But if this pretended right be grounded upon no word or work of God, nor the reason of man, ’tis to be accounted a mere figment, that hath nothing of truth in it.
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 it never had any effect, which to us is the same. ’Tis as ridiculous to think of retrieving that, which from the beginning of the world was lost, as to create that which never was. But I may go farther, and affirm, that tho there had been such a right in the first fathers of mankind exercised by them, and for some ages individually transmitted to their eldest sons, it must necessarily perish, since the generations of men are so confused, that no man knows his own original, and consequently this heir is nowhere to be found; for ’tis a folly for a man to pretend to an inheritance, who cannot prove himself to be the right heir. If this be not true, I desire to know from which of Noah’s sons the kings of England, France, or Spain do deduce their original, or what reason they can give why the title to dominion, which is fancied to be in Noah, did rather belong to the first of their respective races, that attained to the crowns they now enjoy, than to the meanest peasant of their kingdoms; or how that can be transmitted to them, which was not in the first. We know that no man can give what he hath not; that if there be no giver, there is no gift; if there be no root, there can be no branch; and that the first point failing, all that should be derived from it must necessarily fail.
Our author, who is good at resolving difficulties, shews us an easy way out of this strait. ’Tis true, says he, all kings are not natural parents of their subjects; yet they either are, or are to be reputed the next heirs to those first progenitors, who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, and in their right succeed to the exercise of the supreme jurisdiction; and such heirs are not only lords of their own children, but also of their brethren, and all those that were subject to their father, c. By this means it comes to pass, that many a child succeeding a king hath the right of a father over many a grey-headed multitude, and hath the title of pater patriae. 1
An assertion comprehending so many points, upon which the most important rights of all mankind do depend, might deserve some proof: But he being of opinion we ought to take it upon his credit, doth not vouchsafe to give us so much as the shadow of any. Nevertheless being unwilling either crudely to receive, or rashly to reject it, I shall take the liberty of examining the proposition, and hope I may be pardoned, if I dwell a little more than ordinarily upon that which is the foundation of his work.
We are beholden to him for confessing modestly that all kings are not the natural fathers of their people, and sparing us the pains of proving, that the kings of Persia, who reigned from the Indies to the Hellespont, did not beget all the men that lived in those countries; or that the kings of France and Spain, who began to reign before they were five years old, were not the natural fathers of the nations under them. But if all kings are not fathers, none are, as they are kings: If any one is, or ever was, the rights of paternity belong to him, and to no other who is not so also. This must be made evident; for matters of such importance require proof, and ought not to be taken upon supposition. If Filmer therefore will pretend that the right of father belongs to any one king, he must prove that he is the father of his people; for otherwise it doth not appertain to him; he is not the man we seek.
’Tis no less absurd to say he is to be reputed heir to the first progenitor: for it must be first proved, that the nation did descend from one single progenitor without mixture of other races: that this progenitor was the man, to whom Noah (according to Filmer’s whimsical division of Asia, Europe, and Africa among his sons) did give the land now inhabited by that people: That this division so made was not capable of subdivisions; and that this man is by a true and uninterrupted succession descended from the first and eldest line of that progenitor; and all fails, if every one of these points be not made good. If there never was any such man who had that right, it cannot be inherited from him. If by the same rule that a parcel of the world was allotted to him, that parcel might be subdivided amongst his children as they increased, the subdivisions may be infinite, and the right of dominion thereby destroyed. If several nations inhabit the same land, they owe obedience to several fathers: that which is due to their true father, cannot be rendered to him that is not so; for he would by that means be deprived of the right which is inseparably annexed to his person: And lastly, whatsoever the right of an heir may be, it can belong only to him that is heir.
Lest any should be seduced from these plain truths by frivolous suggestions, ’tis good to consider that the title of pater patriae, with which our author would cheat us, hath no relation to the matters of right, upon which we dispute. ’Tis a figurative speech, that may have been rightly enough applied to some excellent princes on account of their care and love to their people, resembling that of a father to his children; and can relate to none but those who had it. No man that had common sense, or valued truth, did ever call Phalaris, Dionysius, Nabis, Nero, or Caligula, fathers of their countries; but monsters, that to the utmost of their power endeavoured their destruction: which is enough to prove, that sacred name cannot be given to all, and in consequence to none but such, as by their virtue, piety, and good government do deserve it.
These matters will yet appear more evident, if it be considered, that tho Noah had reigned as a king; that Zoroaster, as some suppose, was Ham, who reigned over his children, and that thereby some right might perhaps be derived to such as succeeded them; yet this can have no influence upon such as have not the like original; and no man is to be presumed to have it, till it be proved, since we have proved that many had it not. If Nimrod set himself up against his grandfather, and Ninus, who was descended from him in the fifth generation, slew him; they ill deserved the name and rights of fathers; and none, but those who have renounced all humanity, virtue, and common sense, can give it to them, or their successors. If therefore Noah and Shem had not so much as the shadow of regal power, and the actions of Nimrod, Ninus, and others who were kings in their times, shew they did not reign in the right of fathers, but were set up in a direct opposition to it, the titles of the first kings were not from paternity, nor consistent with it.
Our author therefore, who should have proved every point, doth neither prove any one, nor 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 been 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 entering upon the government by the right of fathers, or managing it as fathers, they did by the most outrageous 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 enjoined, 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, ’tis 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 Cush, Ham, Shem and Noah; ’tis 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, Japheth, Ham, Cush, 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 Cush, Ham and Noah were his elders and progenitors in the direct line, and all the sons of Shem and Japheth, and their descendants 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) 2 he says, went out to people the earth, and whom he calls kings: for, according to the same rule, Noah, Shem and Japheth, with their descendants, 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 anything 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 been 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 acknowledge 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, ’tis 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. ] 3
—degenerated from that reason which distinguisheth men from beasts. Tho it may be fit to use some ceremonies, before a man be admitted to practice physick, or set up a trade, ’tis 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 ’tis 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 virtues 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 and good; or to subject the best to the rage of the worst. If there be any family therefore in the world, that can by the law of God and nature, distinct from the ordinance of man, pretend to an hereditary right of dominion over any people, it must be one that never did, and never can produce any person that is not free from all the infirmities and vices that render him unable to exercise the sovereign power; and is endowed with all the virtues required to that end; or at least a promise from God, verified by experience, that the next in blood shall ever be able and fit for that work. But since we do not know that any such hath yet appeared in the world, we have no reason to believe that there is, or ever was any such; and consequently none upon whom God hath conferred the rights that cannot be exercised without them.
If there was no shadow of a paternal right in the institution of the kingdoms of Saul and David, there could be none in those that succeeded. Rehoboam could have no other, than from Solomon: When he reigned over two tribes, and Jeroboam over ten, ’tis not possible that both of them could be the next heir of their last common father Jacob; and ’tis absurd to say, that ought to be reputed, which is impossible: for our thoughts are ever to be guided by truth, or such an appearance of it, as doth persuade or convince us.
The same title of father is yet more ridiculously or odiously applied to the succeeding kings. Baasha had no other title to the crown, than by killing Nadab the son of Jeroboam, and destroying his family. Zimri purchased the same honour by the slaughter of Elah when he was drunk; and dealing with the house of Baasha, as he had done with that of Jeroboam. Zimri burning himself, transferred the same to Omri, as a reward for bringing him to that extremity. As Jehu was more fierce than these, he seems to have gained a more excellent recompence than any since Jeroboam, even a conditional promise of a perpetual kingdom; but falling from these glorious privileges, purchased by his zeal in killing two wicked kings, and above one hundred of their brethren, Shallum inherited them, by destroying Zechariah and all that remained of his race. This in plain English is no less than to say, that whosoever kills a king, and invades a crown, tho the act and means of accomplishing it be never so detestable, does thereby become father of his country, and heir of all the divine privileges annexed to that glorious inheritance. And tho I cannot tell whether such a doctrine be more sottish, monstrous or impious, I dare affirm, that if it were received, no king in the world could think himself safe in his throne for one day: They are already encompassed with many dangers; but lest pride, avarice, ambition, lust, rage, and all the vices that usually reign in the hearts of worldly men, should not be sufficient to invite them perpetually to disturb mankind, through the desire of gaining the power, riches and splendor that accompanies a crown, our author proposes to them the most sacred privileges, as a reward of the most execrable crimes. He that was stirred up only by the violence of his own nature, thought that a kingdom could never be bought at too dear a rate;
But if the sacred character of God’s anointed or vicegerent, and father of a country, were added to the other advantages that follow the highest fortunes; the most modest and just men would be filled with fury, that they might attain to them. Nay, it may be, even the best would be the most forward in conspiring against such as reigned: They who could not be tempted with external pleasures, would be most in love with divine privileges; and since they should become the sacred ministers of God, if they succeeded, and traitors or rogues only if they miscarried, their only care would be so to lay their designs, that they might be surely executed. This is a doctrine worthy of Filmer’s invention, and Heylyn’s approbation; which being well weighed, will shew to all good and just kings how far they are obliged to those, who under pretence of advancing their authority, fill the minds of men with such notions as are so desperately pernicious to them.
If the Israelites, whose lawgiver was God, had no king in the first institution of their government, ’tis no wonder that other nations should not think themselves obliged to set up any: if they who came all of one stock, and knew their genealogies, when they did institute kings, had no regard to our author’s chimerical right of inheritance, nor were taught by God or his prophets to have any; ’tis not strange that nations, who did not know their own original, and who probably, if not certainly, came of several stocks, never put themselves to the trouble of seeking one, who by his birth deserved to be preferred before others; and if the various changes happening in all kingdoms (whereby in process of time the crowns were transported into divers families, to which the right of inheritance could not without the utmost impiety and madness be imputed) such a fancy certainly could only enter into the heads of fools; and we know of none so foolish to have harbour’d it.
The Grecians, amongst others who followed the light of reason, knew no other original title to the government of a nation, than that wisdom, valour and justice, which was beneficial to the people. These qualities gave beginning to those governments, which we call heroum regna; 1 and the veneration paid to such as enjoyed them, proceeded from a grateful sense of the good received from them: They were thought to be descended from the gods, who in virtue and beneficence surpassed other men: The same attended their descendants, till they came to abuse their power, and by their vices shewed themselves like to, or worse than others. Those nations did not seek the most ancient, but the most worthy; and thought such only worthy to be preferred before others, who could best perform their duty. The Spartans knew that Hercules and Achilles were not their fathers, for they were a nation before either of them were born; but thinking their children might be like to them in valour, they brought them from Thebes and Epirus to be their kings. If our author is of another opinion, I desire to know, whether the Heraclidae, or the Aeacidae were, or ought to be reputed fathers of the Lacedemonians; for if the one was, the other was not.
The same method was followed in Italy; and they who esteemed themselves Aborigines,
could not set up one to govern them under the title of parent. They could pay no veneration to any man under the name of a common father, who thought they had none; and they who esteemed themselves equal, could have no reason to prefer any one; unless he were distinguished from others by the virtues that were beneficial to all. This may be illustrated by matters of fact. Romulus and Remus, the sons of a nun, constuprated, as is probable, by a lusty soldier, who was said to be Mars, for their vigour and valour were made heads of a gathered people. We know not that ever they had any children; but we are sure they could not be fathers of the people that flocked to them from several places, nor in any manner be reputed heirs of him or them that were so; for they never knew who was their own father; and when their mother came to be discovered, they ought to have been subjects to Amulius or Numitor, when they had slain him. They could not be his heirs whilst he lived, and were not when he died: The government of the Latins continued at Alba, and Romulus reigned over those who joined with him in building Rome. The power not coming to him by inheritance, must have been gained by force, or conferred upon him by consent: It could not be acquired by force; for one man could not force a multitude of fierce and valiant men, as they appear to have been. It must therefore have been by consent: And when he aimed at more authority than they were willing to allow, they slew him. He being dead, they fetched Numa from among the Sabines: He was not their father, nor heir to their father, but a stranger; not a conqueror, but an unarmed philosopher. Tullus Hostilius had no other title: Ancus Marcius was no way related to such as had reigned. The first Tarquin was the son of a banished Corinthian. Servius Tullius came to Rome in the belly of his captive mother, and could inherit nothing but chains from his vanquished father. Tarquin the Proud murdered him, and first took upon himself the title of king, sine jussu populi. 3 If this murder and usurpation be called a conquest, and thought to create a right, the effect will be but small: The conqueror was soon conquered, banished, and his sons slain, after which we hear no more of him or his descendants. Whatsoever he gained from Servius, or the people, was soon lost, and did accrue to those that conquered and ejected him; and they might retain what was their own, or confer it upon one or more, in such manner and measure as best pleased themselves. If the regal power, which our author says was in the consuls, could be divided into two parts, limited to a year, and suffer such restrictions as the people pleased to lay upon it, they might have divided it into as many parcels, and put it into such form, as best suited with their inclinations; and the several magistracies which they did create for the exercise of the kingly, and all other powers, shews that they were to give account to none but themselves.
The Israelites, Spartans, Romans and others, who thus framed their governments according to their own will, did it not by any peculiar privilege, but by a universal right conferred upon them by God and nature: They were made of no better clay than others: They had no right, that does not as well belong to other nations; that is to say, the constitution of every government is referred to those who are concerned in it, and no other has anything to do with it.
Yet if it be asserted, that the government of Rome was paternal, or they had none at all; I desire to know, how they came to have six fathers of several families, whilst they lived under kings; and two or more new ones every year afterwards: Or how they came to be so excellent in virtue and fortune, as to conquer the best part of the world, if they had no government. Hobbes indeed doth scurrilously deride Cicero, Plato and Aristotle, caeterosque Romanae Graecae anarchiae fautores. 4 But ’tis strange that this anarchy, which he resembles to a chaos, full of darkness and confusion, that can have no strength or regular action, should overthrow all the monarchies that came within their reach, If (as our author says) the best order, greatest strength, and most stability be in them. 5 It must therefore be confessed, that these governments are in their various forms, rightly instituted by several nations, without any regard to inheritance; or that these nations have had no governments, and were more strong, virtuous and happy without government, than under it, which is most absurd.
But if governments arise from the consent of men, and are instituted by men according to their own inclinations, they did therein seek their own good; for the will is ever drawn by some real good, or the appearance of it. This is that which man seeks by all the regular or irregular motions of his mind. Reason and passion, virtue and vice do herein concur, tho they differ vastly in the objects, in which each of them thinks this good to consist. A people therefore that sets up kings, dictators, consuls, praetors or emperors, does it not, that they may be great, glorious, rich or happy, but that it may be well with themselves and their posterity. This is not accomplished simply by setting one, a few, or more men in the administration of powers, but by placing the authority in those who may rightly perform their office. This is not every man’s work: valour, integrity, wisdom, industry, experience and skill, are required for the management of those military and civil affairs that necessarily fall under the care of the chief magistrates. He or they therefore may reasonably be advanced above their equals, who are most fit to perform the duties belonging to their stations, in order to the publick good, for which they were instituted.
Marius, Sulla, Catiline, Julius or Octavius Caesar, and all those who by force or fraud usurped a dominion over their brethren, could have no title to this right; much less could they become fathers of the people, by using all the most wicked means that could well be imagined to destroy them; and not being regularly chosen for their virtues, or the opinion of them, nor preferred on account of any prerogative that had been from the beginning annexed to their families, they could have no other right than occupation could confer upon them. If this can confer a right, there is an end of all disputes concerning the laws of God or man. If Julius and Octavius Caesar did successively become lords and fathers of their country, by slaughtering almost all the senate, and such persons as were eminent for nobility or virtue, together with the major part of the people, it cannot be denied, that a thief, who breaks into his neighbour’s house, and kills him, is justly master of his estate; and may exact the same obedience from his children, that they render to their father. If this right could be transferred to Tiberius, either through the malice of Octavius, or the fraud of his wife; a wet blanket laid over his face, and a few corrupted soldiers could invest Caligula with the same. A vile rascal pulling Claudius out by the heels from behind the hangings where he had hid himself, could give it to him. A dish of mushrooms well seasoned by the infamous strumpet his wife, and a potion prepared for Britannicus by Locusta, could transfer it to her son, who was a stranger to his blood. Galba became heir to it, by driving Nero to despair and death. Two common soldiers by exciting his guards to kill him, could give a just title to the empire of the world to Otho, who was thought to be the worst man in it. If a company of villains in the German army, thinking it as fit for them as others, to create a father of mankind, could confer the dignity upon Vitellius; and if Vespasian, causing him to be killed, and thrown into a jakes less impure than his life, did inherit all the glorious and sacred privileges belonging to that title, ’tis in vain to inquire after any man’s right to anything.
If there be such a thing as right or wrong to be examined by men, and any rules set, whereby the one may be distinguished from the other; these extravagancies can have no effect of right. Such as commit them, are not to be looked upon as fathers; but as the most mortal enemies of their respective countries. No right is to be acknowledged in any, but such as is conferred upon them by those who have the right of conferring, and are concerned in the exercise of the power, upon such conditions as best please themselves. No obedience can be due to him or them, who have not a right of commanding. This cannot reasonably be conferred upon any, that are not esteemed willing and able rightly to execute it. This ability to perform the highest works that come within the reach of men; and integrity of will not to be diverted from it by any temptation, or consideration of private advantages, comprehending all that is most commendable in man; we may easily see, that whensoever men act according to the law of their own nature, which is reason, they can have no other rule to direct them in advancing one above another, than the opinion of a man’s virtue and ability, best to perform the duty incumbent upon him; that is, by all means to procure the good of the people committed to his charge. He is only fit to conduct a ship, who understands the art of a pilot: When we are sick, we seek the assistance of such as are best skill’d in physick: The command of an army is prudently conferred upon him that hath most industry, skill, experience and valour: In like manner, he only can, according to the rules of nature, be advanced to the dignities of the world, who excels in the virtues required for the performance of the duties annexed to them; for he only can answer the end of his institution. The law of every instituted power, is to accomplish the end of its institution, as creatures are to do the will of their creator, and in deflecting from it, overthrow their own being. Magistrates are distinguished from other men, by the power with which the law invests them for the publick good: He that cannot or will not procure that good, destroys his own being, and becomes like to other men. In matters of the greatest importance, detur digniori 6 is the voice of nature; all her most sacred laws are perverted, if this be not observed in the disposition of the governments of mankind: But all is neglected and violated, if they are not put into the hands of such as excel in all manner of virtues; for they only are worthy of them, and they only can have a right who are worthy, because they only can perform the end for which they are instituted. This may seem strange to those, who have their heads infected with Filmer’s whimseys; but to others, so certainly grounded upon truth, that Bartholomew de Las Casas Bishop of Chiapa, in a treatise written by him, and dedicated to the Emperor Charles the 5th, concerning the Indies, makes it the foundation of all his discourse, that notwithstanding his grant of all those countries from the pope, and his pretentions to conquest, he could have no right over any of those nations, unless he did in the first place, as the principal end, regard their good: The reason, says he, is, that regard is to be had to the principal end and cause, for which a supreme or universal lord is set over them, which is their good and profit, and not that it should turn to their destruction and ruin; for if that should be, there is no doubt but from thence forward, that power would be tyrannical and unjust, as tending more to the interest and profit of that lord, than to the publick good and profit of the subjects; which, according to natural reason, and the laws of God and man, is abhorred, and deserves to be abhorred. 7 And in another place speaking of the governors, who, abusing their power, brought many troubles and vexations upon the Indians; he says, They had rendered his majesty’s government intolerable, and his yoke insupportable, tyrannical, and most justly abhorred. 8 I do not allege this through an opinion, that a Spanish bishop is of more authority than another man; but to shew, that these are common notions agreed by all mankind; and that the greatest monarchs do neither refuse to hear them, or to regulate themselves according to them, till they renounce common sense, and degenerate into beasts.
But if that government be unreasonable, and abhorred by the laws of God and man, which is not instituted for the good of those that live under it; and an empire, grounded upon the donation of the pope, which amongst those of the Roman religion is of great importance, and an entire conquest of the people, with whom there had been no former compact, do degenerate into a most unjust and detestable tyranny, so soon as the supreme lord begins to prefer his own interest or profit, before the good of his subjects; what shall we say of those who pretend to a right of dominion over free nations, as inseparably united to their persons, without distinction of age or sex, or the least consideration of their infirmities and vices; as if they were not placed in the throne for the good of their people, but to enjoy the honours and pleasures that attend the highest fortune? What name can be fit for those, who have no other title to the places they possess, than the most unjust and violent usurpation, or being descended from those, who for their virtues were, by the people’s consent, duly advanced to the exercise of a legitimate power; and having sworn to administer it, according to the conditions upon which it was given, for the good of those who gave it, turn all to their own pleasure and profit, without any care of the publick? These 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 been deprived, and return to the ancient custom of chusing those to be magistrates, who for their virtues 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.
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, ’Tis but the negligence or ignorance of the people, to lose the knowledge 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 universal father, c. 1
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 been a man in the world, who had the right in himself, and telling who he was, have shewed how it had been 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 what it would avail us if we did know him, for ’tis 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 been 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 universe 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 does 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 ourselves. It were a shame for one of us poor, weak, shortsighted 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 suit 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 does 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 folly 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 2 ), 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 everyone; 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 does nowhere 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 persuaded to search into the genealogies of their princes, and to judge 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 been 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 safely 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 Heylyn; since ’tis no less absurd to deduce a right from him that had none, than to expect pure and wholesome 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 one, I desire to know who he is, and where we may find him, that the empire of the world may be delivered to him: But if he cannot be found, the business is at an end; for every man in the world may pretend himself to be the person; and the infinite controversies arising thereupon can never be decided, unless either the genealogies of everyone from Noah were extant and proved, or we had a word from heaven, with a sufficient testimony of his mission who announceth it. When this is done, ’twill be time to consider what kind of obedience is due to this wonderfully happy and glorious person. But whilst the first appears to be absolutely impossible, and we have no promise or reason to expect the other, the proposition is to be esteemed one of our author’s empty whimseys, which cannot be received by mankind, unless they come all to be possessed with an epidemical madness, which would cast them into that which Hobbes calls bellum omnium contra omnes; 3 when every man’s sword would be drawn against every man, and every man’s against him, if God should so abandon the world to suffer them to fall into such misery.
If this pretended right be divided, it concerns us to know by whom, when, how, and to whom: for the division cannot be of any value, unless the right was originally in one; that he did exercise this right in making the division; that the parcels into which the world is divided are according to the allotment that was made; and that the persons claiming them by virtue of it are the true heirs of those to whom they were first granted. Many other difficulties may be alleged no less inextricable than these; but this seeming sufficient for the present, I shall not trouble myself with more, promising that when they shall be removed I will propose others, or confessing my errors, yield up the cause.
But if the dominion of the whole world cannot belong to any one man, and every one have an equal title to that which should give it; or if it did belong to one, none did ever exercise it in governing the whole, or dividing it; or if he did divide it, no man knows how, when, and to whom; so that they who lay claim to any parcels can give no testimony of that division, nor shew any better title than other men derived from his first progenitor, to whom ’tis said to have been granted; and that we have neither a word, nor the promise of a word from God to decide the controversies arising thereupon, nor any prophet giving testimony of his mission that takes upon him to do it, the whole fabrick of our author’s patriarchical dominion falls to the ground; and they who propose these doctrines, which (if they were received) would be a root of perpetual and irreconcilable hatred in every man against every man, can be accounted no less than ministers of the Devil, tho they want the abilities he has sometimes infused into those who have been employ’d upon the like occasions. And we may justly conclude that God having never given the whole world to be governed by one man, nor prescribed any rule for the division of it; nor declared where the right of dividing or subdividing that which every man has should terminate; we may safely affirm that the whole is forever left to the will and discretion of man: We may enter into, form, and continue in greater or lesser societies, as best pleases ourselves: The right of paternity as to dominion is at an end, and no more remains, but the love, veneration, and obedience, which proceeding from a due sense of the benefits of birth and education, have their root in gratitude, and are esteemed sacred and inviolable by all that are sober and virtuous. And as ’tis impossible to transfer these benefits by inheritance, so ’tis impossible to transfer the rights arising from them. No man can be my father but he that did beget me; and ’tis as absurd to say I owe that duty to one who is not my father, which I owe to my father, as to say, he did beget me, who did not beget me; for the obligation that arises from benefits can only be to him that conferred them. ’Tis in vain to say the same is due to his heir; for that can take place only when he has but one, which in this case signifies nothing: For if I being the only son of my father, inherit his right, and have the same power over my children as he had over me; if I had one hundred brothers, they must all inherit the same; and the law of England, which acknowledges one only heir, is not general, but municipal, and is so far from being general, as the precept of God and nature, that I doubt whether it was ever known or used in any nation of the world beyond our island. The words of the Apostle, If we are children, we are therefore heirs and co-heirs with Christ, 4 are the voice of God and nature; and as the universal law of God and nature is always the same, every one of us who have children have the same right over them, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had over theirs; and that right which was not devolved to any one of them, but inherited by them all (I mean the right of father as father) not the peculiar promises, which were not according to the law of nature, but the election of grace, is also inherited by every one of us, and ours, that is, by all mankind. But if that which could be inherited was inherited by all, and it be impossible that a right of dominion over all can be due to everyone, then all that is or can be inherited by everyone is that exemption from the dominion of another, which we call liberty, and is the gift of God and nature.
There being no such thing therefore, according to the law of nature, as an hereditary right to the dominion of the world, or any part of it; nor one man that can derive to himself a title from the first fathers of mankind, by which he can rightly pretend to be preferred before others to that command, or a part of it, and none can be derived from Nimrod, or other usurpers, who had none in themselves; we may justly spare our pains of seeking farther into that matter. But as things of the highest importance can never be too fully explained; it may not be amiss to observe, that if mankind could be brought to believe that such a right of dominion were by the law of God and nature hereditary, a great number of the most destructive and inextricable controversies must thereupon arise, which the wisdom and goodness of God can never enjoin, and nature, which is reason, can never intend; but at present I shall only mention two, from whence others must perpetually spring. First if there be such a law, no human constitution can alter it: No length of time can be a defence against it: All governments that are not conformable to it are vicious and void even in their root, and must be so forever: That which is originally unjust may be justly overthrown. We do not know of any (at least in that part of the world in which we are most concerned) that is established, or exercised with an absolute power, as by the authors of those opinions is esteemed inseparable from it: Many, as the empire, and other states, are directly contrary; and on that account can have no justice in them. It being certain therefore that he or they who exercise those governments have no right: that there is a man to whom it doth belong, and no man knowing who he is, there is no one man who has not as good a title to it as any other: There is not therefore one who hath not a right, as well as any, to overthrow that which hath none at all. He that hath no part in the government may destroy it as well as he that has the greatest; for he neither has that which God ordained he should have, nor can shew a title to that which he enjoys from that original prerogative of birth, from whence it can only be derived.
If it be said, that some governments are arbitrary, as they ought to be, and France, Turkey, and the like be alleged as instances, the matter is not mended: for we do not only know when those, who deserve to be regarded by us, were not absolute, and how they came to be so; but also, that those very families which are now in possession are not of very long continuance, had no more title to the original right we speak of than any other men, and consequently can have none to this day. And tho we cannot perhaps say that the governments of the barbarous Eastern nations were ever other than they are, yet the known original of them deprives them of all pretence to the patriarchical inheritance, and they may be as justly as any other deprived of the power to which they have no title.
In the second place, tho all men’s genealogies were extant, and fully verified, and it were allowed that the dominion of the world, or every part of it did belong to the right heir of the first progenitor, or any other to whom the first did rightly assign the parcel, which is under question; yet it were impossible for us to know who should be esteemed the true heir, or according to what rule he should be judged so to be: for God hath not by a precise word determined it, and men cannot agree about it, as appears by the various laws and customs of several nations, disposing severally of hereditary dominions.
’Tis a folly to say, they ought to go to the next in blood; for ’tis not known who is that next. Some give the preference to him who amongst many competitors is the fewest degrees removed from their common progenitor who first obtained the crown: Others look only upon the last that possessed it. Some admit of representation, by which means the grandchild of a king by his eldest son, is preferred before his second son, he being said to represent his dead father, who was the eldest: Others exclude these, and advance the younger son, who is nearer by one degree to the common progenitor that last enjoyed the crown than the grandchild. According to the first rule, Richard the second was advanced to the crown of England, as son of the eldest son of Edward the third, before his uncles, who by one degree were nearer to the last possessor: And in pursuance of the second, Sancho surnamed the Brave, second son of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile, was preferred before Alfonso son of Ferdinand his elder brother, according to the law of tanistry, which was in force in Spain ever since we have had any knowledge of that country, as appears by the contest between Corbis and Orsua, decided by combat before Scipio Africanus; continued in full force as long as the kingdom of the Goths lasted, and was ever highly valued, till the House of Austria got possession of that country, and introduced laws and customs formerly unknown to the inhabitants.
The histories of all nations furnish us with innumerable examples of both sorts; and whosoever takes upon him to determine which side is in the right, ought to shew by what authority he undertakes to be the judge of mankind, and how the infinite breaches thereby made upon the rights of the governing families shall be cured, without the overthrow of those that he shall condemn, and of the nations where such laws have been in force as he dislikes: and till that be done, in my opinion, no place will afford a better lodging for him that shall impudently assume such a power, than the new buildings in Moor-Fields.
’Tis no less hard to decide whether this next heir is to be sought in the male line only, or whether females also be admitted. If we follow the first as the law of God and nature, the title of our English kings is wholly abolished; for not one of them since Henry the 1st has had the least pretence to an inheritance by the masculine line; and if it were necessary, we have enough to say of those that were before them.
If it be said, that the same right belongs to females, it ought to be proved that women are as fit as men to perform the office of a king, that is, as the Israelites said to Samuel, to go in and out before us, to judge us, and to fight our battles; for it were an impious folly to say that God had ordained those for the offices on which the good of mankind so much depends, who by nature are unable to perform the duties of them. If on the other side, the sweetness, gentleness, delicacy, and tenderness of the sex render them so unfit for manly exercises, that they are accounted utterly repugnant to, and inconsistent with that modesty which does so eminently shine in all those that are good amongst them; that law of nature which should advance them to the government of men, would overthrow its own work, and make those to be the heads of nations, which cannot be the heads of private families; for, as the Apostle says, The woman is not the head of the man, but the man is the head of the woman. 1 This were no less than to oblige mankind to lay aside the name of reasonable creature: for if reason be his nature, it cannot enjoin that which is contrary to itself; if it be not, the definition homo est animal rationale, 2 is false, and ought no longer to be assumed.
If any man think these arguments to be mistaken or misapplied, I desire him to enquire of the French nation on what account they have always excluded females, and such as descended from them? How comes the house of Bourbon to 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 ancient 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; 3 and no man ever heard of a queen, or a man deriving his title from a female among the ancient 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. 4 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 feminine 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, ’tis 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 does 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.
Lest what has been 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 profane 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 ancient families is oft obscure, and worn out of knowledge; 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 ennobled 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 sovereignty on whom they please, c. 1
I may justly ask how any one or more families come to be esteemed more ancient 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 ancient, 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 ancient 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 does not arise from an usurped or delegated power, but from my birth derived from him; and ’tis 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 does not arise from nature; nor the obedience that I owe to him that begot, from the benefits which I have received, but is merely an artificial thing depending upon the will of another: and that we may be sure there can be no error in this, our author attributes it to the wisdom of princes. But before this comes to be authentick, we must at the least be sure that all princes have this great and profound wisdom, which our author acknowledges to be in them, and which is certainly necessary for the doing of such great things, if they were referred to them. They seem to us to be born like other men, and to be generally no wiser than other men. We are not obliged to believe that Nebuchadnezzar was wise, till God had given him the heart of a man; or that his grandson Belshazzar, who being laid in the balance was found too light, had any such profound wisdom. Ahasuerus shewed it not in appointing all the people of God to be slain, upon a lie told to him by a rascal; and the matter was not very much mended, when being informed of the truth, he gave them leave to kill as many of their enemies as they pleased. The hardness of Pharaoh’s heart, and the overthrow thereby brought upon himself and people, does not argue so profound a judgment as our author presumes every prince must have: And ’tis not probable that Samuel would have told Saul, He had done foolishly, if kings had always been so exceeding wise: Nay, if wisdom had been annexed to the character, Solomon might have spared the pains of asking it from God, and Rehoboam must have had it. Not to multiply examples out of Scripture, ’tis believed that Xerxes had not inflicted stripes upon the sea for breaking his navy in pieces, if he had been so very wise. Caligula for the same reason might have saved the labour of making love to the moon, or have chosen a fitter subject to advance to the consulate than his horse Incitatus: Nero had not endeavoured to make a woman of a man, nor married a man as a woman. 2 Many other examples might be alleged to shew that kings are not always wise: and not only the Roman satyrist, who says quicquid delirant reges, c. 3 shews that he did not believe them to be generally wiser than other men; but Solomon himself judges them to be as liable to infirmities, when he prefers a wise child before an old and foolish king. 4 If therefore the strength of our author’s argument lies in the certainty of the wisdom of kings, it can be of no value, till he proves it to be more universal in them than history or experience will permit us to believe. Nay, if there be truth or wisdom in the Scripture, which frequently represents the wicked man as a fool, we cannot think that all kings are wise, unless it be proved that none of them have been wicked; and when this is performed by Filmer’s disciples, I shall confess my error.
Men give testimony of their wisdom, when they undertake that which they ought to do, and rightly perform that which they undertake; both which points do utterly fail in the subject of our discourse. We have often heard of such as have adopted those to be their sons who were not so, and some civil laws approve it. This signifies no more, than that such a man, either through affection to one who is not his son, or to his parents, or for some other reason, takes him into his family, and shews kindness to him, as to his son; but the adoption of fathers is a whimsical piece of nonsense. If this be capable of an aggravation, I think none can be greater, than not to leave it to my own discretion, who having no father, may resolve to pay the duty I owed to my father to one who may have shewed kindness to me; but for another to impose a father upon a man, or a people composed of fathers, or such as have fathers, whereby they should be deprived of that natural honour and right, which he makes the foundation of his discourse, is the utmost of all absurdities. If any prince therefore have ever undertaken to appoint fathers of his people, he cannot be accounted a man of profound wisdom, but a fool or a madman; and his acts can be of no value. But if the thing were consonant to nature, and referred to the will of princes (which I absolutely deny) the frequent extravagancies committed by them in the elevation of their favourites, shews that they intend not to make them fathers of the people, or know not what they do when they do it.
To chuse or institute a father is nonsense in the very term; but if any were to be chosen to perform the office of fathers to such as have none, and are not of age to provide for themselves (as men do tutors or guardians for orphans) none could be capable of being elected, but such as in kindness to the person they were to take under their care, did most resemble his true father, and had the virtues and abilities required rightly to provide for his good. If this fails, all right ceases; and such a corruption is introduced as we saw in our court of wards, which the nation could not bear, when the institution was perverted, and the king, who ought to have taken a tender care of the wards and their estates, delivered them as a prey to those whom he favoured. 5
Our author ridiculously attributes the title and authority of father to the word prince; for it hath none in it, and signifies no more than a man, who in some kind is more eminent than the vulgar. In this sense Mucius Scaevola told Porsenna, that three hundred princes of the Roman youth had conspired against him: 6 by which he could not mean that three hundred fathers of the Roman youth, but three hundred Roman young men had conspired: and they could not be fathers of the city, unless they had been fathers of their own fathers. Princeps senatus 7 was understood in the same sense; and T. Sempronius the censor chusing Q. Fabius Maximus to that honour, gave for a reason, Se lecturum Q. Fabium Maximum, quem tum principem Romanae civitatis esse, vel Annibale judice, dicturus esset; 8 which could not be understood that Hannibal thought him to be the father or lord of the city (for he knew he was not) but the man, who for wisdom and valour was the most eminent in it.
The like are and ought to be the princes of every nation; and tho something of honour may justly be attributed to the descendants of such as have done great services to their country, yet they who degenerate from them cannot be esteemed princes; much less can such honours or rights be conferred upon court-creatures or favourites. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, and others, could advance Macro, Pallas, Narcissus, Tigellinus, Vinius, Laco, and the like, to the highest degrees of riches and power; but they still continued to be villains, and so they died.
No wise or good man ever thought otherwise of those who through the folly of princes have been advanced to the highest places in several countries. The madness of attributing to them a paternal power, seems to have been peculiarly reserved to compleat the infamy of our author; for he only could acknowledge a cooptitious father, or give to another man the power of chusing him. I confess that a man in his infancy may have been exposed, like Moses, Cyrus, Oedipus, Romulus: He may have been taken in war; or by the charity of some good person saved from the teeth of wild beasts, or from the sword by which his parents fell, and may have been educated with that care which fathers usually have of their children: ’tis reasonable that such a one in the whole course of his life should pay that veneration and obedience to him, who gave him as it were a second birth, which was due to his natural father; and this, tho improperly, may be called an adoption. But to think that any man can assume it to himself, or confer it upon another, and thereby arrogate to himself the service and obedience, which, by the most tender and sacred laws of nature, we owe to those from whom we receive birth and education, is the most preposterous folly that hitherto has ever entered into the heart of man.
Our author nevertheless is not ashamed of it, and gives reasons no way unsuitable to the proposition. Men are, says he, adopted fathers of provinces for their abilities, merits, or fortunes. 9 But these abilities can simply deserve nothing; for if they are ill employed, they are the worst of vices, and the most powerful instruments of mischief. Merits, in regard of another, are nothing, unless they be to him; and he alone can merit from me the respect due to a father, who hath conferred benefits upon me, in some measure proportionable to those which we usually receive from our fathers: and the world may judge, whether all the court-ministers and favorites that we have known, do upon this account deserve to be esteemed fathers of nations. But to allow this on account of their fortunes, is, if possible, more extravagant than anything that hath been yet utter’d. By this account Mazarin must have been father of the French nation: The same right was inherited by his chaste niece, and remained in her, till she and her silly husband dissipated the treasures which her uncle had torn from the bowels of that people. The partizans may generally claim the same right over the provinces they have pillaged: Old Audley, Dog Smith, Bp. Duppa, Brownlow, Child, Dashwood, Fox, c. 10 are to be esteemed fathers of the people of England. This doctrine is perfectly canonical, if Filmer and Heylyn were good divines; and legal, if they judged more rightly touching matters of law. But if it be absurd and detestable, they are to be reputed men, who, by attributing the highest honours to the vilest wretches of the world, for what they had gain’d by the most abominable means, endeavour to increase those vices, which are already come to such a height, that they can by no other way be brought to a greater. Daily experience too plainly shews, with what rage avarice usually fills the hearts of men. There are not many destructive villainies committed in the world, that do not proceed from it. In this respect ’tis called idolatry, and the root of all evil. Solomon warns us to beware of such as make haste to grow rich, and says, they shall not be innocent. But ’tis no matter what the prophets, the apostles, or the wisest of men say of riches, and the ways of gaining them; for our author tells us, that men of the greatest fortunes, without examining how they came to them, or what use they make of them, deserve to be made fathers of provinces.
But this is not his only quarrel with all that is just and good: His whole book goes directly against the letter and spirit of the Scripture. The work of all those, whom God in several ages has raised up to announce his word, was to abate the lusts and passions that arise in the hearts of men; to shew the vanity of worldly enjoyments, with the dangers that accompany riches and honours, and to raise our hearts to the love of those treasures that perish not. Honest and wise men following the light of nature, have in some measure imitated this. Such as lived private lives, as Plato, Socrates, Epictetus, and others, made it their business to abate men’s lusts, by shewing the folly of seeking vain honours, useless riches, or unsatisfying pleasures; and those who were like to them, if they were raised to supreme magistracies, have endeavoured by the severest punishments to restrain men from committing the crimes by which riches are most commonly gained: but Filmer and Heylyn lead us into a new way. If they deserve credit, whosoever would become supreme lord and father of his country, absolute, sacred and inviolable, is only to kill him that is in the head of the government: Usurpation confers an equal right with election or inheritance: We are to look upon the power, not the ways by which it is obtained: Possession only is to be regarded; and men must venerate the present power, as set up by God, tho gained by violence, treachery or poison: Children must not impose laws upon, nor examine the actions of their father. Those who are a little more modest, and would content themselves with the honour of being fathers and lords only of provinces, if they get riches by the favour of the king, or the favour of the king by riches, may receive that honour from him: The lord paramount may make them peculiar lords of each province as sacred as himself; and by that means every man shall have an immediate and a subaltern father. This would be a spur to excite even the most sleeping lusts; and a poison that would fill the gentlest spirits with the most violent furies. If men should believe this, there would hardly be found one of whom it might not be said, hac spe, minanti fulmen, occurret Jovi . 11 No more is required to fill the world with fire and blood, than the reception of these precepts: No man can look upon that as a wickedness, which shall render him sacred; nor fear to attempt that which shall make him God’s vicegerent. And I doubt, whether the wickedness of filling men’s heads with such notions was ever equalled, unless by him who said, Ye shall not die, but be as gods.
But since our author is pleased to teach us these strange things, I wish he would also have told us, how many men in every nation ought to be look’d upon as adopted fathers: What proportion of riches, ability or merit, is naturally or divinely required to make them capable of this sublime character: Whether the right of this chimerical father does not destroy that of the natural; or whether both continue in force, and men thereby stand obliged, in despite of what Christ said, to serve two masters. For if the right of my artificial father arise from any act of the king, in favour of his riches, abilities or merit, I ought to know whether he is to excel in all, or any one of these points: How far, and which of them gives the preference; since ’tis impossible for me to determine whether my father, who may be wise, tho not rich, is thereby divested of his right, and it comes to be transferr’d to another, who may be rich tho not wise, nor of any personal merit at all, till that point be decided; or, so much as to guess, when I am emancipated from the duty I owe to him, by whom I was begotten and educated, unless I know whether he be fallen from his right, through want of merit, wisdom or estate: and that can never be, till it be determined that he hath forfeited his right, by being defective in all, or any of the three; and what proportion of merit, wisdom or estate is required in him, for the enjoyment of his right, or in another that would acquire it: for no man can succeed to the right of another, unless the first possessor be rightly deprived of it; and it cannot belong to them both, because common sense universally teaches, that two distinct persons cannot, at the same time, and in the same degree, have an equal right to the same individual thing.
The right of father cannot therefore be conferred upon princes by kings, but must forever follow the rule of nature. The character of a father is indelible, and incommunicable: The duty of children arising from benefits received is perpetual, because they can never not have received them; and can be due only to him from whom they are received. For these reasons, we see, that such as our author calls princes, cannot confer it upon a king; for they cannot give what they have not in themselves: They who have nothing, can give nothing: They who are only suppositious, cannot make another to be real; and the whimsey of kings making princes to be fathers, and princes conferring that right on kings, comes to nothing.
Having proved that the right of a father proceeds from the generation and education of his children: That no man can have that right over those, whom he hath not begotten and educated: That every man hath it over those, who owe their birth and education to him: That all the sons of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, did equally inherit it: That by the same reasons, it doth forever belong to every man that begets children; it plainly appears, that no father can have a right over others, unless it be by them granted to him, and that he receive his right from those who granted it. But our author, with an admirable sagacity peculiar to himself, discovers, and with equal confidence tells us, that that which is from the people, or the chief heads of them, is not from the people: He that is so elected, says he, claims not his right from the people as a donative, but from God. 1 That is, if I mistake not, Romulus was not made king of the Romans by that people, but by God: Those men being newly gathered together, had two fathers, tho neither of them had any children; and no man knew who was their father, nor which of them was the elder: But Romulus by the slaughter of his brother decided all questions, and purchased to himself a royal charter from God; and the act of the people which conferred the power on him, was the act of God. We had formerly learnt, that whatsoever was done by monarchs, was to be imputed to God; and that whosoever murdered the father of a people, acquired the same right to himself: but now it seems, that nations also have the same privilege, and that God doth, what they do. Now I understand why it was said of old, vox populi est vox Dei: 2 But if it was so in regard of Romulus, the same must be confessed of Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, and Servius Tullius; who being all strangers to each other, and most of them aliens also, were successively advanced by the same people, without any respect to the children, relations or heirs of their predecessors. And I cannot comprehend, why the act of the same people should not have the same virtue, and be equally attributed to God, when they gave the same or more power to consuls, military tribunes, decemviri, or dictators; or why the same divine character should not be in the same manner conferred upon any magistracies, that by any people have been, are, or shall be at any time erected for the same ends.
Upon the same grounds we may conclude, that no privilege is peculiarly annexed to any form of government; but that all magistrates are equally the ministers of God, who perform the work for which they were instituted; and that the people which institutes them, may proportion, regulate and terminate their power, as to time, measure, and number of persons, as seems most convenient to themselves, which can be no other than their own good. For it cannot be imagined that a multitude of people should send for Numa, or any other person to whom they owed nothing, to reign over them, that he might live in glory and pleasure; or for any other reason, than that it might be good for them and their posterity. This shews the work of all magistrates to be always and everywhere the same, even the doing of justice, and procuring the welfare of those that create them. This we learn from common sense: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the best human authors lay it as an unmoveable foundation, upon which they build their arguments relating to matters of that nature: And the Apostle from better authority declares, That rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil: Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same; for he is the minister of God unto thee for good: But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil. 3 And the reason he gives for praying for kings, and all that are in authority, is, that we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty. 4 But if this be the work of the magistrate, and the glorious name of God’s minister be given to him for the performance of it, we may easily see to whom that title belongs. His children and servants ye are, whose works ye do. He therefore, and he only, is the servant of God, who does the work of God; who is a terror to those that do evil, and a praise to those that do well; who beareth the sword for the punishment of wickedness and vice, and so governs, that the people may live quietly in all godliness and honesty. The order of his institution is inverted, and the institution vacated, if the power be turned to the praise of those that do evil, and becomes a terror to such as do well; and that none who live honestly and justly can be quiet under it. If God be the fountain of justice, mercy and truth, and those his servants who walk in them, no exercise of violence, fraud, cruelty, pride, or avarice, is patronized by him: and they who are the authors of those villainies, cannot but be the ministers of him, who sets himself up against God; because ’tis impossible that truth and falsehood, mercy and cruelty, justice and the most violent oppression can proceed from the same root. It was a folly and a lie in those Jews, to call themselves the children of Abraham, who did not the works of Abraham; and Christ declared them to be the children of the Devil, whose works they did: 5 which words proceeding from the eternal truth, do as well indicate to us, whose child and servant every man is to be accounted, as to those who first heard them.
If our author’s former assertions were void of judgment and truth, his next clause shews a great defect in his memory, and contradicts the former: The judgments of God, says he, who hath power to give and take away kingdoms, are most just; yet the ministry of men, who execute God’s judgments without commission, is sinful and damnable. 6 If it be true, as he says, that we are to look at the power, not the ways by which it is gained; and that he who hath it, whether it be by usurpation, conquest, or any other means, is to be accounted as father, or right heir to the father of the people, to which title the most sublime and divine privileges are annexed, a man, who by the most wicked and unjust actions advances himself to the power, becomes immediately the father of the people, and the minister of God; which I take to be a piece of divinity worthy our author and his disciples.
It may be doubted what he means by a commission from God; for we know of none but what is outwardly by his word, or inwardly by his spirit; and I am apt to think, that neither he nor his abettors allowing of either, as to the point in question, he doth fouly prevaricate, in alleging that which he thinks cannot be of any effect. If any man should say, that the word of God to Moses, Joshua, Ehud, Gideon, Samuel, Jeroboam and Jehu, or any others, are, in the like cases, rules to be observed by all; because that which was from God was good; that which was good, is good; and he that does good, is justified by it: He would probably tell us, that what was good in them, is not good in others; and that the word of God doth justify those only to whom it is spoken: That is to say, no man can execute the just judgments of God, to the benefit of mankind, according to the example of those servants of God, without damnable sin, unless he have a precise word particularly directed to him for it, as Moses had. But if any man should pretend that such a word was come to him, he would be accounted an enthusiast, and obtain no credit. So that, which way soever the clause be taken, it appears to be full of fraud, confessing only in the theory, that which he thinks can never be brought into practice; that his beloved villainies may be thereby secured, and that the glorious examples of the most heroick actions, performed by the best and wisest men that ever were in the world for the benefit of mankind, may never be imitated.
The next clause shews, that I did our author no wrong in saying, that he gave a right to usurpation; for he plainly says, That whether the prince be the supreme father of his people, or the true heir of such a father; or whether he come to the crown by usurpation, or election of the nobles or people, or by any other way whatsoever, c. it is the only right and authority of the natural father. 7 In the 3d chap. sect. 8. It skills not which way the king comes by his power, whether by election, donation, succession, or by any other means. 8 And in another place, That we are to regard the power, not the means by which it is gained. To which I need say no more, than that I cannot sufficiently admire the ingeniously invented title of father by usurpation; and confess, that since there is such a thing in the world, to which not only private men, but whole nations owe obedience, whatsoever has been said anciently (as was thought to express the highest excess of fury and injustice), as, jus datum sceleri; jus omne in ferro est situm; jus licet in jugulos nostros sibi fecerit ense Sylla potens Mariusque; ferox Cinna cruentus, Caesareaeque domus series, 9 were solid truths, good law and divinity; which did not only signify the actual exercise of the power, but induced a conscientious obligation of obeying it. The powers so gained, did carry in themselves the most sacred and inviolable rights; and the actors of the most detestable villainies thereby became the ministers of God, and the fathers of their subdued people. Or if this be not true, it cannot be denied, that Filmer and his followers, in the most impudent and outrageous blasphemy, have surpassed all that have gone before them.
To confirm his assertions, he gives us a wonderful explanation of the fifth commandment; which, he says, enjoins obedience to princes, under the terms of, Honour thy father and thy mother; drawing this inference, That as all power is in the father, the prince who hath it, cannot be restrained by any law; which being grounded upon the perfect likeness between kings and fathers, no man can deny it to be true. But if Claudius was the father of the Roman people, I suppose the chaste Messalina was the mother, and to be honoured by virtue of the same commandment: But then I fear that such as met her in the most obscene places, were not only guilty of adultery, but of incest. The same honour must needs belong to Nero and his virtuous Poppaea, unless it were transferred to his new-made woman Sporus; or perhaps he himself was the mother, and the glorious title of pater patriae belonged to the rascal, who married him as a woman. The like may be said of Agathocles, Dionysius, Phalaris, Busiris, Machanidas, Peter the Cruel of Castile, Christian of Denmark, the last princes of the house of Valois in France, and Philip the Second of Spain. Those actions of theirs, which men have ever esteemed most detestable, and the whole course of their abominable government, did not proceed from pride, avarice, cruelty, madness and lust, but from the tender care of most pious fathers. Tacitus sadly describes the state of his country, urbs incendiis vastata, consumptis antiquissimis delubris, ipso Capitolio civium manibus incenso; pollutae ceremoniae; magna adulteria; plenum exiliis mare; infecti caedibus scopuli; atrocius in urbe saevitum; nobilitas, opes, omissi vel gesti honores pro crimine, ob virtutes certissimum exitium; 10 but he was to blame: All this proceeded from the ardency of a paternal affection. When Nero, by the death of Helvidius Priscus and Thrasea, endeavoured to cut up virtue by the roots, ipsam exscindere virtutem, 11 he did it, because he knew it was good for the world that there should be no virtuous man in it. When he fired the city, and when Caligula wished the people had but one neck, that he might strike it off at one blow, they did it through a prudent care of their children’s good, knowing that it would be for their advantage to be destroyed; and that the empty desolated world would be no more troubled with popular seditions. By the same rule Pharaoh, Eglon, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Herod, and the like, were fathers of the Hebrews. And without looking far backward, or depending upon the faith of history, we may enumerate many princes, who in a paternal care of their people, have not yielded to Nero or Caligula. If our author say true, all those actions of theirs, which we have ever attributed to the utmost excess of pride, cruelty, avarice and perfidiousness, proceeded from their princely wisdom and fatherly kindness to the nations under them: and we are beholden to him for the discovery of so great a mystery which hath been hid from mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day; if not, we may still look upon them as children of the Devil; and continue to believe, that princes as well as other magistrates were set up by the people for the publick good; that the praises given to such as are wise, just and good, are purely personal, and can belong only to those, who by a due exercise of their power do deserve it, and to no others.
In this chapter our author fights valiantly against Bellarmine and Suarez, seeming to think himself victorious, if he can shew that either of them hath contradicted the other, or himself; 1 but being no way concerned in them, I shall leave their followers to defend their quarrel: My work is to seek after truth; and, tho they may have said some things, in matters not concerning their beloved cause of popery, that are agreeable to reason, law or Scripture, I have little hope of finding it among those who apply themselves chiefly to School-sophistry, as the best means to support idolatry. That which I maintain, is the cause of mankind; which ought not to suffer, tho champions of corrupt principles have weakly defended, or maliciously betrayed it: and therefore not at all relying on their authority, I intend to reject whatsoever they say that agrees not with reason, Scripture, or the approved examples of the best polished nations. He also attacks Plato and Aristotle, upon whose opinions I set a far greater value, in as much as they seem to have penetrated more deeply into the secrets of human nature; 2 and not only to have judged more rightly of the interests of mankind, but also to have comprehended in their writings the wisdom of the Grecians, with all that they had learnt from the Phoenicians, Egyptians and Hebrews; which may lead us to the discovery of the truth we seek. If this be our work, the question is not, whether it be a paradox, or a received opinion, that people naturally govern, or chuse governors, but whether it be true or not; for many paradoxes are true, and the most gross errors have often been most common. Tho I hope to prove, that what he calls a paradox, is not only true; but a truth planted in the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all that have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disapproved by none, but such as through wickedness, stupidity, or baseness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts, and to have retained nothing of men, but the outward shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt from their master the Devil.
We have already seen, that the patriarchical power resembles not the regal in principle or practice: that the beginning and continuance of regal power was contrary to, and inconsistent with the patriarchical: that the first fathers of mankind left all their children independent on each other, and in an equal liberty of providing for themselves: that every man continued in this liberty, till the number so increased, that they became troublesome and dangerous to each other; and finding no other remedy to the disorders growing, or like to grow among them, joined many families into one civil body, that they might the better provide for the conveniency, safety, and defence of themselves and their children. This was a collation of every man’s private right into a publick stock; and no one having any other right than what was common to all, except it were that of fathers over their children, they were all equally free when their fathers were dead; and nothing could induce them to join, and lessen that natural liberty by joining in societies, but the hopes of a publick advantage.
Such as were wise and valiant procured it, by setting up regular governments, and placing the best men in the administration; whilst the weakest and basest fell under the power of the most boisterous and violent of their neighbours. Those of the first sort had their root in wisdom and justice, and are called lawful kingdoms or commonwealths; and the rules by which they are governed, are known by the name of laws. These governments have ever been the nurses of virtue: The nations living under them have flourished in peace and happiness, or made wars with glory and advantage: whereas the other sort springing from violence and wrong, have ever gone under the odious title of tyrannies; and by fomenting vices, like to those from whence they grew, have brought shame and misery upon those who were subject to them. This appears so plainly in Scripture, that the assertors of liberty want no other patron than God himself; and his word so fully justifies what we contend for, that it were not necessary to make use of human authority, if our adversaries did not oblige us to examine such as are cited by them. This, in our present case, would be an easy work, if our author had rightly marked the passages he would make use of, or had been faithful in his interpretation or explication of such as he truly cites; but failing grossly in both, ’tis hard to trace him.
He cites the 16th chapter of the third book of Aristotle’s Politicks, and I do not find there is more than twelve; 3 or tho that wound might be cured, by saying the words are in the twelfth, his fraud in perverting the sense were unpardonable, tho the other mistake be passed over. ’Tis true that Aristotle doth there seem to doubt whether there be any such thing as one man naturally a lord over many citizens, since a city consists of equals: but in the whole scope of that chapter, book, and his other writings, he fully shews his doubt did not arise from an imagination that one man could naturally inherit a right of dominion over many not descended from him; or that they were born under a necessity of being slaves to him (for such fancies can proceed only from distemper’d brains) but that civil societies aiming at the publick good, those who by nature were endowed with such virtues or talents as were most beneficial to them, ought to be preferred. And nothing can be more contrary to the frantick whimsy of our author, who fancies an hereditary prerogative of dominion inherent in a person as father of a people, or heir, or to be reputed heir of the first father, when ’tis certain he is not, but that either he or his predecessor came in by election or usurpation, than to shew that ’tis only wisdom, justice, valour, and other commendable virtues, which are not hereditary, that can give the preference; and that the only reason why it should be given, is, that men so qualified can better than others accomplish the ends for which societies are constituted: For tho, says he, all are equally free, all are not equally endowed with those virtues that render liberty safe, prosperous, and happy. That equality which is just among equals, is just only among equals; but such as are base, ignorant, vicious, slothful, or cowardly, are not equal in natural or acquired virtues, to the generous, wise, valiant, and industrious; nor equally useful to the societies in which they live: they cannot therefore have an equal part in the government of them; they cannot equally provide for the common good; and ’tis not a personal, but a publick benefit that is sought in their constitution and continuance. There may be a hundred thousand men in an army, who are all equally free; but they only are naturally most fit to be commanders or leaders, who most excel in the virtues required for the right performance of those offices; and that, not because ’tis good for them to be raised above their brethren, but because ’tis good for their brethren to be guided by them, as ’tis ever good to be governed by the wisest and the best. If the nature of man be reason, detur digniori, in matters of this kind, is the voice of nature; and it were not only a deviation from reason, but a most desperate and mischievous madness, for a company going to the Indies, to give the guidance of their ship to the son of the best pilot in the world, if he want the skill required to that employment, or to one who was maliciously set to destroy them; and he only can have a right grounded upon the dictates of nature, to be advanced to the helm, who best knows how to govern it, and has given the best testimonies of his integrity and intentions to employ his skill for the good of those that are embarked. But as the work of a magistrate, especially if he be the supreme, is the highest, noblest, and most difficult that can be committed to the charge of a man, a more excellent virtue is required in the person who is to be advanced to it, than for any other; and he that is most excellent in that virtue, is reasonably and naturally to be preferred before any other. Aristotle having this in his view, seems to think, that those who believed it not to be natural for one man to be lord of all the citizens, since a city consists of equals, had not observed that inequality of endowments, virtues and abilities in men, which render some more fit than others, for the performance of their duties, and the work intended; but it will not be found, as I suppose, that he did ever dream of a natural superiority, that any man could ever have in a civil society, unless it be such a superiority in virtue, as most conduces to the publick good. 4
He confirms this in proceeding to examine the different sorts of governments, according to the different dispositions of nations; and is so bold to say, that a popular government is the best for a people, who are naturally generous and warlike: that the government of a few suits best with those, among whom a few men are found to excel others in those virtues that are profitable to societies; and that the government of one is good, when that one does so far surpass all others in those virtues, that he hath more of them than all the rest of the people together: and for the same reason that induced him to believe that equality is just amongst equals, he concludes inequality of power to be most unjust, unless there be inequality of merit; and equality of power to be so also, when there is inequality of virtue, that being the only rule by which every man’s part ought to be regulated. 5
But if it be neither reasonable nor just that those who are not equal in virtue should be made equal in power, or that such as are equal in virtue should be unequal in power, the most brutal and abominable of all extravagancies is to make one or a few, who in virtue and abilities to perform civil functions are inferior to others, superior to all in power; and the miseries suffered by those nations, who inverting the laws of nature and reason, have placed children, or men of no virtue in the government, when men that excelled in all virtues were not wanting, do so far manifest this truth, that the pains of proving it may be spared.
’Tis not necessary for me to inquire, whether it be possible to find such a man as Aristotle calls naturâ regem, 6 or whether he intended to recommend Alexander to the world, for the man designed by God and nature to be king over all, because no man was equal to him in the virtues that were beneficial to all. For pursuing my position, that virtue only can give a just and natural preference, I ingenuously confess, that when such a man, or race of men as he describes, shall appear in the world, they carry the true marks of sovereignty upon them: We ought to believe, that God has raised them above all, whom he has made to excel all: It were an impious folly to think of reducing him into the ordinary level of mankind, whom God has placed above it. ’Twere better for us to be guided by him, than to follow our own judgment; nay, I could almost say, ’twere better to serve such a master, than to be free. But this will be nothing to the purpose, till such a man, or succession of men do appear; and if our author would persuade us, that all mankind, or every particular, is obliged to a perpetual subjection to one man or family, upon any other condition, he must do it by the credit of those who favour his design more than Aristotle.
I know not who that will be, but am confident he will find no help from Plato: for if his principles be examined, by which a grave author’s sense is best comprehended, it will appear, that all his books of laws, and of a commonwealth, 7 are chiefly grounded upon this, that magistrates are chosen by societies, seeking their own good; and that the best men ought to be chosen for the attaining of it: whereas his whole design of seeking which is the best form of government, or what laws do most conduce to its perfection and permanency (if one rule were by nature appointed for all, and none could justly transgress it; if God had designed an universal lord over the whole world, or a particular one over every nation, who could be bound by no law), were utterly absurd; and they who write books concerning political matters, and take upon them to instruct nations how to govern themselves, would be found either foolishly to misspend their time, or impiously to incite people to rebel against the ordinance of God. If this can justly be imputed to Plato, he is not the wise man he is supposed to have been; and can less deserve the tide of divine, which our author gives him: but if he remain justly free from such censures, it must be confessed, that whilst he seeks what is good for a people, and to convince them by reason that it is so, he takes it for granted, that they have a liberty of chusing that which appears to be the best to them. He first says, that this good consists in the obtaining of justice; but farther explaining himself, he shews that under the name of justice, he comprehends all that tends to their perfection and felicity; in as much as every people, by joining in a civil society, and creating magistrates, doth seek its own good; and ’tis just, that he or they who are created, should, to the utmost of their power, accomplish the end of their creation, and lead the people to justice, without which there is neither perfection nor happiness: That the proper act of justice is to give to everyone his due; to man that which belongs to man, and to God that which is God’s. But as no man can be just, or desire to be so, unless he know that justice is good; nor know that it is good, unless he know that original justice and goodness, through which all that is just is just, and all that is good is good, ’tis impossible for any man to perform the part of a good magistrate, unless he have the knowledge of God; or to bring a people to justice, unless he bring them to the knowledge of God, who is the root of all justice and goodness. 8 If Plato therefore deserve credit, he only can duly perform the part of a good magistrate, whose moral virtues are ripened and heightened by a superinduction of divine knowledge. The misery of man proceeds from his being separated from God: This separation is wrought by corruption; his restitution therefore to felicity and integrity, can only be brought about by his reunion to the good from which he is fallen. Plato looks upon this as the only worthy object of man’s desire; and in his Laws and Politicks he intends not to teach us how to erect manufactures, and to increase trade or riches; but how magistrates may be helpful to nations in the manner beforementioned, and consequently what men are fit to be magistrates. If our author therefore would make use of Plato’s doctrine to his end, he ought to have proved that there is a family in every nation, to the chief of which, and successively to the next in blood, God does ever reveal and infuse such a knowledge of himself, as may render him a light to others; and failing in this, all that he says is to no purpose.
The weakness in which we are born, renders us unable to attain this good of ourselves: we want help in all things, especially in the greatest. The fierce barbarity of a loose multitude, bound by no law, and regulated by no discipline, is wholly repugnant to it: Whilst every man fears his neighbour, and has no other defence than his own strength, he must live in that perpetual anxiety which is equally contrary to that happiness, and that sedate temper of mind which is required for the search of it. The first step towards the cure of this pestilent evil, is for many to join in one body, that everyone may be protected by the united force of all; and the various talents that men possess, may by good discipline be rendered useful to the whole; as the meanest piece of wood or stone being placed by a wise architect, conduces to the beauty of the most glorious building. But every man bearing in his own breast affections, passions, and vices that are repugnant to this end, and no man owing any submission to his neighbour; none will subject the correction or restriction of themselves to another, unless he also submit to the same rule. They are rough pieces of timber or stone, which ’tis necessary to cleave, saw, or cut: This is the work of a skillful builder, and he only is capable of erecting a great fabrick, who is so: Magistrates are political architects; and they only can perform the work incumbent on them, who excel in political virtues. Nature, in variously framing the minds of men, according to the variety of uses in which they may be employ’d, in order to the institution and preservation of civil societies, must be our guide, in allotting to every one his proper work. And Plato observing this variety, affirms, that the laws of nature cannot be more absurdly violated, than by giving the government of a people to such, as do not excel others in those arts and virtues that tend to the ultimate ends for which governments are instituted. By this means those who are slaves by nature, or rendered so by their vices, are often set above those that God and nature had fitted for the highest commands; and societies which subsist only by order, fall into corruption, when all order is so preposterously inverted, and the most extreme confusion introduced. This is an evil that Solomon detested: Folly is set in great dignity, and the rich sit in low places: I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth. 9 They who understand Solomon’s language, will easily see, that the rich, and the princes he means, are such only who are rich in virtue and wisdom, and who ought to be preferred for those qualities: And when he says, a servant that reigneth is one of the three things the earth cannot bear, he can only mean such as deserve to be servants; for when they reign, they do not serve, but are served by others: which perfectly agrees with what we learn from Plato, and plainly shews, that true philosophy is perfectly conformable with what is taught us by those who were divinely inspired. Therefore tho I should allow to our author, that Aristotle, in those words, It seems to some, not to be natural for one man to be lord of all the citizens, since the city consists of equals, 10 did speak the opinion of others rather than his own; and should confess that he and his master Plato, did acknowledge a natural inequality among men, it would be nothing to his purpose: for the inequality, and the rational superiority due to some, or to one, by reason of that inequality, did not proceed from blood or extraction, and had nothing patriarchical in it; but consisted solely in the virtues of the persons, by which they were rendered more able than others to perform their duty, for the good of the society. Therefore if these authors are to be trusted, whatsoever place a man is advanced to in a city, ’tis not for his own sake, but for that of the city; and we are not to ask who was his father, but what are his virtues in relation to it. This induces a necessity of distinguishing between a simple and a relative inequality; for if it were possible for a man to have great virtues, and yet no way beneficial to the society of which he is, or to have some one vice that renders them useless, he could have no pretence to a magistratical power more than any other. They who are equally free, may equally enjoy their freedom; but the powers that can only be executed by such as are endowed with great wisdom, justice and valour, can belong to none, nor be rightly conferred upon any, except such as excel in those virtues. And if no such can be found, all are equally by turns to participate of the honours annexed to magistracy; and law, which is said to be written reason, cannot justly exalt those, whom nature, which is reason, hath depressed, nor depress those whom nature hath exalted. It cannot make kings slaves, nor slaves kings, without introducing that evil, which, if we believe Solomon, and the spirit by which he spoke, the earth cannot bear. 11 This may discover what lawgivers deserve to be reputed wise or just; and what decrees or sanctions ought to be reputed laws. Aristotle proceeding by this rule, rather tells us, who is naturally a king, than where we should find him; and after having given the highest praises to this true natural king and his government, he sticks not to declare that of one man, in virtue equal or inferior to others, to be a mere tyranny, even the worst of all, as it is the corruption of the best (or, as our author calls it, the most divine), and such as can be fit only for those barbarous and stupid nations, which, tho bearing the shape of men, are little different from beasts. Whoever therefore will from Aristotle’s words infer, that nature has designed one man, or succession of men, to be lords of every country, must shew that man to be endowed with all the virtues, that render him fit for so great an office, which he does not bear for his own pleasure, glory or profit, but for the good of those that are under him; and if that be not done, he must look after other patrons than Aristotle for his opinion.
Plato does more explicitly say, that the civil or politick man, the shepherd, father, or king of a people, is the same, designed for the same work, enabled to perform it by the excellency of the same virtues, and made perfect by the infusion of the divine wisdom. This is Plato’s monarch, and I confess, that wheresoever he does appear in the world, he ought to be accounted as sent from God for the good of that people. His government is the best that can be set up among men; and if assurance can be given, that his children, heirs or successors, shall forever be equal to him in the above-mentioned virtues, it were a folly and a sin to bring him under the government of any other, or to an equality with them, since God had made him to excel them all; and ’tis better for them to be ruled by him, than to follow their own judgment. This is that which gives him the preference: He is wise through the knowledge of the truth, and thereby becomes good, happy, pure, beautiful and perfect. The divine light shining forth in him, is a guide to others; and he is a fit leader of a people to the good that he enjoys. 12 If this can be expressed by words in fashion, this is his prerogative; this is the royal charter given to him by God; and to him only, who is so adapted for the performance of his office. He that should pretend to the same privileges, without the same abilities to perform the works for which they are granted, would exceed the folly of a child, that takes upon him a burden which can only be borne by a giant; or the madness of one who presumes to give physick, and understands not the art of a physician, thereby drawing guilt upon himself, and death upon his patient. It were as vain to expect that a child should carry the giant’s burden, and that an ignorant man should give wholsome physick, as that one who lives void of all knowledge of good, should conduct men to it. Whensoever therefore such a man, as is above-described, does not appear, nature and reason instruct us to seek him or them who are most like to him; and to lay such burdens upon them as are proportionable to their strength; which is as much as to say, to prefer every man according to his merit, and assign to every one such works as he seems able to accomplish.
But that Plato and Aristotle may neither be thought unreasonably addicted to monarchy; nor, wholly rejecting it, to have talked in vain of a monarch, that is not to be found; ’tis good to consider that this is not a fiction. Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and others, were such as they define; and were made to be such, by that communion with God which Plato requires: And he in all his writings, intending the institution of such a discipline as should render men happy, wise and good, could take no better way to bring his countrymen to it, than by shewing them that wisdom, virtue, and purity only could make a natural difference among men.
’Tis not my work to justify these opinions of Plato and his scholar Aristotle: They were men, and, tho wise and learned, subject to error. If they erred in these points, it hurts not me, nor the cause I maintain, since I make no other use of their books, than to shew the impudence and prevarication of those, who gather small scraps out of good books, to justify their assertions concerning such kings as are known amongst us; which being examined, are found to be wholly against them; and if they were followed, would destroy their persons and power.
But our author’s intention being only to cavil, or to cheat such as are not versed in the writings of the ancients, or at least to cause those who do not make truth their guide, to waver and fluctuate in their discourses, he does in one page say, That without doubt Moses his history of the Creation guided these philosophers in finding out this lineal subjection: And in the next affirms, That the ignorance of the Creation, occasioned several amongst the heathen philosophers to think that men met together as herds of cattle: 13 Whereas they could not have been ignorant of the Creation, if they had read the books that Moses writ; and having that knowledge, they could not think that men met together as herds of cattle. However, I deny that any of them did ever dream of that lineal subjection, derived from the first parents of mankind, or that any such thing was to be learnt from Moses. Tho they did not perhaps justly know the beginning of mankind, they did know the beginnings and progress of the governments under which they lived; and being assured that the first kingdoms had been those, which they called heroum regna, that is, of those who had been most beneficial to mankind; that their descendants in many places degenerating from their virtues, had given nations occasion to set up aristocracies; and they also falling into corruption, to institute democracies, or mixed governments; did rightly conclude, that every nation might justly order their own affairs according to their own pleasure, and could have neither obligation nor reason to set up one man or a few above others, unless it did appear to them that they had more of those virtues, which conduce to the good of civil societies, than the rest of their brethren.
Our author’s cavil upon Aristotle’s opinion, That those who are wise in mind are by nature fitted to be lords, and those who are strong of body ordained to obey, 14 deserves no answer; for he plainly falsifies the text: Aristotle speaks only of those qualities which are required for every purpose; and means no more, than that such as are eminent in the virtues of the mind deserve to govern, tho they do not excel in bodily strength; and that they who are strong of body, tho of little understanding, and incapable of commanding, may be useful in executing the commands of others: But is so far from denying that one man may excel in all the perfections of mind and body, that he acknowledges him only to be a king by nature who does so, both being required for the full performance of his duty. And if this be not true, I suppose that one who is like Agrippa Posthumus, corporis viribus stolidé ferox, 15 may be fit to govern many nations; and Moses or Samuel, if they naturally wanted bodily strength, or that it decayed by age, might justly be made slaves, which is a discovery worthy our author’s invention.
I am not concerned in making good what Suarez says: A Jesuit may speak that which is true; but it ought to be received, as from the Devil, cautiously, lest mischief be hid under it: and Sir Robert’s frequent prevarications upon the Scripture, and many good authors, give reason to suspect he may have falsified one, that few Protestants read, if it served to his purpose; and not mentioning the place, his fraud cannot easily be discovered, unless it be by one who has leisure to examine all his vastly voluminous writings. But as to the point in question, that pains may be saved; there is nothing that can be imputed to the invention of Suarez; for, that Adam had only an oeconomical, not a political power, 1 is not the voice of a Jesuit, but of nature and common sense: for politick signifying no more in Greek, than civil in Latin, ’tis evident there could be no civil power, where there was no civil society; and there could be none between him and his children, because a civil society is composed of equals, and fortified by mutual compacts, which could not be between him and his children, at least, if there be anything of truth in our author’s doctrine, That all children do perpetually and absolutely depend upon the will of their father. 2 Suarez seems to have been of another opinion; and observing the benefits we receive from parents, and the veneration we owe to them to be reciprocal, he could not think any duty could extend farther than the knowledge of the relation upon which it was grounded; and makes a difference between the power of a father, before and after his children are made free; that is in truth, before and after they are able to provide for themselves, and to deliver their parents from the burden of taking care of them: which will appear rational to any who are able to distinguish between what a man of fifty years old, subsisting by himself, and having a family of his own, or a child of eight doth owe to his father: The same reason that obliges a child to submit entirely to the will of his parents, when he is utterly ignorant of all things, does permit, and often enjoin men of ripe age to examine the commands they receive before they obey them; and ’tis not more plain that I owe all manner of duty, affection, and respect to him that did beget and educate me, than that I can owe nothing on any such account to one that did neither.
This may have been the opinion of Suarez: but I can hardly believe such a notion, as, that Adam in process of time might have servants, 3 could proceed from any other brain than our author’s; for if he had lived to this day, he could have had none under him but his own children; and if a family be not compleat without servants, his must always have been defective; and his kingdom must have been so too, if that has such a resemblance to a family as our author fancies. This is evident, that a hard father may use his children as servants, or a rebellious, stubborn son may deserve to be so used; and a gentle and good master may shew that kindness to faithful and well-deserving servants, which resembles the sweetness of a fatherly rule: but neither of them can change their nature; a son can never grow to be a servant, nor a servant to be a son. If a family therefore be not compleat, unless it consist of children and servants, it cannot be like to a kingdom or city, which is composed of freemen and equals: Servants may be in it, but are not members of it. As truth can never be repugnant to justice, ’tis impossible this should be a prejudice to the paternal rule, which is most just; especially when a grateful remembrance of the benefits received, doth still remain, with a necessary and perpetual obligation of repaying them in all affection and duty: whereas the care of ever providing for their families, as they did probably increase in the time of our first long living fathers, would have been an insupportable burden to parents, if it had been incumbent on them. We do not find that Adam exercised any such power over Cain, when he had slain Abel, as our author fancies to be regal: The murderer went out, and built a city for himself, and called it by the name of his first-born. And we have not the least reason to believe, that after Adam’s death Cain had any dominion over his brethren, or their posterity; or any one of them over him and his. He feared that whosoever saw him would kill him, which language does not agree with the rights belonging to the haughty title of heir apparent to the dominion of the whole earth. The like was practiced by Noah and his sons, who set up colonies for themselves: but lived as private men in obscure places, whilst their children of the fourth or fifth generation, especially of the youngest and accursed son, were great and powerful kings, as is fully proved in the first chapter.
Tho this had been otherwise, it would have no effect upon us; for no argument drawn from the examples of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, if they and their children had continued under the dominion of Noah as long as he lived, can oblige me to resign myself and all my concernments absolutely into the hands of one who is not my father. But when the contrary is evidently true in them, and their next ensuing generations, ’tis an admirable boldness in our author to think of imposing upon us for an eternal and universal law (when the knowledge of our first progenitors is utterly extinguished) that which was not at all regarded by those, who could not be ignorant of their own original, or the duty thereby incumbent upon them, or their immediate fathers then living, to whom the rights must have belonged, if there had been any such thing in nature, or that they had been of any advantage to them: whereas in truth, if there had been such a law in the beginning, it must have vanished of itself, for want of being exercised in the beginning, and could not possibly be revived after four thousand years, when no man in the world can possibly know to whom the universal right of dominion over the whole world or particular nations does belong; for ’tis in vain to speak of a right, when no one man can have a better title to it than any other. But there being no precept in the Scripture for it, and the examples directed or approved by God himself and his most faithful servants, being inconsistent with, and contrary to it, we may be sure there never was any such thing; and that men being left to the free use of their own understanding, may order and dispose of their own affairs as they think fit. No man can have a better title than another, unless for his personal virtues; every man that in the judgment of those concerned excels in them, may be advanced: and those nations that through mistake set up such as are unworthy, or do not take right measures in providing for a succession of men worthy, and other things necessary to their welfare, may be guilty of great folly, to their own shame and misery; but can do no injustice to any people, in relation to an hereditary right, which can be naturally in none.
The follies with which our author endeavours to corrupt and trouble the world, seem to proceed from his fundamental mistakes of the ends for which governments are constituted; and from an opinion, that an excessive power is good for the governor, or the diminution of it a prejudice: whereas common sense teaches, and all good men acknowledge, that governments are not set up for the advantage, profit, pleasure or glory of one or a few men, but for the good of the society. For this reason Plato and Aristotle find no more certain way of distinguishing between a lawful king and a tyrant, than that the first seeks to procure the common good, and the other his own pleasure or profit; and doubt not to declare, that he who according to his institution was the first, destroys his own being, and degenerates into the latter, if he deflect from that rule: He that was the best of men, becomes the worst; and the father or shepherd of the people makes himself their enemy. And we may from hence collect, that in all controversies concerning the power of magistrates, we are not to examine what conduces to their profit or glory, but what is good for the publick.
His second error is no less gross and mischievous than the first; and that absolute power to which he would exalt the chief magistrate, would be burdensome, and desperately dangerous if he had it. The highest places are always slippery: Men’s eyes dazzle when they are carried up to them; and all falls from them are mortal. Few kings or tyrants, says Juvenal, go down to the grave in peace; 1 and he did not imprudently couple them together, because in his time few or no kings were known who were not tyrants. Dionysius thought no man left a tyranny, till he was drawn out by the heels. But Tacitus says, Nescit quam grave intolerandum sit cuncta regendi onus. 2 Moses could not bear it: Gideon would not accept of any resemblance of it. The moral sense of Jotham’s wise parable is eternal: The bramble coveted the power, which the vine, olive and fig tree refused. 3 The worst and basest of men are ambitious of the highest places, which the best and wisest reject; of ir some, who may be otherwise well qualified—
[ In this place two pages are wanting in the original manuscript. ]
—as the fittest to be followed by mankind. If these philosophers and divines deserve credit, Nimrod, Ninus, Pharaoh, and the rest of that accursed crew, did not commit such excesses as were condemned by God, and abhorred by good men; but gaining to themselves the glorious character of his vicegerents, left their practices as a perpetual law to all succeeding generations; whereby the world, and every part of it, would be forever exposed to the violence, cruelty and madness of the most wicked men that it should produce. But if these opinions comprehend an extravagancy of wickedness and madness, that was not known among men, till some of these wretches presumed to attempt the increase of that corruption under which mankind groans, by adding fuel to the worst of all vices; we may safely return to our propositions, that God having established no such authority as our author fancies, nations are left to the use of their own judgment, in making provision for their own welfare: That there is no lawful magistrate over any of them, but such as they have set up; that in creating them, they do not seek the advantage of their magistrate, but their own: and having found that an absolute power over a people, is a burden which no man can bear; and that no wise or good man ever desired it; from thence conclude, that it is not good for any to have it, nor just for any to affect it, tho it were personally good for himself; because he is not exalted to seek his own good, but that of the publick.
Tho the perversity of our author’s judgment and nature may have driven him into the most gross errors, ’tis not amiss to observe, that many of those delivered by him, proceed from his ignorance of the most important differences between father and lord, king and tyrant; which are so evident and irreconcilable, that one would have thought no man could be so stupid, as not to see it impossible for one and the same man, at the same time, to be father and master, king and tyrant, over the same persons. But lest he should think me too scrupulous, or too strict in inquiring after truth, I intend for the present to waive that inquiry, and to seek what was good for Adam or Noah: What we have reason to believe they desired to transmit to their posterity, and to take it for a perpetual law in its utmost extent; which I think will be of no advantage to our author: for this authority, which was universal during their lives, must necessarily after their decease be divided, as an inheritance, into as many parcels as they had children. The Apostle says, If children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; 1 which alluding to the laws and customs of nations, could have been of no force, unless it had been true and known to be so. But if children are heirs, or joint heirs, whatsoever authority Adam or Noah had, is inherited by every man in the world; and that title of heir which our author so much magnifies, as if it were annexed to one single person, vanishes into nothing; or else the words of the Apostle could have neither strength nor truth in them, but would be built upon a false foundation, which may perhaps agree with our author’s divinity.
Yet if the Apostle had not declared himself so fully in this point, we might easily have seen that Adam and Noah did leave their children in that equality; for fathers are ever understood to embrace all their children with equal affection, till the discovery of personal virtues or vices make a difference. But the personal virtues, that give a reasonable preference of one before another, or make him more fit to govern than the others, cannot appear before he is, nor can be annexed to any one line: Therefore the father cannot be thought to have given to one man, or his descendants, the government of his brethren and their descendants.
Besides, tho the law of England may make one man to be sole heir of his father, yet the laws of God and nature do not so. All the children of Noah were his heirs: The land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was equally divided among their children. If the children of Joseph made two tribes, it was not as the first born, but by the will of Jacob, who adopted Ephraim and Manasseh; and they thereby became his sons, and obtained an inheritance equal to that of the other tribes. The law allowed a double portion to the first-begotten; but this made a difference between brothers only in proportion, whereas that between lord and servant, is in specie, not in degree. And if our author’s opinion might take place, instead of such a division of the common inheritance between brothers, as was made between the children of Jacob, all must continue forever slaves to one lord; which would establish a difference in specie between brethren, which nature abhors.
If nature does not make one man lord over his brethren, he can never come to be their lord, unless they make him so, or he subdue them. If he subdue them, it is an act of violence, contrary to right, which may consequently be recovered: If they make him lord, ’tis for their own sakes, not for his; and he must seek their good, not his own, lest, as Aristotle says, he degenerate from a king into a tyrant. He therefore who would persuade us, that the dominion over every nation, does naturally belong to one man, woman or child, at a venture; or to the heir, whatsoever he or she be, as to age, sex, or other qualifications, must prove it good for all nations to be under them. But as reason is our nature, that can never be natural to us that is not rational. Reason gives paria paribus, 2 equal power to those who have equal abilities and merit: It allots to everyone the part he is most fit to perform; and this fitness must be equally lasting with the law that allots it. But as it can never be good for great nations, having men amongst them of virtue, experience, wisdom and goodness, to be governed by children, fools, or vicious and wicked persons; and we neither find that the virtues required in such as deserve to govern them, did ever continue in any race of men, nor have reason to believe they ever will, it can never be reasonable to annex the dominion of a nation to any one line. We may take this upon Solomon’s word, Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning: 3 And I wish the experience of all ages, did not make this truth too evident to us. This therefore can never be the work, much less the law of nature; and if there be any such thing in the world, as the dominion over a nation, inseparably united to a man and his family, it can have no other root, than a civil or municipal law, which is not the subject of our discourse.
Moreover, every father’s right must cease, when he ceases to be, or be transmitted to those, who being also fathers, have the same title to it. And tho the contrary method of annexing the whole inheritance to one person, or exposing all his brethren to be destroyed by his rage, if they will not submit, may conduce to the enlargement of a proud and violent empire, as in Turkey; where he that gains the power, usually begins his reign with the slaughter of his brothers and nephews: yet it can never agree with the piety, gentleness and wisdom of the patriarchs, or the laws of God and nature.
These things being agreed, we need not trouble ourselves with the limits or definition of a family, and as little with the titles given to the head of it: ’Tis all one to us, whether it be confined to one roof and fire, or extended farther; and none but such as are strangers to the practice of mankind, can think that titles of civility have a power to create a right of dominion. Every man in Latin is called dominus, unless such as are of the vilest condition, or in a great subjection to those who speak to them; and yet the word strictly taken, relates only to servus, for a man is lord only of his servant or slave. The Italians are not less liberal of the titles of signore and padrone, and the Spaniards of señor; but he would be ridiculous in those countries, who thereupon should arrogate to himself a right of dominion over those who are so civil. The vanity of our age seems to carry this point a little higher, especially among the French, who put a great weight upon the word prince; but they cannot change the true signification of it; and even in their sense, prince du sang signifies no more than a chief man of the royal blood, to whom they pay much respect, because he may come to the crown; as they at Rome do to cardinals, who have the power of chusing popes, and out of whose number, for some ages, they have been chosen. In this sense did Scaevola, when he was apprehended by Porsenna, say, Trecenti conjuravimus Romanae juventutis principes; 4 which was never otherwise understood, than of such young citizens as were remarkable amongst their companions. And nothing can be more absurd than to think, if the name of prince had carried an absolute and despotical power with it, that it could belong to three hundred in a city, that possessed no more than a ten miles territory; or that it could have been given to them, whilst they were young, and the most part of their fathers, as is most probable, still living.
I should, like our author, run round in a circle, if I should refute what he says of a regal power in our first parents; or shew, that the regal, where it is, is not absolute as often as he does assert it. But having already proved, that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, c. enjoyed no such power; transmitted to every one of their sons that which they had, and they became fathers of many great nations, who always continued independent on each other, I leave to our author to prove, when and by what law the right of subdividing the paternal power was stopped, and how any one or more of their descendants came to have that power over their brethren, which none of their immediate children had over theirs.
His question to Suarez, how and when sons become free, savours more of Jesuitical sophistry, than anything said by the Jesuit; 5 but the solution is easy: for if he mean the respect, veneration and kindness proceeding from gratitude, it ceases only with the life of the father to whom it is due, and the memory of it must last as long as that of the son; and if they had been possessed of such an absolute power as he fancies, it must have ceased with the reasons upon which it was grounded.
First, because the power, of which a father would probably have made a wise and gentle use, could not be rightly trusted in the hands of one who is not a father; and that which tended only to the preservation of all the children, could not be turned to the increase of the pride, luxury and violence of one, to the oppression of others who are equally heirs.
In the second place, societies cannot be instituted, unless the heads of the families that are to compose them, resign so much of their right as seems convenient into the publick stock, to which everyone becomes subject: But that the same power should, at the same time, continue in the true father, and the figurative father, the magistrate; and that the children should owe entire obedience to the commands of both, which may often cross each other, is absurd.
Thirdly, it ceases when it cannot be executed; as when men live to see four or five generations, as many do at this day; because the son cannot tell whether he should obey his father, grandfather, or great-grandfather, and cannot be equally subject to them all; most especially, when they live in divers places, and set up families of their own, as the sons of the patriarchs did: which being observed, I know no place where this paternal power could have any effect, unless in the fabulous Island of Pines; and even there it must have ceased, when he died, who by the inventor of the story, is said to have seen above ten thousand persons issued of his body 6
And if it be said, that Noah, Shem, Abraham, c. consented that their children should go where they thought fit, and provide for themselves; I answer, that the like has been done in all ages, and must be done forever. ’Tis the voice of nature, obeyed, not only by mankind, but by all living creatures; and there is none so stupid as not to understand it. A hen leaves her chickens, when they can seek their own nourishment: A cow looks after her calf no longer, than till it is able to feed: A lion gives over hunting for his whelps, when they are able to seek their own prey, and have strength enough to provide what is sufficient for themselves. And the contrary would be an insupportable burden to all living creatures, but especially to men; for the good order that the rational nature delights in, would be overthrown, and civil societies, by which it is best preserved, would never be established.
We are not concerned to examine, whether the political and oeconomical powers be entirely the same, or in what they differ: for that absolute power which he contends for, is purely despotical, different from both, or rather inconsistent with either as to the same subject; and that which the patriarchs exercised, having been equally inherited by their children, and consequently by every one of their posterity, ’tis as much as is required for my purpose of proving the natural, universal liberty of mankind; and I am no way concerned in the question, whether the first parents of mankind had a power of life and death over their children, or not.
This being established, I shall leave Filmer to fight against Suarez or Bellarmine; or to turn one of them against the other, without any concernment in the combat, or the success of it. But since he thereupon raises a question, Whether the supreme power be so in the people, that there is but one and the same power in all the people of the world; so that no power can be granted, unless all men upon the earth meet, and agree to chuse a governor: 1 I think it deserves to be answered, and might do it by proposing a question to him; Whether in his opinion, the empire of the whole world doth, by the laws of God and nature, belong to one man, and who that man is? Or, how it came so to be divided, as we have ever known it to have been, without such an injury to the universal monarch, as can never be repaired? But intending to proceed more candidly, and not to trouble myself with Bellarmine or Suarez, I say, that they who place the power in a multitude, understand a multitude composed of freemen, who think it for their convenience to join together, and to establish such laws and rules as they oblige themselves to observe: which multitude, whether it be great or small, has the same right, because ten men are as free as ten millions of men; and tho it may be more prudent in some cases to join with the greater than the smaller number, because there is more strength, it is not so always: But however every man must therein be his own judge, since if he mistake, the hurt is only to himself; and the ten may as justly resolve to live together, frame a civil society, and oblige themselves to laws, as the greatest number of men that ever met together in the world.
Thus we find that a few men assembling together upon the banks of the Tiber, resolved to build a city, and set up a government among themselves: And the multitude that met at Babylon, when their design of building a tower that should reach up to heaven failed, and their language was confounded, divided themselves, as our author says, into seventy two parcels, and by the same right might have divided into more, as their descendants did, into almost an infinite number before the death of their common father Noah. But we cannot find a more perfect picture of freemen, living according to their own will, than in Abraham and Lot; they went together into Canaan, continued together as long as was convenient for them, and parted when their substance did so increase, that they became troublesome to each other. In the like manner Ishmael, Isaac, and Abraham’s six sons by Keturah, might have continued together and made one nation; Isaac and Esau, Moab and Ammon might have done so too; or all of them that came of the same stock might have united together; but they did not; and their descendants by the same rule might have subdivided perpetually, if they had thought it expedient for themselves: and if the sons of Jacob did not do the like, ’tis probable they were kept together by the hope of an inheritance promised to them by God, in which we find no shadow of a despotical dominion, affected by one as father or heir to the first father, or reputed to be the heir; but all continued in that fraternal equality, which according to Abraham’s words to Lot they ought to do. 2 There was no lord, slave or vassal; no strife was to be among them: They were brethren; they might live together, or separate, as they found it convenient for themselves. By the same law that Abraham and Lot, Moab and Ammon, Ishmael, Isaac, and the sons of Keturah, Jacob, Esau, and their descendants, did divide and set up several governments, every one of their children might have done the like: and the same right remained to their issue, till they had by agreement engaged themselves to each other. But if they had no dependence upon each other, and might live together in that fraternal equality which was between Abraham and Lot; or separate, and continue in that separation, or reunite; they could not but have a right of framing such conditions of their reunion as best pleased themselves. By this means every number of men, agreeing together and framing a society, became a compleat body, having all power in themselves over themselves, subject to no other human law than their own. All those that compose the society, being equally free to enter into it or not, no man could have any prerogative above others, unless it were granted by the consent of the whole; and nothing obliging them to enter into this society, but the consideration of their own good; that good, or the opinion of it, must have been the rule, motive and end of all that they did ordain. ’Tis lawful therefore for any such bodies to set up one, or a few men to govern them, or to retain the power in themselves; and he or they who are set up, having no other power but what is so conferred upon them by that multitude, whether great or small, are truly by them made what they are; and by the law of their own creation, are to exercise those powers according to the proportion, and to the ends for which they were given.
These rights, in several nations and ages, have been variously executed, in the establishment of monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, or mixed governments, according to the variety of circumstances; and the governments have been good or evil, according to the rectitude or pravity of their institution, and the virtue and wisdom, or the folly and vices of those to whom the power was committed: but the end which was ever proposed, being the good of the publick, they only performed their duty, who procured it according to the laws of the society, which were equally valid as to their own magistrates, whether they were few or many.
This might suffice to answer our author’s question; but he endeavours further to perplex it, by a fiction of his own brain, That God gave this power to the whole multitude met, and not to every particular assembly of men: And expects a proof, That the whole multitude met, and divided this power which God gave them in gross, by breaking it into parcels, and by appointing a distinct power to each commonwealth. He also fathers it upon the assertors of liberty; and does not see, as he says, how there can be an election of a magistrate by any commonwealth, that is not an usurpation upon the privilege of the whole world, unless all mankind had met together, and divided the power into parcels which God had given them in gross. 3 But before I put myself to the trouble of answering that which is but an appendix to a whimsy of his own, I may justly ask, what hurt he finds in usurpation, who asserts, that the same obedience is due to all monarchs, whether they come in by inheritance, election or usurpation? If usurpation can give a right to a monarch, why does it not confer the same upon a people? Or rather, if God did in gross confer such a right upon all mankind, and they neither did, nor can meet together by consent to dispose of it for the good of the whole; why should not those who can, and do consent to meet together, agree upon that which seems most expedient to them for the government of themselves? Did God create man under the necessity of wanting government, and all the good that proceeds from it; because at the first all did not, and afterwards all could not meet to agree upon rules? Or did he ever declare, that unless they should use the first opportunity of dividing themselves into such parcels as were to remain unalterable, the right of reigning over everyone shall fall to the first villain that should dare to attempt it? Is it not more consonant to the wisdom and goodness of God, to leave to every nation a liberty of repairing the mischiefs fallen upon them through the omission of their first parents, by setting up governments among themselves, than to lay them under a necessity of submitting to any that should insolently aspire to a domination over them? Is it not more just and reasonable to believe, that the universal right not being executed, devolves upon particular nations, as members of the great body, than that it should become the reward of violence 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 outrageous 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, does 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 usurpation 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 been 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? 4 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? 5 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 virtue 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? Does not the style of the oath of allegiance used in the kingdom of Aragon, 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; 6 if he did not come in by their election? Were not the Roman emperors in disorderly times chosen by the soldiers; 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, cortes, assemblies of estates, or the like, to do that which formerly had been 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 ’tis 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 Mizpeh to chuse a king, and did chuse Saul: 7 He being slain, all Judah came to Hebron, and made David their king; 8 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. 9 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. 10 The same people in the time of the judges, had general assemblies, as often as occasion did require, to set up a judge, 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. 11 The mickelgemote among the Saxons was an assembly of the whole people: The baronagium is truly said to be the same, in as much as it comprehended all the freemen, that is, all the people; for the difference between civis and servus is irreconcilable; and no man, whilst he is a servant, can be a member of a commonwealth; for he that is not in his own power, cannot have a part in the government of others. All the forementioned northern nations had the like customs among them: The governments they had were so instituted. The utmost that any now remaining pretends to, is, to derive their right from them: If, according to Filmer, these first assemblies could not confer it upon the first, they had none: Such as claim under them, can inherit none from those that had none; and there can be no right in all the governments we so much venerate; and nothing can tend more to their overthrow than the reception of our author’s doctrine.
Tho any one instance would be sufficient to overthrow his general negative proposition (for a rule is not generally true, if there be any just exception against it) I have alleged many, and find it so easy to increase the number, that there is no nation, whose original we know, out of whose histories I will not undertake to produce the like: but I have not been solicitous precisely to distinguish, which nations have acted in their own persons, and which have made use of delegates; nor in what times they have changed from one way to the other: for if any have acted by themselves, the thing is possible; and whatsoever is done by delegated powers, must be referred to their principals; for none can give to any a power which they have not in themselves.
He is graciously pleased to confess, That when men are assembled by a human power, that power that doth assemble them, may also limit the manner of the execution of that power, c. But in assemblies that take their authority from the law of nature, it is not so; for what liberty or freedom is due to any man by the law of nature, no inferior power can alter, limit or diminish: No one man, or multitude of men, can give away the natural right of another, c. 12 These are strong lines, and such as, if there be any sense in them, utterly overthrow all our author’s doctrine; for if any assembly of men did ever take their authority from the law of nature, it must be of such, as remaining in the entire fruition of their natural liberty, and restrained by no contract, meet together to deliberate of such matters as concern themselves; and if they can be restrained by no one man, or number of men, they may dispose of their own affairs as they think fit. But because no one of them is obliged to enter into the society that the rest may constitute, he cannot enjoy the benefit of that society unless he enter into it: He may be gone, and set up for himself, or set up another with such as will agree with him. But if he enter into the society, he is obliged by the laws of it; and if one of those laws be, that all things should be determined by the plurality of voices, his assent is afterwards comprehended in all the resolutions of that plurality. Reuben or Simeon might, according to the laws of nature, have divided themselves from their brethren, as well as Lot from Abraham, or Ishmael and the sons of Keturah from Isaac; but when they, in hopes of having a part in the inheritance promised to their fathers, had joined with their brethren, a few of their descendants could not have a right, by their dissent, to hinder the resolutions of the whole body, or such a part of it as by the first agreement was to pass for an act of the whole. And the Scripture teaches us, that when the lot was fallen upon Saul, they who despised him were styled men of Belial; 13 and the rest, after his victory over the Ammonites, would have slain them if he had permitted. In the like manner, when a number of men met together to build Rome, any man who had disliked the design, might justly have refused to join in it; but when he had entered into the society, he could not by his vote invalidate the acts of the whole, nor destroy the rights of Romulus, Numa, and the others, who by the senate and people were made kings; nor those of the other magistrates, who after their expulsion were legally created.
This is as much as is required to establish the natural liberty of mankind in its utmost extent, and cannot be shaken by our author’s surmise, That a gap is thereby opened for every seditious multitude to raise a new commonwealth: 14 For till the commonwealth be established, no multitude can be seditious, because they are not subject to any humane law; and sedition implies an unjust and disorderly opposition of that power which is legally established; which cannot be when there is none, nor by him who is not a member of the society that makes it; and when it is made, such as entered into it, are obliged to the laws of it.
This shewing the root and foundation of civil powers, we may judge of the use and extent of them, according to the letter of the law, or the true intentional meaning of it; both which declare them to be purely human ordinances, proceeding from the will of those who seek their own good; and may certainly infer, that since all multitudes are composed of such as are under some contract, or free from all, no man is obliged to enter into those contracts against his own will, nor obliged by any to which he does not assent: Those multitudes that enter into such contracts, and thereupon form civil societies, act according to their own will: Those that are engaged in none, take their authority from the law of nature; their rights cannot be limited or diminished by any one man, or number of men; and consequently whoever does it, or attempts the doing of it, violates the most sacred laws of God and nature.
His cavils concerning proxies, and the way of using them, deserve no answer, as relating only to one sort of men amongst us, and can have no influence upon the laws of nature, or the proceedings of assemblies, acting according to such rules as they set to themselves. In some places they have voted all together in their own persons, as in Athens: In others by tribes, as in Rome: Sometimes by delegates, when the number of the whole people is so great, that no one place can contain them, as in the parliaments, diets, general assemblies of estates, long used in the great kingdoms of Europe. In other parts many cities are joined together in leagues, as anciently the Achaeans, Aetolians, Samnites, Tuscans; and in these times the states of Holland, and cantons of Switzerland: but our author not regarding such matters, in pursuance of his folly, with an ignorance as admirable as his stupidity, repeats his challenge, I ask, says he, but one example out of the history of the whole world; let the commonwealth be named, wherever the multitude, or so much as the major part of it, consented either by voice or procuration to the election of a prince; 15 not observing, that if an answer could not be given, he did overthrow the rights of all the princes that are, or ever have been in the world: for if the liberty of one man cannot be limited or diminished by one, or any number of men, and none can give away the right of another, ’tis plain that the ambition of one man, or of many a faction of citizens, or the mutiny of an army, cannot give a right to any over the liberties of a whole nation. Those who are so set up, have their root in violence or fraud, and are rather to be accounted robbers and pirates, than magistrates. Leo Africanus observing in his history, that since the extinction of Mahomet’s race (to whom his countrymen thought God had given the empire of the world) their princes did not come in by the consent of those nations which they governed, says, that they are esteemed thieves; and that on this account, the most honourable men among the Arabians and Moors, scorn to eat, drink, or make alliances with them: 16 and if the case were as general as that author makes it, no better rule could be anywhere followed by honourable and worthy men. But a good cause must not be lost by the fault of an ill advocate; the rights of kings must not perish, because Filmer knows not how to defend, or does maliciously betray them. I have already proved that David, and divers of the judges, were chosen by all Israel; Jeroboam by ten tribes; all the kings of Rome, except Tarquin the Proud, by the whole city. I may add many examples of the Saxons in our own country: Ine and Offa were made kings, omnium consensu: 17 These all are expressed plainly by the words, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, senatoribus, ducibus populo terrae. 18 Egbert and Ethelward came to the crown by the same authority, omnium consensu rex creatur. 19 Ethelwolf the Monk, necessitate cogente factus est rex, consensus publicus in regem dari petiit. Ethelstan, tho a bastard, electus est magno consensu optimatum, a populo consalutatus. 20 In the like manner Edwin’s government being disliked, they chose Edgar, unanimi omnium conspiratione; Edwino dejecto, eligerunt Deo dictante Edgarum in regem, annuente populo; 21 And in another place, Edgarus ab omni Anglorum populo electus est. 22 Ironside being dead, Canute was received by the general consent of all; Juraverunt illi, quod eum regem sibi eligere vellent: foedus etiam cum principibus omni populo ipse, illi cum ipso percusserunt. 23
Whereupon, omnium consensu super totam Angliam Canutus coronatur. 24 Hardicanutus gaudenter ab omnibus suscipitur electus est. 25 The same author says that Edward the Confessor electus est in regem ab omni populo: 26 And another, omnium electione in Edwardum concordatur. 27 Tho the name of Conqueror be odiously given to William the Norman, he had the same title to the crown with his predecessors, in magna exultatione a clero populo susceptus, ab omnibus rex acclamatus . 28 I cannot recite all the examples of this kind, that the history of almost all nations furnishes, unless I should make a volume in bulk not inferior to the book of martyrs: But those which I have mentioned out of the sacred, Roman, and English history, being more than sufficient to answer our author’s challenge, I take liberty to add, that tho there could not be one example produced of a prince, or any other magistrate, chosen by the general consent of the people, or by the major part of them, it could be of no advantage to the cause he has undertaken to maintain: For when a people hath either indefinitely, or under certain conditions and limitations, resigned their power into the hands of a certain number of men; or agreed upon rules, according to which persons should, from time to time, be deputed for the management of their affairs, the acts of those persons, if their power be without restrictions, are of the same value as the acts of the whole nation, and the assent of every individual man is comprehended in them. If the power be limited, whatsoever is done according to that limitation, has the same authority. If it do therefore appear (as is testified by the laws and histories of all our northern nations) that the power of every people is either wholly, or to such a degree as is necessary for creating kings, granted to their several gemotes, diets, cortes, assemblies of estates, parliaments, and the like, all the kings that they have anywhere, or at any time chosen, do reign by the same authority, and have the same right, as if every individual man of those nations had assented to their election. But that these gemotes, diets, and other assemblies of state, have everywhere had such powers, and executed them by rejecting or setting up kings; and that the kings now in being among us have received their beginning from such acts, has been fully proved, and is so plain in itself, that none but those who are grossly stupid or impudent can deny it: which is enough to shew that all kings are not set up by violence, deceit, faction of a few powerful men, or the mutinies of armies; but from the consent of such multitudes, as joining together, frame civil societies; and either in their own persons at general assemblies, or by their delegates, confer a just and legal power upon them; which our author rejecting, he does, as far as in him lies, prove them all to be usurpers and tyrants.
Tho the right of magistrates do essentially depend upon the consent of those they govern, it is hardly worth our pains to examine, Whether the silent acceptation of a governor by part of the people be an argument of their concurring in the election of him; or by the same reason the tacit consent of the whole commonwealth may be maintained: 1 for when the question is concerning right, fraudulent surmises are of no value; much less will it from thence follow, that a prince commanding by succession, conquest, or usurpation, may be said to be elected by the people; 2 for evident marks of dissent are often given: Some declare their hatred; others murmur more privately; many oppose the governour or government, and succeed according to the measure of their strength, virtue, or fortune. Many would resist, but cannot; and it were ridiculous to say, that the inhabitants of Greece, the kingdom of Naples, or duchy of Tuscany, do tacitly assent to the government of the Great Turk, king of Spain, or duke of Florence; when nothing is more certain than that those miserable nations abhor the tyrannies they are under; and if they were not mastered by a power that is much too great for them, they would soon free themselves. And those who are under such governments do no more assent to them, tho they may be silent, than a man approves of being robbed, when, without saying a word, he delivers his purse to a thief that he knows to be too strong for him.
’Tis not therefore the bare sufferance of a government when a disgust is declared, nor a silent submission when the power of opposing is wanting, that can imply an assent, or election, and create a right; but an explicit act of approbation, when men have ability and courage to resist or deny. Which being agreed, ’tis evident that our author’s distinction between eligere and instituere 3 signifies nothing: tho, if the power of instituting were only left to nations, it would be sufficient; for he is in vain elected who is not instituted; and he that is instituted is certainly elected; for his institution is an election. As the Romans who chose Romulus, Numa, and Hostilius to be kings; and Brutus, Valerius, or Lucretius to be consuls, did make them so, and their right was solely grounded upon their election. The text brought by our author against this doth fully prove it, Him shalt thou set king over thee whom the Lord shall chuse; 4 for God did not only make the institution of a king to be purely an act of the people, but left it to them to institute one or not, as should best please themselves; and the words, whom the Lord shall chuse, can have no other signification, than that the people resolving to have a king, and following the rules prescribed by his servant Moses, he would direct them in their choice; which relates only to that particular people in covenant with God, and immediately under his government, which no other was. But this pains might have been saved, if God by a universal law had given a rule to all. The Israelites could not have been three hundred years without a king, and then left to the liberty of making one, or not, if he by a perpetual law had ordained that every nation should have one; and it had been as well impertinent as unjust to deliberate who should be king, if the dominion had by right of inheritance belonged to one: They must have submitted to him whether they would or not: No care was to be taken in the election or institution of him, who by his birth had a right annexed to his person that could not be altered: He could not have been forbidden to multiply silver or gold, who by the law of his creation might do what he pleased: It had been ridiculous to say, he should not raise his heart above his brethren, who had no brethren, that is, no equals; but was raised above all by God, who had imposed upon all others a necessity of obeying him. 5 But God, who does nothing in vain, did neither constitute or elect any till they desired it, nor command them to do it themselves, unless it so pleased themselves; nor appoint them to take him out of any one line: Every Israelite might be chosen: None but strangers were excluded; and the people were left to the liberty of chusing and instituting any one of their brethren.
Our author endeavouring by Hooker’s authority to establish his distinction between eligere and instituere, destroys it, and the paternal right, which he makes the foundation of his doctrine. Heaps of Scripture are alleged, says he, concerning the solemn coronation and inauguration of Saul, David, Solomon and others, by nobles, ancients, and people of the commonwealth of Israel: 6 which is enough to prove that the whole work was theirs; that no other had any title more than what they bestowed upon him: They were set up by the nobles, ancients, and people: Even God did no otherwise intervene than by such a secret disposition of the lots by his Providence, as is exercised in the government of all the things in the world; and we cannot have a more certain evidence, that a paternal right to dominion is a mere whimsy, than that God did not cause the lot to fall upon the eldest, of the eldest line, of the eldest tribe; but upon Saul, a young man, of the youngest tribe: and afterwards, tho he had designed David, Solomon, Jeroboam, and others, who had no pretence to the paternal right to be kings, he left both the election and institution of them to the elders and people.
But Hooker being well examined, it will appear that his opinions were as contrary to the doctrine of our author, as those we have mentioned out of Plato and Aristotle. He plainly says, It is impossible that any should have a compleat lawful power over a multitude consisting of so many families, as every politick society doth, but by consent of men, or immediate appointment from God: Because not having the natural superiority of fathers, their power must needs be usurped, and then unlawful; or if lawful, then either granted or consented unto by them over whom they exercise the same, or else given extraordinarily by God. And tho he thinks kings to have been the first governors so constituted, he adds, That this is not the only regiment that hath been received in the world. The inconveniences of one kind have caused sundry others to be devised. So that in a word, all publick regiment, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men, judging it convenient and behoofeful . And a little below, Man’s nature standing therefore as it doth, some kind of regiment the law of nature doth require; yet the kinds thereof being many, nature tyeth not to any one, but leaveth the choice as a thing arbitrary. And again, To live by one man’s will, became all men’s misery: This constrained them to come unto laws, c. But as those laws do not only teach that which is good, but enjoin it, they have in them a constraining force. To constrain men to anything inconvenient seemeth unreasonable: Most requisite therefore it is that to devise laws, which all men should be forced to obey, none but wise men should be admitted . Moreover that which we say concerning the power of government must here be applied unto the power of making laws, whereby to govern; which power God hath over all; and by the natural law, whereunto he hath made all subject, the lawful power of making laws to command whole politick societies of men, belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate, of what kind soever upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent, upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. Laws therefore they are not, which publick consent hath not made so. 7 The humour of our age considered, I should not have dared to say so much; but if Hooker be a man of such great authority, I cannot offend in 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 merely 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 sovereign 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. 8 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, does 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 been contrary to the laws of God and nature, if a general rule had been set, which had obliged all to be forever subject to the will of one; and they had not been 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 been contrary to his own eternal and universal law; which is impossible. A law therefore having been 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 virtue 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 mere tyranny, are not untrue and unnatural conceits set abroad by the seedsmen of rebellion; 9 but real truths grounded upon the laws of God and nature, acknowledged and practiced 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.
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. ’Tis in vain to say the kingdom; for we do not know what he means by the kingdom: ’tis 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, 1 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 mere 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 been 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 been 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 been preferred before them: Stephen and Henry the second did not; for Maude 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.