy fell upon his own Subjects with such cruelty that they are now sorced to fly to the Turks for protection the Protestants especially who find their condition more tolerable under those professed Enemies to Christianity than to be exposed to the pride avarice perfidiousness and violence of the Jesuits by whom he is governed And the qualities of the King of Portugal are so well known together with the condition to which he would have brought his Kingdom if he had not bin sent to the Tercera's that I need not speak particularly of him If Kings therefore by virtue of their office are constituted Judges over the body of their people because the People or Parliaments representing them are not insallible those Kings who are children fools disabled by age or madmen are so also women have the same right where they are admitted to the succession those men who tho of ripe age and not superannuated nor directly fools or madmen yet absolutely uncapable of judging important Affairs or by their passions interests vices or malice and wickedness of their Ministers Servants and Favorites are set to oppress and ruin the people enjoy the same privilege than which nothing can be imagined more absurd and abominable nor more directly tending to the corruption and destruction of the Nations under them for whose good and safety our Author confesses they have their power SECT XXXIX Those Kings only are heads of the People who are good wise and seek to advance no Interest but that of the Publick THE worst of men seldom arrive to such a degree of impudence as plainly to propose the most mischievous follies and enormities They who are enemies to Virtue and fear not God are afraid of men and dare not offer such things as the world will not bear lest by that means they should overthrow their own designs All poison must be disguised and no man can be perswaded to eat Arsenic unless it be cover'd with something that appears to be harmless Creusa would have abhorr'd Medea's present if the pestilent venom had not bin hidden by the exterior lustre of Gold and Gems The Garment that destroy'd Hercules appear'd beautiful and Eve had neither eaten of the forbidden Tree nor given the Fruit to her Husband if it had not seemed to be good and pleasant and she had not bin induced to believe that by eating it they should both be as Gods The Servants of the Devil have always followed the same method their malice is carried on by fraud and they have seldom destroy'd any but such as they had first deceived Truth can never conduce to mischief and is best discovered by plain words but nothing is more usual with ill men than to cover their mischievous designs with figurative phrases It would be too ridiculous to say in plain terms that all Kings without distinction are better able to judg of all matters than any or all their people they must therefore be called the Head that thereby they may be invested with all the preeminences which in a natural body belong to that part and men must be made to believe the analogy between the natural and political body to be perfect But the matter must be better examined before this mortal poison seem fit to be swallowed The word Head is figuratively used both in Scripture and prosane Authors in several senses in relation to places or persons and always implies something of real or seeming preeminence in point of honor or jurisdiction Thus Damascus is said to be the head of Syria Samaria of Ephraiam and Ephraim of the ten Tribes that is Ephraim was the chief Tribe Samaria was the chief City of Ephraim and Damascus of Syria tho it be certain that Ephraim had no jurisdiction over the other Tribes nor Samaria over the other Cities of Ephraim but every one according to the Law had an equal power within it self or the Territories belonging to it and no privileges were granted to one above another except to Jerusalem in the matter of Religion because the Temple was placed there The words also Head Prince principal Man or Captain seem to be equivocal and in this sense the same men are called Heads of the Tribes Princes in the houses of their Fathers and 't is said that two hundred Heads of the Tribe of Reuben were carried away captive by Tiglath Pilezer and proportionably in the other Tribes which were a strange thing if the word did imply that supreme absolute and infinite Power that our Author attributes to it and no man of less understanding than he can comprehend how there should be two hundred or more sovereign unlimited Powers in one Tribe most especially when 't is certain that one series of Kings had for many Ages reigned over that Tribe and nine more and that every one of those Tribes as well as the particular Cities even from their first entrance into the promised Land had a full jurisdiction within it self When the Gileadites came to Jephtha he suspected them and asked whether indeed they intended to make him their Head they answered if he would lead them against the Ammonites he should be their Head In the like sense when Jul. Caesar in despair would have killed himself one of his Soldiers disswaded him from that design by telling him That the safety of so many Nations that had made him their Head depending upon his life it would be cruelty in him to take such a resolution But for all that when this Head was taken off the Body did still subsist upon which I observe many fundamental differences between the relation of this figurative Head even when the word is rightly applied and that of the natural Head to their respective Bodies The figurative Heads may be many the natural but one The people makes or creates the figurative Head the natural is from it self or connate with the Body The natural Body cannot change or subsist without the natural Head but a people may change and subsist very well without the artificial Nay if it had bin true that the world had chosen Cesar as it was not for he was chosen only by a sactious mercenary Army and the soundest part so far opposed that Election that they brought him to think of killing himself there could have bin no truth in this flattering assertion That the safety of the whole depended upon his life for the world could not only subsist without him but without any such Head as it had done before he by the help of his corrupted Soldiery had usurped the Power which also shews that a civil Head may be
Princes that have bin in the world who having their power for life and leaving it to descend to their children have wanted the Virtues requir'd for the performance of their duty And I should less fear to be guilty of an absurdity in saying that a Nation might every year change its Head than that he can be the Head who cares not for the Members nor understands the things that conduce to their good most especially if he set up an Interest in himself against them It cannot be said that these are imaginary cases and that no Prince dos these things for the proof is too easy and the examples too numerous Caligula could not have wished the Romans but one Head that he might cut it off at once if he had bin that Head and had advanced no Interest contrary to that of the Members Nero had not burn'd the City of Rome if his concernments had bin inseparably united to those of the people He who caused above three hundred thousand of his innocent unarmed Subjects to be murder'd and fill'd his whole Kingdom with fire and blood did set up a personal Interest repugnant to that of the Nation and no better testimony can be requir'd to shew that he did so than a Letter written by his Son to take off the penalty due to one of the chief Ministers of those cruelties for this reason that what he had done was by the command and for the service of his Royal Father King John did not pursue the advantage of his people when he endeavoured to subject them to the Pope or the Moors And whatever Prince seeks assistance from foreign Powers or makes Leagues with any stranger or enemy for his own advantage against his people however secret the Treaty may be declares himself not to be the Head but an enemy to them The Head cannot stand in need of an exterior help against the Body nor subsist when divided from it He therefore that courts such an assistance divides himself from the Body and if he do subsist it must be by a life he has in himself distinct from that of the Body which the Head cannot have But besides these enormities that testify the most wicked rage and fury in the highest degree there is another practice which no man that knows the world can deny to be common with Princes and incompatible with the nature of a Head The Head cannot desire to draw all the nourishment of the Body to it self nor more than a due proportion If the rest of the parts are sick weak or cold the Head suffers equally with them and if they perish must perish also Let this be compared with the actions of many Princes we know and we shall soon see which of them are Heads of their people If the Gold brought from the Indies has bin equally distributed by the Kings of Spain to the body of that Nation I consent they may be called the Heads If the Kings of France assume no more of the Riches of that great Kingdom than their due proportion let them also wear that honourable name But if the naked backs and empty bellies of their miserable Subjects evince the contrary it can by no means belong to them If those great Nations wast and languish if nothing be so common in the best Provinces belonging to them as misery famine and all the effects of the most outragious oppression whilst their Princes and Favorites possess such treasures as the most wanton prodigality cannot exhaust if that which is gained by the sweat of so many millions of men be torn out of the mouths of their starving Wives and Children to foment the vices of those luxurious Courts or reward the Ministers of their lusts the nourishment is not distributed equally to all the parts of the body the oeconomy of the whole is overthrown and they who do these things cannot be the Heads nor parts of the Body but something distinct from and repugnant to it 'T is not therefore he who is found in or advanced to the place of the Head who is truly the Head 'T is not he who ought but he who dos perform the office of the Head that deserves the name and privileges belonging to the Head If our Another theresore will perswade us that any King is Head of his People he must do it by Arguments peculiarly relating to him since those in general are found to be false If he say that the King as King may direct or correct the people and that the power of determining all controversies must be referred to him because they may be mistaken he must show that the King is infallible for unless he do so the wound is not cured This also must be by some other way than by saying he is their Head for such Powers belong not to the office of the Head and we see that all Kings do not deserve that name Many of them want both understanding and will to perform the functions of the Head and many act directly contrary in the whole course of their Government If any therefore among them have merited the glorious name of Heads of Nations it must have bin by their personal Virtues by a vigilant care of the good of their People by an inseparable conjunction of interests with them by an ardent love to every member of the Society by a moderation of spirit affecting no undue Superiority or assuming any singular advantage which they are not willing to communicate to every part of the political body He who finds this merit in himself will scorn all the advantages that can be drawn from misapplied names He that knows such honor to be peculiarly due to him for being the best of Kings will never glory in that which may be common to him with the worst Nay whoever pretends by such general discourses as these of our Author to advance the particular Interests of any one King dos either know he is of no merit and that nothing can be said for him which will not as well agree with the worst of men or cares not what he says so he may do mischief and is well enough contented that he who is set up by such Maxims as a publick plague may fall in the ruin he brings upon the people SECT XL. Good Laws prescribe easy and safe Remedies against the Evils proceeding from the vices or infirmities of the Magistrate and when they fail they must be supplied THOSE who desire to advance the power of the Magistrate above the Law would perswade us that the difficulties and dangers of inquiring into his actions or opposing his will when employ'd in violence and injustice are so great that the remedy is always worse than the disease and that 't is better to suffer all the evils that may proceed from his infirmities and vices than to hazard the consequences of displeasing him But on the contrary I think and hope to prove 1. That in well-constituted Governments the remedies against ill Magistrates are easy
manifest this by the words Be it enacted by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled and by Authority of the same But King James says Filmer in his Law of free Monarchy affirms the contrary and it may be so yet that is nothing to us No man doubts that he desired it might be so in England but it dos not from thence appear that it is so The Law of a free Monarchy is nothing to us for that Monarchy is not free which is regulated by a Law not to be broken without the guilt of Perjury as he himself confessed in relation to ours As to the words cited from Hooker I can find no hurt in them To draw up the form of a good Law is a matter of invention and judgment but it receives the force of a Law from the power that enacts it We have no other reason for the paiment of Excise or Customs than that the Parliament has granted those Revenues to the King to defray the publick Charges Whatever therefore King James was pleased to say in his Books or in those written for him we do not so much as know that the killing of a King is Treason or to be punished with death otherwise than as it is enacted by Parliament and it was not always so for in the time of Ethelstan the Estimates of Lives were agreed in Parliament and that of a King valued at thirty thousand Thrymsae And if that Law had not bin alter'd by the Parliament it must have bin in force at this day It had bin in vain for a King to say he would have it otherwise for he is not created to make Laws but to govern according to such as are made and sworn to assent to such as shall be proposed He who thinks the Crown not worth accepting on these conditions may refuse it The words Le Roy le veult are only a pattern of the French fashions upon which some Kings have laid great stress and would no doubt have bin glad to introduce Car tel est nostre plaisir but that may prove a difficult matter Nay in France it self where that Stile and all the ranting expressions that please the vainest of men are in mode no Edict has the power of a Law till it be registred in Parliament This is not a mere ceremony as some pretend but all that is essential to a Law Nothing has bin more common than for those Parliaments to refuse Edicts sent to them by the King When John Chastel had at the instigation of the Jesuits stabb'd Henry the fourth in the Mouth and that Order had designed or executed many other execrable crimes they were banished out of the Kingdom by an Arrest of the Parliament of Paris Some other Parliaments registred the same but those of Tholouse and Bordeaux absolutely refused and notwithstanding all that the King could do the Jesuits continued at Tournon and many other places within their Precincts till the Arrest was revoked These proceedings are so displeasing to the Court that the most violent ways have bin often used to abolish them About the year 1650 Seguier then Chancellor of France was sent with a great number of Soldiers to oblige the Parliament of Paris to pass some Edicts upon which they had hesitated but he was so far from accomplishing his design that the People rose against him and he thought himself happy that he escaped with his Life If the Parliaments do not in all parts of the Kingdom continue in the Liberty of approving or rejecting all Edicts the Law is not altered but oppressed by the violence of the Sword And the Prince of Condé who was principally employ'd to do that work may as I suppose have had leisure to reflect upon those Actions and cannot but find reason to conclude that his excellent valour and conduct was used in a most noble exploit equally beneficial to his Country and himself However those who are skilled in the Laws of that Nation do still affirm that all publick Acts which are not duly examined and registred are void in themselves and can be of no force longer than the miserable People lies under the violence of Oppression which is all that could reasonably be said if a Pirat had the same power over them But whether the French have willingly offer'd their ears to be bor'd or have bin subdued by force it concerns us not Our Liberties depend not upon their will virtue or fortune how wretched and shameful soever their Slavery may be the evil is only to themselves We are to consider no human Laws but our own and if we have the spirit of our Ancestors we shall maintain them and die as free as they left us Le Roy le veut tho written in great Letters or pronounced in the most tragical manner can signify no more than that the King in performance of his Oath dos assent to such Laws as the Lords and Commons have agreed Without prejudice to themselves and their Liberties a People may suffer the King to advise with his Council upon what they propose Two eyes see more than one and human judgment is subject to errors Tho the Parliament consist of the most eminent men of the Nation yet when they intend good they may be mistaken They may sefely put a check upon themselves that they may farther consider the most important matters and correct the errors that may have bin committed if the King's Council do discover them but he can speak only by the advice of his Council and every man of them is with his head to answer for the advices he gives If the Parliament has not bin satisfied with the reasons given against any Law that they offer'd it has frequently pass'd and if they have bin satisfied 't was not the King but they that laid it aside He that is of another opinion may try whether Le Roy le veut can give the force of a Law to any thing conceived by the King his Council or any other than the Parliament But if no wise man will affirm that he can do it or deny that by his Oath he is obliged to assent to those that come from them he can neither have the Legislative power in himself nor any other part in it than what is necessarily to be performed by him as the Law prescribes I know not what our Author means by saying Le Roy le veut is the interpretative phrase pronounced at the passing of every Act of Parliament For if there be difficulty in any of them those words do no way remove it But the following part of the paragraph better deserves to be observed It was says he the antient custom for á long time until the days of Henry the fifth for the Kings when any Bill was brought to them that had passed both Houses to take and pick out what they liked not and so much as they chose was enacted as a Law But the custom of the
and will govern you as I please But I doubt whether he would have succeeded till that Kingdom was joined to others of far greater strength from whence a power might be drawn to force them out of their usual method That which has bin said of the Governments of England France and other Countries shows them to be of the same nature and if they do not deserve the name of Kingdoms and that their Princes will by our Author's Arguments be perswaded to leave them those Nations perhaps will be so humble to content themselves without that magnificent Title rather than resign their own Liberties to purchase it and if this will not please him he may seek his glorious soveraign Monarchy among the wild Arabs or in the Island of Ceylon for it will not be found among civiliz'd Nations However more ignorance cannot be express'd than by giving the name of Democracy to those Governments that are composed of the three simple species as we have proved that all the good ones have ever bin for in a strict sense it can only sute with those where the People retain to themselves the administration of the supreme Power and more largely when the popular part as in Athens greatly overbalances the other two and that the denomination is taken from the prevailing part But our Author if I mistake not is the first that ever took the antient Governments of Israel Sparta and Rome or those of England France Germany and Spain to be Democracies only because every one of them had Senats and Assemblies of the People who in their Persons or by their Deputies did join with their chief Magistrates in the exercise of the supreme Power That of Israel to the time of Saul is called by Josephus an Aristocracy The same name is given to that of Sparta by all the Greek Authors and the great contest in the Peloponnesian War was between the two kinds of Government the Cities that were governed Aristocratically or desired to be so following the Lacedemonians and such as delighted in Democracy taking part with the Athenians In like manner Rome England and France were said to be under Monarchies not that their Kings might do what they pleased but because one man had a preheminence above any other Yet if the Romans could take Romulus the Son of a man that was never known Numa a Sabin Hostilius and Aneus Martius private men and Tarquinius Priscus the Son of a banished Corinthian who had no Title to a preference before others till it was bestowed upon them 't is ridiculous to think that they who gave them what they had could not set what limits they pleased to their own gift But says our Author The Nobility will then have one Voice and the People another and they joining may overrule the third which was never seen in any Kingdom This may perhaps be a way of regulating the Monarchical Power but it is not necessary nor the only one There may be a Senate tho the People be excluded that Senate may be composed of men chosen for their Virtue as well as for the Nobility of their Birth The Government may consist of King and People without a Senate or the Senate may be composed only of the Peoples Delegates But if I should grant his assertion to be true the reasonableness of such a Constitution cannot be destroy'd by the consequences he endeavours to draw from it for he who would instruct the world in matters of State must show what is or ought to be not what he fancies may thereupon ensue Besides it dos not follow that where there are three equal Votes Laws should be always made by the plurality for the consent of all the three is in many places required and 't is certain that in England and other parts the King and one of the Estates cannot make a Law without the concurrence of the other But to please Filmer I will avow that where the Nobles and Commons have an equal Vote they may join and over-rule or limit the power of the King and I leave any reasonable man to judg whether it be more safe and fit that those two Estates comprehending the whole body of the Nation in their Persons or by Representation should have a right to over-rule or limit the power of that man woman or child who sits in the Throne or that he or she young or old wise or foolish good or bad should over-rule them and by their vices weakness folly impertinence incapacity or malice put a stop to their proceedings and whether the chief concernments of a Nation may more fasely and prudently be made to depend upon the votes of so many eminent Persons amongst whom many wise and good men will always be found if there be any in the Nation and who in all respects have the same interest with them or upon the will of one who may be and often is as vile ignorant and wretched as the meanest Slave and either has or is for the most part made to believe he has an interest so contrary to them that their suppression is his Advancement Common sense so naturally leads us to the decision of this Question that I should not think it possible for Mankind to have mistaken tho we had no examples of it in History and 't is in vain to say that all Princes are not such as I represent for if a right were annexed to the being of a Prince and that his single judgment should over-balance that of a whole Nation it must belong to him as a Prince and be enjoy'd by the worst and basest as well as by the wisest and best which would inevitably draw on the absurdities above-mention'd But that many are and have bin such no man can deny or reasonably hope that they will not often prove to be such as long as any preference is granted to those who have nothing to recommend them but the Families from whence they derive a continual succession of those who excel in virtue wisdom and experience being promised to none nor reasonably to be expected from any Such a Right therefore cannot be claimed by all and if not by all then not by any unless it proceed from a particular grant in consideration of personal Virtue Ability and Integrity which must be proved and when any one goes about to do it I will either acknowledg him to be in the right or give the reasons of my denial However this is nothing to the general Proposition nay if a man were to be found who had more of the qualities requir'd for making a right judgment in matters of the greatest importance than a whole Nation or an Assembly of the best men chosen out of it which I have never heard to have bin unless in the Persons of Moses Joshua or Samuel who had the Spirit of God for their guide it would be nothing to our purpose for even he might be biassed by his personal Interests which Governments are not established principally to
to their Country I say that all Nations amongst whom Virtue has bin esteemed have had a great regard to them and their Posterity And tho Kings when they were made have bin intrusted by the Saxons and other Nations with a Power of ennobling those who by services render'd to their Country might deserve that Honor yet the body of the Nobility was more antient than such for it had bin equally impossible to take Kings according to Tacitus out of the Nobility if there had bin no Nobility as to take Captains for their Virtue if there had bin no Virtue and Princes could not without breach of that trust confer Honors upon those that did not deserve them which is so true that this practice was objected as the greatest crime against Vortigern the last and the worst of the British Kings and tho he might pretend according to such cavils as are usual in our time that the judgment of those matters was reserred to him yet the world judged of his Crimes and when he had render'd himself odious to God and men by them he perished in them and brought destruction upon his Country that had suffer'd them too long As among the Turks and most of the Eastern Tyrannies there is no Nobility and no man has any considerable advantage above the common People unless by the immediate favour of the Prince so in all the legal Kingdoms of the North the strength of the Government has always bin placed in the Nobility and no better defence has bin found against the encroachments of ill Kings than by setting up an Order of men who by holding large Territories and having great numbers of Tenants and Dependents might be able to restrain the exorbitances that either the Kings or the Commons might run into For this end Spain Germany France Poland Denmark Sweeden Scotland and England were almost wholly divided into Lordships under several names by which every particular Possessor owed Allegiance that is such an Obedience as the Law requires to the King and he reciprocally swore to perform that which the same Law exacted from him When these Nations were converted to the Christian Religion they had a great veneration for the Clergy and not doubting that the men whom they esteemed holy would be just thought their Liberties could not be better secured than by joining those who had the direction of their Consciences to the Noblemen who had the command of their Forces This succeeded so well in relation to the defence of the publick Rights that in all the forementioned States the Bishops Abbots c. were no less zealous or bold in defending the publick Liberty than the best and greatest of the Lords And if it were true that things being thus established the Commons did neither personally nor by their Representatives enter into the General Assemblies it could be of no advantage to Kings for such a Power as is above-mentioned is equally inconsistent with the absolute Sovereignty of Kings if placed in the Nobility and Clergy as if the Commons had a part If the King has all no other man nor number of men can have any If the Nobility and Clergy have the power the Commons may have their share also But I affirm that those whom we now call Commons have always had a part in the Government and their place in the Councils that managed it for if there was a distinction it must have bin by Patent Birth or Tenure As for Patents we know they began long after the coming of the Normans and those that now have them cannot pretend to any advantage on account of Birth or Tenure beyond many of those who have them not Nay besides the several Branches of the Families that now enjoy the most antient Honors which consequently are as noble as they and some of them of the elder Houses we know many that are now called Commoners who in antiquity and eminency are no way inferior to the chief of the titular Nobility and nothing can be more absurd than to give a prerogative of Birth to Cr-v-n T-ft-n H-ae B-nn-t Osb-rn and others before the Cliftons Hampdens Courtneys Pelhams St. Johns Baintons Wilbrahams Hungerfords and many others And if the Tenures of their Estates be consider'd they have the same and as antient as any of those who go under the names of Duke or Marquess I forbear to mention the sordid ways of attaining to Titles in our days but whoever will take the pains to examine them shall find that they rather defile than ennoble the possessors And whereas men are truly ennobled only by Virtue and respect is due to such as are descended from those who have bravely serv'd their Country because it is presumed till they shew the contrary that they will resemble their Ancestors these modern Courtiers by their Names and Titles frequently oblige us to call to mind such things as are not to be mentioned without blushing Whatever the antient Noblemen of England were we are sure they were not such as these And tho it should be confess'd that no others than Dukes Marquesses Earls Viscounts and Barons had their places in the Councils mentioned by Cesar and Tacitus or in the great Assemblies of the Saxons it could be of no advantage to such as now are called by those names They were the titles of Offices conserred upon those who did and could best conduct the people in time of War give Counsel to the King administer Justice and perform other publick duties but were never made hereditary except by abuse much less were they sold for money or given as recompences of the vilest services If the antient order be totally inverted and the ends of its institution perverted they who from thence pretend to be distinguished from other men must build their claim upon something very different from Antiquity This being sufficient if I mistake not to make it appear that the antient Councils of our Nation did not consist of such as we now call Noblemen it may be worth our pains to examine of what sort of men they did consist And tho I cannot much rely upon the credit of Camden which he has forfeited by a great number of untruths I will begin with him because he is cited by our Author If we will believe him That which the Saxons called Wittenagemot we may justly name Parliament which has the supreme and most sacred Authority of making abrogating and interpreting Laws and generally of all things relating to the safety of the Commonwealth This Wittenagemot was according to William of Malmsbury The general meeting of the Senat and People and Sir Harry Spelman calls it The General Council of the Clergy and People In the Assembly at Calcuth it was decreed by the Archbishops Bishops Abbots Dukes Senators and the People of the Land Populo terrae that the Kings should be elected by the Priests and Elders of the People By these Offa Ina and others were made Kings and Alfred
in his Will acknowledged his Crown from them Edgar was elected by all the People and not long after deposed by them and again restored in a General Assembly These things being sometimes said to be done by the assent of the Barons of the Kingdom Camden says That under the name of the Baronage all the Orders of the Kingdom are in a manner comprehended and it cannot be otherwise understood if we consider that those called Noblemen or the Nobility of England are often by the Historians said to be infinita multitudo an infinite multitude If any man ask how the Nobility came to be so numerous I answer That the Northern Nations who were perpetually in Arms put a high esteem upon Military Valour sought by conquest to acquire better Countries than their own valu'd themselves according to the numbers of men they could bring into the field and to distinguish them from Villains called those Noblemen who nobly defended and enlarged their Dominions by War and for a reward of their Services in the division of Lands gained by conquest they distributed to them Freeholds under the obligation of continuing the same Service to their Country This appears by the name of Knights Service a Knight being no more than a Soldier and a Knight's Fee no more than was sufficient to maintain one 'T is plain that Knighthood was always esteemed Nobility so that no man of what quality soever thought a Knight inferior to him and those of the highest birth could not act as Noblemen till they were knighted Among the Goths in Spain the cutting off the Hair which being long was the mark of Knighthood was accounted a degrading and looked upon to be so great a mark of Infamy that he who had suffer'd it could never bear any honor or office in the Commonwealth and there was no dignity so high but every Knight was capable of it There was no distinction of men above it and even to this day Baron or Varon in their Language signifies no more than Vir in Latin which is not properly given to any man unless he be free The like was in France till the coming in of the third race of Kings in which time the 12 Peers of whom 6 only were Laymen were raised to a higher dignity and the Commands annexed made hereditary but the honour of Knighthood was thereby no way diminished Tho there were Dukes Earls Marquesses and Barons in the time of Froissart yet he usually calls them Knights And Philip de Commines speaking of the most eminent men of his time calls them good wise or valiant Knights Even to this day the name of Gentleman comprehends all that is raised above the common people Henry the fourth usually called himself the first Gentleman in France and 't is an ordinary phrase among them when they speak of a Gentleman of good Birth to say Il est noble comme le Roy He is as noble as the King In their General Assembly of Estates The Chamber of the Noblesse which is one of Three is composed of the Deputies sent by the Gentry of every Province and in the inquiry made about the Year 1668 concerning Nobility no notice was taken of such as had assumed the Titles of Earl Marquess Viscount or Baron but only of those who called themselves Gentlemen and if they could prove that name to belong to them they were left to use the other Titles as they pleased When Duels were in fashion as all know they were lately no man except the Princes of the Blood and Marechals of France could with honour refuse a Challenge from any Gentleman The first because it was thought unfit that he who might be King should fight with a Subject to the danger of the Commonwealth which might by that means be deprived of its Head The others being by their Office Commanders of the Nobility and Judges of all the Controversies relating to Honour that happen amongst them cannot reasonably be brought into private Contests with any In Denmark Nobleman and Gentleman is the same thing and till the year 1660 they had the principal part of the Government in their hands When Charles Guslavus King of Sweden invaded Poland in the year 1655 't is said that there were above three hundred thousand Gentlemen in Arms to resist him This is the Nobility of that Country Kings are chosen by them Every one of them will say as in France He is noble as the King The last King was a private man among them not thought to have had more than four hundred pounds a year He who now reigns was not at all above him in birth or estate till he had raised himself by great services done for his Country in many wars and there was not one Gentleman in the Nation who might not have bin chosen as well as he if it had pleased the Assembly that did it This being the Nobility of the Northern Nations and the true Baronage of England 't is no wonder that they were called Nobiles the most eminent among them Magnates Principes Proceres and so numerous that they were esteemed to be Multitudo infinita One place was hardly able to contain them and the inconveniences of calling them all together appeared to be so great that they in time chose rather to meet by Representatives than every one in his own person The power therefore remaining in them it matters not what method they observed in the execution They who had the substance in their hands might give it what form they pleased Our Author sufficiently manifests his ignorance in saying there could be no Knights of the Shires in the time of the Saxons because there were no Shires for the very word is Saxon and we find the names of Barkshire Wiltshire Devonshire Dorsetshire and others most frequently in the writings of those times and Dukes Earls Thanes or Aldermen appointed to command the forces and look to the distribution of Justice in them Selden cites Ingulphus for saying that Alfred was the first that changed the Provinces c. into Counties but refutes him and proves that the distinction of the Land into Shires or Counties for Shire signified no more than the share or part committed to the care of the Earl or Comes was far more antient Whether the first divisions by the Saxons were greater or lesser than the Shires or Counties now are is nothing to the question they who made them to be as they were could have made them greater or lesser as they pleased And whether they did immediately or some ages after that distinction cease to come to their great Assemblies and rather chuse to send their Deputies or whether such Deputies were chosen by Counties Cities and Boroughs as in our days or in any other manner can be of no advantage or prejudice to the Cause that I maintain If the power of the Nation when it was divided into seven Kingdoms or united under one did reside in the Micklegemots