Moreover, I find great variety in the deduction of this hereditary right. In Sparta there were two kings of different famillies, endowed with an equal power. If the Heraclidae did reign as fathers of the people, the Aeacidae did not; if the right was in the Aeacidae, the Heraclidae could have none; for ’tis equally impossible to have two fathers as two thousand. ’Tis in vain to say that two families joined, and agreed to reign jointly: for ’tis evident the Spartans had kings before the time of Hercules or Achilles, who were the fathers of the two races. If it be said that the regal power with which they were invested did entitle them to the right of fathers, it must in like manner have belonged to the Roman consuls, military tribunes, dictators, and praetors; for they had more power than the Spartan kings; and that glorious nation might change their fathers every year, and multiply or diminish the number of them as they pleased. If this be most ridiculous and absurd, ’tis certain that the name and office of king, consul, dictator, or the like, does not confer any determined right upon the person that hath it: Everyone has a right to that which is allotted to him by the laws of the country by which he is created.
As the Persians, Spartans, Romans or Germans, might make such magistrates, and under such names as best pleased themselves, and accordingly enlarge or diminish their power; the same right belongs to all nations, and the rights due unto, as well as the duties incumbent upon everyone, are to be known only by the laws of that place. This may seem strange to those who know neither books nor things, histories nor laws, but is well explain’d by Grotius; who denying the sovereign power to be annexed to any man, speaks of divers magistrates under several names that had, and others that under the same names had it not; and distinguishes those who have the summum imperium summo modo, from those who have it modo non summo: 2 and tho probably he looked upon the first sort as a thing merely speculative, if by that summo modo, a right of doing what one pleases be understood; yet he gives many examples of the other, and among those who had liberrimum imperium, 3 if any had it, he names the kings of the Sabaeans; who nevertheless were under such a condition, that tho they were, as Agatharchides reports, obeyed in all things, whilst they continued within the walls of their palace, might be stoned by any that met them without it. He finds also another obstacle to the absolute power, cum rex partem habeat summi imperii, partem senatus, sive populus; 4 which parts are proportioned according to the laws of each kingdom, whether hereditary or elective, both being equally regulated by them.
The law that gives and measures the power, prescribes rules how it should be transmitted. In some places the supreme magistrates are annually elected, in others their power is for life; in some they are merely elective, in others hereditary under certain rules or limitations. The ancient kingdoms and lordships of Spain were hereditary; but the succession went ordinarily to the eldest of the reigning family, not to the nearest in blood. This was the ground of the quarrel between Corbis the brother, and Orsua the son of the last prince, decided by combat before Scipio. 5 I know not whether the Goths brought that custom with them when they conquered Spain, or whether they learnt it from the inhabitants; but certain it is, that keeping themselves to the families of the Balthi, and Amalthi, they had more regard to age than proximity; and almost ever preferred the brother, or eldest kinsman of the last king before his son. 6 The like custom was in use among the Moors in Spain and Africa, who according to the several changes that happened among the families of Almohades, Almoravides, and Benemerini, did always take one of the reigning blood; but in the choice of him had most respect to age and capacity. 7 This is usually called the law of tanistry; and, as in many other places, prevailed also in Ireland, till that country fell under the English government.
In France and Turkey the male that is nearest in blood, succeeds; and I do not know of any deviation from that rule in France, since Henry the First was preferred before Robert his elder brother, grandchild to Hugh Capet: but notwithstanding the great veneration they have for the royal blood, they utterly exclude females, lest the crown should fall to a stranger; or a woman that is seldom able to govern herself, should come to govern so great a people. Some nations admit females, either simply, as well as males; or under a condition of not marrying out of their country, or without the consent of the estates, with an absolute exclusion of them and their children if they do; according to which law, now in force among the Swedes, Charles Gustavus was chosen king upon the resignation of Queen Christina, as having no title; and the crown settled upon the heirs of his body, to the utter exclusion of his brother Adolphus, their mother having married a German. Tho divers nations have differently disposed their affairs; all those that are not naturally slaves, and like to beasts, have preferred their own good before the personal interests of him that expects the crown, so as upon no pretence whatever to admit of one, who is evidently guilty of such vices as are prejudicial to the state. For this reason the French, tho much addicted to their kings, rejected the vile remainders of Meroveus his race, and made Pepin the son of Charles Martel king: And when his descendants fell into the like vices, they were often deposed, till at last they were wholly rejected, and the crown given to Capet and to his heirs male as formerly. Yet for all this Henry his grandchild, being esteemed more fit to govern than his elder brother Robert, was, as is said before, made king, and that crown still remains in his descendants; no consideration being had of the children of Robert, who continued dukes of Burgundy during the reigns of ten kings. And in the memory of our fathers, Henry of Navarre was rejected by two assemblies of the estates, because he differed in religion from the body of the nation, and could never be received as king, till he had renounced his own, tho he was certainly the next in blood; and that in all other respects he excelled in those virtues which they most esteem.
We have already proved, that our own history is full of the like examples, and might enumerate a multitude of others, if it were not too tedious: and as the various rules, according to which all the hereditary crowns of the world are inherited, shew, that none is set by nature, but that every people proceeds according to their own will; the frequent deviations from those rules do evidently testify, that salus populi est lex suprema; 8 and that no crown is granted otherwise, than in submission to it.
But tho there were a rule, which in no case ought to be transgressed, there must be a power of judging to whom it ought to be applied. ’Tis perhaps hard to conceive one more precise than that of France, where the eldest legitimate male in the direct line is preferred; and yet that alone is not sufficient. There may be bastardy in the case: Bastards may be thought legitimate, and legitimate sons bastards. The children born of Isabel of Portugal during her marriage with John the Third of Castile were declared bastards; and the title of the house of Austria to that crown, depends upon that declaration. We often see that marriages which have been contracted, and for a long time taken to be good, have been declared null; and the legitimation of the present king of France, is founded solely upon the abolition of the marriage of Henry the Fourth with Marguerite of Valois, which for the space of twenty seven years was thought to have been good. Whilst Spain was divided into five or six kingdoms, and the several kings linked to each other by mutual alliances, incestuous marriages were often contracted, and upon better consideration annulled; many have been utterly void, through the preengagement of one of the parties. These are not feigned cases, but such as happen frequently; and the diversity of accidents, as well as the humours of men, may produce many others, which would involve nations in the most fatal disorders, if everyone should think himself obliged to follow such a one who pretended a title, that to him might seem plausible, when another should set up one as pleasing to others, and there were no power to terminate those disputes to which both must submit, but the decision must be left to the sword.
This is that which I call the application of the rule, when it is as plain and certain as humane wisdom can make it; but if it be left more at large, as where females inherit, the difficulties are inextricable: and he that says, the next heir is really king when one is dead, before he be so declared by a power that may judge of his title, does, as far as in him lies, expose nations to be split into the most desperate factions, and every man to fight for the title which he fancies to be good, till he destroy those of the contrary party, or be destroyed by them. This is the blessed way proposed by our author to prevent sedition: 9 But, God be thanked, our ancestors found a better. They did not look upon Robert the Norman as king of England after the death of his father; and when he did proudly endeavour, on pretence of inheritance, to impose himself upon the nation, that thought fit to prefer his younger brothers before him, he paid the penalty of his folly, by the loss of his eyes and liberty. The French did not think the grandchild of Pharamond to be king after the death of his father, nor seek who was the next heir of the Merovingian line, when Childeric the third was dead; nor regard the title of Charles of Lorraine after the death of his brother Lothair, or of Robert of Burgundy eldest son of King Robert; but advanced Meroveus, Pepin, Capet and Henry the first, who had no other right than what the nobility and people bestowed upon them. And if such acts do not destroy the pretences of all who lay claim to crowns by inheritance, and do not create a right, I think it will be hard to find a lawful king in the world, or that there ever have been any; since the first did plainly come in like Nimrod, and those who have been everywhere since histories are known to us, owed their exaltation to the consent of nations, armed or unarmed, by the deposition or exclusion of the heirs of such as had reigned before them.
Our author not troubling himself with these things, or any other relating to the matter in question, is pleased to slight Hooker’s opinions concerning coronation and inauguration, with the heaps of Scripture upon which he grounds them; whereas those solemnities would not only have been foolish and impertinent, but profane and impious, if they were not deeds by which the right of dominion is really conferred. 10 What could be more wickedly superstitious, than to call all Israel together before the Lord, and to cast lots upon every tribe, family and person, for the election of a king, if it had been known to whom the crown did belong by a natural and unalterable right? Or if there had been such a thing in nature, how could God have caused that lot to fall upon one of the youngest tribe forever to discountenance his own law, and divert nations from taking any notice of it? It had been absurd for the tribe of Judah to chuse and anoint David, and for the other tribes to follow their example after the death of Ishbosheth, if he had been king by a right not depending on their will. David did worse in slaying the sons of Rimmon, saying, they had killed a righteous man lying upon his bed, if Ishbosheth, whose head they presented, had most unrighteously detained from him, as long as he lived, the dominion of the ten tribes: The king, elders and people, had most scornfully abused the most sacred things, by using such ceremonies in making him king, and compleating their work in a covenant made between him and them before the Lord, if he had been already king, and if those acts had been empty ceremonies conferring no right at all. 11
I dare not say that a league does imply an absolute equality between both parties; for there is a foedus inequale, 12 wherein the weaker, as Grotius says, does usually obtain protection, and the stronger honour; but there can be none at all, unless both parties are equally free to make it, or not to make it. David therefore was not king, till he was elected, and those covenants made; and he was made king by that election and covenants.
This is not shaken by our author’s supposition, that the people would not have taken Joash, Manasseh or Josiah, if they had had a right of chusing a king; 13 since Solomon says, Woe unto the kingdom whose king is a child. For, first, they who at the first had a right of chusing whom they pleased to be king, by the covenant made with him whom they did chuse, may have deprived themselves of the farther execution of it, and rendered the crown hereditary even to children, unless the conditions were violated upon which it was granted. In the second place, if the infancy of a king brings woe upon a people, the government of such a one cannot be according to the laws of God and nature; for governments are not instituted by either for the pleasure of a man, but for the good of nations; and their weal, not their woe, is sought by both: and if children are anywhere admitted to rule, ’tis by the particular law of the place, grounded perhaps upon an opinion, that it is the best way to prevent dangerous contests; or that other ways may be found to prevent the inconveniences that may proceed from their weakness. Thirdly, It cannot be concluded that they might not reject children, because they did not: such matters require positive proofs, suppositions are of no value in relation to them, and the whole matter may be altered by particular circumstances. The Jews might reasonably have a great veneration for the house of David: they knew what was promised to that family; and whatever respect was paid, or privilege granted on that account, can be of no advantage to any other in the world. They might be farther induced to set up Joash, in hope the defects of his age might be supplied by the virtue, experience and wisdom of Jehoiada. We do not know what good opinion may have been conceived of Manasseh when he was twelve years old; but much might be hoped from one that had been virtuously educated, and was probably under the care of such as had been chosen by Hezekiah: and tho the contrary did fall out, the mischiefs brought upon the people by his wicked reign, proceeded not from the weakness of his childhood, but from the malice of his riper years. And both the examples of Joash and Josiah prove, that neither of them came in by their own right, but by the choice of the people. Jehoiada gathered the Levites out of all the cities of Judah, and the chief of the fathers of Israel, and they came to Jerusalem: And all the congregation made a covenant with the king in the house of God, and brought out the king’s son, and put upon him the crown, and gave him the testimony, and made him king; whereupon they slew Athaliah. 14 And when Ammon was slain, the people of the land slew them that had conspired against King Ammon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead: 15 which had been most impertinent, if he was of himself king before they made him so. Besides, tho infancy may be a just cause of excepting against, and rejecting the next heir to a crown, ’tis not the greatest or strongest. ’Tis far more easy to find a remedy against the folly of a child (if the state be well regulated) than the more rooted vices of grown men. The English, who willingly received Henry the sixth, Edward the fifth and sixth, tho children, resolutely opposed Robert the Norman: And the French, who willingly submitted to Charles the ninth, Lewis the thirteenth and fourteenth in their infancy, rejected the lewd remainders of Meroveus his race; Charles of Lorraine with his kindred descended from Pepin, Robert duke of Burgundy with his descendants, and Henry of Navarre, till he had satisfied the nobility and people in the point of religion. And tho I do not know that the letter upon the words, Vae regno cujus rex puer est, recited by Lambarde 16 was written by Eleutherius bishop of Rome; yet the authority given to it by the Saxons, who made it a law, is much more to be valued than what it could receive from the writer; and whoever he was, he seems rightly to have understood Solomon’s meaning, who did not look upon him as a child that wanted years, or was superannuated, but him only who was guilty of insolence, luxury, folly and madness: and he that said, A wise child was better than an old and foolish king, 17 could have no other meaning, unless he should say, it was worse to be governed by a wise person than a fool; which may agree with the judgment of our author, but could never enter into the heart of Solomon.
Lastly, tho the practice of one or more nations may indicate what laws, covenants or customs were in force among them, yet they cannot bind others: The diversity of them proceeds from the variety of men’s judgments, and declares, that the direction of all such affairs depends upon their own will; according to which every people for themselves forms and measures the magistracy, and magistratical power; which, as it is directed solely for the good, hath its exercises and extent proportionable to the command of those that institute it; and such ordinances being good for men, God makes them his own.
I see no reason to believe that God did approve the government of one over many, because he created but one; but to the contrary, in as much as he did endow him, and those that came from him, as well the youngest as the eldest line, with understanding to provide for themselves, and by the invention of arts and sciences, to be beneficial to each other; he shewed, that they ought to make use of that understanding in forming governments according to their own convenience, and such occasions as should arise, as well as in other matters: and it might as well be inferr’d, that it is unlawful for us to build, clothe, arm, defend, or nourish ourselves, otherwise than as our first parents did, before, or soon after the Flood, as to take from us the liberty of instituting governments that were not known to them. If they did not find out all that conduces to the use of man, but a faculty as well as a liberty was left to everyone, and will be to the end of the world, to make use of his wit, industry, and experience, according to present exigencies, to invent and practise such things as seem convenient to himself and others in matters of the least importance; it were absurd to imagine, that the political science, which of all others is the most abstruse and variable according to accidents and circumstances, should have been perfectly known to them who had no use of it; and that their descendants are obliged to add nothing to what they practiced. But the reason given by our author to prove this extravagant fancy, is yet more ridiculous than the thing itself; God, saith he, shewed his opinion, viz. that all should be governed by one, when he endowed not only men, but beasts with a natural propensity to monarchy: Neither can it be doubted, hut a natural propensity is referred to God who is the author of nature: 1 Which I suppose may appear if it be considered.
Nevertheless I cannot but commend him in the first place for introducing God speaking so modestly, not declaring his will, but his opinion. He puts haughty and majestick language into the mouth of kings. They command and decide, as if they were subject to no error, and their wills ought to be taken for perpetual laws; but to God he ascribes an humble delivery of his opinion only, as if he feared to be mistaken. In the second place, I deny that there is any such general propensity in man or beast, or that monarchy would thereby be justified tho it were found in them. It cannot be in beasts, for they know not what government is; and being incapable of it, cannot distinguish the several sorts, nor consequently incline to one more than another. Salmasius his story of bees 2 is only fit for old women to prate of in chimney corners; and they who represent lions and eagles as kings of birds and beasts, do it only to show, that their power is nothing but brutish violence, exercised in the destruction of all that are not able to oppose it, and that hath nothing of goodness or justice in it: which similitude (tho it should prove to be in all respects adequate to the matter in question) could only shew, that those who have no sense of right, reason or religion, have a natural propensity to make use of their strength, to the destruction of such as are weaker than they; and not that any are willing to submit, or not to resist it if they can, which I think will be of no great advantage to monarchy. But whatever propensity may be in beasts, it cannot be attributed generally to men; for if it were, they never could have deviated from it, unless they were violently put out of their natural course; which in this case cannot be, for there is no power to force them. But that they have most frequently deviated, appears by the various forms of government established by them. There is therefore no natural propensity to anyone, but they chuse that which in their judgment seems best for them. Or, if he would have that inconsiderate impulse, by which brutish and ignorant men may be swayed when they know no better, to pass for a propensity; others are no more obliged to follow it, than to live upon acorns, or inhabit hollow trees, because their fathers did it when they had no better dwellings, and found no better nourishment in the uncultivated world. And he that exhibits such examples, as far as in him lies, endeavours to take from us the use of reason, and extinguishing the light of it, to make us live like the worst of beasts, that we may be fit subjects to absolute monarchy. This may perhaps be our author’s intention, having learnt from Aristotle, that such a government is only suitable to the nature of the most bestial men, who being incapable of governing themselves, fall under the power of such as will take the conduct of them: but he ought withal to have remembered, that according to Aristotle’s opinion, this conductor must be in nature different from those he takes the charge of; and if he be not, there can be no government, nor order, by which it subsists: Beasts follow beasts, and the blind lead the blind to destruction.
But tho I should grant this propensity to be general, it could not be imputed to God, since man by sin is fallen from the law of his creation. The wickedness of man (even in the first ages) was great in the world: All the imaginations of his heart are evil, and that continually. All men are liars: There is none that doth good, no not one. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, c. 3 These are the fruits of our corrupted nature, which the Apostle observing, does not only make a difference between the natural and the spiritual man, whose proceeding only can be referred to God, and that only so far as he is guided by his spirit; but shews, that the natural man is in a perpetual enmity against God, without any possibility of being reconciled to him, unless by the destruction of the old man, and the regenerating or renewing him through the spirit of grace. There being no footsteps of this in our author’s book, he and his master Heylyn may have differed from the Apostle, referring that propensity of nature to God, which he declares to be utter enmity against him; and we may conclude, that this propensity, however general it may be, cannot be attributed to God as the author of nature, since it cannot be more general than the corruptions into which we are fallen.
Notwithstanding all this, our author is resolved that monarchy must be from God: What form of government, says he, God ordained by his authority, may be gathered by that commonwealth which he instituted amongst the Hebrews; which was not aristocratical, as Calvin saith, but plainly monarchical. 1 I may in as few words deny the government set up by God to have been monarchical, as he asserts it; but finding such language ordinarily to proceed from a mixture of folly, impudence and pride, I chuse rather to shew upon what I ground my opinions, than nakedly to deliver them; most especially, when by insisting upon the government instituted by God over his people, he refers us to the Scripture. And I do this the more boldly, since I follow Calvin’s exposition, and believe that he having been highly esteemed for his wit, judgment and learning, by such as were endowed with the like, and reverenced as a glorious servant of God, might, if he were now alive, comfort himself, tho he had the misfortune to fall under the censures of Filmer and his followers. ’Tis probable he gave some reasons for his opinions; but our author having maliciously concealed them, and I not having leisure at present to examine all his writings to find them, must content myself with such as my small understanding may suggest, and such as I have found in approved authors.
In the first place I may safely say, he was not alone of that opinion: Josephus, Philo, and Moses Maimonides, with all the best of the Jewish and Christian authors, had long before delivered the same. Josephus says, that Saul’s first sin by which he fell, was, that he took away the aristocracy; 2 which he could not do if it had never been established. Philo imputes the institution of kingly government, as it was in Israel, neither to God nor his word, but to the fury of the sinful people. Abravanel says, it proceeded from their delight in the idolatry to which their neighbours were addicted, and which could be upheld only by a government, in practice and principle contrary to that which God had instituted. 3 Maimonides frequently says the same thing, grounded upon the words of Hosea, I gave them kings in my wrath; 4 and whosoever will call that a divine institution, may give the same name to plagues or famines, and induce a necessity incumbent upon all men to go and search the one where they may find it, and to leave their lands forever uncultivated that they may be sure of the other: which being too bestial to be asserted by a man, I may safely say, the Hebrew kings were not instituted by God, but given as a punishment of their sin, who despised the government that he had instituted: and the abovementioned authors agree in the same thing, calling the people’s desire to have a king, furious, mad, wicked, and proceeding from their love to the idolatry of their neighbours, which was suited to their government; both which were inconsistent with what God had established over his own people.
But waiving the opinions of men, ’tis good to see what we can learn from the Scripture, and enquire if there be any precept there expressly commanding them to make a king; or any example that they did so whilst they continued obedient to the word of God; or anything from whence we may reasonably infer they ought to have done it: all which, if I mistake not, will be found directly contrary.
The only precept that we find in the law concerning kings, is that of Deuteron. 17. already mentioned; and that is not a command to the people to make, but instructions what manner of king they should make if they desired to have one: There was therefore none at all.
Examples do as little favour our author’s assertions. Moses, Joshua, and the other judges, had not the name or power of kings: They were not of the tribe to which the scepter was promised: They did not transmit the power they had to their children, which in our adversary’s opinion is a right inseparable from kings; and their power was not continued by any kind of succession, but created occasionally, as need required, according to the virtues discovered in those who were raised by God to deliver the nation in the time of their distress; which being done, their children lay hid among the rest of the people. Thus were Ehud, Gideon, Jephthah, and others set up: Whosoever will give battle (say the princes and people of Gilead) to the children of Ammon, shall be head over the inheritance of Gilead: and finding Jephthah to be such a man as they sought, they made him their chief, and all Israel followed them. 5 When Othniel had shew’d his valour in taking Kirjath-Sepher, and delivering his brethren from Cushan-Rishathaim, he was made judge: When Ehud had killed Eglon; when Shamgar and Samson had destroyed great numbers of the Philistines; and when Gideon had defeated the Midianites, they were fit to be advanced above their brethren. 6 These dignities were not inherent in their persons or families, but conferred upon them; nor conferred, that they might be exalted in riches and glory, but that they might be ministers of good to the people. This may justify Plato’s opinion, that if one man be found incomparably to excel all others in the virtues that are beneficial to civil societies, he ought to be advanced above all: but I think it will be hard from thence to deduce an argument in favour of such a monarchy as is necessarily to descend to the next in blood, whether man, woman, or child, without any consideration of virtue, age, sex, or ability; and that failing, it can be of no use to our author. But whatever the dignity of a Hebrew judge was, and howsoever he was raised to that office, it certainly differ’d from that of a king. Gideon could not have refused to be a king when the people would have made him so, if he had been a king already; or that God from the beginning had appointed that they should have one: 7 The elders and people could not have asked a king of Samuel, if he had been king; and he could not without impiety have been displeased with them for asking for such a one as God had appointed; neither would God have said to him, They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them, if he had ordained what they desired. 8
They did not indeed reject God with their mouths: They pretended to use the liberty he had given them to make a king; but would have such a one as he had forbidden: They drew near to him with their lips, but their hearts were far from him; and he seeing their hypocrisy, severely chastised them in granting their ill conceived request; and foretold the miseries that should thereupon befall them, from which he would not deliver them, tho they should cry to him by reason of what they suffered from their king: He was their creature, and the mischiefs thereby brought upon them were the fruits of their own labour.
This is that which our author calls God’s institution of kings; but the prophet explains the matter much better, I gave them kings in my anger, and took them away in my wrath: 9 in destroying them God brought desolation upon the people that had sinned in asking for them, and following their example in all kind of wickedness. This is all our author has to boast of: but God who acknowledges those works only to be his own, which proceed from his goodness and mercy to his people, disowns this; Israel hath cast off the thing that is good (even the government that he had established) the enemy shall pursue him: They have set up kings, but not by me; and princes, but I know them not. 10 As if he sought to justify the severity of his judgments brought upon them by the wickedness of their kings, that they, not he, had ordained.
Having seen what government God did not ordain, it may be seasonable to examine the nature of the government which he did ordain; and we shall easily find that it consisted of three parts, besides the magistrates of the several tribes and cities. They had a chief magistrate, who was called judge or captain, as Joshua, Gideon, and others, a council of seventy chosen men, and the general assemblies of the people. 11
The first was merely occasional, like to the dictators of Rome; and as the Romans in times of danger frequently chose such a man as was much esteemed for valour and wisdom, God’s peculiar people had a peculiar regard to that wisdom and valour which was accompanied with his presence, hoping for deliverance only from him.
The second is known by the name of the great Sanhedrin, which being instituted by Moses according to the command of God, continued, till they were all save one slain by Herod. And the third part, which is the assembly of the people, was so common, that none can be ignorant of it, but such as never looked into the Scripture. When the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half that of Manasseh had built an altar on the side of Jordan, The whole congregation of the children of Israel gathered together at Shiloh to go up to war against them, and sent Phineas the son of Eliezer, and with him ten princes, c. 12 This was the highest and most important action that could concern a people, even war or peace, and that not with strangers, but their own brethren. Joshua was then alive: The elders never failed; but this was not transacted by him or them, but by the collected body of the people; for they sent Phineas. This democratical embassy was democratically received: It was not directed to one man, but to all the children of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, and the answer was sent by them all; which being pleasing to Phineas, and the ten that were with him, they made their report to the congregation, and all was quiet.
The last eminent act performed by Joshua was the calling of a like assembly to Shechem, composed of elders, heads of families, judges, officers, and all the people, to whom he proposed, and they agreeing made a covenant before the Lord. 13
Joshua being dead, the proceedings of every tribe were grounded upon counsels taken at such assemblies among themselves for their own concernments, as appears by the actions of Judah, Simeon, c. against the Canaanites; 14 and when the Levite complained that his wife had been forced by those of Gibeah, the whole congregation of Israel met together at Mizpah from all parts, even from Dan to Beersheba, as one man, and there resolved upon that terrible war which they made against the tribe of Benjamin. 15 The like assembly was gathered together for the election of Saul, every man was there: and tho the elders only are said to have asked a king of Samuel, they seem to have been deputed from the whole congregation; for God said, Hearken to the voice of the people. 16 In the same manner the tribe of Judah, and after that the rest chose and anointed David to be their king. After the death of Solomon all Israel met together to treat with Rehoboam; and not receiving satisfaction from him, ten of the tribes abrogated his kingdom. 17
If these actions were considered singly by themselves, Calvin might have given the name of a democracy to the Hebrew government, as well as to that of Athens; for without doubt they evidently manifest the supreme power to have been in the supreme manner in these general assemblies; but the government (as to its outward order) consisting of those three parts, which comprehend the three simple species, tho in truth it was a theocracy; and no times having been appointed, nor occasions specified, upon which judges should be chosen, or these assemblies called; whereas the Sanhedrin, which was the aristocratical part, was permanent, the whole might rightly be called an aristocracy, that part prevailing above the others: and tho Josephus calls it a theocracy, by reason of God’s presence with his people; 18 yet in relation to man he calls it an aristocracy, and says that Saul’s first sin by which he fell from the kingdom was, that gubernationem optimatum sustulit; 19 which could not be, if they were governed by a monarch before he was chosen.
Our author taking no notice of these matters, first endeavours to prove the excellency of monarchy form natural instinct; and then begging the question, says, that God did always govern his people by monarchy; whereas he ought in the first place to have observed that this instinct (if there be any such thing) is only an irrational appetite, attributed to beasts, that know not why they do anything; and is to be followed only by those men who being equally irrational, live in the same ignorance: and the second being proved to be absolutely false by the express words of the Scripture, There was then no king in Israel, 20 several times repeated, and the whole series of the history, he hath no other evasion than to say, That even then the Israelites were under the kingly government of the fathers of particular families. 21
It appears by the forementioned text cited also by our author, that in the assembly of the people, gathered together to take counsel concerning the war against Benjamin, were four hundred thousand footmen that drew sword: They all arose together, saying, Not a man of us shall go to his tent. So all the men of Israel were gathered together against the city. This is repeated several times in the relation. The Benjaminites proceeded in the like manner in preparing for their defence; and if all these who did so meet to consult and determine were monarchs, there were then in Israel and Benjamin four hundred and twenty six thousand, seven hundred monarchs or kings, tho the Scriptures say there was not one. 22
If yet our author insist upon his notion of kingly government, I desire to know who were the subjects, if all these were kings; for the text says, that the whole congregation was gathered together as one man from Dan to Beersheba. If there can be so many kings without one subject, what becomes of the right of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that was to have been devolved upon one man as heir to them, and thereby lord of all? If every man had an equal part in that inheritance, and by virtue of it became a king, why is not the same eternally subdivided to as many men as are in the world, who are also kings? If this be their natural condition, how comes it to be altered, till they do unthrone themselves by consent to set up one or more to have a power over them all? Why should they divest themselves of their natural right to set up one above themselves, unless in consideration of their own good? If the 426,700 kings might retain the power in themselves, or give it to one, why might they not give it to any such number of men as should best please themselves, or retain it in their own hands, as they did till the days of Saul; or frame, limit, and direct it according to their own pleasure? If this be true, God is the author of democracy; and no asserter of human liberty did ever claim more than the people of God did enjoy and exercise at the time when our author says they were under the kingly government; which liberty being not granted by any peculiar concession or institution, the same must belong to all mankind.
’Tis in vain to say the 426,700 men were heads of families; for the Scripture only says, They were footmen that drew the sword, or rather all the men of Israel from Dan to Beersheba, who were able to make war. When six hundred Benjaminites did only remain of the 26,700, ’tis plain that no more were left of that tribe, their women and children having been destroyed in the cities after their defeat. The next chapter makes the matter yet more plain; for when all that were at the congregation in Mizpah were found to have sworn, they would not give their daughters to any of the tribe of Benjamin, no Israelite was free from the oath, but the men of Jabesh-Gilead, who had not been at the assembly: All the rest of Israel was therefore comprehended; and they continuing to govern in a popular way with absolute power, sent twelve thousand of their most valiant men to destroy all the males of Jabesh-Gilead, and the women that had lain by man, reserving the virgins for the Benjaminites. 23 This is enough for my purpose: for the question is not concerning the power that every householder in London hath over his wife, children, and servants; but whether they are all perpetually subject to one man and family; and I intend not to set up their wives, prentices, and children against them, or to diminish their rights, but to assert them, as the gift of God and nature, no otherwise to be restrained than by laws made with their consent.
Reason failing, our author pleases himself with terms of his own invention: When the people begged a king of Samuel, they were governed by a kingly power: God out of a special love and care to the house of Israel, did chuse to be their king himself, and did govern them at that time by his viceroy Samuel and his sons. 24 The behaviour of the Israelites towards Samuel has been thought proud, perverse, and obstinate; but the fine court word begging was never before applied to them; and their insolent fury was not only seen against Samuel, but against God; They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me. 25 And I think Filmer is the first who ever found that beggars in begging did reject him of whom they begged: Or if they were beggars, they were such as would not be denied; for after all that Samuel had said to dissuade them from their wicked design, they said, nay, but we will have a king. 26
But lest I should be thought too much inclined to contradict our author, I confess that once he hath happened to be in the right. God out of a special love to the house of Israel chose to be their king: He gave them laws, prescribed a form of government, raised up men in a wonderful manner to execute it, filled them with his spirit, was ever present when they called upon him: He gave them counsel in their doubts, and assistance in all their extremities: He made a covenant with them, and would be exalted by them. 27 But what is this to an earthly monarch? Who can from hence derive a right to any one man to play the lord over his brethren, or a reason why any nation should set him up? God is our lord by right of creation, and our only lord, because he only hath created us. If any other were equal to him in wisdom, power, goodness, and beneficence to us, he might challenge the same duty from us. If growing out of ourselves, receiving being from none, depending on no providence, we were offered the protection of a wisdom subject to no error, a goodness that could never fail, and a power that nothing could resist; it were reasonable for us to enter into a covenant, submit ourselves to him, and with all the faculties of our minds to addict ourselves to his service. But what right can from hence accrue to a mortal creature like to one of us, from whom we have received nothing, and who stands in need of help as much as we? Who can from hence deduce an argument to persuade us to depend upon his wisdom, who has as little as other men? To submit to his will who is subject to the same frailties, passions, and vices with the rest of mankind? Or to expect protection and defence from him whose life depends upon as slender threads as our own; and who can have no power but that which we confer upon him? If this cannot be done, but is of all things the most contrary to common sense, no man can in himself have any right over us; we are all as free as the four hundred twenty six thousand seven hundred Hebrew kings: We can naturally owe allegiance to none; and I doubt whether all the lusts that have reigned amongst men since the beginning of the world, have brought more guilt and misery upon them than that preposterous and impudent pretence of imitating what God had instituted. When Saul set himself most violently to oppose the command of God, he pretended to fulfill it: 28 When the Jews grew weary of God’s government, and resolved to reject him, that he should not reign over them, they used some of Moses his words, and asked that king of God, whom they intended to set up against him: But this king had not been set up against God, the people had not rejected God, and sinned in asking for him, if every nation by a general law ought to have one, or by a particular law one had been appointed by him over them. There was therefore no king amongst them, nor any law of God or nature, particular or general, according to which they ought to have one.
Our author well observes that Aristotle is hardly brought to give a general opinion in favour of Monarchy, as if it were the best form of government, or to say true, never does it. He uses much caution, proposes conditions, and limitations, and makes no decision but according to circumstances. Men of wisdom and learning are subject to such doubts; but none ought to wonder if stupidity and ignorance defend Filmer and his followers from them; or that their hatred to the ancient virtue should give them an aversion to the learning that was the nurse of it. Those who neither understand the several species of government, nor the various tempers of nations, may without fear or shame give their opinions in favour of that which best pleaseth them; but wise men will always proportion their praises to the merit of the subject, and never commend that simply which is good only according to circumstances. Aristotle highly applauds monarchy, when the monarch has more of those virtues that tend to the good of a commonwealth than all they who compose it. This is the king mentioned in his Ethicks, and extolled in his Politicks: 1 He is above all by nature, and ought not by a municipal law to be made equal to others in power: He ought to govern, because ’tis better for a people to be governed by him, than to enjoy their liberty; or rather they do enjoy their liberty, which is never more safe, than when it is defended by one who is a living law to himself and others. Wheresoever such a man appears, he ought to reign: He bears in his person the divine character of a sovereign: God has raised him above all; and such as will not submit to him, ought to be accounted sons of Belial, brought forth and slain. But he does withal confess, that if no such man be found, there is no natural king: All the prerogatives belonging to him vanish, for want of one who is capable of enjoying them. He lays severe censures upon those who not being thus qualified take upon them to govern men, equal to or better than themselves; and judges the assumption of such powers by persons who are not naturally adapted to the administration of them, as barbarous usurpations, which no law or reason can justify; and is not so much transported with the excellency of this true king, as not to confess he ought to be limited by law: Qui legem praeesse jubet, videtur jubere praeesse Deum leges: qui autem hominem praeesse jubet, adjungit bestiam; libido quippe talis est, atque obliquos agit, etiam viros optimos qui sunt in potestate, ex quo mens atque appetitus lex est. 2 This agrees with the words of the best king that is known to have been in the world, proceeding, as is most probable, from a sense of the passions that reigned in his own breast; Man being in honour, hath no understanding, but is like to the beast that perisheth. 3 This shews that such as deny that kings do reign by law, or that laws may be put upon kings, do equally set themselves against the opinions of wise men, and the word of God: and our author having found that learning made the Grecians seditious, may reasonably doubt that religion may make others worse; so as none will be fit subjects of his applauded government, but those who have neither religion nor learning; and that it cannot be introduced till both be extinguished.
Aristotle having declared his mind concerning government, in the books expressly written on that subject, whatsoever is said by the by in his moral discourses, must be referred to and interpreted by the other: And if he said (which I do not find) that monarchy is the best form of government, and a popular state the worst, he cannot be thought to have meant otherwise, than that those nations were the most happy, who had such a man as he thinks fit to be made a monarch; and those the most unhappy, who neither had such a one, nor a few, that any way excelled the rest; but all being equally brutish, must take upon them the government they were unable to manage: for he does nowhere admit any other end of just and civil government, than the good of the governed; nor any advantage due to one or a few persons, unless for such virtues as conduce to the common good of the society. And as our author thinks learning makes men seditious, Aristotle also acknowledges, that those who have understanding and courage, which may be taken for learning, or the effect of it, will never endure the government of one or a few that do not excel them in virtue: but nowhere dispraises a popular government, unless the multitude be composed of such as are barbarous, stupid, lewd, vicious, and incapable of the happiness for which governments are instituted; who cannot live to themselves, but like a herd of beasts must be brought under the dominion of another; or who, having amongst themselves such an excellent person as is above described, will not submit to him, but either kill, banish, or bring him to be equal with others, whom God had made to excel all. I do not trouble myself, or the reader, with citing here or there a line out of his books, but refer myself to those who have perused his moral and political writings, submitting to the severest censures, if this be not the true sense of them; and that virtue alone, in his opinion, ought to give the preeminence. And as Aristotle following the wise men of those times, shews us how far reason, improved by meditation, can advance in the knowledge and love of that which is truly good; so we may in Filmer, guided by Heylyn, see an example of corrupted Christians, extinguishing the light of religion by their vices, and degenerating into beasts, whilst they endeavour to support the personal interest of some men, who being raised to dignities by the consent of nations, or by unwarrantable ways and means, would cast all the power into the hands of such as happen to be born in their families; as if governments had not been instituted for the common good of nations, but only to increase their pride, and foment their vices; or that the care and direction of a great people were so easy a work, that every man, woman, or child, how young, weak, foolish or wicked soever, may be worthy of it, and able to manage it.
Our author’s judgment, as well as inclinations to virtue, are manifested in the preference he gives to the manners of the Assyrians and other Eastern nations, before the Grecians and Romans: Whereas the first were never remarkable for anything, but pride, lewdness, treachery, cruelty, cowardice, madness, and hatred to all that is good; whilst the others excelled in wisdom, valour, and all the virtues that deserve imitation. This was so well observed by St. Augustine, that he brings no stronger argument to prove, that God leaves nothing that is good in man unrewarded, than that he gave the dominion of the best part of the world to the Romans, who in moral virtues excelled all other nations. 1 And I think no example can be alleged of a free people that has ever been conquer’d by an absolute monarch, unless he did incomparably surpass them in riches and strength; whereas many great kings have been overthrown by small republicks: and the success being constantly the same, it cannot be attributed to fortune, but must necessarily be the production of virtue and good order. Machiavelli discoursing of these matters, finds virtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of liberty, that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted people to set up a good government, or for a tyranny to be introduced if they be virtuous; and makes this conclusion, That where the matter (that is, the body of the people) is not corrupted, tumults and disorders do no hurt; and where it is corrupted, good laws do no good: 2 Which being confirmed by reason and experience, I think no wise man has ever contradicted him.
But I do not more wonder that Filmer should look upon absolute monarchy to be the nurse of virtue, tho we see they did never subsist together, than that he should attribute order and stability to it; whereas order doth principally consist in appointing to everyone his right place, office, or work; and this lays the whole weight of the government upon one person, who very often does neither deserve, nor is able to bear the least part of it. Plato, Aristotle, Hooker, and (I may say in short) all wise men have held, that order required that the wisest, best, and most valiant men, should be placed in the offices where wisdom, virtue and valour are requisite. If common sense did not teach us this, we might learn it from the Scripture. When God gave the conduct of his people to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and others, he endowed them with all the virtues and graces that were required for the right performance of their duty. When the Israelites were oppressed by the Midianites, Philistines and Ammonites, they expected help from the most wise and valiant. When Hannibal was at the gates of Rome, and had filled Italy with fire and blood; or when the Gauls overwhelmed that country with their multitudes and fury, the senate and people of Rome put themselves under the conduct of Camillus, Manlius, Fabius, Scipio, and the like; and when they failed to chuse such as were fit for the work to be done, they received such defeats as convinced them of their error. But if our author say true, order did require that the power of defending the country should have been annexed as an inheritance to one family, or left to him that could get it, and the exercise of all authority committed to the next in blood, tho the weakest of women, or the basest of men.
The like may be said of judging, or doing of justice; and ’tis absurd to pretend that either is expected from the power, not the person of the monarch; for experience doth too well shew how much all things halt in relation to justice or defence, when there is a defect in him that ought to judge us, and to fight our battles. But of all things this ought least to be alleged by the advocates for absolute monarchy, who deny that the authority can be separated from the person, and lay it as a fundamental principle, that whosoever hath it may do what he pleases, and be accountable to no man.
Our author’s next work is to shew, that stability is the effect of this good order; but he ought to have known, that stability is then only worthy of praise, when it is in that which is good. No man delights in sickness or pain, because it is long, or incurable; nor in slavery and misery, because it is perpetual: much less will any man in his senses commend a permanency in vice and wickedness. He must therefore prove, that the stability he boasts of is in things that are good, or all that he says of it signifies nothing.
I might leave him here with as little fear, that any man who shall espouse his quarrel, shall ever be able to remove this obstacle, as that he himself should rise out of his grave and do it: but I hope to prove, that of all things under the sun, there is none more mutable or unstable than absolute monarchy; which is all that I dispute against, professing much veneration for that which is mixed, regulated by law, and directed to the publick good.
This might be proved by many arguments, but I shall confine myself to two; the one drawn from reason, the other from matters of fact.
Nothing can be called stable, that is not so in principle and practice, in which respect human nature is not well capable of stability; but the utmost deviation from it that can be imagined, is, when such an error is laid for a foundation as can never be corrected. All will confess, that if there be any stability in man, it must be in wisdom and virtue, and in those actions that are thereby directed; for in weakness, folly and madness there can be none. The stability therefore that we seek, in relation to the exercise of civil and military powers, can never be found, unless care be taken that such as shall exercise those powers, be endowed with the qualities that should make them stable. This is utterly repugnant to our author’s doctrine: He lays for a foundation, that the succession goes to the next in blood, without distinction of age, sex, or personal qualities; whereas even he himself could not have the impudence to say, that children, and women (where they are admitted) or fools, madmen, and such as are full of all wickedness, do not come to be the heirs of reigning families, as well as of the meanest. 3 The stability therefore that can be expected from such a government, either depends upon those who have none in themselves, or is referred wholly to chance, which is directly opposite to stability.
This would be the case, tho it were (as we say) an even wager, whether the person would be fit or unfit, and that there were as many men in the world able, as unable to perform the duty of a king; but experience shewing that among many millions of men, there is hardly one that possesses the qualities required in a king, ’tis so many to one, that he upon whom the lot shall fall, will not be the man we seek, in whose person and government there can be such a stability as is asserted. And that failing, all must necessarily fail; for there can be no stability in his will, laws or actions, who has none in his person.
That we may see whether this be verified by experience, we need not search into the dark relations of the Babylonian and Assyrian monarchies: Those rude ages afford us little instruction; and tho the fragments of history remaining do sufficiently show, that all things there were in perpetual fluctuation, by reason of the madness of their kings, and the violence of those who transported the empire from one place or family to another, I will not much rely upon them, but slightly touching some of their stories, pass to those that are better known to us.
The kings of those ages seem to have lived rather like beasts in a forest than men joined in civil society: they followed the example of Nimrod the mighty hunter; force was the only law that prevailed, the stronger devoured the weaker, and continued in power till he was ejected by one of more strength or better fortune. 4 By this means the race of Ninus was destroy’d by Belochus: Arbaces rent the kingdom asunder, and took Media to himself. Morodach extinguished the race of Belochus, and was made king: Nebuchadnezzar like a flood overwhelmed all for a time, destroy’d the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Egypt, with many others, and found no obstacle, till his rage and pride turned to a most bestial madness: And the Assyrian empire was wholly abolish’d at the death of his grandchild Belshazzar; 5 and no stability can be found in the reigns of those great kings, unless that name be given to the pride, idolatry, cruelty and wickedness in which they remained constant. If we examine things more distinctly, we shall find that all things varied according to the humour of the prince. Whilst Pharaoh lived, who had received such signal services from Joseph, the Israelites were well used: but when another rose up who knew him not, they were persecuted with all the extremities of injustice and cruelty, till the furious king persisting in his design of exterminating them, brought destruction upon himself and the nation. 6 Where the like power hath prevailed, it has ever produced the like effects. When some great men of Persia had persuaded Darius, that it was a fine thing to command, that no man for the space of thirty days should make any petition to God or man, but to the king only, Daniel the most wise and holy man then in the world must be thrown to the lions. When God had miraculously saved him, the same sentence was passed against the princes of the nation. 7 When Haman had filled Ahasuerus his ears with lies, all the Jews were appointed to be slain; and when the fraud of that villain was detected, leave was given them, with the like precipitancy, to kill whom they pleased. 8 When the Israelites came to have kings, they were made subject to the same storms, and always with their blood suffer’d the penalty of their prince’s madness. When one kind of fury possessed Saul, he slew the priests, persecuted David, and would have killed his brave son Jonathan: When he fell under another, he took upon him to do the priest’s office, pretended to understand the word of God better than Samuel, and spared those that God had commanded him to destroy: Upon another whimsy he killed the Gibeonites, and never rested from finding new inventions to vex the people, till he had brought many thousands of them to perish with himself and his sons on Mount Gilboa. 9 We do not find any king, in wisdom, valour and holiness, equal to David; and yet he falling under the temptations that attend the greatest fortunes, brought civil wars and a plague upon the nation. When Solomon’s heart was drawn away by strange women, he filled the land with idols, and oppressed the people with intolerable tributes. 10 Rehoboam’s folly made that rent in the kingdom which could never be made up. 11 Under his successors the people served God, Baal or Ashtaroth, as best pleased him who had the power; and no other marks of stability can be alleged to have been in that kingdom, than the constancy of their kings in the practice of idolatry, their cruelty to the prophets, hatred to the Jews, and civil wars producing such slaughters as are reported in few other stories: The kingdom was in the space of about two hundred years possessed by nine several families, not one of them getting possession otherwise than by the slaughter of his predecessor, and the extinction of his race; and ended in the bondage of the ten tribes, which continues to this day. 12
He that desires farther proofs of this point, may seek them in the histories of Alexander of Macedon, and his successors: He seems to have been endow’d with all the virtues that nature improved by discipline did ever attain, so that he is believed to be the man meant by Aristotle, who on account of the excellency of his virtues was by nature framed for a king; and Plutarch ascribes his conquests rather to those, than to his fortune: But even that virtue was overthrown by the successes that accompanied it: He burnt the most magnificent palace of the world, in a frolick, to please a mad drunken whore: Upon the most frivolous suggestions of eunuchs and rascals, he kill’d the best and bravest of his friends; and his valour, which had no equal, not subsisting without his other virtues, perished when he became lewd, proud, cruel and superstitious; so as it may be truly said, he died a coward. 13 His successors did not differ from him: When they had killed his mother, wife and children, they exercised their fury against one another; and tearing the kingdom to pieces, the survivors left the sword as an inheritance to their families, who perished by it, or under the weight of the Roman chains.
When the Romans had lost that liberty which had been the nurse of their virtue, and gained the empire in lieu of it, they attained to our author’s applauded stability. Julius being slain in the senate, the first question was, whether it could be restored, or not? And that being decided by the battle of Philippi, the conquerors set themselves to destroy all the eminent men in the city, as the best means to establish the monarchy. Augustus gained it by the death of Antonius, and the corruption of the soldiers; and he dying naturally, or by the fraud of his wife, the empire was transferred to her son Tiberius; under whom the miserable people suffer’d the worst effects of the most impure lust and inhuman cruelty: He being stifled, the government went on with much uniformity and stability; Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius regularly and constantly did all the mischief they could, and were not more like to each other in the villainies they committed, than in the deaths they suffered. Vespasian’s more gentle reign did no way compensate the blood he spilt to attain the empire: And the benefits received from Titus his short-liv’d virtue, were infinitely overbalanced by the detestable vices of his brother Domitian, who turned all things into the old channel of cruelty, lust, rapine and perfidiousness. His slaughter gave a little breath to the gasping perishing world; and men might be virtuous under the government of Nerva, Trajan, Antoninus, Aurelius, and a few more; tho even in their time religion was always dangerous. But when the power fell into the hands of Commodus, Heliogabalus, Caracalla, and others of that sort, nothing was safe but obscurity, or the utmost excesses of lewdness and baseness. However, whilst the will of the governor passed for a law, and the power did usually fall into the hands of such as were most bold and violent, the utmost security that any man could have for his person or estate, depended upon his temper; and princes themselves, whether good or bad, had no longer leases of their lives, than the furious and corrupted soldiers would give them; and the empire of the world was changeable, according to the success of a battle.
Matters were not much mended when the emperors became Christians: Some favour’d those who were called Orthodox, and gave great revenues to corrupt the clergy. Others supported Arianism, and persecuted the Orthodox with as much asperity as the pagans had done. Some revolted, and shewed themselves more fierce against the professors of Christianity, than they that had never had any knowledge of it. The world was torn in pieces amongst them, and often suffered as great miseries by their sloth, ignorance and cowardice, as by their fury and madness, till the empire was totally dissolved and lost. That which under the weakness and irregularity of a popular government, had conquer’d all from the Euphrates to Britain, and destroyed the kingdoms of Asia, Egypt, Macedon, Numidia, and a multitude of others, was made a prey to unknown barbarous nations, and rent into as many pieces as it had been composed of, when it enjoy’d the stability that accompanies divine and absolute monarchy.
The like may be said of all the kingdoms in the world; they may have their ebbings and flowings according to the virtues or vices of princes or their favorites; but can never have any stability, because there is, and can be none in them: Or if any exception may be brought against this rule, it must be of those monarchies only which are mixed and regulated by laws, where diets, parliaments, assemblies of estates or senates, may supply the defects of a prince, restrain him if he prove extravagant, and reject such as are found to be unworthy of their office, which are as odious to our author and his followers, as the most popular governments, and can be of no advantage to his cause.
There is another ground of perpetual fluctuation in absolute monarchies; or such as are grown so strong, that they cannot be restrained by law, tho according to their institution they ought to be, distinct from, but in some measure relating to the inclinations of the monarch, that is, the impulse of ministers, favorites, wives or whores, who frequently govern all things according to their own passions or interests. And tho we cannot say who were the favorites of every one of the Assyrian or Egyptian kings, yet the examples before-mentioned of the different method follow’d in Egypt before, and after the death of Joseph, and in Persia whilst the idolatrous princes, and Haman, or Daniel, Esther and Mordecai were in credit; the violent changes happening thereupon, give us reason to believe the like were in the times of other kings: and if we examine the histories of later ages, and the lives of princes that are more exactly known, we shall find that kingdoms are more frequently swayed by those who have power with the prince, than by his own judgment: So that whosoever hath to deal with princes concerning foreign or domestick affairs, is obliged more to regard the humour of those persons, than the most important interests of a prince or people.
I might draw too much envy upon myself, if I should take upon me to cite all the examples of this kind that are found in modern histories, or the memoirs that do more precisely shew the temper of princes, and the secret springs by which they were moved. But as those who have well observed the management of affairs in France during the reigns of Francis the First, Henry the Second, Francis the Second, Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, Henry the Fourth, and Lewis the Thirteenth, will confess, that the interests of the dukes of Montmorency and Guise, Queen Catherine de Medici, the duke of Epernon, La Fosseuse, Madame de Guiche, de Gabriele, d’ Entragues, the Marechal d’ Ancre, the Constable de Luines, and the Cardinal de Richelieu, 14 were more to be consider’d by those who had any private or publick business to treat at court, than the opinions of those princes, or the most weighty concernments of the state; so it cannot be denied, that other kingdoms where princes legally have, or wrongfully usurp the like power, are governed in the like manner; or if it be, there is hardly any prince’s reign that will not furnish abundant proof of what I have asserted.
I agree with our author, that good order and stability produce strength. If monarchy therefore excel in them, absolute monarchies should be of more strength than those that are limited according to the proportion of their riches, extent of territory, and number of people that they govern; and those limited monarchies in the like proportion more strong than popular governments or commonwealths. If this be so, I wonder how a few of those giddy Greeks who, according to our author, had learning enough only to make them seditious, 15 came to overthrow those vast armies of the Persians as often as they met with them; and seldom found any other difficulty than what did arise from their own countrymen, who sometimes sided with the barbarians. Seditions are often raised by a little prating; but when one man was to fight against fifty, or a hundred, as at the battles of Salamis, Plataea, Marathon, and others, then industry, wisdom, skill and valour was required; and if their learning had not made them to excel in those virtues, they must have been overwhelmed by the prodigious multitudes of their enemies. This was so well known to the Persians, that when Cyrus the younger prepar’d to invade his brother Artaxerxes, he brought together indeed a vast army of Asiaticks; but chiefly relied upon the counsel and valour of ten thousand Grecians, whom he had engaged to serve him. These giddy heads, accompanied with good hands, in the great battle near Babylon, found no resistance from Artaxerxes his army; and when Cyrus was killed by accident in the pursuit of the victory they had gained, and their own officers treacherously murder’d, they made good their retreat into Greece under the conduct of Xenophon, in despite of above four hundred thousand horse and foot, who endeavour’d to oppose them. They were destitute of horse, money, provisions, friends and all other help, except what their wisdom and valour furnished them; and thereupon relying, they passed over the bellies of all the enemies that ventur’d to appear against them in a march of a thousand miles. These things were performed in the weakness of popular confusion; but Agesilaus not being sensible of so great defects, accompanied only with six and thirty Spartans, and such other forces as he could raise upon his personal credit, adventured without authority or money to undertake a war against that great king Artaxerxes; and having often beaten Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes his lieutenants, was preparing to assault him in the heart of his kingdom, when he was commanded by the ephori to return for the defence of his own country. 16
It may in like manner appear strange, that Alexander with the forces of Greece, much diminished by the Phocaean, Peloponnesian, Theban, and other intestine wars, could overthrow all the powers of the East, and conquer more provinces than any other army ever saw; if so much order and stability were to be found in absolute monarchies, and if the liberty in which the Grecians were educated did only fit them for seditions: and it would seem no less astonishing, that Rome and Greece, whilst they were free, should furnish such numbers of men excelling in all moral virtues, to the admiration of all succeeding ages; and thereby become so powerful that no monarchs were able to resist them; and that the same countries since the loss of their liberty, have always been weak, base, cowardly and vicious, if the same liberty had not been the mother and nurse of their virtue, as well as the root of their power.
It cannot be said that Alexander was a monarch in our author’s sense; for the power of the Macedonian kings was small. Philip confessed the people were freemen, and his son found them to be so, when his fortune had overthrown his virtue, and he fell to hate and fear that generosity of spirit which it creates. He made his conquests by it, and lov’d it as long as he deserved to be lov’d. His successors had the same fortune: When their hearts came to be filled with barbarick pride, and to delight only in rendering men slaves, they became weak and base, and were easily overthrown by the Romans, whose virtue and fortune did also perish with their liberty. All the nations they had to deal with, had the same fate. They never conquer’d a free people without extreme difficulty: They received many great defeats, and were often necessitated to fight for their lives against the Latins, Sabines, Tuscans, Samnites, Carthaginians, Spaniards; and in the height of their power found it a hard work to subdue a few poor Aetolians: But the greatest kings were easily overcome. When Antiochus had insolently boasted that he would cover Greece and Italy with the multitude of his troops, Quintus Flaminius ingeniously compared his army of Persians, Chaldeans, Syrians, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Arabians, and other base Asiatic slaves, to a supper set before him by a Grecian friend, which seeming to be of several sorts of venison, was all cut out of one hog, variously dress’d; and not long after was as easily slaughter’d as the hog had been. 17 The greatest danger of the war with Mithridates was to avoid his poisons and treacheries; and to follow him through the deserts where he fled. When Lucullus with less than twenty thousand men had put Tigranes with two hundred thousand to flight, the Roman soldiers who for a while had pursued the chase, stood still on a sudden, and fell into loud laughter at themselves for using their arms against such wretched cowardly slaves. 18 If this be not enough to prove the falsehood of our author’s proposition, I desire it may be consider’d whether good order or stability be wanting in Venice: Whether Tuscany be in a better condition to defend itself since it fell under the power of the Medicis, or when it was full of free cities: Whether it were an easy work to conquer Switzerland: Whether the Hollanders are of greater strength since the recovery of their liberty, or when they groaned under the yoke of Spain: And lastly, whether the entire conquest of Scotland and Ireland, the victories obtained against the Hollanders when they were in the height of their power, and the reputation to which England did rise in less than five years after 1648, 19 be good marks of the instability, disorder, and weakness of free nations: And if the contrary be true, nothing can be more absurdly false than our author’s assertion.
Among many fine things proposed by our author, I see none more to be admired, or that better declares the soundness of his judgment, than that he is only pleased with the beginning and end of the Roman empire; and says, that their time of liberty (between those two extremes) had nothing of good in it, but that it was of short continuance: 1 whereas I dare affirm that all that was ever desirable, or worthy of praise and imitation in Rome, did proceed from its liberty, grow up and perish with it: which I think will not be contradicted by any, but those who prefer the most sordid vices before the most eminent virtues; who believe the people to have been more worthily employ’d by the Tarquins in cleaning jakes and common shores, than in acquiring the dominion of the best part of mankind; and account it better for a people to be oppressed with hard labour under a proud master in a sterile, unhealthy ten-mile territory, than to command all the countries that lie between the Euphrates and Britain. Such opinions will hardly find any better patrons than Filmer and his disciples, nor the matters of fact, as they are represented, be denied by any that know the histories of those times. Many Romans may have had seeds of virtue in them, whilst in the infancy of that city they lived under kings; but they brought forth little fruit. Tarquin, surnamed the Proud, being a Grecian by extraction, had perhaps observed that the virtue of that nation had rendered them averse to the divine government he desir’d to set up; and having by his well-natur’d Tullia poison’d his own brother her husband, and his own wife her sister, married her, killed her father, and spared none that he thought able to oppose his designs, to finish the work, he butcher’d the senate, with such as seemed most eminent among the people, and like a most pious father endeavour’d to render the city desolate: during that time they who would not be made instruments of those villainies were obliged for their own safety to conceal their virtues; but he being removed, they shined in their glory. Whilst he reign’d, Brutus, Valerius, Horatius, Herminius, Larcius, and Coriolanus, lay hid and unregarded; but when they came to fight for themselves, and to employ their valour for the good of their country, they gave such testimonies of bravery, as have been admired by all succeeding ages, and settled such a discipline, as produced others like to them, or more excellent than they, as long as their liberty lasted. In two hundred and sixty years that they remained under the government of kings, tho all of them, the last only excepted, were chosen by the senate and people, and did as much to advance the publick service as could reasonably be expected from them, their dominion hardly extended so far as from London to Hownslow: But in little more than three hundred years after they recovered their liberty, they had subdued all the warlike nations of Italy, destroy’d vast armies of the Gauls, Cimbri, and Germans, overthrown the formidable power of Carthage, conquer’d the Cisalpine and Transalpine Gauls, with all the nations of Spain, notwithstanding the ferocity of the one, and the more constant valour of the other, and the prodigious multitudes of both: They had brought all Greece into subjection, and by the conquest of Macedon the spoils of the world to adorn their city; and found so little difficulty in all the wars that happened between them and the greatest king after the death of Alexander of Epirus and Pyrrhus, that the defeats of Syphax, Perseus, Antiochus, Prusias, Tigranes, Ptolemy, and many others, did hardly deserve to be numbered amongst their victories.
It were ridiculous to impute this to chance, or to think that fortune, which of all things is the most variable, could for so many ages continue the same course, unless supported by virtue; or to suppose that all these monarchies which are so much extoll’d, could have been destroyed by that commonwealth, if it had wanted strength, stability, virtue, or good order. The secret counsels of God are impenetrable; but the ways by which he accomplishes his designs are often evident: When he intends to exalt a people, he fills both them and their leaders with the virtues suitable to the accomplishment of his end; and takes away all wisdom and virtue from those he resolves to destroy. The pride of the Babylonians and Assyrians fell through the baseness of Sardanapalus; and the great city was taken while Belshazzar lay drunk amongst his whores: The empire was transported to the Persians and Grecians by the valor of Cyrus, Alexander, and the brave armies that follow’d them. Histories furnish us with innumerable examples of this kind: But I think none can be found of a cowardly, weak, effeminate, foolish, ill disciplin’d people, that have ever subdued such as were eminent in strength, wisdom, valor, and good discipline; or that these qualities have been found or subsisted anywhere, unless they were cultivated and nourished by a well order’d government. If this therefore was found among the Romans, and not in the kingdoms they overthrew, they had the order and stability which the monarchies had not; and the strength and virtue by which they obtained such success was the product of them. But if this virtue and the glorious effects of it did begin with liberty, it did also expire with the same. The best men that had not fallen in battle were gleaned up by the proscriptions, or circumvented for the most part by false and frivolous accusations. Mankind is inclin’d to vice, and the way to virtue is so hard, that it wants encouragement; but when all honours, advantages and preferments are given to vice, and despised virtue finds no other reward than hatred, persecution, and death, there are few who will follow it. Tacitus well describes the state of the empire, when the power was absolutely fallen into the hands of one: Italia novis cladibus, vel post longam seculorum seriem repetitis, afflicta; urbs incendiis vastata, consumptis antiquissimis delubris, ipso Capitolio civium manibus incenso; pollutae ceremoniae; magna adulteria; plenum exciliis mare; infecti caedibus scopuli; atrocius in urbe saevitum; nobilitas, opes, omissi vel gesti honores pro crimine, ob virtutes certissimum exitium. 2 His following words shew, that the rewards of these abominations were not less odious than the things themselves: The highest dignities were bestowed upon the delatores, who were a kind of rogues like to our Irish witnesses, or those that by a new coin’d word we call trepanners. This is not a picture drawn by a vulgar hand, but by one of the best painters in the world; and being a model that so much pleases our author, ’tis good to see what it produced. The first fruit was such an entire degeneracy from all good, that Rome may be justly said never to have produced a brave man since the first age of her slavery. Germanicus and Corbulo were born expirante libertate; 3 and the recompence they received did so little encourage others to follow their example, that none have been found in any degree like to them; and those of the most noble families applied themselves to sleep, laziness, and luxury, that they might not be suspected to be better than their masters. Thrasea, Soranus, and Helvidius were worthy men, who resolved to persist in their integrity, tho they should die for it; but that was the only thing that made them eminent; for they were of unknown families, not Romans by birth, nor ever employ’d in war: And those emperors who did arrive to any degree of virtue, were Spaniards, Gauls, Africans, Thracians, and of all nations, except Romans. The patrician and plebeian families, which for many ages had fill’d the world with great commanders, and such as excelled in all virtues, being thus extinguished or corrupted, the common people fell into the lowest degree of baseness: Plebs sordida circo theatris sueta. 4 That people which in magnanimity surpassed all that have been known in the world; who never found any enterprize above their spirit to undertake, and power to accomplish, with their liberty lost all their vigour and virtue. They who by their votes had disposed of kingdoms and provinces, fell to desire nothing but to live and see plays.
Whether their emperors were good or bad, they usually rejoic’d at their death, in hopes of getting a little money or victuals from the successor. Tho the empire was by this means grown weak and bloodless, yet it could not fall on a sudden: So vast a body could not die in a moment: All the neighbouring nations had been so much broken by their power, that none was able to take advantage of their weakness; and life was preserved by the strength of hungry barbarians, allured by the greatness of the pay they received to defend those, who had no power left to defend themselves. This precarious and accidental help could not be durable. They who for a while had been contented with their wages, soon began to think it fit for them rather to fight for themselves, than for their weak masters; and thereupon fell to set up emperors depending on themselves, or to seize upon the naked provinces, where they found no other difficulty than to contend with other strangers, who might have the like design upon the same. Thus did the armies of the East and West set up emperors at their pleasure; and tho the Goths, Vandals, Huns, Sueves, Alans, and others had cruel wars among themselves, yet they feared and suffered little or nothing from the Romans. This state of things was so soon observed, that in the beginning of Tiberius his reign they who endeavoured to excite the Gauls to take arms, used no other arguments than such as were drawn from the extreme weakness of the Romans, Quam inops Italia, plebs urbana imbellis, nihil in exercitibus validum praeter externum. 6 It was evident that after the battles of Philippi and Actium, the strength of the Roman armies consisted of strangers; and even the victories that went under their name were gained by those nations which in the time of their liberty they had subdued. They had nothing left but riches gather’d out of their vast dominions; and they learnt by their ruin, that an empire acquir’d by virtue could not long be supported by money. They who by their valour had arrived at such a height of glory, power, greatness, and happiness as was never equalled, and who in all appearance had nothing to fear from any foreign power, could never have fallen, unless their virtue and discipline had decay’d, and the corruption of their manners had excited them to turn their victorious swords into their own bowels. Whilst they were in that flourishing condition, they thought they had nothing more to desire than continuance: but if our author’s judgment is to be followed, there was nothing of good in it, except the shortness of its continuance; they were beholden to those who wrought the change, they were the better for the battles of Pharsalia, Philippi, Munda, and Actium; the destruction of two thirds of the people, with the slaughter of all the most eminent men among them was for their advantage: The proscriptions were wholesome remedies: Tacitus did not understand the state of his own country, when he seems to be ashamed to write the history of it, Nobis in arcto inglorius labor; 7 when instead of such glorious things as had been achieved by the Romans, whilst either the senate, or the common people prevailed, he had nothing left to relate, but saeva jussa, continuas accusationes, fallaces amicitias, perniciem innocentium. 8 They enjoy’d nothing that was good from the expulsion of the Tarquins to the reestablishment of divine absolute monarchy in the persons of those pious fathers of the people, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, c. There was no virtue in the Junii, Horatii, Cornelii, Quintii, Decii, Manlii; but the generous and tender-hearted princes before-mentioned were perfect examples of it: Whilst annual magistrates governed, there was no stability; Sejanus, Macro, and Tigellinus introduced good order: Virtue was not esteemed by the ancient senate and people; Messalina, Agrippina, Poppaea, Narcissus, Pallas, Vinius, and Laco knew how to put a just value upon it: The irregularities of popular assemblies, and want of prudence in the senate, was repaired by the temperate proceedings of the German, Pannonian and Eastern armies, or the modest discretion of the Praetorian bands: The city was delivered by them from the burden of governing the world, and for its own good frequently plunder’d, fired; and at last, with the rest of desolated Italy, and the noblest provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa, brought under the yoke of the most barbarous and cruel nations. By the same light we may see that those who endeavour’d to perpetuate the misery of liberty to Rome, or lost their lives in the defence of it, were the worst, or the most foolish of men, and that they were the best who did overthrow it. This rectifies all our errors; and if the highest praises are due to him that did the work, the next are well deserved by those who perished in attempting it: and if the sons of Brutus, with their companions the Vitellii and Aquilii; Claudius Appius the decemvir; those that would have betrayed the city to Porsenna; Spurius Maelius, Spur. Cassius, Manlius Capitolinus, Saturninus, Catiline, Cethegus, Lentulus, had been as fortunate as Julius Caesar, they might as well have deserved an apotheosis. But if all this be false, absurd, bestial, and abominable, the principles that necessarily lead us to such conclusions are so also; which is enough to shew, that the strength, virtue, glory, wealth, power, and happiness of Rome proceeding from liberty, did rise, grow, and perish with it.
In the next place our author would persuade us that the Romans were inconstant, because of their changes from annual consuls to military tribunes, decemviri, and dictators; and gives the name of sedition to the complaints made against usury, or the contests concerning marriages or magistracy: but I affirm,
But lest this should not be sufficient to restrain aspiring men, what power soever was granted to any magistrate, the sovereignty still remained in the people, and all without exception were subject to them. This may seem strange to those who think the dictators were absolute, because they are said to have been sine provocatione; 3 but that is to be only understood in relation to other magistrates, and not to the people, as is clearly proved in the case of Q. Fabius, whom Papirius the dictator would have put to death: Tribunos plebis appello, says Fabius Maximus his father, provoco ad populum, eumque tibi fugienti exercitus tui, fugienti senatus judicium, judicem fero; qui certe unus plusquam tua dictatura potest polletque: videro, cessurusne sis provocationi, cui Tullus Hostilius cessit. 4 And tho the people did rather intercede for Fabius than command his deliverance, that modesty did evidently proceed from an opinion that Papirius was in the right; and tho they desired to save Fabius, who seems to have been one of the greatest and best men that ever the city produced, they would not enervate that military discipline, to which they owed, not only their greatness, but their subsistence; most especially when their sovereign authority was acknowledged by all, and the dictator himself had submitted. This right of appeals to the people was the foundation of the Roman commonwealth, laid in the days of Romulus, submitted to by Hostilius in the case of Horatius, 5 and never violated, till the laws and the liberty which they supported were overthrown by the power of the sword. This is confirmed by the speech of Metellus the tribune, who in the time of the second Carthaginian War, causelessly disliking the proceedings of Q. Fabius Maximus then dictator, in a publick assembly of the people said, Quod si antiquus animus plebi Romanae esset, se audacter laturum de abrogando Q. Fabii imperio; nunc modicam rogationem promulgaturum, de aequando magistri equitum dictatoris jure: 6 which was done, and that action, which had no precedent, shews that the people needed none, and that their power being eminently above that of all magistrates was obliged to no other rule than that of their own will. Tho I do therefore grant that a power like to the dictatorian, limited in time, circumscribed by law, and kept perpetually under the supreme authority of the people, may, by virtuous and well-disciplin’d nations, upon some occasions, be prudently granted to a virtuous man, it can have no relation to our author’s monarch, whose power is in himself, subject to no law, perpetually exercised by himself, and for his own sake, whether he have any of the abilities required for the due performance of so great a work, or be entirely destitute of them; nothing being more unreasonable than to deduce consequences from cases, which in substance and circumstances are altogether unlike: but to the contrary, these examples shewing that the Romans, even in the time of such magistrates as seemed to be most absolute, did retain and exercise the sovereign power, do most evidently prove that the government was ever the same remaining in the people, who without prejudice might give the administration to one or more men as best pleased themselves, and the success shews that they did it prudently.
Little pains is required to confute our author, who imputes much bloodshed to the popular government of Rome; for he cannot prove that one man was unjustly put to death, or slain in any sedition before Publius Gracchus: The foundations of the commonwealth were then so shaken, that the laws could not be executed; and whatsoever did then fall out ought to be attributed to the monarchy for which the great men began to contend. Whilst they had no other wars than with neighbouring nations, they had a strict eye upon their commanders, and could preserve discipline among the soldiers: but when by the excellence of their valour and conduct the greatest powers of the world were subdued, and for the better carrying on of foreign wars, armies were suffered to continue in the same hands longer than the law did direct, soldiery came to be accounted a trade, and those who had the worst designs against the commonwealth, began to favour all manner of licentiousness and rapine, that they might gain the favour of the legions, who by that means became unruly and seditious; ’twas hard, if not impossible, to preserve a civil equality, when the spoils of the greatest kingdoms were brought to adorn the houses of private men; and they who had the greatest cities and nations to be their dependents and clients, were apt to scorn the power of the law. This was a most dangerous disease, like those to which human bodies are subject when they are arrived to that which physicians call the athletick habit, proceeding from the highest perfection of health, activity and strength, that the best constitution by diet and exercise can attain. Whosoever falls into them shews that he had attain’d that perfection; and he who blames that which brings a state into the like condition, condemns that which is most perfect among men. Whilst the Romans were in the way to this, no sedition did them any hurt: they were composed without blood; and those that seemed to be the most dangerous, produced the best laws. But when they were arrived to that condition, no order could do them good; the fatal period set to human things was come, they could go no higher,
and all that our author blames, is not to be imputed to their constitution, but their departing from it. All men were ever subject to error, and it may be said that the mistaken people in the space of about three hundred years did unjustly fine or banish five or six men; but those mistakes were so frankly acknowledged, and carefully repair’d by honours bestow’d upon the injured persons, as appears by the examples of Camillus, Livius Salinator, Aemilius Paulus, and others, that they deserve more praise than if they had not failed.
If for the above-mentioned time seditions were harmless or profitable, they were also absolutely exempted from civil wars. Those of Apulia and Greece were revolts of conquer’d nations, and can no way fall under that name: But ’tis most absurdly applied to the servile and gladiatorian wars; for the gladiators were slaves also, and civil wars can be made only by those who are members of the civil society, which slaves are not. Those that made the bellum sociale, 2 were freemen, but not citizens; and the war they made could not be called civil. The Romans had three ways of dealing with conquered nations.
We often hear of wars made by those of the two latter sorts; but of none that can be called civil, till the times of Marius, Sulla, and Catiline: and as they are to be esteemed the last strugglings of expiring liberty, when the laws, by which it had subsisted, were enervated: so those that happened between Caesar and Pompey, Octavius and Antonius, with the proscriptions, triumvirate, and all the mischiefs that accompanied them, are to be imputed wholly to the monarchy for which they contended, as well as those between Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, that hardly ever ceased till the empire was abolished; for the name of a commonwealth continued to the end; and I know not why Tiberius or Nero might not use it as well as Sulla or Marius.
Yet if our author be resolved to impute to popular government all that passed before Caesar made himself perpetual dictator, he will find no more than is seen in all places. We have known few small states, and no great one free from revolts of subjects or allies; and the greatest empire of the East was overthrown by the rebellion of the Mamelukes their slaves. If there is any difference to be observed between what happened at Rome, ’tis chiefly, that whilst there was any shadow of liberty, the slaves, gladiators, subjects or allies, were always beaten and suppressed; whereas in the time of the emperors, the revolt of a province was sufficient to give a new master to the best part of mankind; and he having no more power than was required for a present mischief, was for the most part, in a short time, destroy’d by another. But to please our author, I will acknowledge a second defect, even that wantonness to which he ascribes all their disorders; tho I must withal desire him to consider from whence wantonness doth proceed. If the people of Turkey or France did rebel, I should think they were driven to it by misery, beggary, or despair; and could lay wantonness only to the charge of those who enjoy’d much prosperity. Nations that are oppress’d and made miserable, may fall into rage, but can never grow wanton. In the time of the Roman emperors, the praetorian cohorts, or the armies that had the liberty of ravaging the richest provinces, might be proud of their strength, or grow wanton through the abundance of their enjoyments: The Janizaries in later ages may, for the same reasons, have fallen into the like excesses; but such as have lost their liberty are in no danger of them. When all the nobility of Rome was destroyed, and those who excelled in reputation or virtue, were fallen in the wars, or by the proscriptions; when two thirds of the people were slain, the best cities and colonies burnt, the provinces exhausted, and the small remains left in them oppressed with a most miserable slavery, they may have revolted, and sometimes did, as the Britains, Batavians, and others mentioned in the Roman history: But they were driven to those revolts by fury and necessity, arising from the miseries and indignities they suffer’d under an insupportable tyranny; and wantonness had no part in them. The people of Rome, when they were a little freed from the terror of the soldiers, did sometimes for the same reasons conspire against the emperors; and when they could do no more, expressed their hatred by breaking their statues: But after the battles of Pharsalia, Philippi, and the proscriptions, they never committed any folly through wantonness. In the like manner Naples and Sicily have revolted within these few years; and some who are well acquainted with the state of those kingdoms, think them ready again to do the like; but if it should so happen, no man of understanding would impute it to wantonness. The pressures under which they groan, have cured them of all such diseases: and the Romans since the loss of their liberty could never fall into them. They may have grown wanton when their authority was reverenced, their virtue admired, their power irresistible, and the riches of the world were flowing in upon them, as it were, to corrupt their manners, by enticing them to pleasure: But when all that was lost, and they found their persons expos’d to all manner of violence from the basest of men; their riches exhausted by tributes and rapine, whilst the treasures of the empire were not sufficient to supply the luxury of their masters; the misery they suffer’d, and the shame of suffering it, with the contemptible weakness to which they were reduc’d, did too strongly admonish them, that the vices of wantonness belonged only to those who enjoy’d a condition far different from theirs; and the memory of what they had lost, sharpened the sense of what they felt. This is the state of things which pleases our author; and, by praising that government, which depriv’d those who were under it of all that is most desirable in the world, and introduc’d all that ought to be detested, he sufficiently shews, that he delights only in that which is most abominable, and would introduce his admir’d absolute monarchy, only as an instrument of bringing vice, misery, devastation and infamy upon mankind.
In pursuance of his design our author, with as much judgment as truth, denies that Rome became mistress of the world under the popular government: It is not so, says he, for Rome began her empire under kings, and did perfect it under emperors: It did only increase under that popularity: Her greatest exaltation was under Trajan, and longest peace under Augustus. 1 For the illustration of which, I desire these few things may be consider’d.
When the city had been burnt by the Gauls, it was soon restored: The defeats of Ticinum, Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae were repair’d with equal or greater victories: The war of the allies ended in their overthrow: The fury of the gladiators was extinguished with their blood: The commonwealth lost battles, but was never conquer’d in any war; and in the end triumphed over all that had contended with them. Whilst liberty continued, it was the nurse of virtue; and all the losses suffered in foreign or civil wars, were easily recovered: but when liberty was lost, valour and virtue was torn up by the roots, and the Roman power proceeding from it, perished.
I have not dwelt so long upon this point to expose the folly of our author, but to show that the above mention’d evils did proceed from a permanent cause, which will always produce the like effects; and histories testify, that it has done the same in all places. Carthage was rebuilt, after it had been destroy’d by Scipio, and continued to be a rich city for almost a thousand years, but produced no such men as Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal: Cleomenes and Euclidas were the last that deserved to be called Spartans: Athens never had an eminent man, after it felt the weight of the Macedonian yoke; and Philopoemen was the last of the Achaeans. Tho the commonwealths of Italy in later ages, having too much applied themselves to the acquisition of money, and wanted that greatness of spirit which had reigned in their ancestors, yet they have not been without valour and virtue. That of Pisa was famous for power at sea, till the Genoese overthrew them. Florence had a brave nobility, and a stout people. Arezzo, Pistoia, Cortona, Siena, and other small towns of Tuscany, were not without strength, tho for the most part unhappily exercised in the factions of Ghibellines and Guelphs, Neri and Bianchi, that divided all Italy; but since the introduction of Filmer’s divine absolute monarchy, all power, virtue, reputation and strength, is utterly perished from among them, and no man dares to oppose the publick mischiefs. They usually decide private quarrels by assassination or poison; and in other respects they enjoy the happiness of that peace which is always found within empty walls and desolated countries: And if this be according to the laws of God and nature, it cannot be denied, that weakness, baseness, cowardice, destruction and desolation are so likewise. These are the blessings our well-natur’d author would confer upon us; but if they were to be esteemed so, I cannot tell why those that felt them, complained so much of them. Tacitus reciting what passed in his time, and somewhat before (for want of a Christian spirit) in the bitterness of his soul says, nec unquam atrocioribus populi Romani cladibus, magisque; justis indiciis probatum est, non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem. 7 Some thought that no punishments could be justly deserved by a people that had so much favour’d virtue; others, that even the gods they ador’d, envied their felicity and glory; but all confess’d they were fallen from the highest pitch of human happiness into the lowest degree of infamy and misery: And our author being the first that ever found they had gained by the change, we are to attribute the discovery of so great a secret to the excellency of his wisdom. If, suspending my judgment in this point, till it be proved by better authority than his word, I in the meantime follow the opinion of those who think slavery doth naturally produce meanness of spirit, with its worst effect, flattery, which Tacitus calls foedum servitutis crimen; 8 I must believe, that the impudence of carrying it to such a height, as to commend nothing in the most glorious liberty, that made the most virtuous people in the world, but the shortness of its continuance, and to prefer the tyranny of the basest of men, or worst of monsters, is peculiar to Filmer; and that their wickedness, which had never been equalled, is surpassed by him, who recommends as the ordinance of God, the principles that certainly produce them.
But, says our author, tho Rome was for a while miraculously upheld in glory by a greater prudence than its own, yet in a short time, after manifold alterations, she was ruined by her own hand. 9 But ’tis absurd to say, that the overthrow of a government, which had nothing of good in it, can be a ruin; or that the glory in which it continued, had nothing of good in it; and most of all, that it could be ruin’d by no hands but its own, if that glory had not been gained, and immediately or instrumentally supported by such virtue and strength as is worthily to be preferr’d before all other temporal happiness, and does ever produce it. This shews that liars ought to have good memories. But passing over such foolish contradictions, I desire to know, how that prudence, greater than its own (which till I am better inform’d, I must think to be inseparably united to justice and goodness) came miraculously to support a government, which was not only evil in itself, as contrary to the laws of God and nature; but so perpetually bent against that monarchy, which he says is according to them, as to hate all monarchs, despite all that would live under them, destroy as many of them as came within their reach; and make a law by which any man was authorised to kill him, who should endeavour to set up this divine power among them. Moreover, no human prudence preserved the Roman glory but their own: the others directly set themselves to oppose it, and the most eminent fell under it. We know of no prudence surpassing the human, unless it be the divine: But the divine prudence did never miraculously exert itself, except to bear witness to the truth, and to give authority to those that announced it. If therefore the glory of this popular government was miraculously supported by a more than human prudence, it was good in itself; the miracles done in favour of it did testify it, and all that our author says against it is false and abominable.
If I lay aside the word miraculous, as put in by chance, ’twill be hard to know how God (who in the usual course of his providence guides all things by such a gentle and undiscerned power, that they seem to go on of themselves) should give such virtue to this popular government, and the magistrates bred up under it, that the greatest monarchs of the earth were as dust before them, unless there had been an excellency in their discipline, far surpassing that of their enemies; or how that can be called ill in its principle, and said to comprehend no good, which God did so gloriously support, and no man was ever able to resist. This cannot be better answer’d than by our author’s citation, suis ipsa Roma viribus ruit; 10 That city which had overthrown the greatest powers of the world must, in all appearance, have lasted forever, if their virtue and discipline had not decay’d, or their forces been turned against themselves. If our author therefore say true, the greatest good that ever befell the Romans, was the decay of their virtue and discipline; and the turning of their own arms against themselves, was not their ruin but their preservation.
When they had brought the warlike nations of Italy into subjection, or association; often repressed the fury of the Gauls, Cimbri and Teutons; overthrown the wealth, power and wit of Carthage supported by the skill, industry, and valour of Hannibal and his brave relations; almost extirpated the valiant Spaniards, who would no other way be subdued; defeated Philip, Perseus, Antiochus, Gentius, Syphax and Jugurtha; struck an awe into Ptolemy; avoided the snares and poisons of Mithridates; followed him in his flights, reveng’d his treacheries, and carried their victorious arms beyond his conquer’d kingdoms to the banks of Tigris: When neither the revolt of their Italian associates, nor the rebellion of their slaves led by Spartacus (who in skill seems to have been equal to Hannibal, and above him in courage) could put a stop to their victories: When Greece had been reduced to yield to a virtue rather than a power greater than their own, we may well say that government was supported by a more than human prudence, which led them through virtue to a height of glory, power and happiness, that till that day had been unknown to the world, and could never have been ruined, if by the decay of that virtue they had not turned their victorious arms against themselves. That city was a giant that could die by no other hand than his own; like Hercules poison’d and driven into madness, after he had destroy’d thieves, monsters and tyrants, and found nothing on the earth able to resist him. 11 The wisest of men in ancient times, looking upon this as a point of more than human perfection, thought or feigned to think, that he was descended from the gods, and at his death received into their number, tho perhaps Filmer would prefer a weak, base and effeminate slave before him. The matter will not be much different, if we adhere to the foremention’d similitude of the athletick habit; for the danger proceeds only from the perfection of it, and he who dislikes it, must commend that weakness and vice which may perish, but can never be changed into anything worse than itself, as those that lie upon the ground can never fall. However this fall of the Romans, which our author, speaking truth against his will, calls their ruin, was into that which he recommends as the ordinance of God: Which is as much as to say, that they were ruin’d when they fell from their own unnatural inventions to follow the law of God and of nature; that luxury also through which they fell, was the product of their felicity; and that the nations that had been subdued by them, had no other way of avenging their defeats, than by alluring their masters to their own vices: This was the root of their civil wars. When that proud city found no more resistance, it grew wanton.
Honest poverty became uneasy, when honours were given to ill-gotten riches. This was so monarchical, that a people infected with such a custom must needs fall by it. They who by vice had exhausted their fortunes, could repair them only by bringing their country under a government that would give impunity to rapine; and such as had not virtues to deserve advancement from the senate and people, would always endeavour to set up a man that would bestow the honours that were due to virtue, upon those who would be most abjectly subservient to his will and interests. When men’s minds are filled with this fury, they sacrifice the common good to the advancement of their private concernments. This was the temper of Catiline expressed by Sallust, luxuria principi gravis, paupertas vix à privato toleranda; and this put him upon that desperate extremity to say, incendium meum ruinâ extinguam. 13 Others in the same manner being filled with the same rage, he could not want companions in his most villainous designs. ’Tis not long since a person of the highest quality, and no less famous for learning and wit, having observed the state of England, as it stood not many years ago, and that to which it has been reduc’d since the year sixty, 14 as is thought very much by the advice and example of France, said, that they now were taking a most cruel vengeance upon us for all the overthrows received from our ancestors, by introducing their most damnable maxims, and teaching us the worst of their vices. ’Tis not for me to determine whether this judgment was rightly made or not; for I intend not to speak of our affairs: but all historians agreeing, that the change of the Roman government was wrought by such means as I have mentioned; and our author acknowledging that change to have been their ruin, as in truth it was, I may justly conclude, that the overthrow of that government could not have been a ruin to them, but good for them, unless it had been good; and that the power which did ruin it, and was set up in the room of it, cannot have been according to the laws of God or nature, for they confer only that which is good, and destroy nothing that is so; but must have been most contrary to that good which was overthrown by it.
Our author’s cavils concerning I know not what vulgar opinions that democracies were introduc’d to curb tyranny, deserve no answer; for our question is, whether one form of government be prescribed to us by God and nature, or we are left according to our own understanding, to constitute such as seem best to ourselves. As for democracy he may say what pleases him of it; and I believe it can suit only with the convenience of a small town, accompanied with such circumstances as are seldom found. But this no way obliges men to run into the other extreme, in as much as the variety of forms between mere democracy and absolute monarchy is almost infinite: And if I should undertake to say, there never was a good government in the world, that did not consist of the three simple species of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, I think I might make it good. This at the least is certain, that the government of the Hebrews instituted by God, had a judge, the great Sanhedrin, and general assemblies of the people: Sparta had two kings, a senate of twenty eight chosen men, and the like assemblies: All the Dorian cities had a chief magistrate, a senate, and occasional assemblies: The Ionian, Athens, and others, had an archon, the areopagi; and all judgments concerning matters of the greatest importance, as well as the election of magistrates, were referr’d to the people. Rome in the beginning had a king and a senate, whilst the election of kings, and judgments upon appeals remained in the people; afterwards consuls representing kings, and vested with equal power, a more numerous senate, and more frequent meetings of the people. Venice has at this day a duke, the senate of the pregadi, and the great assembly of the nobility, which is the whole city, the rest of the inhabitants being only incolae, not cives; 1 and those of the other cities or countries are their subjects, and do not participate of the government. Genoa is governed in like manner: Lucca not unlike to them. Germany is at this day governed by an emperor, the princes or great lords in their several precincts, the cities by their own magistrates, and by general diets, in which the whole power of the nation resides, and where the emperor, princes, nobility, and cities have their places in person, or by their deputies. All the northern nations, which upon the dissolution of the Roman empire possessed the best provinces that had composed it, were under that form which is usually called the Gothick polity: They had king, lords, commons, diets, assemblies of estates, cortes, and parliaments, in which the sovereign powers of those nations did reside, and by which they were exercised. The like was practised in Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden, Denmark, Poland; and if things are changed in some of these places within few years, they must give better proofs of having gained by the change than are yet seen in the world, before I think myself obliged to change my opinion.
Some nations not liking the name of king, have given such a power as kings enjoy’d in other places to one or more magistrates, either limited to a certain time, or left to be perpetual, as best pleased themselves: Others approving the name, made the dignity purely elective. Some have in their elections principally regarded one family as long as it lasted: Others consider’d nothing but the fitness of the person, and reserved to themselves a liberty of taking where they pleased. Some have permitted the crown to be hereditary as to its ordinary course; but restrained the power, and instituted officers to inspect the proceedings of kings, and to take care that the laws were not violated: Of this sort were the ephori of Sparta, the maires du palais, 2 and afterwards the constable of France; the justicia in Aragon; Rijckshofmeister in Denmark; the high steward in England; and in all places such assemblies as are before-mentioned under several names, who had the power of the whole nation. Some have continued long, and it may be always in the same form; others have changed it: Some being incensed against their kings, as the Romans exasperated by the villainies of Tarquin, and the Tuscans by the cruelties of Mezentius, abolished the name of king: Others, as Athens, Sicyon, Argos, Corinth, Thebes, and the Latins, did not stay for such extremities; but set up other governments when they thought it best for themselves, and by this conduct prevented the evils that usually fall upon nations, when their kings degenerate into tyrants, and a nation is brought to enter into a war by which all may be lost, and nothing can be gained which was not their own before. The Romans took not this salutary course; the mischief was grown up before they perceived, or set themselves against it; and when the effects of pride, avarice, cruelty and lust were grown to such a height, that they could no longer be endured, they could not free themselves without a war: and whereas upon other occasions their victories had brought them increase of strength, territory, and glory; the only reward of their virtue in this was, to be delivered from a plague they had unadvisedly suffered to grow up among them. I confess this was most of all to be esteemed; for if they had been overthrown, their condition under Tarquin would have been more intolerable than if they had fallen under the power of Pyrrhus or Hannibal; and all their following prosperity was the fruit of their recover’d liberty: But it had been much better to have reformed the state after the death of one of their good kings, than to be brought to fight for their lives against that abominable tyrant. Our author in pursuance of his aversion to all that is good, disapproves this; and wanting reasons to justify his dislike, according to the custom of impostors and cheats, hath recourse to the ugly terms of a back-door, sedition and faction: 3 as if it were not as just for a people to lay aside their kings when they receive nothing but evil, and can rationally hope for no benefit by them, as for others to set them up in expectation of good from them. But if the truth be examin’d, nothing will be found more orderly than the changes of government, or of the persons and races of those that govern’d, which have been made by many nations. When Pharamond’s grandson seemed not to deserve the crown he had worn, the French gave it to Meroveus, who more resembled him in virtue: In process of time when this race also degenerated, they were rejected, and Pepin advanced to the throne; and the most remote in blood of his descendants having often been preferred before the nearest, and bastards before the legitimate issue, they were at last all laid aside; and the crown remains to this day in the family of Hugh Capet, on whom it was bestow’d upon the rejection of Charles of Lorraine. In like manner the Castilians took Don Sancho surnamed the Brave, second son to Alfonso the Wise, before Alfonso el Desheredado, son of the elder brother Ferdinand. The states of Aragon preferred Martin, brother to John the first, before Mary his daughter married to the Count de Foix, tho females were not excluded from the succession; and the house of Austria now enjoys that crown from Joan daughter to Ferdinand. In that and many other kingdoms, bastards have been advanced before their legitimate brothers. Henry Count of Trastamara, bastard to Alfonso the II king of Castile, received the crown as a reward of the good service he had done to his country against his brother Peter the Cruel, without any regard had to the house of La Cerda descended from Alfonso el Desheredado, which to this day never enjoy’d any greater honour than that of duke de Medina Celi. Not long after the Portuguese conceiving a dislike of their King Ferdinand, and his daughter married to John king of Castile, rejected her and her uncle by the father’s side, and gave the crown to John a knight of Calatrava, and bastard to an uncle of Ferdinand their king. About the beginning of this age the Swedes deposed their King Sigismund for being a papist, and made Charles his uncle king. Divers examples of the like nature in England have been already mentioned. All these transportations of crowns were acts performed by assemblies of the three estates in the several kingdoms, and these crowns are to this day enjoy’d under titles derived from such as were thus brought in by the deposition or rejection of those, who according to descent of blood had better titles than the present possessors. The acts therefore were lawful and good, or they can have no title at all; and they who made them, had a just power so to do.
If our author can draw any advantage from the resemblance of regality that he finds in the Roman consuls and Athenian archons, I shall without envy leave him the enjoyment of it; but I am much mistaken if that do not prove my assertion, that those governments were composed of the three simple species: for if the monarchical part was in them, it cannot be denied that the aristocratical was in the senate or areopagi, and the democratical in the people. But he ought to have remembered that if there was something of monarchical in those governments when they are said to have been popular, there was something of aristocratical and democratical in those that were called regal; which justifies my proposition on both sides, and shews that the denomination was taken from the part that prevail’d; and if this were not so, the governments of France, Spain, and Germany might be called democracies, and those of Rome and Athens monarchies, because the people have a part in the one, and an image of monarchy was preserved in the other.
If our author will not allow the cases to be altogether equal, I think he will find no other difference, than that the consuls and archons were regularly made by the votes of the consenting people, and orderly resign’d their power, when the time was expir’d for which it was given; whereas Tarquin, Dionysius, Agathocles, Nabis, Phalaris, Caesar, and almost all his successors, whom he takes for compleat monarchs, came in by violence, fraud, and corruption, by the help of the worst men, by the slaughter of the best, and most commonly (when the method was once establish’d) by that of his predecessor, who, if our author say true, was the father of his country and his also. This was the root and foundation of the only government that deserves praise: this is that which stamped the divine character upon Agathocles, Dionysius and Caesar, and that had bestow’d the same upon Manlius, Marius, or Catiline, if they had gain’d the monarchies they affected. But I suppose that such as God has bless’d with better judgment, and a due regard to justice and truth, will say, that all those who have attained to such greatness as destroys all manner of good in the places where they have set up themselves by the most detestable villainies, came in by a back door; and that such magistrates as were orderly chosen by a willing people, were the true shepherds who came in by the gate of the sheepfold, and might justly be called the ministers of God, so long as they performed their duty in providing for the good of the nations committed to their charge.
If I go a step farther, and confess the Romans made some changes in the outward form of their government, I may safely say they did well in it, and prosper’d by it. After the expulsion of the kings, the power was chiefly in the nobility, who had been leaders of the people; but it was necessary to humble them, when they began to presume too much upon the advantages of their birth; and the city could never have been great, unless the plebeians who were the body of it, and the main strength of their armies, had been admitted to a participation of honours. This could not be done at the first: They who had been so vilely oppressed by Tarquin, and harass’d with making or cleansing sinks, were not then fit for magistracies, or the command of armies; but they could not justly be excluded from them, when they had men who in courage and conduct were equal to the best of the patricians; and it had been absurd for any man to think it a disparagement to him to marry the daughter of one whom he had obey’d as dictator or consul, and perhaps follow’d in his triumph. Rome that was constituted for war, and sought its grandeur by that means, could never have arriv’d to any considerable height, if the people had not been exercised in arms, and their spirits raised to delight in conquests, and willing to expose themselves to the greatest fatigues and dangers to accomplish them. Such men as these were not to be used like slaves, or oppressed by the unmerciful hand of usurers. They who by their sweat and blood were to defend and enlarge the territories of the state, were to be convinced they fought for themselves; and they had reason to demand a magistracy of their own, vested with a power that none might offend, to maintain their rights, and to protect their families, whilst they were abroad in the armies. These were the tribunes of the people, made, as they called it, sacrosancti or inviolable; and the creation of them was the most considerable change that happened till the time of Marius, who brought all into disorder. The creation or abolition of military tribunes with consular power, ought to be accounted as nothing; for it imported little whether that authority were exercised by two, or by five: That of the decemviri was as little to be regarded, they were intended only for a year; and tho new ones were created for another, on pretence that the laws they were to frame could not be brought to perfection in so short a time, yet they were soon thrown down from the power they usurped, and endeavoured to retain contrary to law: The creation of dictators was no novelty, they were made occasionally from the beginning, and never otherwise than occasionally, till Julius Caesar subverted all order, and invading that supreme magistracy by force, usurped the right which belong’d to all. 1 This indeed was a mortal change even in root and principle. All other magistrates had been created by the people for the publick good, and always were within the power of those that had created them. But Caesar coming in by force, sought only the satisfaction of his own raging ambition, or that of the soldiers, whom he had corrupted to destroy their country; and his successors governing for themselves by the help of the like rascals, perpetually exposed the empire to be ravaged by them. But whatever opinion any man may have of the other changes, I dare affirm, there are few or no monarchies (whose histories are so well known to us as that of Rome) which have not suffer’d changes incomparably greater and more mischievous than those of Rome whilst it was free. The Macedonian monarchy fell into pieces immediately after the death of Alexander: ’Tis thought he perished by poison: His wives, children and mother, were destroyed by his own captains: The best of those who had escaped his fury, fell by the sword of each other. When the famous Argyraspides 2 might have expected some reward of their labours, and a little rest in old age, they were maliciously sent into the East by Antigonus to perish by hunger and misery, after he had corrupted them to betray Eumenes. No better fate attended the rest; all was in confusion, every one follow’d whom he pleased, and all of them seemed to be filled with such a rage that they never ceased from mutual slaughters till they were consumed; and their kingdoms continued in perpetual wars against each other, till they all fell under the Roman power. The fortune of Rome was the same after it became a monarchy: Treachery, murder and fury, reigned in every part; there was no law but force; he that could corrupt an army, thought he had a sufficient title to the empire: by this means there were frequently three or four, and at one time thirty several pretenders, who called themselves emperors; of which number he only reigned that had the happiness to destroy all his competitors; and he himself continued no longer than till another durst attempt the destruction of him and his posterity. In this state they remained, till the wasted and bloodless provinces were possess’d by a multitude of barbarous nations. The kingdoms established by them enjoy’d as little peace or justice; that of France was frequently divided into as many parts as the kings of Meroveus or Pepin’s race had children, under the names of the kingdoms of Paris, Orleans, Soissons, Arles, Burgundy, Austrasia, and others: These were perpetually vexed by the unnatural fury of brothers or nearest relations, whilst the miserable nobility and people were obliged to fight upon their foolish quarrels, till all fell under the power of the strongest. This mischief was in some measure cured by a law made in the time of Hugh Capet, that the kingdom should no more be divided: But the apanages, as they call them, granted to the king’s brothers, with the several dukedoms and earldoms erected to please them and other great lords, produced frequently almost as bad effects. This is testified by the desperate and mortal factions, that went under the names of Burgundy and Orleans, Armagnae and Orleans, Montmorency and Guise: These were followed by those of the League, 3 and the Wars of the Huguenots: They were no sooner finish’d by the taking of La Rochelle, but new ones began by the intrigues of the duke of Orleans, brother to Lewis the 13th, and his mother; and pursued with that animosity by them, that they put themselves under the protection of Spain: To which may be added, that the houses of Condé, Soissons, Montmorency, Guise, Vendôme, Angoulême, Bouillon, Rohan, Longueville, Rochefoucault, Eperne and I think I may say every one that is of great eminency in that kingdom, with the cities of Paris, Bourdeaux, and many others, in the space of these last fifty years, have sided with the perpetual enemies of their own country.
Again, other great alterations have happened within the same kingdom: The races of kings four times wholly changed: Five kings deposed in less than 150 years after the death of Charles the Great: The offices of maire du palais, and constable, erected and laid aside: The great dukedoms and earldoms, little inferior to sovereign principalities, establish’d and suppress’d: The decision of all causes, and the execution of the laws, placed absolutely in the hands of the nobility, their deputies, seneschals, or vice-seneschals, and taken from them again: Parliaments set up to receive appeals from the other courts, and to judge sovereignly in all cases, expressly to curb them: The power of these parliaments, after they had crushed the nobility, brought so low, that within the last twenty years they are made to register, and give the power of laws, to edicts, of which the titles only are read to them; and the general assemblies of estates, that from the time of Pepin had the power of the nation in their hands, are now brought to nothing, and almost forgotten.
Tho I mention these things, ’tis not with a design of blaming them, for some of them deserve it not; and it ought to be consider’d that the wisdom of man is imperfect, and unable to foresee the effects that may proceed from an infinite variety of accidents, which according to emergencies, necessarily require new constitutions, to prevent or cure the mischiefs arising from them, or to advance a good that at the first was not thought on: And as the noblest work in which the wit of man can be exercised, were (if it could be done) to constitute a government that should last forever, the next to that is to suit laws to present exigencies, and so much as is in the power of man to foresee: And he that should resolve to persist obstinately in the way he first entered upon, or to blame those who go out of that in which their fathers had walked, when they find it necessary, does as far as in him lies, render the worst of errors perpetual. Changes therefore are unavoidable, and the wit of man can go no farther than to institute such, as in relation to the forces, manners, nature, religion or interests of a people and their neighbours, are suitable and adequate to what is seen, or apprehended to be seen: And he who would oblige all nations at all times to take the same course, would prove as foolish as a physician who should apply the same medicine to all distempers, or an architect that would build the same kind of house for all persons, without considering their estates, dignities, the number of their children or servants, the time or climate in which they live, and many other circumstances; or, which is, if possible, more sottish, a general who should obstinately resolve always to make war in the same way, and to draw up his army in the same form, without examining the nature, number, and strength of his own and his enemies’ forces, or the advantages and disadvantages of the ground. But as there may be some universal rules in physick, architecture and military discipline, from which men ought never to depart; so there are some in politicks also which ought always to be observed: and wise legislators adhering to them only, will be ready to change all others as occasion may require, in order to the publick good. This we may learn from Moses, who laying the foundation of the law given to the Israelites in that justice, charity and truth, which having its root in God is subject to no change, left them the liberty of having judges or no judges, kings or no kings, or to give the sovereign power to high priests or captains, as best pleased themselves; and the mischiefs they afterwards suffer’d, proceeded not simply from changing, but changing for the worse. The like judgment may be made of the alterations that have happen’d in other places. They who aim at the publick good, and wisely institute means proportionable and adequate to the attainment of it, deserve praise; and those only are to be dislik’d, who either foolishly or maliciously set up a corrupt private interest in one or a few men. Whosoever therefore would judge of the Roman changes, may see, that in expelling the Tarquins, creating consuls, abating the violence of usurers, admitting Plebeians to marry with the patricians, rendering them capable of magistracies, deducing colonies, dividing lands gained from their enemies, erecting tribunes to defend the rights of the commons, appointing the decemviri to regulate the law, and abrogating their power when they abused it, creating dictators and military tribunes with a consular power, as occasions requir’d; they acted in the face of the sun for the good of the public; and such acts having always produced effects suitable to the rectitude of their intentions, they consequently deserve praise. But when another principle began to govern, all things were changed in a very different manner: Evil designs, tending only to the advancement of private interests, were carried on in the dark by means as wicked as the end. If Tarquin when he had a mind to be king, poison’d his first wife and his brother, contracted an incestuous marriage with his second by the death of her first husband, murder’d her father and the best men in Rome, yet Caesar did worse: He favour’d Catiline and his villainous associates; bribed and corrupted magistrates; conspir’d with Crassus and Pompey; continued in the command of an army beyond the time prescribed by law, and turned the arms with which he had been entrusted for the service of the commonwealth, to the destruction of it; which was rightly represented by his dream, that he had constuprated his mother: In the like manner when Octavius, Antonius and Lepidus, divided the empire, and then quarrelled among themselves; and when Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian set up parties in several provinces, all was managed with treachery, fraud and cruelty; nothing was intended but the advancement of one man, and the recompence of the villains that served him: And when the empire had suffered infinite calamities by pulling down or rejecting one, and setting up another, it was for the most part difficult to determine who was the worst of the two; or whether the prevailing side had gained or lost by their victory. The question therefore upon which a judgment may be made to the praise or dispraise of the Roman government, before or after the loss of their liberty, ought not to be, whether either were subject to changes, for neither they nor anything under the sun was ever exempted from them; but whether the changes that happened after the establishment of absolute power in the emperors, did not solely proceed from ambition, and tend to the publick ruin: whereas those alterations related by our author concerning consuls, dictators, decemviri, tribunes and laws, were far more rare, less violent, tending to, and procuring the publick good, and therefore deserving praise. The like having been proved by the examples of other kingdoms, and might be farther confirmed by many more, which on account of brevity I omit, is in my opinion sufficient to manifest, that whilst the foundation and principle of a government remains good, the superstructures may be changed according to occasions, without any prejudice to it.
In the next place our author introduces Xenophon, disallowing popular governments: Cites Rome and Athens as places where the best men thriv’d worst, and the worst best; and condemns the Romans for making it capital to pass sentence of death, banishment, loss of liberty, or stripes upon any citizen of Rome. 1 But lest his fraud in this should be detected, he cites no precise passage of any author, alleges few examples, and those mistaken; never tells us what that law was, when made, or where to be found; whereas I hope to prove, that he has upon the whole matter abominably prevaricated, and advanced things that he knows to be either impertinent or false.
1. To this end we are in the first place to consider, whether Xenophon speaks of popular governments simply, or comparatively: if simply, ’tis confess’d that a pure democracy can never be good, unless for a small town; if comparatively, we must examine to what he compares it: We are sure it was not to absolute monarchy; there was no such thing amongst the Greeks established by law: The little tyrants who had enslaved their own countries, as Jason, Phaereus, Phalaris, and the like, had no pretence to it, and were accounted as the worst of beasts: None but such as in all bestiality were like to them, did ever speak or think well of them: Xenophon’s opinion in this point, may be easily found out by what pass’d between his master Plato and the Sicilian tyrant; 2 and the matter will not be mended by referring to his own experience: He had seen the vast monarchy of Persia torn in pieces by the fury of two brothers, and more than a million of men brought to fight upon their private quarrel: Instead of that order, stability and strength which our author ascribes to absolute monarchy as the effect of wisdom and justice, he knew, that by filling one man with pride and cruelty, it brought unspeakable miseries upon all others, and infected them with all the vices that accompany slavery: Men lived like fishes; the great ones devour’d the small; and as appeared by Tissaphernes, Pharnabazus, and others with whom he had to deal, the worst and basest were made to be the greatest: The satraps insulted over those of meaner rank, with an insolence and cruelty that equal’d the depth of their servile submission to their proud master. 3 Luxury and avarice reigned in all: many great nations were made to live for the service of one man, and to foment his vices. This produced weakness and cowardice; no number of those slaves were able to stand against a few free Grecians. No man knew this better than Xenophon, who after the death of Cyrus the younger, and the treacherous murder of Clearchus, and other officers that commanded the Greeks who had served him, made his retreat from Babylon to the Hellespont with ten thousand foot, and passed over the bellies of all that dared to oppose him. 4 He would never have spent his life in exciting his countrymen to attempt the conquest of Asia, nor persuaded Agesilaus to put himself at the head of the enterprize, if he had thought there was such admirable order, stability and strength in that monarchy, and in the Greeks nothing but giddiness of spirit, and so much learning as made them seditious: 5 Nor could he, being a wise man and an excellent captain, have conceived such a design, if he had not by experience found that liberty inspir’d his countrymen with such solid virtue, and produced such stability, good order and strength, that with small numbers of them he might hope to overthrow the vain pomp of the barbarians, and to possess himself of their riches, tho they could bring more than a hundred men to fight against one; which design being interrupted in his time by domestick wars, was soon after his death accomplished by Alexander.
But that Xenophon’s meaning may be better understood, ’tis good to consider, that he spoke of such governments as were then in use among the Greeks; which tho mixed, yet took their denomination from the prevailing part: so that the Dorians, who placed the power chiefly in the hands of a few chosen men, were said to be governed aristocratically; and the Ionians giving more power to the common people, democratically: 6 And he, tho an lonian, either through friendship to Agesilaus, conversation with the Spartans, or for other reasons best known to himself, preferr’d the government of Sparta, or some other which he thought he could frame, and desir’d to introduce, before that of Athens; as Cimon, Thucydides, and many other excellent men of that city are said to have done: And if I acknowledge they were in the right, and that Athens was more subject to disorder, and had less stability than Sparta, I think it will be of little advantage to absolute monarchy.
2. The Athenians did banish some worthy men, and put others to death; but our author, like the Devil, never speaking truth, unless to turn it into a lie, prevaricates in his report of them. The temporary banishment which they called ostracism , was without hurt or dishonour, never accounted as a punishment, nor intended for any other end, than to put a stop to the too eminent greatness of a man, that might prove dangerous to the city; and some excellent persons who fell under it, were soon recalled and brought home with glory. But I am not solicitous whether that reason be sufficient to justify it or not: We are upon a general thesis relating to the laws of God and nature; and if the Athenians, by a fancy of their own, did make an imprudent use of their liberty, it cannot prejudice the publick cause. They who make the worst of it can only say, that by such means they, for a time, deprived themselves of the benefits they might have received from the virtues of some excellent men, to the hurt of none but themselves; and the application of it as an injustice done to Themistocles is absolutely false: He was a man of great wit, industry and valour, but of uncertain faith, too much addicted to his own interest, and held a most dangerous correspondence with the Persians, who then threatened the destruction of Greece. 7 Through envy and spite to Aristides, and to increase his own power, he raised dangerous factions in the city; and being summoned to render an account of his proceedings, he declined the judgment of his country, fled to their enemies, and justly deserved the sentence pronounc’d against him. Some among them were unjustly put to death, and above all Socrates; but the people, who, deceived by false witnesses (against whom neither the laws of God or man have ever prescrib’d a sufficient defence), had condemned him, did so much lament their crime, when the truth was discovered to them, that I doubt whether a more righteous judgment had given better testimony of their righteous intentions. But our author’s impudence appears in the highest excess, in imputing the death of Phocion to the popular state of Athens: Their forces had been broken in the Sicilian War; the city taken, and the principal men slain by Lysander; the remains of the most worthy destroy’d by the thirty tyrants set up by him; their ill-recovered liberty overthrown by the Macedonians, and the death of Phocion compassed by Polyperchon, who with foreign soldiers, slaves, vagabonds, and outlaws, overpower’d the people.
The proceedings of Rome may be more compleatly justified: Coriolanus was duly condemn’d, he set too great a price upon his own valour, and arrogated to himself a power in Rome, which would hardly have been endur’d in Corioli: His violence and pride overbalanced his services; and he that would submit to no law, was justly driven out from the society which could subsist only by law. Quintius was not unlike him, and Manlius Capitolinus far worse than either. Their virtues were not to be consider’d when they departed from them. Consideration ought to be had of human frailty, and some indulgence may be extended to those who commit errors, after having done important services; but a state cannot subsist, which compensating evil actions with good, gives impunity to the most dangerous crimes, in remembrance of any services whatever. He that does well, performs his duty, and ought always to do so: Justice and prudence concur in this; and ’tis no less just than profitable, that every action be considered by itself, and such a reward or punishment allotted to it, as in nature and proportion it doth best deserve.
This, as I suppose, is enough for their cases; but relates not to those of Mamercus, Camillus, Livius Salinator, and Aemilius Paulus; their virtue was compleat, they were wrongfully sentenc’d. But the best princes, senate or people that ever was in the world, by the deceit of evil men, may and have been drawn out of the way of justice: Yet of all the states that are known to us, none was ever so free from crimes of malice and wilful injustice; none was ever guilty of so few errors as that of Rome; and none did ever give better testimonies of repentance, when they were discovered, than the Romans did by the veneration they shew’d to those worthy persons, and the honours they conferr’d upon them afterwards. Mamercus was made dictator, to repair the unjust mark of infamy laid upon him by the censors. Camillus being recall’d from his banishment, often enjoyed the same honour, and died the most reverenced man that had ever been in that city. Livius Salinator was not only made consul after he had been fined, but the people (as it were to expiate the guilt of having condemn’d him) suffer’d that asperity of speech and manners, which might have persuaded such as had been less confident of his virtue and their own, that he desir’d to be reveng’d, tho it were with the ruin of the city. They dealt in the like manner with Aemilius Paulus, repairing the injury of a fine unduly impos’d. Their generosity in leaving the tribunes in the forum, with their accusation against Scipio Africanus, and following him to celebrate an annual sacrifice in the capitol, in commemoration of his victory against Hannibal, was no less admirable than the greatness of his mind, who thought his virtue should be so well known, that no account ought to be expected from him; which was an error proceeding from a noble root, but not to be borne in a well-govern’d commonwealth. 8 The laws that aim at the publick good, make no distinction of persons; and none can be exempted from the penalties of them, otherwise than by approved innocence, which cannot appear without a trial: He that will not bend his mind to them, shakes off the equality of a citizen, and usurps a power above the law, to which no man submits upon any other condition, than that none should be exempted from the power of it. And Scipio being the first Roman that thus disdained the power of the law, I do not know whether the prejudice brought upon the city by so dangerous an example, did not outweigh all the services he had done: Nevertheless the people contented with his retirement to his own house, and afterwards convinc’d of his innocence, would probably (if he had not died in a few months) have brought him back with the honours that fate reserved for his ashes.
I do not at present remember any other eminent men, who can be said in any respect to have thrived ill, whilst the people and senate of Rome acted freely; and if this be not sufficient to clear the point, I desire to know the names of those worst men that thrived best. If they may have been judged to thrive, who were frequently advanced to the supreme magistracies, and enjoy’d the chief honours; I find no men so eminent as Brutus, Publicola, Quinctius Cincinnatus, and Capitolinus, the two Fabii surnamed Maximi, Corvinus, Torquatus, Camillus, and the like: and if these were the worst men that Rome produced in those ages, valour, wisdom, industry in the service of their country, and a most entire love to it must have been the worst of qualities; and I presume our author may have thought them so, since they were invincible obstacles to the introduction of that divine monarchy which Appius Claudius the decemvir, Manlius Capitolinus, Spurius Cassius, Sp. Maelius, and some others may be thought to have affected.
However, these instances are not to be understood as they are simply in themselves, but comparatively with what has happen’d in other places under absolute monarchies: for our inquiry is not after that which is perfect, well knowing that no such thing is found among men; but we seek that human constitution which is attended with the least, or the most pardonable inconveniences. And if we find that in the space of three hundred years, whilst the senate, people, and legally created magistrates governed Rome, not one worthy man was put to death, not above five or six condemned to fines by the beguiled people, and those injuries repair’d by the most honourable satisfaction that could be given; so that virtue continued ever flourishing; the best men that could be found were put into the chief commands, and the city was filled with more excellent men than were ever known to be in any other place: And on the other side, if the emperors so soon as the government was changed, made it their business to destroy the best, and so far succeeded in their design, that they left none; and never failed to advance the worst, unless it fell out as to Queen Catherine de Medici, who is said never to have done any good but by mistake, and some few may have proved better than was intended; it will appear, that our author’s assertions are in the utmost degree false. Of this we need no better witness than Tacitus. The civil wars, and the proscriptions upon which he touches, are justly to be attributed to that monarchy which was then setting up, the only question being who should be the monarch, when the liberty was already overthrown. And if any eminent men escaped, it was much against the will of those who had usurped the power: He acknowledges his histories to be a continued relation of the slaughter of the most illustrious persons, and that in the times of which he writes, virtue was attended with certain destruction. After the death of Germanicus and his eldest children, Valerius Asiaticus, Seneca, Corbulo, and an infinite number more who were thought most to resemble them, found this to be true at the expence of their lives: Nero, in pursuance of the same tyrannical design, murder’d Helvidius and Thrasea, that he might tear up virtue by the roots: 9 Domitian spared none willingly that had either virtue or reputation; and tho Trajan, with perhaps some other, might grow up under him in the remote provinces, yet no good man could escape who came under his eye, and was so eminent as to be observed by him. Whilst these, who were thought to be the best men that appear’d in the Roman empire, did thrive in this manner, Sejanus, Macro, Narcissus, Pallas, Tigellinus, Icetus, Vinius, Laco, and others like to them, had the power of the empire in their hands. Therefore, unless mankind has been mistaken to this day, and that these, who have hitherto been accounted the worst of villains, were indeed the best men in the world, and that those destroy’d by them, who are thought to have been the best, were truly the worst, it cannot be denied that the best men, during the liberty of Rome, thrived best; that good men suffer’d no indignity, unless by some fraud imposed upon the well-meaning people; and that so soon as the liberty was subverted, the worst men thrived best. The best men were exposed to so many calamities and snares, that it was thought a matter of great wonder to see a virtuous man die in his bed: and if the account were well made, I think it might appear, that every one of the emperors before Titus shed more noble and innocent blood than Rome and all the commonwealths in the world have done whilst they had the free enjoyment of their own liberty. But if any man in favour of our author seek to diminish this vast disproportion between the two differing sorts of government, and impute the disorders that happen’d in the time of the Gracchi, and others, whilst Rome was struggling for her liberty, to the government of a commonwealth, he will find them no more to be compar’d with those that fell out afterwards, than the railings of a turbulent tribune against the senate, to the villainies and cruelties that corrupted and dispeopled the provinces from Babylon to Scotland: And whereas the state never fail’d to recover from any disorders, as long as the root of liberty remain’d untouch’d, and became more powerful and glorious than ever, even after the wars of Marius and Sulla; when that was destroy’d, the city fell into a languishing condition, and grew weaker and weaker, till that and the whole empire was ruin’d by the barbarians.
3. Our author, to shew that his memory is as good as his judgment, having represented Rome in the times of liberty as a publick slaughterhouse, soon after blames the clemency of their laws; whereas ’tis impossible that the same city could at the same time be guilty of those contrary extremities; and no less certain, that it was perfectly free from them both. His assertion seems to be grounded upon Caesar’s speech (related by Sallust) in favour of Lentulus and Cethegus companions of Catiline: 10 but tho he there endeavoured to put the best colour he could upon their cause, it signified only thus much, that a Roman citizen could not be put to death, without being heard in publick; which law will displease none that in understanding and integrity may not be compared to Filmer and his followers. ’Tis a folly to extend it farther; for ’tis easily proved that there was always a power of putting citizens to death, and that it was exercised when occasion required. The laws were the same in the time of the kings, and when that office was executed by consuls, excepting such changes as are already mention’d. The lex perduellionis 11 cited by Livy in the case of Horatius who had kill’d his sister, continued in force from the foundation to the end of that government: the condemnation was to death, the words of the sentence these, caput obnubito, infelici arbore reste suspendito; verberato intra pomaerium vel extra pomaerium. 12 He was tried by this law upon an appeal made to the people by his father, and absolved admiratione magis virtutis quam jure causae; 13 which could not have been, if by the law no citizen might be put to death. The sons of Brutus were condemn’d to death in publick, and executed with the Aquilii and Vitellii their companions in the same conspiracy: Manlius Capitolinus was put to death by the vote of the people: Titus Manlius by the command of his father Torquatus, for fighting without order: Two legions were decimated by Appius Claudius: Spurius Maelius refusing to appear before the dictator, was killed by Servilius Ahala general of the horse, and pronounced jure caesum: 14 Quintus Fabius was by Papirius the dictator condemn’d to die, and could not have been saved but by the intercession and authority of the people. If this be not so, I desire to be informed what the senate meant by condemning Nero to be put to death more majorum, 15 if more majorum no citizen might be put to death: Why the consuls, dictators, military tribunes, decemviri, caused rods and axes to be carried before them, as well within as without the city, if no use was to be made of them. Were they only vain badges of a power never to be executed; or upon whom was the supreme power signified by them, to be exercised within and without the city, if the citizens were not subject to it? ’Tis strange that a man who had ever read a book of matters relating to the affairs of Rome, should fancy these things; or hope to impose them upon the world, if he knew them to be foolish, false, and absurd. But of all the marks of a most supine stupidity that can be given by a man, I know no one equal to this of our author, who in the same clause wherein he says no citizen could be put to death or banished, adds, that the magistrates were upon pain of death forbidden to do it; for if a magistrate might be put to death for banishing a citizen, or causing him to be executed, a citizen might be put to death; for the magistrates were not strangers, but citizens. If this was not so, he must think that no crime was capital, but the punishment of capital crimes; or that no man was subject to the supreme power, but he that was created for the execution of it. Yet even this will not stop the gap; for the law that condemned the magistrate to die, could be of no effect, if there were no man to execute it; and there could be none if the law prohibited it, or that he who did it was to die for it: And this goes on to infinity. For if a magistrate could not put a citizen to death, I suppose a citizen could not put to death a magistrate; for he also is a citizen. So that upon the whole matter we may conclude, that malice is blind, and that wickedness is madness. ’Tis hard to say more in praise of popular governments than will result from what he says against them: his reproaches are praises, and his praises reproaches. As government is instituted for the preservation of the governed, the Romans were sparing of blood, and are wisely commended by Livy for it: Nulli unquam populo mitiores placuere poenae; 16 which gentleness will never be blamed, unless by those who are pleased with nothing so much as the fury of those monsters, who with the ruin of the best part of mankind, usurp’d the dominion of that glorious city. But if the Romans were gentle in punishing offences, they were also diligent in preventing them: the excellence of their discipline led the youth to virtue, and the honours they received for recompence confirmed them in it. By this means many of them became laws to themselves; and they who were not the most excellent, were yet taught so much of good, that they had a veneration for those they could not equal, which not only served to incite them to do well according to their talents, but kept them in such awe as to fear incurring their ill opinion by any bad action, as much as by the penalty of the law. This integrity of manners made the laws as it were useless; and whilst they seemed to sleep, ignorant persons thought there were none: But their discipline being corrupted by prosperity, those vices came in which made way for the monarchy; and wickedness being placed in the throne, there was no safety for any but such as would be of the same spirit, and the empire was ruined by it.
Our author’s next work is, with that modesty and truth which is natural to him, to impute corruption and venality to commonwealths. He knows that monarchies are exempted from those evils, and has discovered this truth from the integrity observed in the modern courts of England, France, and Spain, or the more ancient of Rome and Persia: But after many falsehoods in matter of fact, and misrepresentations of that which is true, he shews that the corruption, venality, and violence he blames, were neither the effects of liberty, nor consistent with it. Gnaeus Manlius, who with his Asiatic army brought in the luxury that gave birth to those mischiefs, did probably follow the looseness of his own disposition; yet the best and wisest men of that time knew from the beginning that it would ruin the city, unless a stop might be put to the course of that evil: But they who had seen kings under their feet, and could no longer content themselves with that equality which is necessary among citizens, fomented it as the chief means to advance their ambitious designs. Tho Marius was rigid in his nature, and cared neither for money nor sensual pleasures, yet he favour’d those vices in others, and is said to be the first that made use of them to his advantage. Catiline was one of the lewdest men in the world, and had no other way of compassing his designs than by rendering others as bad as himself: and Caesar set up his tyranny by spreading that corruption farther than the others had been able to do; and tho he, Caligula, and some others were slain, yet the best men found it as impossible to restore liberty to the city when it was corrupted, as the worst had done to set up a tyranny whilst the integrity of their manners did continue. Men have a strange propensity to run into all manner of excesses, when plenty of means invite, and that there is no power to deter; of which the succeeding emperors took advantage, and knowing that even their subsistence depended upon it, they thought themselves obliged by interest as well as inclination to make honours and preferments the rewards of vice: and tho it be not always true in the utmost extent that all men follow the example of the king; yet it is of very great efficacy: Tho some are so good that they will not be perverted, and others so bad that they will not be corrected; yet a great number does always follow the course that is favour’d and rewarded by those that govern. There were idolaters doubtless among the Jews in the days of David and Hezekiah; but they prosper’d better under Jeroboam and Ahab: England was not without papists in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but they thrived much better during the reign of her furious sister. False witnesses and accusers had a better trade under Tiberius, who called them custodes legum, 1 than under Trajan who abhorred them; and whores, players, fiddlers, with other such vermin, abounded certainly more when encouraged by Nero than when despised by Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. But as every one of these manifested what he was by those he favour’d or punish’d, and that a man can only be judged by his principles or practices, he that would know whether absolute monarchies or mixed governments do most foment or punish venality and corruption, ought to examine the principle and practice of both, and compare them one with the other.